The Commentariat -- December 3, 2017
Afternoon Update:
Michael Shear of the New York Times: "President Trump lashed out at the F.B.I. on Sunday ... by charging that the bureau's reputation was 'in tatters -- worst in history' and denying that he had told his first F.B.I. director to end the Flynn investigation.... In a 6:15 a.m. tweet on Sunday, the president called [James] Comey a liar and said the news media had spread falsehoods.... 'I never asked Comey to stop investigating Flynn. Just more Fake News covering another Comey lie!'... In an extraordinary attack on the top law enforcement body in his own government, Mr. Trump accused the F.B.I. and its career investigators of having a bias against him.... 'After years of Comey, with the phony and dishonest Clinton investigation (and more), running the FBI, its reputation is in Tatters - worst in History! But fear not, we will bring it back to greatness.'... Mr. Trump's efforts to shift the attention to Mrs. Clinton after Mr. Flynn's guilty plea began Saturday night, when he assailed the Justice Department." And so forth. ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: It seems obvious that just yesterday, one of his attorneys or some other advisor was able to impress upon Trump that trying to get the FBI to squelch a criminal investigation is obstruction of justice AND is a crime for which a president can be impeached & possibly indicted. This is the first time in lo, these many months since Comey first made the assertion -- under oath -- that Trump has denied he asked Comey to clear Flynn. Of course this is a pattern with Trump: deny, deny, deny. Insist upon his own reality. Pretty soon we'll find out that Flynn's name never even came up in the meeting. Or maybe there was no meeting -- it's just "another Comey lie."
AND Fox Business commentator Lou Dobbs, a/k/a Bigoted Old Coot, thinks President Obama should be arrested for saying that a person (any person) should think before he tweets. Mrs. McC: Even tho Orrin Hatch says the federal government doesn't have any money any more, he may still want to propose a bill charging the CDC with searching for a cure for ODS --the debilitating, as-yet incurable Obama Derangement Syndrome.
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Jim Tankersley & Alan Rappeport of the New York Times: "Congressional Republicans, buoyed by the Senate's approval early Saturday of a landmark tax overhaul, expressed confidence that final legislation would be sent to President Trump by the end of this month. While the tax bills approved by the House and the Senate diverge in significant ways, the same forces that rocketed the measures to passage appear likely to bond Republicans in the two chambers as they work to hash out the differences." ...
... Jesse Drucker & Patricia Cohen of the New York Times: "... many [of the last-minute] changes [to the tax bill] expanded tax benefits for the wealthiest taxpayers, while other attempts to close loopholes fell by the wayside.... Far from simplifying taxes, the bill opened up a whole range of tactics to lower the amount owed to the Internal Revenue Service.... One of the bill's biggest windfalls for the wealthy -- cutting taxes on income received through so-called pass-through entities like partnerships, popular with real estate developers -- got even more generous.... The ever-lengthening list of income that will be taxed at a cut-rate could be seen as 'a Donald J. Trump loophole,' said Steven M. Rosenthal of the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.... The list of earnings that do qualify [for the Trump loophole] was expanded from earlier Republican proposals in the Senate.... Thanks to an amendment offered by Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, certain income from gas and oil operators ... could also qualify for the new, lower rate.... While wealthy investors and business would receive numerous tax cuts -- including eliminating the estate tax for all but a tiny sliver of the country's wealthiest households -- the Senate moved to tighten deductions for lower- and middle-income wage earners." ...
... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: There much more to Drucker & Cohen's report, but the bottom line is that the illegible marginalia made a terrible bill even worse. When Trump has said the bill would be bad for him & that many of his wealthy friends are very unhappy, he was being half-truthful. What he meant was, "It doesn't do enough for me & my rich pals," so GOP senators fixed that at the last minute. ...
... ** Kate Zernike & Alan Rappeport of the New York Times: "As the tax cut legislation passed by the Senate early Saturday hurtles toward final approval, Republicans are preparing to use the swelling deficits made worse by the package as a rationale to pursue their long-held vision: undoing the entitlements of the New Deal and Great Society, leaving government leaner and the safety net skimpier for millions of Americans. Speaker Paul D. Ryan and other Republicans are beginning to express their big dreams publicly, vowing that next year they will move on to changes in Medicare and Social Security. President Trump told a Missouri rally last week, 'We're going to go into welfare reform.'" ...
... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: Assuming Republicans pursue this particular wet dream, I think we'll find that even some crazed Trumpbots will have second thoughts. The Trumpbots are thrilled to get rid of any programs that imagine are exclusively enjoyed by "those people" -- remember "Obamaphones"? -- but many are not so daft they are willing to give up Social Security & Medicare in exchange for GOP pandering to their "traditional" values (like "keep 'em barefoot & pregnant"). ...
... Alan Pyke of ThinkProgress: "The Trump tax cut Republicans will almost certainly vote through the Senate is gaudier than past right-wing guttings.... But its ideological DNA is almost identical to every insane giveaway to rich people and multinational corporations that powerful GOP officials and advisers have pushed since Art Laffer first scribbled a thought experiment on a bar napkin during the Reagan years. The trap it sets a few years down the road, designed to force massive spending cuts to the safety net programs that allow the American underclass to survive while depriving them of their dignity, also reflects Republicans' long commitment to class warfare on behalf of the rich." --safari ...
... Addy Baird of ThinkProgress: "The far-reaching implications of the Republican tax plan may include a sneaky attempt to use the sweeping piece of legislation to attack abortion rights. Nearly 100 pages into the House version of the bill -- and likely in the Senate bill as well, though Republicans have not yet released the text of the bill to the public.... Republicans attempt to codify an anti-choice priorily known as fetal personhood. The provision is, on its face, a move to allow fetuses to be named as beneficiaries of popular college savings plans known as 529 accounts.... Anti-choice activists believe that if fetuses are legally defined as people -- fetal personhood' -- then abortion will be outlawed.... Congressional Republicans buried the definition deep in a tax plan likely to become law, and anti-choice advocates are applauding the move." --safari ...
... The Sabotage of Education. E. A. Crunden of ThinkProgress: "The new tax bill passed by Senate Republicans does away with crucial support for public schools while adding a provision beneficial to their private counterparts. That move would help wealthy parents pay for private schools, including religious schools, while hurting lower-income families. A similar provision is in the House version of the tax bill."--safari ...
... Sarah Kliff of Vox: "The Senate bill includes a provision to repeal the Affordable Care Act's requirement that nearly all Americans carry insurance coverage, known as 'the individual mandate.' Republicans see it as a winning move.... And repealing it will save more than $300 billion -- which can pay for big tax cuts for corporations and the very wealthy. The best economic evidence we have shows that if the individual mandate disappears, premiums go up and millions of Americans lose coverage. The Congressional Budget Office pegs the decline in the number of insured at 13 million.... If the individual mandate repeal does survive into the final tax bill, some experts expect that states that supported President Trump may face the worst outcomes.... Many only have one health insurance plan selling coverage. If that one plan decides it doesn't want to sell in a marketplace without a mandate, it could leave residents with zero health options.... Republicans didn't like skinny repeal when it was a stand-alone policy.... But now, 52 senators have voted to essentially turn skinny repeal into policy buy tacking the individual mandate repeal onto their tax bill." --safari ...
... **Nihilists. Ezra Klein: "Since regaining power in January, congressional Republicans have embarked on a relentless campaign of proving themselves pure nihilists. The GOP spent the Obama years in a frenzy over debt and deficits. Now they are passing a tax bill that will add trillions to the national debt.... The nihilism extends to process too. Republicans complained bitterly during the Obama administration that Democrats weren't holding enough hearings, [etc.] Now ... Democrats feel like fools for taking Republican deficit concerns seriously, for trying to play by the rules and pay for their legislation and show they were acting in good faith. 'Part of me feels like a sucker now,' says Jason Furman, who served as chief economist to President Obama...." --safari ...
... Steve Benen feels as if he's stuck in a Dickensian nightmare. Because he is. On the last full day of work on the Tax Cuts for Trump/deficit-funded bill, Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) objected to a call by Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) to fund the now-unfunded CHIPS program "because we don't have money any more." "After praising the 'terrific job' CHIP has done for families who need help, he immediately added, 'I have a rough time wanting to spend billions and billions and trillions of dollars to help people who won't help themselves – won't lift a finger -- and expect the federal government to do everything.'" ...
The Russia Scandal
** Michael Schmidt, et al., of the New York Times: "When President Trump fired his national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, in February, White House officials portrayed him as a renegade who had acted independently in his discussions with a Russian official during the presidential transition and then lied to his colleagues about the interactions. But emails among top transition officials, provided or described to The New York Times, suggest that Mr. Flynn was far from a rogue actor. In fact, the emails, coupled with interviews and court documents filed on Friday, showed that Mr. Flynn was in close touch with other senior members of the Trump transition team both before and after he spoke with the Russian ambassador, Sergey I. Kislyak, about American sanctions against Russia.... The records suggest that the Trump transition team was intensely focused on improving relations with Moscow and was willing to intervene to pursue that goal despite a request from the Obama administration that it not sow confusion about official American policy before Mr. Trump took office. On Dec. 29, a transition adviser to Mr. Trump, K. T. McFarland, wrote in an email to a colleague that sanctions announced hours before by the Obama administration in retaliation for Russian election meddling were aimed at discrediting Mr. Trump's victory. The sanctions could also make it much harder for Mr. Trump to ease tensions with Russia, 'which has just thrown the U.S.A. election to him,' she wrote in the emails obtained by The Times.... A White House lawyer said on Friday that she meant only that the Democrats were portraying it that way." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Gee, that White House lawyer & I don't read McFarland's e-mail the same way. I don't think "only kidding!" will work here, unless Mueller's team are a bunch of gullible rubes with odd senses of humor. The importance of the e-mails among the Trump staff is obvious. Flynn is an admitted liar, & that limits the utility of his testimony. But now we learn he has give the Mueller team documents to back up his assertions. ...
... Josh Marshall connects some dots in the compelling way he often does. One humorous/appalling part of his post is a graf of Miss Smoking Gun's CV: "Her main qualification for the job was a long stint as a 'Fox News National Security Analyst', a position she had seemingly on the basis of a stint as a speechwriter in the Reagan Pentagon thirty years ago.... She is a notorious resume embellisher. More recent McFarland highlights include a failed run against Hillary Clinton during Clinton's run for a second senate term in 2006. In that race, McFarland distinguished herself by claiming that Clinton saw her as such a threat that she was sending secret helicopters to surveil her estate in the Hamptons. That's the level of person she is. McFarland was defeated in the GOP primary." Marshall demonstrates that McFarland -- who had a lot to gain by disappearing Comey -- seems to have been a player in Trump's decision to rid himself of that meddlesome G-man. ...
... **The NRA Loves Putin. Nicolas Fandos of The New York Times: "A conservative operative trumpeting his close ties to the National Rifle Association and Russia told a Trump campaign adviser last year that he could arrange a back-channel meeting between Donald J. Trump and Vladimir V. Putin..., according to an email sent to the Trump campaign. A May 2016 email to the campaign adviser, Rick Dearborn, bore the subject line 'Kremlin Connection.' In it, the N.R.A. member said he wanted the advice of Mr. Dearborn and Senator Jeff Sessions.... Russia, he wrote, was 'quietly but actively seeking a dialogue with the U.S.' and would attempt to use the N.R.A.'s annual convention in Louisville, Ky., to make 'first contact.'... [A]s Mr. Trump closed in on the nomination, Russians were using three foundational pillars of the Republican Party -- guns, veterans and Christian conservatives -- to try to make contact with his unorthodox campaign.... Mr. Sessions told investigators from the House Intelligence Committee that he did not recall the outreach.... Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, penned letters to several Trump campaign foreign policy advisers last week asking for all documents related to the N.R.A...." --safari: How ironic the organization most dedicated to spilling American blood is also used as a favored conduit to a hostile power. ...
... Kristine Phillips & Aaron Blake of the Washington Post: "In his first public comments about Michael Flynn pleading guilty to lying to the FBI about his interactions with a Russian official, President Trump reiterated Saturday that his campaign did not collude with Russia and suggested Flynn lied for no reason. When asked by reporters before departing for New York if he was worried about what Flynn might say, Trump said, 'No, I'm not. And what has been shown is no collusion. No collusion. There has been absolutely no collusion. So we're very happy.' He later tweeted..., 'I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI. He has pled guilty to those lies. It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!'... Curiously, Trump's tweet indicates he knew about Flynn's lie to the FBI when he fired him, but that wasn't reported by The Washington Post until two days afterward. At the time, Trump cited only Flynn's lie to Vice President Pence.... Trump was greeted in New York by protesters chanting 'Lock him up.'..." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: The most interesting part of Trump's comment is his assertion that "his [Flynn's] actions during the transition were lawful." This strongly suggests to me that Trump himself was in on the Russian contacts from the git-go (so his own actions were lawful, too), something I suspect anyway. If Sally Yates, then acting attorney general, thought the "actions were lawful," she would not have warned the White House that Flynn had made unlawful, compromising contacts with Kislyak. ...
... Also too, according to the tweet, Trump fired Flynn partly because Flynn had lied to the FBI. It was after that when that Trump asked Jim Comey to go easy on Flynn. When Comey refused, Trump fired him. Lying to the FBI is a crime, & it is one that has been much publicized (remember Martha Stewart?). So Trump knew Flynn committed a crime, yet he wanted the FBI to faggedaboudit. Thus his tweet amounts to another admission that he tried to obstruct justice. My hope is that Mueller will send a damning report to the House, at right about the time Democrats take control of the Congress, AND will file a secret indictment of Trump, to be opened upon his forced retirement. ...
... Update: Oops! I missed this part of the report (altho other stuff I've read suggests it might be a later addition to the story): "Trump's lawyer John Dowd drafted the president's tweet, according to two people familiar with the twitter message. Its authorship could reduce how significantly it communicates anything about when the president knew that Flynn had lied to the FBI, but also raises questions about the public relations strategy of the president's chief lawyer. Two people close to the administration described the tweet simply as sloppy and unfortunate." Of course this could be Dowd falling on his sword for his captain. (As Chas Danner writes [linked below], a tweeter called "Southpaw" asks, "We're supposed to believe John Dowd wrote pled instead of pleaded?") ...
... Update 2. Spencer Ackerman of the Daily Beast, based on his interview of former U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade, makes the same point about the admission in Trump's tweet & Sally Yates' warning: "'This tweet makes it clear that Trump knew at the time that he made his request to Comey to let the investigation go that Flynn had lied to the FBI, which is a criminal offense, Barbara McQuade ... told The Daily Beast.... Trump's tweet 'adds to the evidence that Trump was attempting to obstruct or impede the investigation of a crime,' said McQuade.... The admission from the president also suggests that White House counsel Don McGahn had informed the president about Flynn's potential to '
... Chas Danner of New York: "According to Comey's testimony, Trump told him he believed Flynn had done nothing illegal. According to Trump's tweet on Saturday, that might not have been true [since Trump knew Flynn had lied to the FBI, which is a crime], and thus Trump might have been trying to get the director of the FBI to look the other way regarding a crime by a top White House official.... We don't even know what Flynn will reveal now that he is cooperating with Mueller, but Trump and the White House already appear to be making unforced errors as a result." ... ... Kevin Drum points to "the peculiar but oddly Trumpian defense: admit further guilt because you're too dumb to realize what you're doing.... Trump basically admits to wrongdoing all the time, and somehow it never seems to matter. He's confessed that he never would have appointed Jeff Sessions as Attorney General if he'd known he was going to recuse himself from the Russia investigation. He confessed on national TV that he fired James Comey because of the Russia investigation. He then admitted the same thing to the Russian ambassador, telling him that he 'faced great pressure because of Russia,' but that it was all taken care of now that Comey had been canned. This is a striking and novel strategy in American politics." ... ... Michael Schmidt, et al., of the New York Times: "... Robert S. Mueller III removed a top F.B.I. agent from his investigation into Russian election meddling after the Justice Department's inspector general began examining whether the agent had sent text messages that expressed anti-Trump political views, according to three people briefed on the matter. The agent, Peter Strzok, is considered one of the most experienced and trusted F.B.I. counterintelligence investigators. He helped lead the investigation into whether Hillary Clinton mishandled classified information on her private email account, and then played a major role in the investigation into links between President Trump's campaign and Russia. But Mr. Strzok was reassigned this summer from Mr. Mueller's investigation to the F.B.I.'s human resources department, where he has been stationed since. The people briefed on the case said the transfer followed the discovery of text messages in which Mr. Strzok and a colleague reacted to news events, like presidential debates, in ways that could appear critical of Mr. Trump." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ... ... Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Vivian Wang of the New York Times: "Brian Ross, the chief investigative correspondent for ABC News, has been suspended for four weeks without pay after incorrectly reporting that Michael T. Flynn, the former national security adviser, would testify that President Trump had directed him to make contact with Russian officials while Mr. Trump was still a candidate, the network announced on Saturday. Mr. Trump had in fact directed him to make contact after the election, as president-elect, the network said. ABC initially issued a clarification after Mr. Ross made the statement during a broadcast on Friday, but on Saturday the network called it a 'serious error.'" ... ... Mrs. McCrabbie: On Friday afternoon, I linked to a print version of the same story & re-linked it yesterday. ... "There Has Been Absolutely No Collusion." Jeff Toobin of the New Yorker explores the legal cases Mueller may be building against Trump & his entourage of shady characters. It's a longish read, but a good one & quite thorough. ... ... Let's Get Mikey. Susan Hennessey, et al., in Lawfare, also write a comprehensive (although they call it "quick & dirty") piece on Flynn's plea agreement. Two key points: "... take a moment to remember the context in which Flynn's underlying conduct took place: He and apparently the Trump transition team were working to undermine U.S. foreign policy goals endorsed by both parties.... The fact that Pence felt compelled to refute these stories demonstrates that the Trump team understood the gravity of the accusation and why having contacts related to sanctions would be deeply improper." ... ... Dahlia Lithwick of Slate thinks we may have reached the end of the rule of law: "... as the year has progressed, it's become clear that absolutely nothing will persuade Trump supporters and Republicans in Congress that it's time to disavow the president -- not lying, not spilling state secrets, not abject failure in crisis management, and not openly performed corruption. Given that reality, it often feels like it wouldn't be enough for Mueller to hand us a smoking gun and an indictment.... It seems as though truth and law are forever losing ground in the footrace against open looting and overt totalitarianism.... With every passing day, as Trump escapes consequences and attacks the courts and the press, the chances that a 'tick, tick, tick, boom' will be played off as #fakenews also increase." ... ... Mrs. McCrabbie: I would urge Lithwick to read Frank Rich's column, dated 25, on Watergate. "For all the months of sensational revelations and criminal indictments (including of his campaign manager and former attorney general, John Mitchell), a Harris poll found that only 22 percent thought Nixon should leave office. Gallup put the president's approval rating in the upper 30s, roughly where our current president stands now.... It would take another full year of bombshells and firestorms after the televised Senate hearings before a clear majority of Americans (57 percent) finally told pollsters they wanted the president to go home. Only then did he oblige them, in August 1974." Book Review. Michael Kranish of the Washington Post: A book "by Corey Lewandowski, who was fired as Trump's campaign manager, and David Bossie, another top aide..., [called] 'Let Trump Be Trump,' paints a portrait of a campaign with an untested candidate and staff rocketing from crisis to crisis, in which Lewandowski and a cast of mostly neophyte political aides learn on the fly and ultimately accept Trump's propensity to go angrily off message. 'The mode that he switches into when things aren't going his way can feel like an all-out assault; it'd break most hardened men and women into little pieces.'... Trump screams at his top aides, who are subjected to expletive-filled tirades in which they get their 'face ripped off.'" Mr. Unaccountable. Chris Riotta of Newsweek: "Jared Kushner failed to disclose his role as a co-director of the Charles and Seryl Kushner Foundation from 2006 to 2015, a time when the group funded an Israeli settlement considered to be illegal under international law, on financial records he filed with the Office of Government Ethics earlier this year.... The failure to disclose his role in the foundation -- at a time when he was being tasked with serving as the president's Middle East peace envoy -- follows a pattern of egregious omissions that would bar any other official from continuing to serve in the West Wing, experts and officials told Newsweek.... The omission was first discovered by a team of researchers at American Bridge, a progressive research and communications organization, and shared exclusively with Newsweek on Friday afternoon." --safari ... ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Charles & Seyrl are Jared's parents so I doubt Jared just forgot about the family foundation, of which he is a director. Pádraig Collins of the Guardian: "The potential of a US war with North Korea is growing each day, Donald Trump's national security adviser said on Saturday. Speaking at the Reagan National Defense Forum in Simi Valley, California, HR McMaster said North Korea is 'the greatest immediate threat to the United States'. 'I think it's increasing every day, which means that we are in a race, really, we are in a race to be able to solve this problem,' he said." Mrs. McC: What he neglected to say is that Trump himself is accelerating the timetable. The Travails of Pajama Boy. John Bresnahan & Rachel Bade of Robert O'Harrow of the Washington Post: "Project Veritas, an activist group that mounts undercover video stings of liberals and mainstream news organizations, received nearly $1.7 million in donations last year from a giant charity associated with the Koch brothers, according to documents filed with the Internal Revenue Service." Mrs. McC: The Koch boys aren't just selfish confederates; they're vicious, unprincipled, win-at-any-cost confederates. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) Way Beyond the Beltway Real Consequences of #FakeNews. Emily Hazzard of ThinkProgress: Other countries are now using "President Trump's outrageous, self-aggrandizing rhetoric" to brush aside concerns of major human rights violations.... 'There is no such thing as Rohingya,' said a Myanmar official this week. 'It is fake news.'... Libyan media is using the 'fake news' claim to dismiss evidence of slavery and other human rights abuses." --safari News Lede Washington Post: "Marianne Means, a journalist who switched from copy editing to reporting because she was told that editing was no job for a woman, and who broke up another old boys' club as one of the earliest female White House correspondents, covering the administrations of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, died Dec. 2 at her home in Washington. She was 83."
Tom Boggioni of RawStory: "President Donald Trump is in the habit of circumventing the discipline imposed by ... John Kelly by calling aides to the West Wing late at night for secret meetings and assignments. According to the Wall Street Journal, Trump summons staffers to his private residence in the evening to make plans with the promise that Kelly will be kept in the dark.... The report notes that Trump also makes unscheduled calls to confidantes outside the White House so Kelly can't monitor them." --safari
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