December 13, 2019--It's In Their Hands

Earlier in the week there was a blizzard of presidential poll results. 

Mainly about how the candidates were faring in Iowa and New Hampshire and how, nationally, individual Dems were doing in head-to-head contests with Trump.

The upper tier could not but feel encouraged. Even Amy Klobuchar, who was in about 8th place overall at four or five percent, appeared to be leading Trump by five or six percentage points. In first place, holding steady, Joe Biden was nine percentage point ahead of Trump.

Yes, the election is still nearly a year away, though almost everyone I know would like it to be next Tuesday, or tomorrow, and we know from the 2016 polling and results that people who eventually voted for Trump didn't reliably show up in the polls--apparently many people were and perhaps are reluctant to admit, perhaps are embarrassed to reveal they plan to vote for Trump--Biden's numbers especially are looking encouraging to anyone who wants to send Trump packing to Mar-a-Lago.

There was also a trickle of related poll and election results chat in the media that was both encouraging and concerning.

Some of the polls broke out data about how women are thinking about Trump and a generic Democratic opponent. Encouraging, 60 percent said they planned to vote for Trump's opponent, but concerning, 34 percent of polled women said they planned to vote to reelect him.

I know 60-34 represents a landslide and I'll take it, but how can one account for the fact that more than a third of American women say they will vote for Trump in spite of all the outrages he has committed when it comes to women.  From Stormy Daniels to the Access Hollywood tape to the way he characterizes any women with whom he disagrees. Ask Congresswoman Maxine Waters how he has smeared her.

And then, when discussing the polling results someone on "Morning Joe" reminded the panel and viewers that in 2016 only 19 percent of young people voted. Not for Trump, not for Hillary but did not vote at all. 

Also, someone pointed out that three years ago 4.4 million of Obama's 2012 voters did not vote.

So, looking toward 2020, unless women turn out, especially if black women vote at close to Obama levels, unless young people turn out, Trump could win a close Electoral College victory.

The good news though--it's all in our hands. 

November 26, 2019--Schmoozing At Camp David

The consensus is that the reason all Republican members of Congress are so willing to follow Trump to the edge of the cliff and perhaps over it is because he continues to hold onto the support of his base (perhaps as much as 90 percent of it) in spite of the daily drumbeat of scandals, any one of which would in the case of a "normal" president bring about his impeachment in the House of Representatives and conviction in the Senate. 

And if they found the backbone to chide him he would remember their "disloyalty" and support one of their opponents when it comes to primary time. For these members of Congress, plain and simple, it's all about keeping their seats.

This does explain much of their craven behavior, but in many cases other, more profound forces are at work.

Unlike Barack Obama who hated this part of the job, Trump makes a conscious to invite congressmen to share the perks of his presidency.

He never fails to ask members to fly with him on Air Force One when he is going to a rally in their district. In Washington, he uses access to the Oval Office as an emolument (sorry) with (sorry) quid pro quo implications. He even invites them to the residential floors of the White House for meetings, one of the most private places of any presidency. He also never fails to invite a member or two to join him in (frequent) rounds of golf, including using Mar-a-Lago and one or more of the universe of Trump residences and golf courses as political catnip.

And it has recently been reported that he invites people he is courting for political favors (for example, their votes) to spend a weekend of schmoozing at Camp David, the holiest of holies of presidential hideaways.

Most members of Congress come from middle class lives and have never known anyone like Trump much less had so much access to the gilded presidential life style. 

One can almost see Lindsey Graham salivating as he hangs out with Trump on the second floor of the White House, catching glimpses of the Lincoln Bedroom, or flies around with the president after a round of golf at one of Trump's "international" courses. 

As is evident Graham has lost whatever independence he had during the McCain years and is now fully committed to responding to all of Trump whims no matter how outrageous or humiliating. 

More than anything else, Trump makes him and his colleagues feel important as a result of this political courtship.

For the sake of full discloser I need to confess my own experiences with the Clinton and, later, the Bush presidencies. There may be a few useful takeaways. 

During my Ford Foundation years I worked with senior members of the White House staff (including Clinton himself) on a joint venture designed to help low-income students graduate from high school and enter college. It eventually came to be known as the Gear Up Program.

As part of their efforts to get Ford behind what they were proposing, I was invited to a number of White House sponsored events, including some that were more social than professional. 

I need to admit that I felt more important than I in fact was when I participated in meetings in the Roosevelt Room, the East Room, and even the Cabinet Room. I ate in the White House Mess and was even allowed a peek at the Situation Room. 

More than anything else, I was thrilled to have had a few meetings in the Oval Office where I was encouraged to play with Buddy, Clinton's dog.

I never got to the Residence or Camp David but would have been thrilled to have been invited.

I share this not so much for gossip purposes but to suggest how powerful the presidency in all its aspects is. Not just because he is Commander in Chief but because of the aura, history, and accoutrements of the presidency itself and how easy it is to come under their sway.

As a parvenu, like me born and raised in the outer boroughs of New York City, not in Manhattan, Trump on a gut level understands how wielding this soft, cultural and psychological power can be and he is playing it with perverse brilliance.

October 17, 2019--Lindsay In 2024

Trump's favorite golfing partner is the ever slippery Lindsay Graham. 

Just when it looked as if the senator from South Carolina was about to sign up for a death-do-us-part role as the president's chief apologist and poodle (he loves those midnight Air Force One flights to Mar-a-Lago) he seemed to discover a backbone and has been scathing in his criticism of Trump's impulsive decision to withdraw American troops from northern Syria, abandoning to torture and death our formerly staunch ally, the Kurds.

But then I remembered that Graham sought the Republican nomination for president in 2016. He never rose about one-percent land and was the butt of numerous Trump jokes--his favorite was referring to him as a "nut job" and "the dumbest person I know." He even outed him--not what you're thinking--when he gave out Graham's personal cell phone number.

I suspect Lindsay has been seething ever since, waiting for his moment to rise again, to get even. 

This might be that time.

Lindsay is not so dumb as to not sense when there is blood in the political water. With Trump and his administration approaching freewill, sensing Trump will not be around after next year, Lindsay is thinking 2024, when he, in his own mind, would be the frontrunner for the nomination. He would be only 69, young as things go these days. And then he would have his own Air Force One.

July 9, 2019--Trump's American History 101

In case you missed it, or perhaps decided to torture yourself by tuning into Trump's July 4th speech surrounded by tanks at the Lincoln Memorial, or perhaps you thought you were hallucinating when you heard him talking about our Revolutionary War airports, let me at least disabuse you of the latter--he did make mention of such airports and so you weren't having a delusional episode.

He in fact said: "Our [Revolutionary] army manned the air, it rammed the ramparts, it took over the airports, it did everything it had to do, and at Fort McHenry, under the rockets red glare, it had nothing but victory."

Oblivious, he mashed up the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, and the Wright Brothers' first flight nearly a century later.

When Trump learned he had flunked History 101, as usual he blamed the mishap on something other than himself--it was raining and, he said, that knocked out the teleprompter.

To quote him, "I guess the rain knocked it out, but I knew the speech very well. So I was able to do it without a prompter."

About why you may have tuned in, you're on your own, as I confess I am.

But since you may have watched as I did, did you catch the performance of the "Marine Corps Hymn"?

In the background you could see Trump mouthing some of the words. Since I'm good at lipreading I can share with you what he was singing--

From the balls at Mar-a-Lago

To the shops at Tiffany's

I fight the New York Times

On the newsstand and TV

Who cares about rights and freedom

Or our democracy

As long as I don't have to serve

As a United States Marine

March 4, 2019--My Former Maine Governor

Thanks to term limits, I thought that since Mainers had the good fortune to finally be rid of their hateful governor, Paul LePage, I would never again hear about him. At least until his obituary.

But, no, he's still making noise. This time reported in a story that appeared in the New York Daily News. Excerpts are below--

Maine’s former governor Paul LePage, who left office last month, argued the Electoral College is necessary to keep white people in power. 

“What would happen if they eliminate it? White people will not have anything to say,” Paul LePage told a WVOM radio show Tuesday when asked about abolishing the system currently used to elect presidents. “It’s only going to be the minorities that would be elected.” 

LePage, who left office Jan. 2 and now lives in Florida, said making every vote equal would give too much power to states like California, Texas and Florida, where larger numbers of nonwhite people live. 

The 70-year-old Republican served two terms as Maine’s governor and had one of the highest disapproval ratings among governor’s nationwide during his last year in office. He’s no stranger to racial controversy. 

In 2016, LePage complained “guys by the name D-Money, Smoothie, Shifty” come to Maine from New York and Connecticut to sell drugs and “half the time they impregnate a young, white girl before they leave.” 

Later that year, LePage called Latinos the “enemy” during a bizarre press conference where he tried to explain why he’d hurled homophobic remarks at a reporter. 

“The enemy right now, the overwhelming majority of people coming in are people of color or people of Hispanic origin,” he said. 

On March 1, a proposal to elect U.S presidents with a popular vote rather than doing so through the Electoral College process will be considered by the Maine legislature. 

LePage called the bill “insane” and worried that white people, who make up more than 61% of the nation’s population and have accounted for all but one of the nation’s presidents, are “gonna’ be forgotten people.”

Spending six months a year in Maine, he was my part-time governor and a major embarrassment. While residing in Florida I am sure he will continue to be welcome as he has been at Mar-a-Lago.

February 27, 2019--Nuked

I don't know how I feel about the list of targets in the U.S. that the Russians just announced could be nuked if we deploy new intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Europe.

Expecting that these targets for their "hypersonic" missiles would include Washington and New York, I was surprised (pleasantly?) that the targets include the Pentagon, various military bases, and Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland's Catoctin Mountains.

I am oriented to think this way as a former Cold War kid who grew up in Brooklyn, which at the time was threatened with nuking if, as it was feared, the Cold War turned hot. 

In fact, the Brooklyn Navy Yard (only a few miles from where I lived) was ground zero. Or was it Times Square? Either way, in spite of take-cover drills in which I participated at PS 244 and then Brooklyn Tech High School (walking distance to the Navy Yard), I would still be vaporized if one landed in Brooklyn or incinerated in a firestorm or rendered radioactive if a missile struck Times Square. 

None of these fates were very attractive.

So, Camp David, featured on the new list, felt relatively benign. Though it would be better, I perversely thought, if the Russians want to get under Trump's skin to leave Camp David off the target list (Trump doesn't much like it there--too primitive and no golf course) and switch the target to Mar-a-Lago.

Of course, I'm just being silly. About Mar-a-Lago, not the Trump-Putin threat. They are scary.

January 24, 2019--Trump's Day

Peter Baker of the New York Times reported yesterday about what Trump's presidential life is like now that he is ignoring his domestic and international agendas while focusing exclusively on how to manage the politics of the government shutdown.

On Tuesday, for example, the president's public schedule listed only two things--his daily intelligence briefing (we know from other sources that he does not read the written summaries and spends perhaps 10 minutes listening to his National Security Council briefer before drifting off in boredom) and lunch with Veep Mike Pence (how long does it take to gobble down a Big Mac or two?)

Baker sees this to be a bad thing and cites what critics, for example, are saying about Trump's cancelled trip to Davos. It's the place where governmental and business high rollers gather annually to hobnob and come away feeling good about themselves and each other after, for a couple of days of not talking about exerting more power or making more money, they commit themselves to also doing some good in the world. 

Others are saying that this is also traditionally the time of year when a few days before the State of the Union address presidents and their cabinet members float ideas for new domestic programming to see if thy will fly before inserting them in the speech. Like what Trump's plans for infrastructure would look like.

But do we want Trump to be more engaged in the world and domestic affairs than he currently is? That would be not engaged at all.

The last thing Trump wants is to have to share the world stage with the likes of Jami Dimon of JP MorganChase or Bill Gates. He showed up at Davos last year for half a day and after insulting a few people, including Angela Merkel, headed off to Mar-a-Lago. 

Loner Trump doesn't do group.

And thus isn't Davos the last place in the world we'd like Trump to be? Or worse, at a NATO meeting? And shouldn't we be happiest when he is not saying anything about his domestic agenda? 

In Trump's case less is much more. 

I'd be thrilled if he locked himself away in his bedroom all day to watch Fox&Friends and reruns of The Apprentice. Like it says in the Hippocratic Oath, so he would do no harm. A totally disengaged Trump is thus the way to go. 

Therefore, I wish the New York Times and CNN would stop chiding him for doing so little since Trump doing nothing should be the plan.

December 24, 2016--Merry Christmas At the White House

It is Christmas Eve day and I am sure you are feeling cozy that our nation's First Love Birds are huddled together roasting chestnuts on the White House Yule Log's open fire.

This in spite of the fact that our president painted himself into a political corner only to get rolled by Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter who once called Trump a "god" but late last week referred to him as a "gutless douchebag." This because he was willing to trade away his Wall to the Dems so they could strike a budget deal and everyone could slip out of town.

So sure was Trump that things would work out that his wife and a few of his sons hopped on the First Lady's plane (why, by the way, do First Ladies have their own taxpayer-paid-for plane?) and lit out for 16 days (16!) of baking in the sun at their gaudy Palm Beach chateau, Mar-a-Lago.

Trump had to stay behind for politically cosmetic reasons--he couldn't be seen in shorts teeing off at one of his golf courses while nearly a million federal workers would not be getting paychecks.

Rush and Ann, these two Grinches spoiled his Christmas. Poor thing. 

So much so that Trump unleashed a series of tweets that suggested he was becoming even more unhinged. Saturday night, for example, he referred to himself as "the most popular hero in America" for withdrawing all our troops from Syria and "your favorite president." He does need to check the most recent polls.

But a funny thing happened on the way to that deal--after Limbaugh and Coulter slammed him for being weak, calling his manhood into question, he had no recourse but to pull the plug on the budget deal and cancel his golfing getaway.

Then, most interesting, a day after arriving, Melania had them gas up her plane and she flew back to Washington so she could spend Christmas with her beleaguered husband.

Unusual loving behavior for a couple where the wife won't hold hands with her husband in public and for a husband and wife who famously do not exchange Christmas gifts, unless Melania's renegotiating their prenup when Trump was exposed, in a manner of speaking, for having affairs with a porn star and a Playboy Playmate might be considered a gift that keeps on giving.

I suspect that daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared were so shaken by Trump's railing after Defense secretary Mattis summarily quit, refusing to endorse Trump's precipitous and dangerous decision to pull all U.S. forces out of Syria and effectively turn the country over to Putin, Iran, Hezbollah, and ISIS that they were so shaken that he was about to completely lose it if he couldn't make a deal to fund his Wall and shut down the encroaching Mueller investigation, that the children thought the situation was approaching 25th Amendment territory and that Melania better get back in DC and try to calm him down.


And so there they are, Donald and Melania snug in the White House which is full of Melania's blood red Christmas trees. 

Perhaps, to get away from reruns of White Christmas Trump can practice his putting on the White House green. The weather is forecast to cooperate.

August 10, 2018--Country Club Republicans

Rona said, "You'll see. It's all about money."

"What are you talking about?"

"The news that three of Trump's Mar-a-Lago pals are essentially running the Department of Veteran Affairs. They were talking about it last night on CNN and MSNBC. The details are from an investigative report that was posted on ProPublica's website--'The Shadow Rulers of the VA.'"

"Three pals?"

"Yes. Bruce Moskowitz is a Palm Beach doctor who helps wealthy people obtain high-end 'concierge' medical care; a Washington fixer lawyer, Marc Sherman; and the leader of the band of three, Ike Perlmutter, the very weird head of Marvel Entertainment. The comic book people. Perlmutter is so secretive that he showed up once in a disguise at the premiere of a Spider Man movie. FYI--it wasn't a costume-party opening."

"This is just too much. But with Trump nothing surprises."

"None of these guys ever served in our military and thus are not veterans. In fact, it appears that they haven't even been involved in veterans' affairs, including raising money for vets' organizations."

"But . . ?"

"But, one night at Mar-a-Lago, where for $250K a year they are members, they appear to have sold the idea to Trump that he empower them to effectively run the VA. To let the senior people there know that these fellows are in charge and that even the Secretary of Veterans Affairs should see himself as reporting to them. The pitch seems to have included that the VA is such a mess that normal Washington bureaucrats are incapable of reforming it. Which, I suppose, could be true."

Here is a sample from the ProPublica article--

Hundreds of documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act and interviews with former administration officials tell [the story of their involvement]--of a previously unknown triumvirate that hovered over public servants without any transparency, accountability or oversight. The Mar-a-Lago Crowd [as they are called, operating from the country club itself] spoke with VA officials daily, the documents show, reviewing all manner of policy and personnel decisions. 

They prodded the VA to start new programs, and officials travelled to Mar-a-Lago at taxpayer expense to hear their views. “Everyone has to go down and kiss the ring,” a former administration official said. 

If the bureaucracy resists the trio’s wishes, Perlmutter has a powerful ally: The President of the United States. Trump and Perlmutter regularly talk on the phone and dine together when the president visits Mar-a-Lago. “On any veterans issue, the first person the president calls is Ike,” another former official said. Former administration officials say that VA leaders who were at odds with the Mar-a-Lago Crowd were pushed out or passed over. Included, those officials say, were the secretary (whose ethical lapses also played a role), deputy secretary, chief of staff, acting under secretary for health, deputy under secretary for health, chief information officer, and the director of electronic health records modernization. 

The article continues-- 

The Mar-a-Lago Crowd bombarded VA officials with demands, many of them inapt or unhelpful. 

They proposed inviting private health care executives to tell the VA which services they should outsource to private providers like themselves. It was precisely the kind of fox-in-the-henhouse scenario that the VA’s defenders had warned against for years. [Former VA Secretary] David Shulkin delicately tried to hold off Perlmutter’s proposal, saying the VA was already developing an in-house method of comparing its services to the private sector.

Rona said, "Now about the money. It's one thing to think about these three Mar-a-Lago cronies voluntarily offering their services to the president--others such as Roosevelt, Eisenhower, and Nixon had informal advisers, mainly from the business and academic communities--but this is unprecedented. That private citizens would effectively run a mammoth government agency with no oversight whatsoever." 

Rona added, "But in this case it appears that Moskowitz's son has had an inside track to securing VA contracts to, for example, improve their computer systems and in other instances playing an important role in determining what parts of the VA operation should be privatized. This involves billions of dollars. Again, it is going on without the required transparency."

"One thing you can say about Trump," I said, "He's the most inventive president ever in figuring out how to be corrupt."

At Mar-a-Lago: Reince Priebus, Trump, & Ike Perlmutter

July 23, 2018--Mulligan Summit

In golf, when you hit a bad drive and your ball lands in the pond or deep in the woods, if other members of your foursome agree to your taking another shot without penalty and you do, it's called a Mulligan.  

It is named for an actual person, David Bernard Mulligan, who in the late 1920s played at the Winged Foot golf course in Mamaroneck, NY and was notorious for asking frequently for do-overs.

That's what Donald Trump is up to as he moves to schedule in the fall and in Washington another summit with Vladimir Putin. Or maybe at his Mar-a-Lago golf course. Perhaps the only place he can best Putin. But then black-belt Putin might insist on a Judo match. Vince McMahon CEO of the World Wrestling Federation I am certain would be happy to promote that.

Having to endure so much heat for wimping out at the recent Helsinki summit, Trump is not only trying to take back or redefine half the things he said publicly at their joint press conference and subsequently at last Wednesday's Cabinet meeting, ("would" was really "wouldn't" and "no" was "yes"), realizing this was not enough to take him off the hook (even Trump flunkies Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell managed to squeeze out a few choked words of criticism), Trump wants a Mulligan. And Putin will grant him one since he knows he can humiliate Trump again at a second press conference.

But then there is a possible other scenario. To me, a more interesting one--


At the summit, especially when dealing with the press, in WWF terms, Trump gets Putin to take a dive.

The meeting of course would be scheduled for a few weeks before the November midterm election to have maximum impact on the vote. 

The intention would be to pump up Trump's base (assuming they can be pumped up even more than they already are). To do so, Putin would have to agree to let Trump dominate the summit and its aftermath. Particularly to let Trump criticize him in public (Putin, though, would have to be allowed to roll his eyes). This would permit Trump to masquerade as the strongman he isn't and thereby rehabilitate his deflating persona. To shed the lingering image of him as Putin's lapdog.

Why would this be a good thing for Putin? Enough so that he would allow himself to appear to be diminished?

Out of public view (where the real action is) since Putin owns Trump and has been able to pull his strings for years, nothing would change. In fact, Trump's behavior as Putin's double-agent would be strengthened. If his image as commander-in-chief can be shored up, that would make him more effective when doing Putin's bidding. 

A stronger-seeming Trump would be a better cover story. It would make it less apparent that Putin owns him.

So look for Putin to play along. He will agree to come to Washington or Palm Beach in October for a Mulligan-summit and will let Trump strut around for a few days at his "expense."

If this is the emerging plan, I doubt that Trump without medication can pull it off. He will have a script but he is not good at following scripts and so expect the Mar-a-Lago do-over summit to turn out to be another fiasco. 

January 10, 2018--Factotum

Late in the day on Sunday I heard from a number of progressive friends who called all excited about what they saw to be a takedown by Jake Tapper of CNN of Stephen Miller, White House senior advisor.

"I missed that," I said.

"It was on Jake's Sunday show, State of the Nation. Watch it on YouTube. You'll love it.

I did watch it and did sort of love it. At least until I gave it more thought.

In case you, like I, missed it, it was an interview largely about Michael Wolff's Trump tell-all, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House. Miller was clearly offered around to the Sunday talkshows as a counterweight to the Wolff tome. He was the perfect choice to send out on a retaliatory mission since he had been Steve Bannon's protégé; and Bannon, the main source of the most damaging reporting about Trump--how he is like a nine-year-old child and that Donald Jr. committed "treason" when he agreed to talk with the Russians about the "dirt" they claimed to have about Hillary Clinton--needed to be put down.

As my friend surmised, I did love it. To me Trump and everyone he touches are compromised. Very much including Miller. But what I didn't love was how Tapper, in his pose as a journalist, treated Miller who was his guest.  

Here are some selections from what turned out to be a brief interview--

Miller: "The president is a political genius . . . who took down the Bush dynasty, who took down the Clinton dynasty, who took down the entire media complex."

He went on to reup Trump's claim that he is "like, really smart," a veritable "very stable genius." He called Wolff the "garbage author of a garbage book" but Miller's real transgression, was accusing Tapper of being "condescending," and claiming that CNN promulgates "very fake news."

Tapper: Miller's calling him "condescending" clearly got under Tapper's skin--"I get it. There's one viewer that you care about right now, and you're being obsequious [servile, ingratiating], and you're being a factotum [lackey] in order to please him."

With that, he cut Miller off, saying he had nothing worthwhile to say and while Miller continued to rant, Tapper looked into the camera and introduced the next guest. It appears that Miller (off camera now) refused to leave and had to be physically removed by CNN security.

Miller's audience of one tweeted--

Jake Tapper of Fake News CNN just got destroyed in his interview with Stephen Miller of the Trump Administration. Watch the hatred and unfairness of this CNN flunky!

Tapper feigned surprise. But what was he expecting? Rational discourse about the strengths and weaknesses of the Wolff book? He knew in advance what Miller was sent out to do and rather than booking him, saying I don't allow shills and factotums on my show, he signed him up as he knew it would turn out to be a dogfight and go viral in less than a couple of hours. All turned out to be true.

This is not journalism to me but rather talkshow mud wrestling designed to increase ratings, which the struggling Tapper and State of the Union could use.

Monday morning, again on CNN's New Day, cohosts Alisyn Camerota and Chris Cuomo had New York Times White House correspondent Maggie Haberman as a guest. Camerotta pressed her about an interesting subject--

Unlike Michael Wolff who does not have to maintain good relations with the Trump administration--his book is out and he is already making millions in royalties--because she has "to go back to the White House" every day after writing articles that frequently are critical of Trump and his people, does this place her in a compromised position as she needs to remain in the White House's good graces to do her job? Does she have to pull her punches, so to speak, in order to retain access?

Not at all, she in effect said, I report it as I see it. Let the chips fall where they may.

Do you believe that? I'm skeptical.

And then there are my Morning Joe friends, Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski who a year and a half ago were cozied up to candidate Donald Trump. When he appeared on their show--it seemed almost daily--their ratings went off the charts. They were even eager to have a close social relationship to their friend "Donald." Wolff reports about their visits, as a closeted couple, to Mar-a-Lago. Apparently during one visit last January, a week after Trump was inaugurated, Jared Kushner and The Donald playfully spatted about who would marry them once they fessed up publicly to their on-going romance.

But things have gone south in their off-camera relationship. Cut off from access, they have been merciless in their attacks on Trump and his inner circle. So much so that Monday morning when Michael Wolff was on their show hustling Fire and Fury, they brought up some of the inaccuracies in his reporting, including those about them! 

But then, rather, than pressing to hold Wolff responsible for his inaccuracies and carelessness, they made excuses for him, saying, the book is less about the accuracy of incidents but about the overall impression that it offers of Trump and his presidency.

In these three examples it is clear why so many Americans are fed up with the media. They see the leading opinion writers and reporters to lack integrity and objectivity. Those who have personal agendas (Joe and Mika) or ideological interests (Tapper and Cuomo) or who are just trying to promote a book (Wolff) or publicize their reporting (Haberman) are most prone to professional self-righteousness and loss of objectivity.  

We progressives, especially, need to clean up our acts since we should not want to give media-bashers additional reasons and evidence with which to attack our credibility. 

January 5, 2018--Trump's End Game

One more prediction for 2018 (and it's a big one)--

For more than a year I've been claiming that much of Donald Trump's erratic behavior is the result of the anxiety and fear that derives from his intimate personal knowledge about the extent of his and his inner circle's colluding with the Russians to tip the election away from Hillary Clinton and, more than anything else, since he is motivated primarily by greed, how he was at the center of a major money laundering operation which also has Russian ties.

Then, of course, there is the cover-up, perhaps the most dangerous of their and his potential felonies.

But money is his pole star. Money laundering is his and his family's specialty. Especially the Kushners. Keep an eye on Trump and Kushner money that was borrowed from the Russians for bogus real estate deals and then subsequently was laundered by Deutsche Bank and the Bank of Cyprus.

Only he knows the full extent of this and, since it is vast scam, it is not surprising that under the emotional strain associated with the exposure of this Ponzi scheme he is unraveling.

Unravelling at a increasing rate as the Mueller investigation closes in on him and his family. 

Thus the panicky reaction to the new Michael Wolff book, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House. Tomorrow, copies will be jumping off the shelves. I preordered one and can't wait to get my hands on it.

The book hit Trump broadside this past weekend as he was concluding his blissful vacation at his beloved Mar-a-Lago and on the golf courses in Palm Beach.

I suspect he felt, 'Who needs this?' I mean, the presidency. 

I have to believe that Melania and Ivanka took him aside while there for a heart-to-heart about all of this. I can hear them pleading--

"You're 71 years old, you eat crap from MacDonald's, you're 50 pounds overweight, you don't exercise, and you haven't had a real checkup in at least 10 years. You're a classic candidate for a stroke or heart attack. 

"Isn't it enough already? You never really wanted to be president, you didn't expect to get elected, you got into the race to boost your brand but here you are after surprising yourself by winning, having to live in that dump of a White House, rather than Trump Tower. You have to deal with the likes of Mitch McConnell when you could be hanging out with your pals in Palm Beach and playing golf every day of the year without getting grief about that from the snarky fake-news corps."

He would be nodding his head. They would continue--

"So here's what we recommend: declare 'Mission Accomplished' (or call it something else) and take a victory lap one last time by racing around the country on Air Force One. You love that plane. Pardon everyone from Flynn and his clueless son to Manafort to Don Junior to Eric to Jared and to me, Ivanka. So I won't be the first female president. I've seen enough about what that's like. You get called 'dumb as a brick.'

"Then, declare your work done and get the hell out of boring Washington. Turn it over to Pence who, if necessary, will pardon you."

I doubt that he said anything in response to Ivanka or Melania. But my prediction is that as he thinks it over he'll take what's behind door number one and pack it in.

April 10, 2017--Trumpology

In the old days of the Soviet Union, since it was a closed system impervious to Western snooping, one way to read the currents and countercurrents of Soviet leadership--who was in, who was rising, and who was about to be disappeared--was to analyze the pictures of the fur-hatted inner circle arrayed on the top of Lenin's tomb during May Day and other revolutionary celebrations.

Kremlinologists in Washington were tasked to figure this out and they did so by comparing from year to year who was moving into closer proximity to Lenin or Stalin and who was about to slide off the picture plane and soon thereafter into the literal abyss.

Where is the notorious Lavrentiy Beria, head of the fearsome KGB, this year? What about Molotov? Is he losing or gaining power and influence? And who is this upstart Nikita Khrushchev who's star seems to be rising--last year he was nowhere in sight; this year he's only four places from Stalin?

With the inner circle of the Trump White House in turmoil, with the Steve Bannon faction trying to oust son-in-law Jared Kushner and his allies, with Reince Priebus struggling to hold on as chief of staff, and with others close to Trump denying that anything of this sort is going on, with everyone spinning and lying, to get to the truth, as with the Russians, we are left with having to analyze images of the president's unruly team in action. We need to do a content analyst of them in much the same way that we used to try to figure out what was happening in Moscow.

Look carefully of the picture below. It is of the Mar-a-Lago situation room where Trump and his team retired Thursday afternoon to discuss the missile attack on a Syrian airbase.

Mar-a-Lago Situation Room

Seated at the adult table, of course, are Trump at its head and an assortment of Cabinet secretaries. To Trump's left is Rex Tillerson, the almost mute Secretary of State who up to now, nearly three months into the Trump presidency, has not spoken many more than 200 words in public. Across from him, at the president's right are fellow billionaires Wilber Ross, Secretary of Commerce and Steven Mnuchin, Secretary of the Treasury, who is not quite at the table. And then it gets interesting.

To Mnuchin's right, decidedly at the table is Jared Kushner and across from him, not at the table but leaning aggressively forward is Gary Cohn, Trump's favorite economic advisor and Kushner ally, who is being discussed as Reince Priebus' replacement. At the table, with the growing bald spot or tonsure is Priebus himself who appears to need to be careful because Cohn is eyeing him ominously and is about about to pounce on him and seize both his chair and job.

Most interesting to Trumpologists is where Steven Bannon is relegated. Earlier in the week he was unceremoniously dumped from his self-assigned seat on the "Principals Committee" of the National Security Council. Here, about as far away from the adult table at a small children's side table of his own, is the dramatically deflated Senior Strategist. And because of the nasty way in which the picture is framed it looks as if Bannon is wearing a lampshade on his head.

 Moscow, Palm Beach--a picture is worth at least a thousand words.

And, oh, my advice-don't bet against the son-in-law.

March 29, 2017--"Fore!"

Talk about alternative facts.

This time we're talking about golf but not about a situation where someone cheats on the course or about his score. Like what Bill Clinton used to do while duffing--assuming that because he was Commander in Chief, the most powerful man in the world, he could give himself Mulligans. For the non- aficionados, a Mulligan is a no-penalty extra shot after hitting one into the rough or lake. Some thought this was a metaphor about Clinton's character.

No, we're talking now about whether or not Donald Trump played any golf at all while weekending recently at Mar-a-Lago.

White House records show he spent seven hours at his own course, the Trump International Golf Club, but his spokespeople claimed he wasn't there to play. On the way back to Washington on Sunday, on Air Force One, when asked about his golf game, Trump fibbed, claiming that he played "very little."

This golf business is a very delicate matter.

Trump on the stump during the campaign frequently mocked Barak Obama's golfing, claiming that he was always on the golf course and off the case while America was going down the drain. Thus the need to make America Great Again.

Two months into his own presidency, with America in reality going down the drain, one can only imagine how much effort is being expended to obscure the truth about Trump's recreating. Especially  his golfing.

Though Barack Obama may have been obsessed with golf and took every opportunity to get in a round, his people never hid the fact that he was on the course and not at meetings. Most times they even told reporters who he was playing with.

Not Trump. Not only don't we know who was in his foursome but we don't know for certain if he played even though he was spotted at his club dressed in golf attire and wearing a golf glove. When pressed about his golfing he points out that he is not just having fun on the links but working while hitting slices into the woods. Like when he played a round with Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

But talking about golf makes him uneasy because of how he savaged Obama for his golfing.

"I'm going to be working for you," he said last year at a rally in Virginia, "I'm not going to have time to go play golf."

But he is clearly making time for golf. As of March 25th, according to Golf News Net, he has already played 12 rounds while during the first two months of his presidency Obama played exactly zero times.

The presidency is an extraordinarily stressful job even for someone like Donald Trump who doesn't appear to be fully engaged. Even he deserves and needs some down time. Fair enough.

But there are other issues regarding his frequent trips to Palm Beach--for example, how much his weekending in Florida costs taxpayers.

It is estimated that each visit to Mar-a-Lago costs us $3.0 million. For Air Force One; the lodging, care, and feeding of Secret Service agents; reimbursements for Palm Beach police and first responders; and all the incidentals associated with a president out of the pocket and on the move.

Having already made five trips to Mar-a-Lago, this means he has run up $15 million in costs. His burn rate is such that he recently requested an additional $60 million to cover expenses projected for the rest of the fiscal year. This would offset the cost of his wife and son remaining behind in New York City (who can blame them), security for his globetrotting sons, and frequent getaways to Florida.

The Office of Management and Budget turned him down since they are in the middle of gutting programs including Meals On Wheels and are concerned about the appearance of a double standard--one for billionaire Trump, another for the rest of us.

On the other hand, after the clamor about his opulent lifestyle abates, expect to see the double standard at work.

Trump In the Rough

February 28 2017--A Week Without Trump: Intentional Walk

Let's see how I do today--

Spring training is underway all over Florida except near Donald Trump's Palm Beach spread, Mar-a-Lago. The Secret Service is shunted visiting crowds away as well as shutting down local airports. But  Major League teams are making the best of the tumultuous situation.

Also, in an effort to speed up the game, they are meddling with one of baseball's most cherished strategies--the intentional walk.

For non-aficionados, an intentional walk or base-on-balls is when a team decides not to pitch to a hot hitter and on purpose the pitcher throws four out-of-the-strike-zone pitches and, with the umpire signaling ball four, the batter trots off to first base.

This takes about 30 seconds. Which appears to be too much time for desperate officials worried about the bottom line. They are eager to add excitement to the game. Like football or basketball they believe that making things move along quicker is the key to engaging alienated young fans who like football's hurry-up offenses, tennis' tie-breakers, hockey's shoot outs, and basketball's 24-second clock.

Baseball has already changed the rules so that batters, once at home plate and in the batter's box are not allowed to step away to readjust their batting gloves, spit, or scratch their crotches.

Also under discussion is reducing the number of times pitching coaches would be allowed to visit the mound to talk with pitchers and the institution of a pitch clock. Baseball's equivalent to basketball's 24-second version.

I hate all of these ideas.

It would be like reducing the number of characters Donald Trump could use when tweeting. Say 130, rather than the traditional 140. What it would do to him is a version of what these schemes would do to our national pastime--dilute and distort things to which we have become accustomed.

In baseball's case, time is irrelevant. In a speeded-up world where time is money baseball remains a haven of calm where time does not intrude or rule. It moves with an unhurried rhythm and pace of its own.

It's bad enough that all ballparks have installed Jumbotrons and blast rock and roll and rap music between innings. But to put pressure on teams to end games in less than two hours when virtually all memorable games unwind for up to four hours would be to change baseball from something it culturally always has been--a boys' (an now girls') game more suited to rural America than urban three-on-three schoolyard basketball pick up games. Baseball has been a reliable place of peace in a world of ceaseless action and conflict.

Moving things along in baseball should remain a small-ball goal for batters--hitting behind baserunners so that they can be moved along from first to second base.

Intentional bases on balls are an integral part of baseball's aesthetic and lore and can at times lead to surprising results. It should be an easy thing for pitchers to lob out-of-the-strike-zone tosses to their catchers. But at times they have erred--the concept of error, taking responsibility, also remains an essential metaphoric part of the game--bouncing one in the dirt where it eludes the catcher and the man on third comes scampering home with the winning run. Or at times when the batter manages to reach out of the strike zone and hits the weakly tossed ball for a homer or game-winning sacrifice fly as the Yankee's Gary Sanchez did late last season. A baseball example of the occasional power of upending the predictable.

There is yet one more crackpot idea under consideration--to shorten tied games as the teams move to extra innings the leagues are considering starting each at bat by placing a runner on second base so that the hitting team immediately has a runner in scoring position.

Baseball has traditionally rewarded scrappiness and this proposal to, without effort, give teams base runners, a leg up, is antithetical to the game's culture of hard work and limited reward where players can achieve Hall of Fame numbers by succeeding, making a hit, just three times for every 10 trips to the plate--what 300 hitters eek out.

I won't be making it this year to the Grapefruit League--too much tumult in South Florida when Trump is in residence--but I'll be watching on TV and following closely what is being done to spoil the game I love so much.

*   *   * 

Returning to my agenda for the week--I think I mentioned Trump only three times, which makes me feel I am making progress. The fever seems to be abating, the cold sweats too, as well as the detox tremors. Three more days to go. Let's see how I do after his address tonight to a joint session of Congress. Hopefully . . .