On Monday morning, before the day and the Comey hearings started, the people at NBC’s First Read suggested that this could be the most consequential week yet in Trump’s presidency. They had four questions as to why.
1. Does FBI Director Comey publicly repudiate Trump’s wiretapping charge?
2. How far does Comey go on Russia?
3. Does the health-care effort survive — or die?
4. Is Gorsuch’s confirmation still on track?
Yes, I know, the Monday House Intelligence Committee hearing feels like it was a month ago now. We have answers to all these questions and none of them are good for Trump.
1. Does FBI Director Comey publicly repudiate Trump’s wiretapping charge? Yes he did. Comey stated that not only did the FBI fail to find evidence to support Trump’s claim, but that the entire Justice Department also failed to do so. NSA Director Michael Rogers repudiated the White House claim that the British had been solicited to spy on Trump for the Obama administration.
2. How far does Comey go on Russia? Devastatingly far.
I have been authorized by the Department of Justice to confirm that the FBI, as part of our counter-intelligence mission, is investigating the Russian government’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. And that includes investigating the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia’s efforts.
The FBI is investigating the President and his White House for Treason. That fucking far.
3. Does the health-care effort survive — or die? Died at 3:30 pm on Friday, March 24, 2017. This was a gigantic failure that cripples the entire Republican agenda for this Congress. If we were a parliamentary democracy, there would be a vote of no confidence in the Government and snap elections would be called. Speaker Ryan, by all rights, should be forced to resign.
4. Is Gorsuch’s confirmation still on track? Maybe. But it will not be a smooth painless endeavor. The Democrats are going to filibuster his nomination. Thus, if 41 of the 48 Democrats in the Senate stick together and vote no on Cloture, he will be blocked. It is likely, however, that the GOP will go nuclear and end the filibuster for Supreme Court nomination. Which is fine. Ending the filibuster will be on them, and as meager as that is, it is punishment for blocking Garland.
It was a big week for Trump, but in the worst possible way. He and Ryan lost in spectacular fashion as the party split itself apart for all to see. Ryan in particular took a devastating hit, as has been noted if this was a parliamentary democracy he would have gotten a vote of no confidence and the government would have fallen. The bill itself was an ever evolving disaster as they tried to placate the ultra far right “Freedom Caucus” (that name still gets me) and still give their owners the rich a big tax cut will screwing the rest of us. Supposedly Trump has moved on, suspect the rubes that voted for him have not and will have something to say about it.
He may have moved on, but Tom Price has to run Obamacare now. Which means that they still have the capacity to cripple it and make sure that features do not work. That is the longterm problem. They have no incentive to make it work.
The Russia business is intriguing and right now the only Dems I hear who is coherent on this is Adam Schiff and Elizabeth Warren. These Dems need to get their act together. There is a MAJOR case to me made about the lack of accountability and oversight which should be a key issue in 2018.
The core of the problem remains that we need new Dems, and real ones this time. Admit it, it would be nice.
It would be nice, but some of the Dems we have are fine — I just think that we are not playing the messaging game nearly as well as we could. It isn’t that I hear Schiff and Warren saying the good stuff — they are the ONLY ones I hear. Now much of my media is limited to NPR, but still.