More midweek news briefs

1.  Rudy Giuliani has been forced to resign from his New York law firm.   It was his remarks on Fox television about paying to silence people for his clients -- just like Michael Cohen did.  Rudy said he did that all the time for his clients, often without necessarily telling them about it first.   Apparently, Rudy's trying to fix Trump's problem got a little out of hand -- at least as far as his law firm felt.    They adamantly declined to have their firm associated with paying hush money.  Is there anyone who has been associated with Donald Trump who doesn't somehow become tainted?

2.  Don Blakenship is the former West Virginia coal mine owner who spent a year in prison for having ignored mine safety laws that resulted in 29 miners dying in an accident in his mine.  He was running for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate to take Joe Manchin's seat.   He ran as a Republican but a rabidly anti-Washington, anti-Mitch McConnell zealot.   His ads were despicably racist, and Blankenship came in third out of three running in the Republican primary.

3.   Senate hearings on the nomination of Gina Haspel to head the CIA have brought the torture question front and center, since Ms. Haspel played a big role in overseeing a secret site where 9/11 suspects were interrogated.   She says she would not bring back torture as Director, but she declined to call it immoral in answer to questions.    Later, Dick Cheney said he strongly supports reinstituting the enhanced interrogation program.   And a  guest on Fox Business News, Retired Lt. Gen Tom McInerney -- a noted conspiracy theorist and Obama birth-citizen denier -- claims that "It worked on John McCain. . . That's why they call him 'Songbird John.'"
     The host later apologized for not challenging that, saying that his control room was speaking in his ear at the time and he did not hear the remark.   There's no truth to that outrageous claim about McCain.   McCain was tortured as a POW -- and resisted.   In fact, when the enemy found out his uncle was a  high ranking naval officer, they said they would release him.   But he declined, saying that until all of his fellow prisoners were released, he would stay.

4.   The KKK member who fired a gun during the rally in Charlottesville has been convicted of improperly firing a gun into a crowd and could get up to 10 years in prison.

5.  President Trump is in danger of losing another cabinet secretary -- and not one of those (Pruitt, Zinke, DeVos) that we'd particularly like to see go.   Homeland Security Administrator Kirstjen Nielsen was upset enough by the president yelling at her during a cabinet meeting about not having secured the borders that she wrote a letter of resignation.   She has not yet given it to Trump, but she is said to be miserable in the job.    She gets the brunt of his wrath that people are still coming into the country illegally.    And Trump also feels some are balking at his order to separate children from their mothers at the border.   Homeland Security later put out a release saying that Sec. Nielsen had not written a resignation letter.

6.  President and Mrs. Trump were waiting at the air base at 2:00 am to meet Mike Pompao's plane bringing home the three Korean-American, naturalized citizens who have been held in a North Korean prison.  Kim Jong Un released them as part of the prelude to his meeting with Trump next month.
     All went well, with heartfelt exchanges of welcome and gratitude, and then the released men were leaving to be taken to Walter Reed Hospital for checkups.  And then, I suppose, Trump just couldn't contain it any longer.   As described by the New York Times reporter:  ". . . he turned back toward the floodlights.  'I think you probably broke the all-time in history television rating for 3 o'clock in the morning,' Mr. Trump said.  Minutes later, he boarded Marine One back to the White House."

     Ah, well . . . if only his self-centeredness and ratings fetish were the worst complaints we had about him.

Ralph

P.S.    Michael Hirschorn, Emmy Award winning television producer and commentator about the reality of celebrity personalities, was a guest to discuss the meaning of this Trumpism with Ari Melber on MSNBC.  He referred to the Trump administration in general as "malevolence tempered by incompetence."
     Perfect.