9.17.17: It's Put Up or Shut Up Time, No One's Exempt This Week

In being non-ideological and narcissistic as many would describe, President Trump this week has left Democrats and Republicans alike to doubt his position on anything. But when you're goal is to simply get 'wins' and be liked, you're not going to commit to any position.  The unfortunate but predictable result of that is nothing gets done, which is what you've seen for the first eight months of his presidency.

Ann Coulter's rhetorical question of "who doesn't want Trump impeached?" is the firebrand's way of asking, "what is this president for?" After this week, everyone is left to wonder. By impulse is no way to run the United States of America and it seems that President Trump hasn't internalized that concept. As far as other conservative commentators are concerned (Limbaugh, Hannity, et al), NBC's Katy Tur who just wrote a book about her experience on the Trump campaign said that the Trump supporter (apparently a new political party according to Chuck Todd, not really) don't even listen to those people. At least they have that going for them. 

But the Trump supporter is to the right of the right, the "if I don't like the game, I'm taking the ball and going home" crowd if you will, and what the president showed glimpses of is that he may not be their guy. Mr. Trump plays to the crowd he's in front of, and now conservative commentators are realizing that he really was just playing. Presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin gave the most succinct insight that only a presidential historian could, which was that Mr. Trump has "lost his mojo."

What is simply inexplicable is how Christian conservatives, white evangelicals can give the president a pass on the president's behavior, statements (past and present) and personal transgressions. David Brody from the Christian Broadcasting Network, who has his finger on the pulse of these things, explained that white evangelicals feel that Mr. Trump is their cultural warrior. Really? The perception is that Mr. Trump is playing to an unconscious (or maybe conscious) xenophobia. If that's a too 'loaded' explanation, that's only one of two possibilities; the other being in opposition to abortion. If the president ever waffles on that, he's lose all that support - the ultimate deal breaker.

And speaking of Christians, Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) didn't have much Christian charity to show toward the DREAMers, some of whom have served in the military. I guess he didn't ask about that either in his time in the service, just like he punted on the issue of transgender individuals being allowed to serve. As has been mentioned in this column previously, DACA recipients are Americans, for all intent and purpose, and Mr. Cotton is certainly indifferent to the human element of the issue. The Arkansas senator threw out the phrase "unlimited chain migration," which pushes all the right wing buttons creating another 'immigration boogie' suggesting that this is what is going on now; it's unlimited and endless.

And not to leave out any chastising for the other side, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) wouldn't say if he would run as a Democrat or Independent. He also punted, on this question, and the problem is that if you want to tell the Democratic party what to do and sometimes, frankly, lecture them on how they should do things, then he should get invested and join the party. Because giving yourself the easy out when you have to backtrack on something or even nuance it by saying, "Oh, well I'm not a Democrat, I'm an Independent," is sorry to say a little chickenshit. Mr. Sanders, what's it going to be. Don't get me wrong, I agree with Mr. Sanders that Medicare for all is a good plan and you could incrementally integrate it by lowering the requirement age over a series of time periods to absorb cost adjustments. However, what Mr. Sanders wants to do, essentially, is take the profit motive out of health care. And that's not necessarily bad per se, just incredibly difficult.

In the time being, Congress should be working on prescription drug prices down because its behavior on this issue has been disgraceful. Congress enables the pharmaceutical companies to get millions upon millions of Americans on one medication or another, also addictive and deadly (opiates), and then gauge those same Americans on the price. Now that I think of it, that's actually drug dealing, and through campaign contributions, politicians get a cut of that.  Too much to think about.

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The program also covered North Korea and Chuck Todd's trip to the U.S. Virgin Islands, the latter of which you should go online and watch again, however I wanted to keep the column to the president's actions over the week and the interviews with the respective senators, but no one is exempt this week. On all sides, Americans of all stripes are saying the same thing, "Put up or shut up."


Panel: Doris Kearns Goodwin, presidential historian; Katy Tur, NBC News; Alex Cardenas, fmr. president of the American Conservatives Union; David Brody, Christian Broadcasting Network

9.10.17: Irma Preempts Everything, Covers Everyone

"Meet The Press" has been preempted today due to wall-to-wall coverage of Hurricane Irma, for which we'll say that we hope everyone in the path of the storm comes out the other side of it safely, of course. As it has been said many times, in the midst of a natural disaster there is no politics, no red nor blue, just United States and Americans helping one another.

With that said, such comprehensive storm coverage gives cover to many things, namely special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation and the fact that he's seeking to interview six White House staffers, current and former. Normally, this would be huge news but fortunately for Mr. Mueller, the general news media is preoccupied. The most high profile current staffer is interim White House Communications Director Hope Hicks. Former W.H. Press Secretary Sean Spicer and fmr. Chief of Staff Reince Priebus are also on Mr. Mueller's list of interviewees.

The special counsel's interest in these individuals centers around Donald Trump Jr.'s June 2016 meeting with Russian representatives but more specifically who was privy to the discussion about Mr. Trump Jr.'s official statement, crafted by the White House staff on board Air Force One on the way back from the G20 Summit. Just the factual description of the above scenario invites so many obvious questions with potentially damaging answers. For example, did you know about the meeting? Did the president know about this meeting? Why did the White House craft the statement and who was involved in its drafting? Not good stuff, like that... Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer said that bungled collusion is still collusion, so are the actions on board Air Force One obstruction?

Of said individuals, the one the administration has to worry about the most, this column believes, is fmr. Chief of Staff Reince Priebus. Ms. Hicks has been with the president too long, years before he even decided to run, loyal and as close to being family without actually being family. But Mr. Priebus is a different story...

For every situation in question, he was present and who knows at this point how Mr. Priebus is feeling about the president and the administration, which in other words is to question his degree of loyalty to the president at this point in time. As fmr. Chairman of the RNC, Mr. Priebus is a party guy and he knows full well what actions cross the line and which ones do not. But also being a party guy means that ultimately that's where he'll put his faith. Let's face it, he got the hard boot from the White House so the loyalty wasn't reciprocated and he won't end up needing a pardon from the president.

A bit of conjecture there, for sure but the point is that this is a serious development in this investigation, and its not getting crazy coverage, which all told is a good thing.

The other thing that we need to touch on, and yes we have to go there,  is the fact of atmospheric change which is causing climate occurrences like droughts and hurricanes, etc. to be much more intense. Even if you don't believe that man's activities are having an effective on the climate changing (despite the overwhelming scientific evidence), we can all agree that these extreme weather events happen and are occurring with more frequency so can't we at least get together on climate event prevention and build and zone cities to accommodate the facts of devastation on the ground?

9.3.17: The Heat Into The Fall, The President's August and What It Means for September

The challenges for President Trump have arrived and his tumultuous month of August lingering into these beginning days of September with the aftermath of the tragic Hurricane Harvey and as reported this morning a new nuclear test in North Korea, one that registered a 6.3 on the Richter Scale.

As the Sylvester Turner, Mayor of Houston, stated it's all about housing in terms of the relief and aid for the communities. Secondarily, he said that the removal of debris was essential to prevent any public health crisis. So far, the president has responded well to the disaster and has signaled an immediate injection of $7.8 billion for hurricane relief.  It's a start but realistically, that amount is only half of the tip of the iceberg of monetary resources that it's going to take to rebuild southeast Texas.

With the limited amount of congressional working days in September and funding for hurricane relief the first order of business on the domestic front and the North Korean threats on the foreign policy end, the administration's legislative agenda is all but dead. With the suggestion that Hurricane Harvey relief funds be tied to the raising of the debt ceiling will length the debate and simply create more uncertainty with the best to hope for is a continuing resolution to fund the government. Not to mention that Mr. Trump called out and picked fights with a number of Republican legislators this past month, number one on that list being the Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY). This comes after the president isolating himself with an abhorrent press conference in the wake of Charlotttesville, an alternative-universe like rally in Phoenix where he dissed both of the state's Republican senators, and then a pardon for an unrepentant bigoted sheriff who defied the rule of law. Now, senators like John McCain (R-AZ) want to stick it in the president's eye, so to speak.

The president is still talking about health care, which will not be taken up again by Congress and there just isn't the legislative time to get tax reform done, with everything else on the table. Nothing legislatively is going to get done in this next session. Further complicating the domestic agenda is the president's coming Tuesday decision on what to do about DACA - the deferred action on childhood arrivals.

Many conservative members of Congress has urged the president not to rescind the executive order (DACA), but as today's panel discussed, doing away with DACA doesn't play well with Mr. Trump's base. The hard line attorney general Jeff Sessions is advocating for the order's cancellation. There was also conjecture from the panel that the president would kick it to Congress to decide what to do, which would be the politically logical thing to do, as Princeton professor Eddie Glaude pointed out, but he seemed to think that because it's Mr. Trump, conventional political logic doesn't apply. One can only speculate, but rescinding DACA would also implement harsh deportation policy on places particularly like southeast Texas, which would be a slap in the face by the president to that community if he rescinded the order now. Bottom line is: These 800,000 'Dreamer' kids are Americans and should be made so.

And while Mr. Trump was throwing cold water on Congressional relations in August, it was fire and fury everywhere else. In addition to inflaming racial divisions with irresponsible comments, "fire and fury" was the phrase that the president used as a response to missile tests by North Korea. It's worth noting a statistic that Chuck Todd outlined: Kim Jung Il conducted 16 missile tests in his entire time in power, and his son Kim Jung Un has had 18 since Mr. Trump became president. It's quite obvious that the young dictator is testing the ill-tempered president.

Mr. Trump's terrible August, frankly, has set him up well for a productive September and despite outside mitigating issues such as the Russian investigation, can the president overcome all of these challenges to simply show that he can be competent in the job?

September is going to be the most significant month of his presidency so far.


Panel: Kristen Welker, NBC News; Susan Page, USA Today; Eddie Glaude, Princeton University; Matthew Continetti, Washington Free Beacon