Politics

Follow The Money

~ Mr. Rantastic ~ Leave a comment

Where does Trump Inc. really get its money? In his interview with the New York Times this week, Donald Trump shot himself in the foot again and told everyone it was none of their business. Of course, now everyone will be focused on that very question.

Trump said that the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election would cross a “red line” if it started looking into his finances. But the special counsel is apparently thinking of doing just that, if he hasn’t already. After all, any crime investigator knows that the first thing to do is follow the money.

Trump’s supporters think he has a point: the investigation was supposed to be about Russian interference and should not be side tracked.  These are also people who have no love for the Clintons and surely supported Bill’s impeachment. They should remember that the only reason he was impeached was because an investigation of Clinton’s business affairs got sidetracked to whether or not he lied about having sex with an intern.

Sex with an intern is not Trump’s style, but the investigation may find that his firm is financially in bed with a number of dubious characters and governments, which could have the same consequences.

Where’s Papa Bear?

~ Mr. Rantastic ~ Leave a comment

So  far, Donald Trump has been uncharacteristically restrained in his comments about his son’s dealings with the Russians. One would have expected him to be very vocal about the attacks on his namesake. There are a number of possible reasons why Trump is holstering his Twitter handle on this one.

  • He knows it is bad and is hoping it blows over
  • He does not want to say anything that may later be proven to be a lie by his son
  • He is keeping his powder dry in case his son really gets into trouble
  • He is selling his son down the river to deflect attention from himself

It is hard to imagine that the last reason is valid considering the tight family circle that is Trump Inc. After all, Jared Kushner, Trump’s son in law, was also involved, and if it turns out illegalities were performed, the two of them might go down together.

No, it is probably a combination of the first three reasons, with the emphasis on the first one. Trump is smart enough to know that the issue has absolutely no chance of blowing over if he goes to the mat on it.

It likely won’t blow over though, so look for papa bear to come out swinging on behalf of his cubs when things heat up.

Trump’s Media Smackdown

~ Mr. Rantastic ~ Leave a comment

Donald Trump’s recent tweet of himself taking down CNN WWE-style has elicited a gaggle of news stories about how Trump has been modeling WWE fighters. But, as is the case too often lately, the media has the story wrong.

The story isn’t that Trump is using WWE tactics in politics. The real story is that the media has not figured this out until now even though it has been going on for a year. Why? Because the media are elites and have lost touch with the a large portion of America. For instance, the portion that makes WWE one of the top rated shows on cable TV. Have any of the national media even seen a WWE show or event?

Trump supporters know this. They can tell that the media has no clue about their interests, their lives and their daily struggles. Which is why they distrust the media. Meanwhile the media, which often reports on the very poor but hardly ever on the middle class, cannot understand where Trump’s support comes from.

Instead, they ought to be trying to figure out why Trump supporters would trust media that is so out of touch that it couldn’t figure out that Trump has been borrowing from the WWE (especially after he appointed the ex-CEO to his administration).

Don’t Ever Forget, Trump’s A Fighter

~ Mr. Rantastic ~ Leave a comment

When asked what he admired most about Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump responded, “She’s a fighter”. It is really the quality Trump admires most about himself (psychology calls that ‘projection’).

There are many people, primarily Trump opponents, who believe that if he is confronted with a terrible scandal or starkly contrary facts that he will back down and reverse position. They are completely and utterly mistaken.

Donald Trump will never back down. He was recorded talking about groping women but did not back down. Pictures of his inauguration crowd showed it smaller than Barak Obama’s, but that is just an ‘alternative fact’. Backing down is just not in his nature.

There are two possible exceptions. Going to jail or losing a lot of money. But these are debatable.

So looking forward to when and if Congress and/or the special prosecutor implicate Trump with regard to collusion with Russia, financial conflicts of interest or anything else, Trump will fight back with everything he has.

That will include mobilizing his base. There will be demonstrations in his favor. They won’t be as large as the ones against him, but that won’t be the point. The point of the Trump demonstrations will be to show the country what kind of social unrest might happen if it doesn’t back off.

The Democrats’ Missing Message

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Does the Democratic Party stand for anything other that ‘not Trump’? One has to wonder. Since Donald Trump won the presidency they have lost two special elections. The key point both Dem candidates were campaigning on was simple and negative: reject Trump. They lost.

At least Trump has a positive message: We’re gonna shake things up with that fossilized bunch of do-nothing blowhards in Washington. And while we are at it we’ll fight for the people that have been left behind by technology, gloabalization, environmentalism, etc.

The Democrats? All they seem to be saying is: “Trump a horrible person. It’s amazing that people are stupid enough to support him. He is going to ruin the country.”

Dissing Trump and his supporters is not a party platform. The Democrats need a positive message, one that resonates right in the gut of the people that agree that Washington is broken and who are hard working but being left behind economically. These folks should be the Democrats’ core constituency but they have given them up to the Tea Party and Trump.

Until the Democrats come up with a compelling, gut-grabbing positive message they will not be able to win many elections. It will probably take a change in the Democrats’ leadership away from elites like Nancy Pelosi for this to happen.

Charles Kushner Pardon Pool

~ Mr. Rantastic ~ 2 Comments

The odds are pretty high that Donald Trump will pardon Charles Kushner before he leaves office. After all, Kushner is the father of his son-in-law Jared. More importantly, Charles Kushner is one of the grandfathers of Jared Kushner’s three children, and Donald Trump is the other one.

The question is only when this will happen? Will Trump wait until the end of his presidency like most other presidents have done when it came to controversial pardons? Or will he just do it when he feels like it?

If your office or political club is looking for a pool to bet on, it is time to set one up for Charles.

Comey’s Call To Arms

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James Comey’s testimony before the US Congress this week will not bring President Donald Trump down. There was a lot of circumstantial evidence, but no smoking gun.

In the long term though, Comey might prove to be very influential. He accused Trump of lying about him and, more importantly, the FBI. This was a call to arms to the FBI and the law enforcement community in general: “Don’t let Trump get away with trying to insult and manipulate us.”

The real danger to Trump is that the FBI will take this to heart and redouble its efforts to uncover the Russia connections to the Trump administration. And it may not stop there. Bill Clinton was being investigated for the Whitewater affair, but after finding nothing the special counsel then turned to whether he had sex with an intern. The House voted to impeach him for lying about that.

The special counsel investigating Trump is a former FBI director. If he and the FBI heed Comey’s call to arms, Trump could be in for a very rough ride.

 

Trump to Europe: You’re Fired!

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There are some managers that come into a new job and believe that one of the first things they should do is fire someone. It gets people’s attention, puts them on their toes and shows them that it is not going to be business as usual.

Apparently, Donald Trump is one of those managers. A main topic at his first formal meeting with the Europeans was the Paris climate change agreement. They wanted the US to stay on track and worked hard to convince him to do so.

But to Trump, the issue was not about climate change but about letting the Europeans know that it will not be business as usual. And “firing” the climate change deal despite their pleas was a good way to do this.

In the short term, it won’t make much difference to climate change. Business is largely in favor of it and is going to act as if it were in effect for commercial reasons. Environmentally sympathetic state and local governments will do the same.

Meanwhile, Trump scores huge points with his base, sticking up for them against all of the usual suspects: the wishy washy UN, the socialist Europeans, the cheating Chinese, the elite liberals back home, etc. All without having to get Congress’ involved.

Starting his relationship with the Europeans by pissing them off may backfire on Trump. But not as much as pissing off his base by appeasing the Europeans and reversing his campaign promises on the Paris Accords. If impeachment talk ever becomes mainstream, he is going to want need his base solidly behind him.

Putin: We Did It, So What?

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Vladimir Putin is taking the long view. Realizing that the investigations into Russian influence in the 2016 elections is likely to show that they were hacking, he admitted that this probably happened. Not by the government of course, but by patriotic individual Russians that felt their government was threatened. He did not say threatened by whom, but the answer is Hillary Clinton.

Putin also let us know told us that we should not expect him or his government to do anything about it. He likened the hackers to artists that wake up with an idea and act on it. And if any connection is ever made between these hackers and Donald Trump, that is their business, not the Russian government’s.

Meanwhile, when pressed Trump is going to say that the Russians did nothing wrong. And he will be right, just like he was right when he said it was smart to pay as little taxes as legally possible. He will point to Obama’s government, which did plenty of hacking, even of our allies, so why shouldn’t the Russians try to hack us? We certainly try to hack them. He will continue to claim that he was not involved, and if the hacking benefited his campaign, so what?

The reality is that the Democrats brought this on themselves. They were irresponsibly lax regarding their computer security. Hillary Clinton set the tone when she decided to use her personal email system instead of the State Department’s, despite repeated warnings.

Both Trump and Putin will claim that it is not their fault that the Democrats left themselves open to hacking, and they will be right.

They will also claim that it was not their fault that people took advantage of it for political reasons, and they would be right about that too.

They will further maintain that they had nothing to do with planning or supporting the hacking, but it remains to be seen whether they are right about that. Of course, even if proven wrong, they have both proven very adept at denying the truth and turning to ‘alternative facts’.

 

It’s the Cover Up, Stupid

~ Mr. Rantastic ~ Leave a comment

Anyone who follows politics knows that when it comes to scandals, it is not the transgression that gets you, it’s the cover up. Nevertheless, politicians continue to cover things up rather than just admit to them, face the music and try to move on.

There was some reasonable expectation that Donald Trump would be different. After all, he was the one that claimed he could shoot someone in Times Square and still maintain his support. But it was not to be, and a few days ago Trump succumbed. He fired the FBI director, apparently for digging too deeply into his Russian connections.

By taking this extreme step that was clearly politically motivated, Trump likely achieves a number of unwanted objectives.

  • He makes enemies of a whole bunch of FBI personnel that can hurt him with their investigations and, more importantly, their leaks.
  • He gives the press renewed incentive to pursue the story
  • He gives his enemies in congress more ammo that he is undemocratic
  • He encourages more leaking by other members of the executive branch that disagree with politicizing the FBI

Inevitably, Trump’s Russian connections will be exposed. They could be around manipulating the election, they could be around his business empire being financed by Putins’ billionaire friends, they could be around his hotels getting sweetheart deals in Russia. There is a good chance it will be all of the above.

Whatever the connections turn out to be, they will not be the impeachable offense. That will be his efforts to cover them up.