There’s an old saying, “When the going gets tough, the tough get a six pack”. Or something like that, that one has been my motto anyway. The first three weeks of Der Gropinfuhror’s rule have been so hectic it’s hard to keep up. Which is more important to cover, Trump’s last outraged Tweet, his stupid statement in front of some group, his latest infantile Executive Order, or Sean Spicer’s abject incompetence as a Spokesman? It’s like a Vegas buffet of stupid.
Rachel Maddow has found a way to deal with it. She announced earlier this week that people should stop paying so much attention to what they say, that’s just the left hand waving the bright, shiny object, and pay attention to what they do. Sounds good, especially when dealing with a gaudy, loud, brash, fact free organization which is not going to provide any hard based information willingly.
But when you put sunglasses on to fight the Trump glare, and put earmuffs on to drown out Sean Spicer and KellyAnne Conway, and just look, there already appear to be a few mice nibbling at ropes. This is where we should be looking and concentrating, it’s where the real action may end up coming from, and the real outrage.
While James Comey has suddenly decided that it’s better for the FBI to keep it’s big, fat mouth shut, refusing to confirm or deny whether investigations are taking place, as opposed to risking the possibility of his ass being constantly dragged up on investigations, the whispers continue to grow of an active investigation into Trump campaign communications with the Russian government during the campaign. Are they finding anything? Who knows, but it is interesting that after repeatedly denying that the topic of US sanctions came up in his pre NSA days with the Russian Ambassador, Flynn has been forced to backtrack, saying that while he doesn’t remember the subject coming up, he couldn’t guarantee that it didn’t happen. First, why was he asked that question again? And second, why now turn around and start backtracking?
Forget the noise, Trump’s ethics are starting to move more and more front and center. Trump has refused to divest from his companies, although he swears he has turned over management to his two sons. If so, he severely undercut his pose by having his two sons as guests in the White House for the cabinet swearing in ceremony recently. Ivanka has turned over daily management of her company to someone else, but she also hasn’t divested, maintaining majority ownership of the company. She occupies the First Lady’s office in the West Wing, it was not good for Daddy to come out and blast a retailer for dropping her line, even if he didn’t directly refer to her company.
Before being elected, Trump bailed out Donnie Jr. by buying out a warehouse style building in South Carolina that Jr. had run into bankruptcy. The Orange Mogul wanted to rehab it and get it up and running again, but it was derelict, with even leaking drums of toxic waste. Trump petitioned a state agency to pay for the cleanup, which is allowed for in SC law, as long as there is no previous connection between the old owner and the new owner. The agency decided that a father-son relationship was a violation, and refused to foot the bill. The Banana Republic dictator has yet to respond, but the ruling just came down earlier this week. Heaven help him if he makes so much as a peep.
To my mind this has gone sadly under reported in all of the noise, but House Oversight Chairman recently asked for an unredacted copy of Trump’s lease with the government for the Washington D,C, property that now houses his gaudy hotel, wanting to see if in fact Trump is breaking federal law by continuing to own the hotel. And after KellyAnne Conway handed any ethics lawyer a gold wrapped gift by giving Ivanka Trump’s clothing line not one, but two separate plugs in the same interview with Fox from the WH briefing room, not only did Chaffetz denounce her, but he quietly added his signature to Elijah Cummings’ letter to the Office of Government Ethics to open a formal investigation.
This was always the GOP’s worst nightmare scenario. I have been avidly watching politics for a long time, and I have never seen an administration in this much trouble in three weeks. How does even a GOP controlled congress work with a White House whose President and First Daughter are already under an ethics cloud for their business entanglements, his Chief Counsel is in trouble for plugging products on the job, and his NSA may have broken the law by negotiating privately with a foreign power with another sitting President, and lying to cover it up. And if Trump is found to be violating the law by continuing his lease on the Old Post Office Building in DC, that is another distraction, which he can’t even directly respond to, since he has supposedly given up his business interests.
Once that first snowball starts rolling, it’s hard to stop the avalanche. Just ask Nixon about that. Good questions can get answers that create even more questions, sometimes going off into at that time not even thought of lines of inquiry. And the new administration is in even more danger, considering the incredible number of leaks already springing up in the dam, one juicy tidbit could launch yet another “uncomfortable truth”.
We are not yet in the land of impeachment, but the idea is not as unlikely as it once seemed, especially when a new PPP poll shows that the nation is split evenly at 46-46 as to whether Trump should be impeached, and this is after only three weeks. If the scandals keep coming, and the constituent pressure on GOP lawmakers continues to increase, at what point do they start looking for the emergency hatch? Trump’s only good news in that poll was that while 32% thought he was the worst option for President, 38% felt that Pence would be even worse. Joy where you can find it Little Man. Everybody else, grab your pencils!