The Pruitt Watch (#swamped)

#DrainTheSwamp | #WhatTheyVotedFor

The list from Steve Benen might, ‘twixt now and Monday, have become obsolete; it’s hard to tell, some days.

1. The EPA’s inspector general is investigating Pruitt’s controversial travel habits.

2. The House Oversight Committee is also exploring the EPA chief’s use of public funds for first-class travel.

3. The EPA’s inspector general is investigating Pruitt’s behind-the-scenes talks with the National Mining Association.

4. Pruitt’s exorbitant spending on an around-the-clock security detail is the subject of three inspector general investigations.

5. The House Oversight Committee is also examining the EPA chief’s security expenditures.

6. The Government Accountability Office has already investigated Pruitt for exceeding federal spending limits when he bought a $43,000 phone booth for his office.

7. The White House Office of Management and Budget is also investigating the phone booth.

8. The EPA’s inspector general is investigating Pruitt’s use of funds set aside for the Safe Drinking Water Act and diverting the money to give generous raises to two of his top aides.

9. The EPA’s inspector general is investigating Pruitt’s four-day trip to Morocco late last year.

10. The Government Accountability Office is investigating Pruitt’s ouster of scientists from the EPA’s science advisory committee.

11. The Government Accountability Office is investigating whether Pruitt broke lobbying laws with comments he made to the National Cattleman’s Beef Association.

12. The House Oversight Committee is investigating Pruitt’s living arrangement at a lobbyist’s condo.

13. And as noted above, the EPA’s inspector general is now also taking a closer look at Pruitt’s time at that condo.

Before the day was out, the msnbc blogger found himself adding to the list, sort of, noting a “controversy that should become the 14th” in a Reuters report describing a financial hardship waiver Pruitt’s EPA granted to an Oklahoma facility for a company owned by former Trump administration hand Carl Icahn:

The waiver enables Icahn’s CVR Energy Inc (CVI.N) to avoid tens of millions of dollars in costs related to the U.S. Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) program. The regulation is meant to cut air pollution, reduce petroleum imports and support corn farmers by requiring refiners to mix billions of gallons of biofuels into the nation’s gasoline and diesel each year.

And it does, you know, just keep going downhill.

Trump Trumping Trump

#trumpswindle | #WhatTheyVotedFor

The thing is, it’s just not supposed to be this easy:

First, prosecutors have suggested that while Michael Cohen is an attorney, his work with Trump hasn’t strictly been in a legal capacity. The president seemed eager to bolster this point this morning, emphasizing repeatedly that Cohen is principally “a businessman.”

Second, the official line from Trump World has been that the president had nothing to do with the Stormy Daniels controversy. He wasn’t involved in the pre-election hush-money payoff, the argument went, and the president is completely in the dark when it comes to the whole sordid affair.

Trump suggested this morning that this narrative is false, making clear that Cohen represented him in the “deal” with the porn star, and asserting that he knows campaign funds weren’t used to buy Daniels’ silence.

And third, Trump is apparently of the opinion that if campaign funds didn’t finance the hush money, then there was nothing wrong with the payoff. That’s not even close to being true. In fact, there are all kinds of lingering questions about in-kind contributions and possible fraud that have nothing to do with whether campaign funds were used or not.

Michael Avenatti was apparently delighted to see Trump blurt out all of this useful information on national television this morning, describing the president’s on-air comments as “another gift from the heavens in this case.”

(Benen)

The part boggling all sensibility is how casually President Trump and his clownish cohort go about hurting themselves.

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Image notes: President Donald Trump attends a Generation Next forum at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington, D.C., 22 March 2018. (Photo: Leah Millis/Reuters)

Benen, Steve. “Daniels’ lawyer: Trump’s new comments are a ‘gift from the heavens'”. msnbc. 26 April 2018.

What They Voted For: Trump Family Values

#familyvalues | #WhatTheyVotedFor

Ah! scandal! Or, via Page Six:

Years before Vanessa Trump filed for divorce from Donald Trump Jr., their marriage was rocked when—around the time she was pregnant with their third child—he cheated on her with a contestant from “The Celebrity Apprentice.”

Page Six has exclusively learned that Don Jr.—then a so-called “adviser” on the NBC show—fell for busty Danity Kane star Aubrey O’Day while filming “Celebrity Apprentice” in 2011.

Sources say that Vanessa—who filed for divorce from President Donald Trump’s eldest son last week after 13 years of marriage—was devastated when he told her that he planned to leave her for O’Day.

Vanessa was pregnant with their third child, Tristan, around that time.

That was yesterday; the New York Post gossip team rolls on, today asking, “Is Aubrey O’Day’s song ‘DJT’ about Donald Trump Jr.?”

What will the post-presidential reality show be called? Trump Family Scandals? Trump Shore? The Real Assholes of Manhattan? The Ballad of “Donny Smalls”?

Additionally, it is worth noting that apparently we now must give a damn about who Aubrey O’Day is. That is to say, branded celebrity is easy enough to avoid until it isn’t, and the crossing of such thresholds ought to count for something.

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Image note: Donald Trump, Jr. (Photo: Manish Swarup/AP Photo, File)

Bacardi, Francesca. “Is Aubrey O’Day’s song ‘DJT’ about Donald Trump Jr.?”. Page Six. 20 March 2018.

Coleman, Oli and Carlos Greer. “Donald Trump Jr. romanced Aubrey O’Day during marriage to Vanessa”. Page Six. 19 March 2018.

The Latest Pickup: Joseph diGenova

#trumpswindle | #WhatTheyVotedFor

Steve Benen suggests—

Obviously, diGenova’s track record of pushing strange, right-wing conspiracy theories on television makes it difficult to take him seriously, but because Donald Trump is Donald Trump, the opposite is true in the White House: this president loves those who push strange, right-wing conspiracy theories on television. The same qualities that make Joseph diGenova appear foolish in the eyes of the American mainstream are the very qualities that make him appealing to Trump.

—and that is all well and fine insofar as it goes. One need not protest, though, in order to recall general questions of White House morale and who might wish to work for the Trump administration, and from there specifically point out that eventually there will only be diverse manners of true believers left to answer the call. In this context, Joe diGenova might not be the best man for the job—

For those who support the president and want him to succeed, none of this is good news. Trump is facing a serious scandal of historic significance, which may very well bring his presidency to a premature end. He needs the best legal defense possible.

I’m not sure he’s getting it. Trump—who already had to replace the former head of his legal team, who seemed completely out of his depth—has assembled a group of attorneys who haven’t necessarily served him especially well, and he’s now adding a conspiracy theorist whom the president probably saw on Fox News, peddling a strange tale with no basis in fact.

—but could well be the last best attorney to take up President Trump’s defense.

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Image notes: Top —President Donald Trump. (Photo: Angelo Carconi/ANSA)  Right — Attorney Joseph E. diGenova (Image: C-SPAN)

Benen, Steve. “Trump’s new defense attorney burdened by a controversial past”. msnbc. 19 March 2018.

Your Tweet of the Day: McCabe Memos

#DimensionTrump | #WhatTheyVotedFor

This is the thing about melodrama and hyperbole:

Republican source to me just now: “The McCabe Memos are the new Pentagon Papers.” #MuellerTime

―Joy Reid

For all the times Republicans bawled about the Obama administration as a Watergate-valence scandal, it is easy enough to be wary of an invocation so spectacular as the Pentagon Papers. Nonetheless, we might recall that melodrama and hyperbole are precisely #WhatTheyVotedFor, even if it hurts who they voted for.

And this does not begin to account for the long Republican habit of challenging thresholds, because the hard part about explaining that is found in the aspect of what is appropriate or not to speculate, project, conclude, or otherwise say about our neighbors.

The Man of the Hour

#DimensionTrump | #WhatTheyVotedFor

The triple-bylined exclusive from The Daily Beast opens like sublime comedy:

Steve Bannon is lawyering up as he gets ready to face investigators looking into the Trump-Russia nexus.

The Daily Beast has learned that the former top White House strategist has retained Bill Burck, of the firm Quinn Emanuel. Two sources tell us Burck is helping Bannon prepare for an interview with the House intelligence committee, which is currently scheduled for next week. Sources also said Bannon plans to “fully cooperate” with investigators.

Burck also represents White House Counsel Don McGahn and former Chief of Staff Reince Priebus for the purposes of the Russia probe ....

(Woodruff, Markay, and Suebsaeng)

To the one, this ought to be in some manner artistically appreciable; to the other, we cannot reiterate enough that as much as Mr. Bannon needs to testify under oath, and about more than simply his time with the Trump campaign, neither, really, can he be trusted. That is to say, spectacularly flaming paragon of right-wing cynicism he might be, Steve Bannon not only can be expected to throw the House Intelligence Committee, and thus the entire Beltway, into chaos, but virtually cannot fail to discredit Congressional inquiries into the #TrumpRussia affair.

Not Quite Nostalgia (Easy Pickings)

#familyvalues | #WhatTheyVotedFor

This is a candidate for Freudian Slip of the Year:

The former judge condemned the Washington Post story during a campaign speech in Huntsville, Alabama. Earlier, another fellow Republican, Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, urged Moore to drop out of the race, saying Moore’s explanations had been inadequate.

In a Huntsville gym, Moore assured supporters that the Post story was “a desperate attempt to stop my political campaign” and that the allegations that he was “involved with a minor child are completely unfalse and untrue and for which they will be sued.”

(Associated Press; accent added)

Just sayin’.

Once upon a time, there was this short, angry man touring the daytime talk show circuit, cosplaying a Grand Something of the Kaykaykay, and to be honest when he got all worked up he reminded of a skinny, embittered, ranting garden gnome, and then someone would talk back to him and he would really go off, to the point we could not understand the words coming out of his mouth.

Whenever these good ol’ boys get themselves so worked up as to stop making any sense whatsoever, the beady-eyed joke in a robe, the unbelievable stereotype of what it takes to be a supremacist, finds time for a comeback tour. Or maybe Cartman is more accessible; imagine one of these angry, Southern, white supremacists getting so screechy and incomprehensible that you never realized until that moment the South Park character was actually a stereotype and not parody.

Oh.

Er … ah … well, now you know.

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Image note: Former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore responds Wednesday, 27 April 2016, to complaints made in January by various groups protesting his administrative order explaining the legal status of the Alabama Sanctity of Marriage Act and the Alabama Marriage Protection Act in Montgomery, Alabama. (Detail of photo by Julie Bennett)

Associated Press. “The Latest: Moore dismisses allegations, says suit to come”. 12 November 2017.

Even More (Rape Culture)

[#rapeculture]

The lede from Reuters:

Amazon Studios chief Roy Price was put on an immediate leave of absence Thursday, the company said, following allegations that he harassed a producer and ignored an actress’s claim of a sexual assault by producer Harvey Weinstein.

Prognostication being more or less the art of capricious but not quite arbitrary projection, a certain obvious question arises: How many entertainment execs are about to fall? One of the interesting questions becomes whether Tinseltown is about to explode into a million billion tiny, glittering pieces; Hollywood, after all, is a town that has long needed more than just an enema.

There is an alternative at least as obvious as the question itself, that maybe one or two more high-profile entertainment executives might fall from grace, and then society will decide that we have discovered and weeded out the few bad seeds, and get on with show business as usual.

And, hey, maybe the next round can be in the music industry, so we can finally free Kesha, but society probably needs a couple years off, first. You know, only a few at a time. I mean, there are only a few bad seeds, y’know, at any one time.

(cough)

Just compared to shattering Hollywood, which itself seems unlikely, what, really, is the chance this is the beginning of a chain reaction lashing severely through the halls of American financial and commercial power tearing away significant chunks of institutionalized rape culture?

(sigh)

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Image note: Detail of frame from Attack on Titan episode 6, “The World the Girl Saw”.

Reuters Staff. “Amazon Studios chief Roy Price suspended following harassment allegation”. Reuters. 12 October 2017.

Required Reading (Justice and Dissent)

[#kneelbeforeJustice]

“Donald Trump took time out from comparing missiles with Kim Jong Un and ignoring Puerto Rico to declare that the athlete who takes a knee is a ‘son of a b***h’ who should be fired for disrespecting America. He was harder on the athletes than on the neo-Nazis who marched in Charlottesville.”

―Leonard Pitts, Jr.

This is not one of those things where I get to say something like, “What he said!” or, “Plus one!” More directly, we can rest assured my part has something to do with paying the fuck attention.

Dear black people:

I guess we’ve messed up again. Seems like we’re never going to learn how to properly protest, no matter how hard conservatives try to teach us.

#WhatTheyVotedFor (Corruption Conundrum)

#PutiTrump | #WhatTheyVotedFor

The basic conundrum, the New York Times explained Tuesday night:

By firing the F.B.I. director, James Comey, late Tuesday afternoon, President Trump has cast grave doubt on the viability of any further investigation into what could be one of the biggest political scandals in the country’s history.

The explanation for this shocking move—that Mr. Comey’s bungling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server violated longstanding Justice Department policy and profoundly damaged public trust in the agency—is impossible to take at face value. Certainly Mr. Comey deserves all the criticism heaped upon him for his repeated missteps in that case, but just as certainly, that’s not the reason Mr. Trump fired him.

‡

Mr. Comey was fired because he was leading an active investigation that could bring down a president. Though compromised by his own poor judgment, Mr. Comey’s agency has been pursuing ties between the Russian government and Mr. Trump and his associates, with potentially ruinous consequences for the administration.