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The Screaming Moderate

Trump, Cohen..and the winner is..Kim!

2/28/2019

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Before heading to Vietnam for his summit with Kim Jong Un, President Trump was fretting because his former lawyer’s testimony would happen the same day in Washington and he’d have to share his positive summit coverage with the negative hearing coverage. Today, he should be happy because his summit was not a success. Which means his failure didn’t get as much play as if it were the only news of the day.

But he can proudly point to both events as being all about him, as he likes it.

The hearing with his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, while reinforcing some things anti-Trumpers believe and disclosing very little new information, wasn’t as revealing as anticipated. The summit, something Trump has built up as one of his crowning achievements was a failure.

Cohen was quite credible on most topics and he reinforced confidence in his testimony when he said a tape of Trump allegedly hitting his wife in an elevator didn’t exist, to his knowledge or investigation. Also, he said he saw no evidence of Trump colluding with Russia over his election. (Naturally, while Trump said Cohen is a liar he cherry-picked that fact out as proof there was no collusion.)

The hearing was a typical Hill hearing: lots of grandstanding by both sides of the aisle who played to the cameras without a real effort to elicit useful information from Cohen. Though it did get more than its share of “wow” statements.

As pointed out in a New York Times column this morning by Caroline Frederickson, president of the American Constitution Society, the only questioner who really did her job was, surprisingly, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York who asked questions as would a prosecutor in a trial to get necessary information that can be further investigated.

The Republican strategy was for everyone to attack Cohen’s credibility and it did not work. He admitted up front as he has in court that he lied to Congress and committed other crimes. And, as the Republicans noted time after time, Cohen is going to prison in May for his crimes. Then Cong. Mark Meadows (R-NC) brought out his show and tell -- a black woman who worked for Trump thus, he claimed, proving Trump is not a racist -- well, do I need to say more? A stupid idea based on an ignorant theory and using a black woman as a prop to try to make his point. Only Trump’s basest base might possibly buy that stunt.

Cohen held up well under the constant attacks, though he showed moments of being on the verge of displaying his well-known anger (real or not). When talking about letting his wife and children down, I thought he’d crack. But he didn’t. Not until committee Chairman Elijah Cummings closed out the hearing with an impassioned plea to get the countr8y back to “normal” and civility. Then Cohen’s eyes welled up and it earned Cummings a rare hearing standing ovation.

On the other side of the world, Trump and Kim ended their summit early when they couldn’t reach agreement on eliminating North Korea’s nuclear capability. On top of that, because they didn’t like questions asked at an earlier event, the White House disinvited four print reporters from the next event. Typically when American presidents are overseas, especially when meeting with dictators, they go out of their way to showcase that our press is free, even if they don’t like the coverage at times. This time, not so much. One more stab in the back of the American press by the American president in front of a murderous dictator that Trump has admitted he is “in love” with.

Bottom line, nothing accomplished at the summit and no movement of the ball at the Cohen hearing. Whoever disliked Trump before the hearing heard further evidence of his bad behavior and, possibly, crimes; and whoever liked Trump just chalked it up to another liar trying to reduce his prison term (Fact Check: nothing Cohen said in the hearing will reduce his sentence. It’s only when a cooperating witness gives investigators information that leads to discovering crimes that a sentence reduction may be considered.)

At the summit, Trump once again demonstrated he does not have the fantastic negotiating skills he claimed. The only winner at the summit was Kim – who wins just sitting next to an American president and giving him credibility.

At the Cohen hearing one thing that struck me as ominous is it that Cohen worries that if the 2020 election is not a clear victory for whoever opposes Trump, Trump will not give up power easily – another fundamental of our democracy. That is a very scary prediction.
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There also was nothing that was clear evidence that Trump should be impeached though the Left is likely to push harder for impeachment now. Cohen may have offered up allegations that could result in impeachment but lots of corroboration would be necessary. And now focus turns not only to the Mueller investigation but the investigation going on in the Southern District of New York. Those folks have information beyond Cohen’s testimony that either backs it up, or doesn’t.
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The other thing Cohen said that explains a lot is that he confirmed Trump never expected to win the election. He looked at it as one big marketing opportunity to make money, thus the push to build Trump Tower in Moscow. Thus all the visits to Trump owned properties. Thus Trump, when he did win, not giving up his companies.
Despite a summit staged by Trump to be a foreign policy success, but failed; and despite a Congressional hearing that was entertaining but provided no smoking gun – nothing changed at the end of the day. Except we still have a president who didn’t think he’d win running a country as if it was his personal business and being surrounded, in his administration and the Congress, by a bunch of men and women who do everything they can to enable him.
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Can he really be the Manchurian candidate?

2/18/2019

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I slowly am coming around to the impossible thought that Donald Trump is working on someone else’s behalf, and not the American people.

I know this possibility has been around a long time – and many believed it -- but I’m just beginning to really accept the possibility.  I’ve had disagreements with many presidents, a couple of whom I worked for, but I never doubted they had the country’s best interest at heart. I chalk up Trump’s insan-er institincts to him being stupid or a narcissist or simply trying to keep his base together.

Let us consider that Trump, indeed, was the Manchurian candidate, inserted as our president quite by accident but being leveraged by, let’s say, Vladimir Putin: He certainly is doing all the things Putin would want:

He has upset the Washington apple cart, especially with his power grab to build a wall despite the fact that the Congress won’t approve money for it. If he can get away with that – and he might – he can do most anything as President. There’s nothing wrong with shaking up D.C. some, but Trump is contradicting the Constitution. And with all the judicial appointments he’s made, he could get away with it. He is trying to make Americans, or at least his base, believe there is an “invasion” going on at our southern border. There is not. There are military troops at the border, because Trump forced them there, and now he uses their presence as evidence to support his bogus “emergency.” If you look at the dozens of instances the emergency powers have been used, they are pretty much all for international reasons – boycotts, blockades, tariffs. None, zero are because a President didn’t get his way, which is what Trump is doing. That is not what our Constitution lays out for us.

He has turned international relationships topsy turvy. VP Pence mentioned Trump’s name at an international conference this weekend and there was silence, where normally there would have been applause for an American president. As Karl Kaiser, a longtime German-American analyst put it: “Two years of Mr. Trump, and a majority of French and Germans now trust Russia and China more than the United States.” That makes them even with Trump because…

Trump trusts Putin more than his intelligence agencies. He has said that at least twice. Once with Putin standing alongside him as he said Putin did not mess with our elections (despite heavy evidence to the contrary). And, he recently stated that he trusts Putin saying North Korea does not have the capability to strike the U.S. with its missiles. Our intelligence people believe the opposite. Please read that again because he is jeopardizing the safety of America because he believes our primary geopolitical enemy --Russia.

Dating North Korea. It’s one thing to meet with the tyrant who runs North Korea – and kills his enemies at will (including family members) – it’s another to lust after him as Trump has been doing, even admitting “we fell in love.” Cheap shot, I know, but it’s true. Maybe he thinks his adventures with Kim should earn him the Nobel Peace Prize because …

Nobel Peace Prize. Trump craves the Prize so much that the U.S. government asked Japan to submit a nomination for him. They did. Look, I didn’t think Obama had done anything to deserve the Prize when he got it either, but Trump equally has accomplished nothing yet except to make allies question us.

Damaging U.S. institutions. Trump has criticized judges. He daily criticizes the media, calling them the “enemy of the people,” damaging those institutions more than they’ve ever been. This creates distrust by Americans of the up-to-now trusted institutions that we rely on to keep public officials honest and criminals behind bars. Each can, and has, made mistakes but we aren’t united states without them. He also has criticized the Department of Justice which continues to investigate whether Russia mucked in our elections (clearly they did) and whether the Trump campaign had any involvement with that. It’s beginning to appear that more than a few in his campaign did collude, whether Trump believes it or knew about it or not.

His fellow elected Republicans fear him. Trump, never a Republican, has the Republican Senate scared to death of him so few feel they can challenge him. Why? They fear that if they anger Trump, they will be opposed in party primary and lose. So, their backbones have disappeared, thus killing off one Constitutionally mandated branch of government from restraining Trump from his worst (or Putin’s worst) instincts.

Add it all up, and we are in dangerous territory with at least two years left of Trump’s governing. If the premise of this piece is true, he’s certainly saving his boldest attacks on our country if he gets a second term, when he has literally nothing to lose.

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Random thoughts

2/13/2019

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Random thoughts over the past few days:

“I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you” -- Friedrich Nietzsche   President Trump who you may have noticed likes to lie a lot, has now begun saying things about his border wall  like, “the wall is being built.” Which, we know, is not true. Sections already were in place and repairs are being made to those but no new footage is being built. So, it occurs to me why doesn’t he just solve the big problem between himself and the Democrats by saying, “the wall is built!”  Then the country can move on to more important things.

 “Folks, I can tell you I've known eight presidents, three of them intimately" – Joe Biden Biden seems to be doing the old Mario Cuomo moonwalk, keeping us all guessing as to whether he’ll run for president or not in 2020. While there was a time I would have liked to see a President Biden, that time is long gone. I do think though the wise old men in the Democratic Party should start impressing upon him why he shouldn’t run. Then whoever the Democratic candidate is, he or she will have two of the best surrogates in history – Biden and former President Obama. That would be a fun campaign to watch, those two against Trump, thus keeping the candidate a little above the fray.

Virginia is for... What? One might think that Virginia Gov. Northam is having a bad year already. But, he got very lucky. Rather than the attention being solely on him and why, as a medical student he thought putting shoe polish on his face to imitate an African-American was cool, he now has two other statewide office holders for competition as dumbest elected official in the state. One has admitted to the same offense of putting on blackface and the other is fighting off accusations of sexual offenses. Lucky Northam, unlucky Virginia voters.

“I do not know if the people of the United States would vote for superior men if they ran for office, but there can be no doubt that such men do not run.” – Alexis de Tocqueville. The 2020 campaign is already underway. It’s kind of like seeing those Christmas decorations being displayed before Halloween. Uh, too soon? Also, for those of my vintage, it seems the current crop of candidates is diminished in my eyes because I’m older than all of them. No one younger than me should be president! (Just kidding)

Seattle got 6.4 inches of snow on Friday, which is just shy of the 6.8 inches the city usually receives in an entire year. Our Seattle correspondent, Barry Schumacher, reports that as the heavy snows were approaching, consumers rushed to the grocery stores to stock up. There was plenty of milk and bread left on the shelves after the onslaught, but the stores ran out of Kale.

Never Again. Antisemitism has never, and never will, disappear completely but lately it seems to be a lot more public than it has been. The German government has reported a 10 percent increase in the number of anti-Semitic incidents last year. A new American congresswoman was forced to apologize for using anti-Semitic tropes. France is calling for a firm response to an increase in anti-Semitic incidents there. Women’s March leaders in this country were criticized for attending an event with Louis Farrakhan who, as always, made incendiary remarks about Jews. All a demonstration of why we can never let our guards down about prejudice against any segment of our society. Bad things are always just a step away.
 
“You don’t have to be indoctrinated by these loser teachers that are trying to sell you on socialism from birth” – Donald Trump Jr. President Trump already is using what will be one of his re-election campaign arguments next year – He’s alining Democrats with Socialists and claiming, in effect, that a vote for a Democrat is a vote for socialism. With his record, he knows that his primary path to re-election is to make the Democrats appear worse than he is. This will be a very ugly campaign.

Shutdown Shmutdown. Don’t forget, it was Trump who said he would take “credit” for the first shutdown earlier this year after grabbing the bait Senate Minority Leader Schumer held out to him in an Oval Office meeting. This time, he claimed he “always accepted” blame for the first one (which he didn't) but would never accept it again, if it happens. People, he never was going to shut down the government again after seeing the dire effects the last one had. Plus, he says the shutdown really was to emphasize how bad a shutdown is. People wouldn't have understood it otherwise, he said. Oy.

The Dean’s last words. John Dingell, who served in Congress longer than anyone, died a few days ago and literally on his death bed dictated an op-ed which The Wasahington Post ran after he pased, leaving a message behind for the rest of us. In part his message was: 

“In democratic government, elected officials do not have power. They hold power — in trust for the people who elected them. If they misuse or abuse that public trust, it is quite properly revoked (the quicker the better).”

Amen, Mr. Chairman. RIP


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State of the Union 2.0

2/5/2019

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The White House is guiding reporters that during tonight’s State of the Union address President Trump will call for comity, for a coming together of Republicans and Democrats for the good of the country.

Yes, they are giving that guidance with a straight face.

There will be a great yawn or sense of bewilderment from most of the country because (1) they’ve heard it from Trump before and those good tidings lasted long enough for him to get his thumbs on his Twitter account; (2) because during his two years in office Trump has given away any credibility he might have once had by dissembling at best and lying at his worst on a daily basis, multiple times a day.

He will get through reading his text because he knows that he will have one of his largest audiences tonight and that audience likely reflects the country’s beliefs about him – 37 or 40 percent support him, the rest doubt him at best, despise him at worst. For one of the few times my guess is he will try to appeal somewhat to the more than 50 percent of the country that don’t approve of the job he is doing.

In his heart, Trump knows he cannot win reelection with only his base. Tonight he gets to talk to the rest of America. Time to put on the “let’s all work together” face.

His challenge is: other than his base, his credibility is near zero and why should anyone believe him tonight?

He’ll call for Democrats to join him in a bill to improve the country’s infrastructure, knowing there is general agreement on that issue but he’s had two years to deal with infrastructure, which is easier than most, and instead focused on building his border wall to keep crime, drugs and disease out of the country and in trying to repeal and replace Obamacare and other Obama era initiatives. The Democrats in the hall don’t believe him just because he is upending everything they achieved with Obama.

He has to talk about his support for the wall tonight because his base will be watching. The guess here is, tough, that won't take up much of the speech. He can dodge it by saying there are bi-partisan, bi-cameral negotiations going on now and he wants to see how that goes. Of course, that's after he said last week that those talks will go no where.

He’ll have Speaker Nancy Pelosi over his right shoulder and not the former Speaker, the toady Paul Ryan. Millions of eyes will watch for Pelosi’s reactions tonight. Spoiler alert: She’ll be respectful because she respects the Office of the President.

Trump’s call for comity won’t last long, certainly not past tonight. He can’t operate without an enemy and his enemy is the Democrats, figure-headed by Nancy Pelosi. But he can’t press her tonight for many reasons, not the least of which is he now knows that she is the toughest person in Washington at the moment.

Trump is saying Pelosi won’t cave to his wall demands because she wants the issue for 2020. He’s projecting, here. He knows it is he who wants the issue for 2020. He likely won’t say tonight that he will use his emergency powers to pay for the wall – even Republican Leader McConnell knows that’s a loser. But he may at some point do that because he knows it is an issue that is headed to the courts and I’m sure he’d just as soon see it languish there so he can claim he’s pushed it as far as he can, thus preserving the talking point for his reelection campaign.

He’s “set the table” as he has teased for using the emergency option and he even ordered a few thousand more troops to the border this week to show what an emergency it is. Doing that plus his saying it's a crisis and emergency he beleives makes it so. So far, the troops deployed there have basically been erecting concertina wire. And when his intelligence chiefs delivered the annual terror threat report to Congress last week, the border issue never came up. It is a crisis of his own rhetoric.

If Trump really wanted to display some comity tonight he would start by congratulating Pelosi on her return to power in the House and be sincere about it. But sincerity is difficult for this president to display. He’d make a self-deprecating joke at some point. Something like, “Gee, did you see what happened last November? I lost bigly.” But he won’t.  Because he thinks he won the 2018 election.
 
He likely won’t veer much from his prepared remarks, but that’s when he looks least sincere of all. He should have kept that campaign promise of never using a TelePrompter – he’s really bad at it and shows it in his softer voice, his half closed (sincere look) eyes and his calmer demeanor. We all know by now that is his false look. At least that’s not the character he’s chosen to play in his reality show of The Celebrity White House.

Last year Trump spoke for a Clinton-esque 80 minutes. This year, I'll take the over. He does like being the focus of attention, after all.

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    B. Jay Cooper

    B. Jay is a former deputy White House press secretary to Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush. He also headed the communications offices at the Republican National Committee, U.S. Department of Commerce, and Yale University. He is a former reporter and is the retired deputy managing director of APCO Worldwide's Washington, D.C., office.
    He is the father of three daughters and grandfather of five boys and one girl. He lives in Marion, Mass.

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