Jacob Heilbrunn

For Donald Trump, parting is never such sweet sorrow. He’s been jettisoning cabinet officials with rapidity. The latest is Defense Secretary James N. Mattis, whose stiff resignation letter has predictably enraged Trump, prompting him to appoint Patrick Shanahan, a former Boeing executive who has curried favor with Trump by backing a space force, as acting Defense Secretary starting January 1. This morning, Trump tweeted, ‘I am pleased to announce that our very talented Deputy Secretary of Defense, Patrick Shanahan, will assume the title of Acting Secretary of Defense starting January 1, 2019. Patrick has a long list of accomplishments while serving as Deputy, & previously Boeing. He will be great!

The resignation of Defense Secretary James N. Mattis was only a matter of time – President Trump referred to him as ‘sort of a Democrat’ in October – but it could hardly have come at a more turbulent moment. Earlier on Thursday the Dow was once again crashing. Washington was headed toward a shutdown over the $5 billion that Trump has demanded for a border wall. Then came the resignation letter of Mattis, widely seen as the last ‘adult in the room,’ as the phrase had it, in the Trump administration. Now that Trump has disemboweled his national security team, he, and he alone, will bear responsibility for the consequences of his actions.

Things are getting quite hairy at the White House. Apparently, senior adviser Stephen Miller reckoned that he needed to perform a cover-up before he went on national television this past Sunday. He seems to have sprayed on hair-in-a-canister to camouflage his glabrous head. Like many of the moves this administration has made, Miller’s gambit only drew more attention to what he wished to conceal. The Washington Post observed, ‘it emanated from Miller’s head like a physical manifestation of his personality — a follicle’d inferiority complex that was suddenly in charge of creating the nation’s policies.’ Since then, the White House has run into a fresh spate of bad news. Former Lt. Gen.

No sooner had darkness at noon ended in a Manhattan courthouse, where Michael Cohen said that Donald Trump’s ‘dirty deeds’ led him into ‘darkness,’ than a fresh story about Individual 1’s past shenanigans emerged. The US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York released a memo indicating it’s receiving ‘substantial and important assistance’ from the parent company of the National Enquirer, American Media Inc. CEO David Pecker, who received immunity from the feds this past August, appears to have become part of a special species that Trump has previously described with disdain: ‘I know all about flipping, for 30, 40 years, I’ve been watching flippers.’Not like now, he hasn’t.

Chuck and Nancy dismantled Donald Trump at the White House today. Trump declared, ‘If we don’t get what we want, one way or the other, whether it’s through you, through military, through anything you want to call, I will shut down the government. I will take the mantle. I will be the one to shut it down.’ Poll after poll has shown that government shutdowns backfire with the public. Trump should have shut up about a shutdown. But Trump, baited by Schumer, couldn’t resist posturing as Mr Big, the protector of the frontier who will singlehandedly stop drugs and felons from entering the US on the southern border, if he can only secure $5 billion to build a wall. The meeting served as an augury of what likely awaits Trump over the next two years.

Individual 1 is at it again. This morning, he went to the old reliable: ‘AFTER TWO YEARS AND MILLIONS OF PAGES OF DOCUMENTS (and a cost of over $30,000,000), NO COLLUSION!’ But the filings yesterday from special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and federal prosecutors in New York indicate that this is an unintentionally self-deprecatory statement. For once, Trump is being far too modest about his abilities. He and his fellow colluders were colluding so much that they have already helped rack up no less than 192 criminal charges. So perhaps Individual 1 should take a step back for a moment from frenetic tweeting to admire his greatest handiwork before it collapses entirely.It’s the very sweep of his schemes that is likely to prove his undoing.

The bombshell last night in special counsel Robert Mueller’s report was that there was none. What he did not say turned out to be more significant than what he did. Filled with extensive redactions that made it look more like a newly declassified CIA than a court document, the memo on former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn, he of ‘lock her up’ fame, recommended no prison time. In maintaining a vigilant silence, Mueller is sure to enrage and unsettle Trump more than if he had disclosed what he knows. Now Trump — and everyone else’s — imagination is free to run riot. Mueller indicated that Flynn had provided ‘substantial assistance,’ including no less than 19 interviews with the FBI.

George H.W. Bush, who died on Friday at the age of 94, oversaw the end of the cold war. Together with Secretary of State James Baker and National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft, he helped to ensure that the dissolution of the Soviet empire and the reunification of Germany took place peacefully. Even as hawks in Washington, DC warned that Mikhail Gorbachev was simply a more nefarious version of his predecessors, Bush ended up embracing him. He represented a realpolitik, a mixture of caution and prudence, that was the obverse of what his son, George W. Bush, ended up practicing as president. Though the right has always awarded the credit for winning the cold war to Ronald Reagan, Bush deserves plaudits for displaying a diplomatic dexterity that would likely have eluded his predecessor.

There is a point where one can go from being a conspiracy theorist to becoming an actual conspirator. It seems that Jerome Corsi, who is reportedly negotiating a plea deal with Special Counsel Robert Mueller, may have reached that point during the 2016 presidential campaign. Mueller is zeroing in on the ties between Corsi, Roger Stone, WikiLeaks, and, of course, Mother Russia. Corsi has been at the center of right-wing conspiracy thinking for some years. He has been part of numerous campaigns to vilify leading Democrats, a veteran, so to speak, of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth’s mission to take down John Kerry in 2004 and the birther contretemps about Barack Obama, which Donald Trump, among others, helped to push.

Holy Schitt! Just when you think there isn’t anything for Donald Trump to add to the lexicon of insults, he finds a new way, this time with the jejune epithet aimed at California lawmaker Adam Schiff, who is poised to become chairman of the House Intelligence committee. Trump’s tweet about him may be taken as an index of his inner apprehension about Schiff, not to mention Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who continues silently to stalk Trump, immune, at least so far, to his brickbats. The main reason for Trump’s turmoil is that he lost the midterm elections even if, as he explained to an alternately bemused and incredulous Chris Wallace of Fox News on Sunday, ‘I wasn’t on the ballot.’ So he was on the ballot until he wasn’t?

So much for small favors. Judge Timothy J. Kelly just came down hard on the administration that appointed him to the federal bench in September 2017. He granted CNN a temporary restraining order, ruling that the White House did not follow due process in depriving CNN reporter Jim Acosta of his right to a ‘hard pass,’ which permits him to enter White House grounds when pleases. He also noted that the doctored video that press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders disseminated about Acosta performing a karate chop on a hapless intern who was trying to retrieve a microphone was ‘likely untrue.’ The judge’s verdict further demonstrates that Trump is the best thing to happen to Acosta and, by extension, much of the media.

There is a new reason to feel bearish about the Trump presidency. Brian Klaas, who writes a column for the Washington Post about the serial threats that Donald Trump poses to American democracy, was one of the first to identify a new ad on Fox for a plush 22” Trumpy Bear that comes with a 28” by 30” American flag tucked inside it that is supposed to serve as a blanket. Two payments of $19.95 plus shipping, the purveyors of the teddy bear assure us, will permit anyone to own an authentic piece of American history. The bear has a blonde combover, a red tie, cufflinks, and he loves golf. https://twitter.

It’s beginning to look as though Michelle Obama does not like Donald Trump. In her new memoir, Becoming, she explains why. Her beef with Trump centers on his embrace of the birther controversy about her husband, who was supposedly born in Indonesia or some other far off country — anywhere but America: ‘The whole thing was crazy and mean-spirited, of course, its underlying bigotry and xenophobia hardly concealed. But it was also dangerous, deliberately meant to stir up the wingnuts and kooks. What if someone with an unstable mind loaded a gun and drove to Washington? What if that person went looking for our girls? Donald Trump, with his loud and reckless innuendos, was putting my family’s safety at risk. And for this I’d never forgive him.

George Conway, the husband of Kellyanne, is putting on warpaint. ‘President Trump’s installation of Matthew Whitaker as acting attorney general of the United States after forcing the resignation of Jeff Sessions is unconstitutional. It’s illegal. And it means that anything Mr Whitaker does, or tries to do, in that position is invalid,’ Conway together with former acting US Solicitor General Neal K. Katyal wrote today in the New York Times. Obviously, the fact that George is Kellyanne’s helpmate supplies an extra frisson to the op-ed, but the arguments that he and Katyal advance are wholly persuasive.

Will the King be toppled? No one is likely to observe of Steve King of Iowa, as nasty a piece of work as has ever served as a Congressman, ‘My heart is inditing of a good matter: I speak of the things which I have made unto the King.’ Intel and Land O’Lakes have rescinded their financial backing for him. King isn’t running any ads or even much of a campaign for reelection. His challenger J.D. Scholten, by contrast, has raised some $641,000 in the past two days. At the same time, the press is brimming with stories about young people turning out in droves to vote. The Cook Report has revised its predictions to indicate that the Democrats may win up to 40 seats in the House.

Does Robert Mueller have a secret sex life? A Republican activist named Jack Burkman, who previously touted the conspiracy theory that Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich was assassinated by members of the Deep State, has apparently been investigating the past life of Trump’s chief investigator. His aim was to ferret out misdeeds by the G-man whose true interest was supposed to be the G-spot. The amateurish plot against Mueller fizzled out fairly quickly, but it has caught the interest of the FBI. It seems to have centred on a former female paralegal who knew Mueller at the Pillsbury, Madison and Sutro law firm in 1974, though not very well, by her own accounting.