* It’s obvious that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi gets to Trump. As only a strong woman can. She doesn’t suffer the female fealty fools that shill for Trump. Her reference to “intervention” likely cut to the quick. It’s not just calling out the “stable genius,” but it’s also a euphemism for impeachment and the 25th Amendment.
* BTW, in another era, the flap over the altered Pelosi video would have been considered a satire of a political figure with all the accompanying legal rationales and ample precedents. But not in the era of formalized, nefarious “misinformation.” And not with Trump personally passing it along–as part of his character-assaulting-of-political-enemies MO.
* The bottom line, impeachment priorities notwithstanding, on all things Trump–from tax returns to Russian cooperation to justice obstruction to witness tampering: Bullies need confronting, not appeasing.
* White House Press Harlot Sarah Sanders recently passed along an insider tidbit that Kim Jong–un agrees with Trump about Joe Biden. Sounding eerily Trump like, the North Korean leader had labeled Biden a “fool of low IQ” for having referenced Kim as one of those “dictators and tyrants” that Trump is obviously enamored of. It is unconscionable for Sanders to be exploiting such foreign insults. There was a time when partisan politics ended at the water’s edge, so to speak. But that was before the “new normal” unraveled revered precedents.
Moreover, Sanders’ repugnant enabling of such thuggish foreign criticism of an American presidential candidate is not even smart. You really want Kim on your side as an anti-Biden partisan? This is like Mussolini saying, “Even Hitler doesn’t like him.” Surely there’s a limit to what even the Trump base will rally around. Surely.
* It’s never too early to speculate on how Barack Obama will figure into the 2020 election. And it’s never too early for Obama to begin leveraging his input and impact to help guide and stoke Democratic support–across the liberal spectrum–for all things anti-Trump.
* Whether Joe Biden is the Democratic nominee or not, we can expect the designated candidate to use a variation of a recent Biden line against Trump and the robust economy he takes all credit for. “President Trump inherited an economy from the Obama/Biden administration just like he inherited everything else in his life,” noted Biden at his recent Philadelphia rally.
* “I don’t do cover-ups.” That was Donald Trump coming close to the truth. Had he only said: “I don’t do cover-ups very well anymore.” That’s despite having had plenty of practice with his academic record, health reports, finances, marital affairs and family history.
* So that redesigned $20 bill, the one that will feature black abolitionist Harriet Tubman, will not be unveiled in 2020 as previously announced. More like 2028. Maybe it’s a coincidence, but maybe, just maybe, Trump didn’t want Tubman replacing his favorite president, Andrew Jackson, on his watch, with his white-nativist base watching.
* We know Trump doesn’t traditionally prep for meetings with other world leaders, including the recent one with Japan’s Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, who has more concerns about North Korea than does Trump. That’s mainly because Japan is close enough to North Korea for short-range missiles to target. And 54,000 U.S. troops would be among the de facto targets, as Trump presumably knows. And then there’s some chaotic tariff stuff. A lot to prep for. But you have to believe that somewhere–on hotel stationery or an index card or a last-second, whispered aside–there was a reminder to Trump that this guy’s first name is NOT ABE, as in “Honest Abe.” Some “SNL” gaffes are worse than others.
* So Trump agrees to present a trophy to the 390-pound winner of the Tokyo Grand Sumo Tournament. Maybe it’s what he does to accommodate his hosts and look like a friendly ally. Or maybe it’s what he does when he will be juxtaposed to someone with worse abs than him.
* If it weren’t so scary, it would merely be spot-on funny. That’s David Axelrod’s line about not being sure what movie John Bolton is starring in: “Dr. Strangelove” or “Wag the Dog.”
* Speaking of Bolton, he recently conjectured that “Maybe now is an appropriate time to talk about the return of the U.S.S. Pueblo.” It’s still being held in a Pyongyang river since its 1968 capture. Can only imagine Trump’s response–quite possibly: “What the hell is the Pueblo?”