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President Donald Trump today finally acknowledged the root cause of the horrific terrorist attack in Charlottesville last week. He specifically called out neo-Nazis and white supremacists for the evil they truly represent. This is all to his credit, although it did take him an unconscionably long time to make such a statement. But there was still one word missing from his statement: terrorism.
So I take a few days off to do some tourist stuff, and suddenly we're almost at war with North Korea? I guess with Donald Trump running things you can't afford to ignore the news for even a few days.
It is now August. The dog days of summer. In politics, this period is traditionally known as the "silly season." It's called that for a reason. With Congress gone from Washington all month, usually coupled with a presidential vacation, there is just not a lot of news for political commentators to comment upon. So they usually latch on to some incredibly silly story and then proceed to beat it into the ground. With nobody else around to make news, this soon turns into a vortex of silliness, with everyone trying to outdo each other pontificating on the seriousness of what, at heart, is pure balderdash.
As time goes by, more and more elephants in Washington seem to be going rogue. By this, we mean that resistance to Donald Trump is growing... within the Republican Party. Just last week, three GOP senators (Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and John McCain) denied Trump his sought-after "repeal and replace Obamacare" bill. Senator David Perdue from Georgia summed it up as: "We had three chairmen who went rogue on the Republican caucus and cost us this vote." Since then, other elephants have been going rogue at an increasing rate.
For the first six months of his presidency, Donald Trump has always been able to count on a "floor" of public support of around 40 percent. Through thick and thin, four-in-ten Americans approved of the job he was doing. That seems to now be changing. For the first time, his own base is starting to become disillusioned with Trump. So far the change is slight, but the trendline doesn't look good for the near future for the president.
It was just another week in Trumpland, folks. By that we mean more scandalous behavior and bumbling incompetence packed into one single week than most White House administrations show during an entire term of office. The week really began with the news last Friday that Sean Spicer had decided to quit, upon hearing that Anthony "The Mooch" Scaramucci was to be his new boss. The week ended (the news is breaking even as we write this) that Trump is sacking his chief of staff, Reince Priebus. During the week, Trump also tried his darndest to get Attorney General Jeff Sessions to quit in frustration, while rumors appeared that Rex Tillerson is planning his "Rexit" as well. For good measure, Mooch fired an underling of his, and then just threatened to fire his entire department if he couldn't figure out who was doing all the leaking. In other words, it's getting kind of crowded beneath the Trump bus, as more and more people are casually thrown under it (and as the wheels begin to come off entirely). Just another wacky week at the Trump White House, in other words. Maybe Reince got tired of all the winning?
I just finished watching a press conference which, in my humble opinion, should be marked in the annals of Washington stupidity as the absolute stupidest press conference of all time. That's a pretty sweeping statement, but it was a pretty breathtakingly stupid presser. It was a giant profile in cowardice, really.
It's really tough these days for Democrats to break into the news cycle. Today, for instance, we had the president's son-in-law testifying behind closed doors to a congressional committee, a new White House communications director staring his first full work week, and Senate Republicans desperately trying to figure out what particular bill they're going to bring up for a vote this week on healthcare (the one that kicks 23 million off their insurance, or the one that kicks 32 million off their insurance?). Plus, as always, there is Donald Trump's Twitter account -- which is always good for at least two or three distractions per day. So it's tough to get noticed, with everything else that's going on in Washington. But this maelstrom of Republican chaos isn't likely to get any better any time soon, so Democrats have to forge ahead in their efforts to gain some political attention.
We awoke to the breaking news that spinmeister Sean Spicer is out, and Sarah Huckabee Sanders is in as White House press secretary. Trump finally found a communications director as well, Anthony "Mooch" Scaramucci, whose main qualification for the job seems to be his world-class standing in the Olympic event entitled "kissing Trump's ass." We personally lost count, during his debut press conference, of how many times he used the phrase "I love Donald Trump" or some variation thereof. Trump, according to Mooch, is a demigod who strides the Earth and can do no wrong, ever, on anything.
Democrats seem to be almost ready to unveil their messaging for the 2018 election cycle. Ever since the disastrous 2016 election, they've been regrouping and trying to figure out a way forward. They did not launch a formal examination of what went wrong last year (unlike Republicans in 2013, there has been no "post-mortem" or "autopsy" document from the Democrats), instead they have focused on tightening up their message to move forward next year. The Washington Post just ran a preview of the Democratic strategizing, and reports that Democrats will be rolling out the whole thing next Monday.