Smart money would bet on the release of the first truly damning Mueller report and/or indictment of Americans, coming late today, or tomorrow – in a classic Friday news dump prior to a long weekend, even Mueller’s staff will not want to deal with the frantic fallout, and thus will likely file it just prior to a long weekend – or early next week to meet the 60 day FBI deadline. I am not the only one that thinks so:
Something very big is going to drop today. https://t.co/1HlUppPlop
— Charles P. Pierce (@CharlesPPierce) August 30, 2018
One could write off the worry about CNN as nothing more than instinctive Trump anger, a reflex, nothing more, to a scathing report about Trump knowing of the Trump Tower meeting. But, there is now credible stuff coming out of the White House noting that Trump’s latest rage and crazy “episode” is “different,” as I wrote earlier this week. Additionally, new reporting confirms some behaviors that are’t healthy for anyone under pressure, never mind a career narcissist whose only coping mechanism is to fight:
“The way it’s really described to me by a lot of Trump sources is that the president is isolated,” Costa told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “He has these aides and advisors he counts on, but he’s really watching television and relying on his own gut instincts.”
“That’s caused some alarm inside the president’s circle,” he added, “that as he becomes more besieged by political and legal problems that he could rely more on the fiery types around him and his own gut instincts than bringing in establishment Republicans.”
“Inside the White House it’s pretty sparse,” Costa said. “You have Kellyanne Conway, you have John Kelly, who’s been pretty beleaguered, not really a political chief of staff, also looking perhaps for the exit.”
I don’t care who you are, if you’re under tremendous stress and pressure, isolating yourself and focusing upon it are the two worst things one can possibly do. Of course, it is now normalized, in a White House where the above report also states that even Sarah “Huck” says she might not stay on a complete term. That oughta be fun, try finding a human being on Earth that wants that job.
Meanwhile, Trumps hatred of Hispanics has now grown to extreme levels, as Charlie Pierce comments on a Washington Post story that states that ICE and immigration officials at the State Department are now suddenly questioning Hispanics born in the United States, FULL AMERICAN CITIZENS, not issuing passports, based on questions of “citizenship” – even to a person born in Brownsville, one who served in the U.S. Army, served in the Border Patrol and now works as a prison guard! Charlie Pierce is rightly enraged:
This is unprecedented. This is unAmerican in the extreme. This is the kind of thing out of which blood-and-soil laws are drawn. (Dr. Wilhelm Stuckert, please call your office in hell.) Your papers are never in order, if you happen to fit a broadly drawn racial profile. This is fascism, pure and simple.
And it surely is. This administration is now at war with the Hispanic race. I have not heard reports about ICE going into Buffalo and denying passports to white people born in Niagra New York and accusing them of being Canadian citizens. As an immigrant myself – from Canada – this white man hasn’t experienced a single incident of anyone questioning my citizenship, even though I don’t know where the hell my naturalization papers might be (I think my wife knows). Fact is, this is hatred of a race, pure and simple – that’s all it is, war against the “browning” of America.
But, that is just a symptom (“just” – God, forgive me), the disease is Trump, who feels increasingly under siege, and yet, increasingly unleashed. The consensus is that Sessions will be gone, sooner rather than later:
“There’s no doubt Jeff Sessions will be leaving at some point,” he said. “It could happen today, it could happen sometime in October, we don’t know. The reality is, he’ll be on his way out.”
Panelist Jackie Kucinich pointed out that, even though Trump might succeed in getting rid of Sessions, he still might not wind up getting an attorney general who would protect him from the Russia probe.
“I think it was Lindsey Graham who said last week, whoever would end up being in that position would have to say they would want Mueller to stay as special counsel,” she said. “Now I don’t know that they can make good on a promise like that. That’s a really difficult promise to make with this president.”
Firing Sessions will not give Trump immunity, because it simply results in Rod Rosenstein becoming acting attorney general. Furthermore, I read reports yesterday that confirm what I have suspected, that Mueller is smart enough to have given himself several “fail safe” plans if he were to be fired, sealed indictments against Trump family members, and material sent out to various local U.S. Attorney’s offices. But,, the real harm in firing Sessions is the charging (no longer creeping) authoritarian power that Trump enjoys wielding, akin to pulling security clearances.
It all adds up to what Pierce noted, smart money would bet something huge is coming down, today possibly, tomorrow most likely, next week at the absolute latest. Book it, and then duck for cover, because all indications are that it will be an ugly bloodbath, a fight for power like this country really hasn’t seen, and, for which, the country seems unprepared.
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