Meeting With the Devil

Damn those folks in Washington!  Just when I think I can get away from commenting on our politics, I get pulled back in!

With the 2026 midterms approaching House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries (above) met with unofficial Trump aide Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law, in New York to discuss policy initiatives in the new 120th Congress that convenes in January.  Kushner wanted to talk about issues that Jeffries, who is likely to become the next Speaker of the House owing to the likelihood of a Democratic House as a result of the November midterms, can work on, ranging from inflation to the price of gasoline.

Jeffries apparently agreed to meet with Kushner - who has no official role in his father-in-law's administration and his used his power as an intermediary for Trump to concoct foreign policy deals - because he thinks Kushner can and will act on good faith.    

What a clown Jeffries is!

Jeffries wanting to do business with Kushner - and presumably allow him to act as a go-between for him and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles - makes about as much sense a chicken thinking he can deal with Colonel Sanders.  Kushner is clearly looking for a way to infiltrate the Democratic power base - such as it is - and get Jeffries and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer to make concessions to Trump in exchange for promises - promises - for a deal on mundane policy initiatives that Trump has no intention of honoring.  

Nothing Kushner does is in the interest of compromise.  He is merely interested in seeking "common ground" with Jeffries to weigh the scales in favor of disabling the Democrats, both in controlling their agenda and sowing chaos among the progressive Democratic base.  He wished to do this out of a desire to keep the opposition at arm's length so he can continue to present himself as an honest broker in negotiating the peace plans Trump gives him the authority to pursue.  While he throws a monkey wrench into Congress for for Trump , he is also going on these "peace" trips to negotiate with Middle Eastern potentates deals that will further enrich Trump - and, coincidentally, himself.  Jeffries doesn't get it; the time to go over the items in Kamala Harris's "to-do" list - housing credits, child care, lower tariffs on Turkmenistani apple cider, etc. - is over.  We have something more important to fight for - like a country that doesn't resemble Turkmenistan (assuming we can still save the country, and I remain a secessionist).  

Jeffries has said that his conversation with Kushner does not mean that Kushner himself will not be investigated or prosecuted as the Democratic House plans to look at Trump's corruption.  I can see the strongly worded letters coming out now.   

In offering to help Jeffries to get to Trump through Wiles, who merely runs what passes for the White House staff but does not intervene in policy, Kushner has revealed himself to be the key master and Wiles to be the gatekeeper  - and that is a gate to hell that you do not want to open.

And we know what kind of trouble that can lead to.

As I once noted, Jeffries' uncle,  pan-Africanist professor Leonard Jeffries, is a black supremacist who has made the argument that the melanin blacks have in their skin makes them superior to white folks.  As far as I'm concerned, Brooklyn sent the wrong Jeffries to Congress.  I know Uncle Leonard is 89 now, but even at that age, he likely has more fight in him than his nephew. 

Since Jeffries loves to paraphrase hip-hop performers, I'd like to paraphrase for him a lyric offered by noted rapper O'Shea Jackson, popularly known as Ice Cube, in response to Jeffries taking a meeting with Kushner - "You can't be a (N-word) for life, dude - when you got a white Jew telling you what to do."  There, I said it.

Sweet Home Albania

While Trump wreaks havoc over what's left of our government (and making it that much easier to break up the country into smaller independent states, as there won't be much of a government left) and remodels and destroys the White House beyond recognition (another reason it will be easier to dissolve the Union), Ivanka Trump is making her own little investment in real estate (sorry, I have no parenthetical clause to offer here about breaking up the country).   

Ivanka came upon this marvelous little island, two square miles large, in the Mediterranean Sea, off the coast of Albania.  Oops!  Correction: Contrary to Ivanka's insistence, this island is in the Adriatic Sea.  Anyway, she thought it would make a nice place to take up residence and build a grand luxury resort looking out on the Mediterranean - I mean, the Adriatic. 

While a lot of MAGA Republicans have nothing wrong with Ivanka buying an island off the coast of Albania in the Gulf of America near Mobile (see what I did there?) the Albanian people are livid, as the island, Sazan, is a former military installation in the Soviet satellite area, with many tunnels and pillboxes still intact, that is now a wildlife refuge.  The prime minister of Albania, elected on a promise to rid the government of corruption, approved the deal for this proposed resort, which is being spearheaded by Affinity Partners, the investment firm founded by . . . Jared Kushner. 

Ivanka vowed not to get involved in politics after her father set out to regain the White House, but her husband's deal with a corrupt leader, which has sparked demonstrations all across Albania, and her own enthusiasm for this project have landed her dead center in what has already become a global controversy.  Benito Mussolini may have actually caused less consternation when he invaded Albania in April 1939.   The resort is bound to cause a great deal of environmental destruction on Sazan Island, undermining its significance as a marine sanctuary, and the jobs it will create will mainly be jobs in which Albanian domestic workers tend to the whims of wealthy American real-estate con men, a third of which will be named Trump, a third of which will be named Kushner, and a third of which are likely to be an assortment of other names from the Epstein files.    

There's only one thing Ivanka and Jared can do to stop this controversy - give up the project.  Don't even scale it down to a respectable size.  Just give up on this Albania getaway.  The only way for them  to please Albanians is to just get down and leave and walk away.

Hope and Change

Hope Hicks, the Trump White House communications director who looks like the model she used to be, has quit her job, bringing the number of people Trump trusts outside his family still serving him in the White House to zero.  She was made to testify before a congressional committee about the Russia investigation and admitted to telling "white lies" for the President but remaining tight-lipped on the big stuff.      

I say she was in the wrong job.  How is it that Sarah Hcuakbee Sanders, a manatees with a wig, is the White House press secretary while an ex-model like Hope Hicks has been serving behind  the scenes as Trump's communications director?  besides, Sarah Huckabee Sanders is a better liar. :-p

Meanwhile, officials in Mexico, the United Arab Emirates, China and Israel have been making efforts to manipulate Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law, as he sought financial backers to help his family's company with its debt while he was trying to get someone to buy into his building in Manhattan  - 666 Fifth Avenue (what an address!) - to alleviate the company's debt.  These foreigners hoped to able to influence Ivanka's husband on foreign policy matters, some of which Kushner has actually been trying to handle personally as Trump's White House assistant.  Kushner has since had his security clearance downgraded. 

As if that weren't all enough, H.R. McMaster, the President's national security adviser, may be forced out, even though he's the only dude standing between Trump and war with North Korea.  All this storminess on the eve of possibly the worst nor'easter to hit the American Northeast in eight years . . . I have to get this published now in case my electricity goes out. :-O   

Wolff At the Door

If any one book takes Trump out of office prematurely, it will be this one.

Michael Wolff's "Fire and Fury" is shaking things up, both for its controversial source material and for its stunning revelations about the Trump White House.  Some of the "revelations" are facts we already know, like Rex Tillerson saying that Trump is a moron.  But other so-called allies can't find nice things to say about Trump's intellect of lack thereof either; Reince Priebus and Steven Mnuchin both said he's an idiot, economic adviser Gary Cohn called him "dumb as sh--," and national security adviser H.R. McMaster thinks he's a dope.  Another aide couldn't get Trump to understand the Bill of Rights.  Wolff confirms that New Jersey governor Chris Christie was slated for a job in the administration but was denied on the basis of his success at putting Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner's banker father in jail  when Christie was U.S. Attorney for New Jersey in the two thousand zeroes.

There's more - too much for me to repeat in this space.  Among other tidbits, Trump eats fast food to avoid being poisoned (these jokes write themselves, folks!), Melania never wanted to be First Lady, and the only reason we lucked out with Tillerson - our most avuncular Secretary of State since Dean Acheson - at the State Department when we could have gotten Trump's fellow xenophobe John Bolton is because Trump didn't think Bolton would go over well because of . . . his moustache.  (Our last mustachioed Secretary of State?  Dean Acheson.)

Steve Bannon doesn't look to good in this book . . .  to those who like the guy.  He apparently had a problem or two - or more - with all those Trump campaign meetings with the Russians at Trump Tower, calling some campaign members "treasonous" and "unpatriotic," adding that Trump had to have known about the meeting involving Paul Manafort, Kushner, and Donald Trump, Jr. Bannon even suggests that the President may have met with the Russians himself, and he even thought that the way Trump handled the Charlottesville incident in August 2017 might have been "25th-Amendment bad," requiring his removal of office due to a loss of sound mental capacity.

Trump didn't like that.  He's since turned on Bannon, even though many in the administration agree that it is Trump, not Bannon, who, as Trump said about Bannon, has "lost his mind."  But here's the kicker: Trump was hoping to lose and planning on losing.  The Guardian reports that, according to Wolff's book, Trump "expected to leverage his defeat for wealth, fame and a Trump-branded TV network," and "key advisers wanted jobs in television or politics."

And if that shrew Debbie Wasserman Schultz had given Martin O'Malley a fair chance at the Democratic presidential nomination instead of backing Hillary, we'd still be in the Paris Agreement now. >:-(  

How did Wolff get so much access to the Trump White House?  They gave it to him, carte blanche, and practically let him wander around interviewing everyone he could find.  Trump knew a little about Wolff's reputation and was actually expecting a favorable report.  

So what effect will Wolff's book actually have?  Sadly, despite the first sentence of this blog entry, little if any whatsoever.  First, many people found Wolff's sources to be highly suspect, and some of his stories may be exaggerated.  Second, even if these stories are completely and thoroughly true, the people who should read this book won't.  And, as  I wrote in this blog entry from December 2015, Donald Trump, like Madonna, has a knack for maintaining and even increasing his popularity with fans after saying and doing outrageous and offensive things that no one else would have gotten away with.  The idea of Trump's opponents hoping for Wolff's book to destroy his Presidency reminds me of us Madonna-haters hoping that her career was through after her movie Body of Evidence tanked.

And her cover of Don McLean's "American Pie" was the pop-music equivalent of Trump hypothetically shooting someone on Manhattan's Fifth Avenue.