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 6, 2017--Kool Aid

Anyone who thinks Barack Obama during the last months of his presidency had anything to do with bugging Donald Trump's Trump Tower email server is drinking the Kool Aid. This time with Steve Bannon, his Brietbart News, and talkshow lunatic Mark Levin pouring refills.

That Obama would commit a felony, literally a felony in support of Hillary Clinton's candidacy, when it was universally thought she had a commanding lead, is delusional. Starting with Trump who, dangerously, believes this stuff.

The explanation is a lot simpler--

The coverup being perpetrated by the current president and his flunkies is coming undone. Even poor attorney general Jeff Sessions sold his chief out, deciding on his own, without consulting Trump, to plead recusal when it comes to the Russian connection, basically abandoning the president to twist slowly in the wind as one piece of fabrication after another peels away, leaving Trump and his senior staff vulnerable to further exposure.

What happened is as follows--

As part of their routine monitoring of Russian electronic communications chatter, the NSA or CIA or FBI stumbled on conversations between the Russian ambassador and Trump operatives such as Michael Flynn and Paul Manafort, both of whom have longstanding ties to high-level Russians, have been on various Russian payrolls, and as a result are significantly compromised, including, as Flynn finally fessed up, engaged in perhaps illegal discussions before taking office about reducing the sanctions the Obama administration imposed on Russia in retaliation after they were caught red-handed (pun intended) hacking into Hillary Clinton's campaign.

Digging deeper, members of the intelligence community discovered other connections, including, in his own words, Donald Trump, Jr. boasting about all the Russian money "pouring into" various Trump projects. Minimally from black-money laundries such as Wilber Ross' Bank of Cyprus.

With this evidence in hand, including transcripts of these back-channel discussions, it was easy for the FBI (not Obama) to secure FISA-court approval to monitor further conversations between Trump campaign operatives, transition team staff, and various Russian spies. As a result, intelligence officials discovered that the campaign outreach to the Russians and more recently the coverup reached very high into the Trump organization.

So, in the aggregate thus far, we have flunkies such as Flynn and Manafort directly involved in encouraging the Russians to sabotage Clinton's campaign, minimally inappropriately talking with them about what the compromised Trump administration would do after taking office to "compensate" Russia for its help in the campaign, and now of course the massive coverup that likely reaches to Trump himself.

Then of course there is what is revealed in the infamous BuzzFeed dossier about Trump and his Russian capers.

This explains the towering rage Trump unleashed on his staff on Friday after Sessions recused himself without even talking with Trump about his intentions. He opted not to take a bullet for the boss and has as a result already outlived his usefulness. Expect him to be exiled and as the drip, drip, drip continues and various members of the Trump team to begin to peel away. I suspect that this will soon include Rex Tillerson who refuses to drink the Kool Air because he doesn't want the coda to his remarkable career to be that he went down with the Trump ship. And, yes, Watergate style, FBI director James Comey to be fired.

March 3, 2017--End of a Week Without Him

You can only imagine how unwelcome a call from Jack felt as I was approaching my last day of detox, especially since I was feeling optimistic about my progress, having managed to mention him (not Jack) only once in Thursday's Gala Girl blog.

For the past month Jack and I have talked about nothing but. I was therefore certain he wasn't calling to talk about the weather.

He wasn't.

"I assume," he began, "that in spite of your pretty pathetic efforts not to mention . . ."

I cut him off, "Please, I beg you, don't even mention his name." In the background Rona was frantically gesturing that I should hang up the phone. I was tempted but didn't since much of the 12-step literature I have been reading says that you can only consider yourself in recovery if, for example, you can be around someone having a drink and not fall off the wagon. So I didn't hang up, seeing this to be a test of how well I was doing as I approached step-12.

"OK," he said, "I won't mention Trump by name. I am trying to be empathetic, but so much happened over night, is probably happening right now, that I couldn't wait to Monday to talk with you about . . .  him."

I held off from responding.

"This business with Jeff Sessions is very disturbing. Less than two days after that amazing speech to Congress we're right back in the soup. I was thinking that before you lapsed into self-imposed silence you had some interesting things to say about the Russian connection. What did you call it, Oscar's Razor?"

I spite of myself I corrected him, "Ockham's."

"What?"

"Razor."

"Isn't it about if you connect all the dots they lead one way or the other to . . . him."

I held my tongue, already feeling quite proud of myself.

"That would explain why there are no tax returns. You probably would say, if you ever resume talking, that they would reveal that . . . he probably got bailout money from Russians through that money-laundering bank on Cyprus that his Commerce secretary, Wilber Ross is half owner of."

"I probably . . . "

"How about the report that Paul Manafort--rememebr him, . . . his former campaign manager who they fired when it became known he was on the Russian payroll--is under investigation by the FBI. If they indict him he could blow the whistle on the whole thing rather than going to jail for ten years. Like some of Nixon's people turned on him to save their scalps."

"Also . . ."

"And then there's that famous BuzzFeed dossier. Every day something else from it gets verified. Soon, like you wrote, we'll hear that the things with the prostitutes are true and that the Russians have the goods on . . . him."

"Then . . ."

"Then indeed. Didn't your favorite paper yesterday, the New York Times, publish a story about how Obama's people during their last weeks in office, to make sure that Trrrr's people . . . his people, wouldn't be able to destroy intelligence evidence about their Russia dealings because they spread what they had on . . . him around to members of Congress and the press?"

"It could be . . ."

"Listen to me."

"I try . . ."

"I'm beginning to sound like you. All this Trump bashing. But even to me it's disturbing. But to change the subject, my favorite story of the day--OK my second favorite--is that Oprah Winfrey is thinking about running for president in 2020."

"O . . . ?"

"Yes, Oprah told Bloomberg News that she never thought about it before  . . . he was elected. But now, to quote her, 'I just thought oh, oh.'"

"And your first . . . ?"

"Sorry. To top the week off there are reports that Beau Biden's wife began fooling around with Beau's brother just four months after Beau died. I mean . . ."

"I read that they're in love. Can't you leave it at that? But at least this story has nothing to do with Trump."