"Ne-ve-r mind." . . . Trump's humiliating defeat.

Donald Trump pinned his hope for early success in his presidency on the Blitzkreig of his hastily and clumsily imposed travel ban from seven mostly-Muslim countries -- a Muslim ban in all but name.

Shot down by the courts and proven to have no rational basis in actual data, Trump's advisers convinced him to withdraw the original ban, which was still tied up in multiple court cases, and go back to the drawing board.

Announced dates for release of the new plan came and went.  Rumors of the terms kept getting narrower.   Yesterday it was finally released, in all of its inglorious, watered-down, almost meaningless version.

It's been described by some as a "backdown of monumental proportions" and "a major political defeat for the Trump administration."

Uncharacteristically, its signing had little fanfare;  no cameras were even present.   Here's what this new version does:

1.   The only travelers now banned are those without visas from six nations -- Iraq has been removed from the list.   The order does not apply to green card holders or permanent, legal U.S. residents.    No big deal:   people from those countries already are required to have a visa.

2.  Inflammatory language, like "extreme vetting" and "radical Islamic terrorists," has been removed.

3.  There is a 10 day period before it goes into effect, unlike the first version which was imposed without warning or preparation and rationalized by supposedly dire risk of terrorist ready to stream into our country.

4.  There is no singling out of refugees from Syria for different treatment, although the numbers of refugees accepted in the U.S. is still reduced from 110,000 to 50,000 per year.

5.  Any exceptions that apply to a particular religious group have been removed.

6.  Iraqis who worked with the U.S. military in Iraq are eligible for a Special Immigrant Visa.

That's about it.   All in all, this whole thing now looks like it does very little and could have been just avoided altogether.   Of course, it was primarily a political stunt -- but it hurt a lot of people.  And it still carries the taint that it originated in anti-Muslim rhetoric of the Trump campaign.

I suppose this "revised" ban does provide a little bit of face-saving for Trump in a humiliating defeat.   But, truth be told, they could have just shelved the whole thing and said the line made famous by Saturday Night Live's late, great Gilda Radner:

"Ne-ve-r mind."

Reagan adviser compares Trump to Nixon . . . . unfavorably

Bruce Bartlett, who was an adviser to President Ronald Reagan, sent out this tweet, comparing Trump and Nixon:

"Take Nixon in the deepest days of his Watergate paranoia, subtract 50 IQ points, add Twitter, and you have Trump today."

Trump accuses Obama of wire tapping him; goes into rage with staff; crisis heating up . . . bigly.

Our Tweeter-in-Chief got itchy fingers early Saturday morning and sent this out at 6:35am:

"Terrible.   Just found out that Obama had my "wires tapped" in Trump Tower before the victory.  Nothing found.   This is McCarthyism!"

Trump kept it up;  and by 7:02 am his fifth twitter message on the subject said this:

"How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process.   This is Nixon/Watergate.  Bad (or sick) guy!"

According to Washington Post investigative journalist Robert Costa, this originated with a reporter for Breitbart News and has been circulating among White House staff.   Former Obama staff member Ben Rhodes shot back a statement:

"No President can order a wiretap.  Those restrictions put in place to protect citizens from people like you."

Yes, that is true.   But the FBI can petition a special court for a warrant to tap a phone.  The Foreign Intelligence Surveillence Act set up this special court following 9/11, and in fact, the Guardian reported back in January that the FBI did seek such a warrant in the summer of 2016 (during the campaign) -- and was turned down.

Here's a thought, however, about what may be going on.   Rep. Devin Nunes, chair of the House Intelligence Committee, revealed that the FBI had listened in on conversations between the Russian Ambassador Kislyev and "a top Trump official."   It is well known that our government spies on the Russian diplomats in the U.S., as they do ours in Russia.

So, if the FBI had a tap on the Russian ambassador's phone, and if he  had a phone call with a Trump official, then the FBI would have heard (and recorded) it.   That may be what this is all about.   Not political spying on one U.S. presidential candidate by the president, but an FBI wire tap on the Russian diplomat.

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That was what I wrote on Saturday night and set it to post as my blog for Monday (so I could take the day off from politics.)    However, Donald Trump just keeps stirring the pot.  Here's what's happened on Sunday.

1.  Trump demanded that Congress investigate what he insists was Obama's tapping of his phone, even though he has presented no evidence that his phone was tapped.   It seems he got it from a Breitbart reporter.

2.  Through a spokeman, Obama said neither he nor anyone in his White House had ordered a tap of Trump's or his campaign's phone.

3.  Later Saturday morning, before leaving for Mar a Lago for the weekend, Trump called his senior staff in for a tongue lashing of Reince Priebus and Steve Bannon for not controlling the story about AG Sessions' recusing himself from any investigations of the Trump campaign and Russia.  Apparently Sessions' announcement took Trump by surprise;  he did not agree that Sessions needed to recuse himself;  and mainly he was enraged that this story had eclipsed the positive coverage of his speech to Congress on Tuesday night.

Reporters looking through the windows said he seemed to be in a rage.  Senior staff referred to the president as "going ballistic."   Because of this, apparently, Preibus and Bannon were to stay behind in Washington rather than accompany the president to Florida.  Sessions did go to Florida with him.

4.  Spicer announced on Sunday that neither the White House or the president will comment further on the matter until Congress investigates the explosive accusation that President Obama ordered his "wires to be tapped."   Of course, it was Trump himself who made the accusation.  But this "no comment" suggests that they don't have -- or at least don't plan to offer -- any evidence to back up the claim.

5.  James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence from 2010-2017 told "Meet the Press" on Sunday that, during his tenure, there was no wire tap of Trump or his campaign.  He says that he would have known if someone else applied to the FISA court for a warrant to tap, and he said "I can deny" that the FBI had done so.  He cannot, of course, speak for what may have happened after Jan. 20th, but Trump's accusation refers to October, before the election.

6.  FBI Director James Comey took the highly unusual step Sunday of asking the Department of Justice to "publicly reject" Trump's allegation.   Comey said that Trump's claim, without any evidence presented, "is false and must be corrected."

But then here's the problem.    Attorney General Sessions has recused himself, so he cannot do what Comey asks.   And the Deputy Attorney General, who will oversee the investigation, has not yet been confirmed.   And apparently the Acting Deputy AG does not feel that he has the standing to issue such a declaration.

But here's the serious message in all this.   This president is out of control, making wild, unsubstantiated accusations against his predecessor -- without evidence -- and lashing out at his own staff with petty punishments and tongue lashing.   The president of the United States accusing his predecessor of tapping his phone is a serious charge.  It is beyond ludicrous that he made it via Twitter at 6:35 am, gave no evidence to back it up, and then threw a temper tantrum at his own staff.

It's true that this government is leaking information like a sieve.   But we have to ask why?   The most likely answer is that the career, non-political staff working in government, especially in our intelligence and security apparatus, think that the only way to prevent a disaster is to leak the information that they fear will never see the light of day in a Trump administration.   I believe they fear, as I do, for the future of our country and our democracy as long as Donald Trump holds the reins of power.

Ralph

#March 4 Trump rallies draw dozens of people

Organizers encouraged people to participate in "#March4Trump" rallies across the nation on Saturday to show support for the president.  In a few places, there were pretty good crowds.   Like Nashville, where it was probably fair to say there were "thousands," and also in Florida.

But even the president probably won't claim they were "the biggest crowds ever."   For example, the Denver 7 News sent out this:  "March4Trump rally brings dozens of supporters to Colorado State Capitol."  In pictures from other capitols, the crowds are best described as "sparse."  The Huffington Post rather cruelly headlined its article about it as:  "Tens of people rally across the country for March4Trump."

Sad.

The hypocrisy of the pious -- Mike Pence's phone

Ah . . . another example of the hypocrisy of the pious.  The Indianapolis Star newspaper has reported that then governor Mike Pence used a personal AOL phone account for official state business, including the discussion of sensitive topics like the state's response to terrorist attacks.

I call this hypocrisy because Vice Presidential candidate Pence was scathing and sanctimonious in his criticism of Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server when she was Secretary of State.   It was one of the main attack topics that the Republicans tried to make into a scandal to sink her candidacy for president.

During the campaign, Pence said on "Meet the Press,"  that Clinton "either knew or should have known that she was placing classified information in a way that exposed it to being hacked and being made available in the public domain, even to enemies of this country."

Pence's AOL phone use came to light when a hacker got into his account over the summer.   It's true that there is no legal obligation for the Indiana governor to use a secure phone.  However, the current governor's office, in releasing copies of Pence's emails, withheld an unspecified number of them because they were considered "too sensitive" to be made public.

For all the political heat Clinton took later about the phone server, the fact is that there was never any evidence that her phone system was hacked.   In contrast, the phones were hacked at the State Department, the Pentagon, the DNC -- and the one used by the governor of Indiana, a guy named Pence.

What is it with these outwardly pious people who have such a propensity for shading the truth, outright lying in many instances, and hiding their own mendacity behind a screen of hypocrisy?    The old derogatory phrase "holier than thou" comes to mind.

Ralph

Ding, dong, the wicked ban is dead -- maybe.

On Thursday night, Rachel Maddow of MSNBC had an exclusive leak given to her of a draft report from the Intelligence and Analysis division of the Homeland Security Department that reinforces the data analysis in the Associated Press-reported leak from the same agency a few days ago (see ShrinkRap, Feb. 27).   Both reports lead to a conclusion that the Trump travel ban has no rational basis, a criterion that the 9th Circuit Appeals Court was asking for.

The earlier AP report used statistics of prior attacks from citizens of those seven countries to show that they have an almost zero likelihood of coming to this country to carry out terror attacks.

A DHS spokesperson confirmed to Rachel that this March 1st report is authentic.   It states that it was prepared by the Department of Homeland Security's Intelligence and Analysis, "in cooperation with" the following agencies:   Customs and Border Patrol, Department of State, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), National Counter-terrorism Center, and the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service.

This report's conclusion is even more damaging to the Trump ban, because it found that most foreign-born extremists based in the U.S. were radicalized after then came to the U.S., not before.   Here is the wording from the leaked draft:

"We assess that most foreign-born, U.S.-based violent extremists [were] radicalized several years after their entry to the United States, limiting the ability of screening and vetting officials to prevent their entry because of national security concerns."

Neither children nor their parents come into our country radicalized.   It is something that happens to the teenagers who have been living in this country for some time.   These two leaked drafts, both from the DHS's own Intelligence and Analysis internal group, contradict any basis for the Trump travel ban and put its future in jeopardy.

Rachel Maddow went further and said "I think the Muslim ban is dead."  She raised the serious question of why these documents were leaked, apparently by people in the Intelligence and Analysis camp itself.    As Rachel said, "they obviously wanted me to have this report, wanted me to present it to the American people."

The only reasonable conclusion is that these are serious, career intelligence analysts who fear that the Trump administration would suppress any such information so as to continue what they consider a political necessity to fulfill a campaign promise.

This seems to be happening throughout the government, including within the White House.  And, in my opinion, it says more about the Trump administration and what people have come to expect from it than it says about the leakers.    They fall more in the category of whistle blowers, doing it to save our democracy from a new presidential administration that seems more concerned with asserting an autocratic power and control than in protecting our democracy.

Rachel and Andrea Mitchell had a discussion about what this tells us about intervention into the problem of radicalization here in the U.S.   They agreed that what is needed is the community approach to working with these adolescents from immigrant families to address their experience of dislocation, abandonment, and isolation.   The prior DHS Director, Jeh Johnson, had started just such an approach.

Tragically, the Trump style is to scrap such "soft" approaches in favor of his bombastic, fictionalized, extreme vetting.  In other words, a strong-man, autocratic crack-down.

It's the same impulse that led him, in his budget proposal, to slash the budget for the State Department for diplomatic and aid work so that he can put in a massive increase for the defense budget.  I've been so focused on the Trump obnoxiousness in style and on his lies that I have not been looking much at his policies.     Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Ralph

Thanks to Nick Visser and Elise Foley of the Huffington Post and to Rachel Maddow of MSNBC and Andrea Mitchell of NBC for reporting and opinion that informed this blog.

Should AG Sessions resign? Or is recusal enough?

Political events move too fast for me to write my blog the day before.   I wrote the following in the early afternoon Thursday.   However, at 4:05pm,  Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that he would recuse himself from any investigations that involve the Trump presidential campaign.   He emphasized that this decision was the recommendation of his ethics advisers and that it follows the  ethical guidelines to avoid any appearance of conflict of interest, given his close involvement with the Trump campaign.

But here's the question:   Why had Sessions not done this from the beginning?   I'm no lawyer and Sessions is.   If I know that he should have recused himself, why did Sessions not know this without having to wait to have a meeting with his ethics advisers to tell him so?   I guess it's in the same category of "not knowing" that he should have cleared up his testimony about those two meetings with the Russian ambassador that he denied when he gave the testimony. 

Sessions will completely remove himself from any involvement, and all decisions and oversight will be done by the Deputy Attorney General -- or, until Trump's nominee for that position is confirmed, by the Acting Deputy AG, who is a career, civil service Justice Department official.

This recusal will likely lower the temperature on this hot issue, although new developments also breaking on Thursday afternoon, will keep the drumbeat going for an independent investigation.   That latest development was a New Yorker story, confirmed by the White House, that Jared Kushner and Gen. Mike Flynn had together met with the Russian ambassador Kislyak in December in Trump Tower "to establish a line of communication," as they did with other foreign governments.

However, this was also at the time the Obama administration was about to impose sanctions and to make its public case that it was the Russians behind the hacking.   With his son-in-law now implicated in the Russian contacts, it's impossible to pretend that Trump himself was not knowledgeable about all this.

This story is growing, not dying down.  Some have said it's going to be bigger than Watergate.   I'll definitely be writing more about it.  But for now, here's the somewhat out of date piece I had written earlier to be posted for Friday's blog:

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Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions has been caught misstating a fact about his own activities in sworn testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in his confirmation hearings.

Sen. Al Franken specifically asked him what he would do as Attorney General if he learned of any evidence that anyone affiliated with the Trump campaign communicated  with the Russian government in the course of the 2016 campaign.  Sessions answered that he was not aware of any such activities.  He added that he, himself, had been "called a surrogate a time or two in that campaign and I did not have communication with the Russians."   In another answer to Sen. Patrick Leahy, he gave a similar answer, denying any knowledge of anyone in the campaign having communication with the Russians.

Wednesday night, the Washington Post broke a story that Sessions did, on two occasions, speak with the Russian ambassador to the U.S., Sergey Kislyak, during the presidential campaign.   Kislyak is known to be the top Russian "spy" in the U.S., as well as the head of their spy network here.

In response, the Justice Department says that then Senator Sessions spoke with Kislyak in his role as a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and that they did not speak about the campaign.   One was a chance meeting with him at the Republican convention.  The other was in his office on October 8th where, among other things, they talked about Ukraine.   He said he doesn't remember any discussion about the campaign in either meeting.

OK.  Maybe that's true.    But, if so, why did he not just say that during his confirmation hearings, especially knowing the conflicting information about Russian connections with the Trump campaign.    Speaking in his defense, Sen. Ted Cruz, who was in the committee hearing, said that he understood that Sessions was speaking in the context of concern about connections with the campaign.   His answer was only saying that he had not had communications with the Russians about the campaign.

Well, but it's now been at least two weeks that the whole issue has become newsworthy again --as to whether the investigations by the two Intelligence Committees are impartial and whether they will be thorough.  Even more controversial have beenn the unsuccessful efforts by White House staff to get FBI and CIA leaders to say there's nothing to the stories about communications between the Trump campaign and the Russians -- and the successful efforts to get the chairs of the House and the Senate Intelligence committees to do what the FBI and CIA leaders would not do.  That is, essentially to go on tv and say "there's nothing to this story."  Paul Ryan has now done the same thing.

In short, it seems there is a cover-up underway.   And there had already been calls for Sessions to recuse himself from overseeing the investigations, as well as calls for an independent, special prosecutor on the whole Trump/Russia connections.

During all this, Sessions still said nothing about his two conversations with Kislyak, saying only that he would recuse himself "if it becomes necessary."  Only after the Washington Post broke the story did he come clean and explain the subject of those conversations.   But, are we to just take his word for it?   Since when is the bar that low?

As with Watergate and Bill Clinton's Monica scandal, it's the attempted  cover-up that does you in.   Looks like we may be in Act III of that melodrama.

Ralph