June 22, 2020

Here we are on Monday, buckling in for another week which will no doubt take all kinds of twists and turns.  That seems to be the norm these days – just ongoing chaos!  We’re all tired of it but I don’t see it settling down any time soon.   Given the events of this past week, Trump is no doubt feeling the pressure and we all know what happens when you corner a wild animal.  They just become more aggressive and irrational.  I suspect that’s what we can expect going forward.

There is a bright spot in the week, however (at least as far as I’m concerned!).  John Bolton’s book is due to be released tomorrow and is due in my mailbox on Thursday.  That should provide some interesting, amusing and depressing reading next weekend!   I, like many, wish Bolton would have testified before the House during the impeachment trial.   And, in fact, he said he would if subpoenaed.  The House chose not to issue that subpoena, knowing full well that the administration would try to block that subpoena just like they blocked so many other legally issued subpoenas so the issue would have been tied up in court for months.  And, the fact is, I’m sure that nothing John Bolton would have said in those hearing would have made any difference at all in the outcome.  The Senate’s ‘verdict’ was a forgone conclusion.

Just to remind everyone, John Bolton did offer to testify before the Senate during the impeachment trial, even without a subpoena and the Republican led Senate refused to call ANY witnesses including Bolton.   They knew that any testimony under oath from Bolton would be damning to the president and would make their task of acquitting Trump much more difficult.  So, we can certainly fault Bolton for not testifying before the House committee but the Republican led Senate is equally culpable in refusing to allow him to testify in the Senate.  But, no matter, the book will be out this week.

I’m sure it won’t change many minds.  Ardent Trump supporters will just dismiss it as a bunch of lies from a ‘traitor’ and ‘disgruntled employee’.  The administration is trying to make a big deal about him releasing classified information.  The irony is that if there are untruths in the book, they cannot be classified – you don’t normally classify lies.  So, the administration is going to have to choose between ‘it’s classified and therefore it’s true’ or ‘it’s a lie and it’s therefore not classified’.    This administration has a penchant for classifying information after the fact which is a questionable practice all by itself.  And further, when Trump recently made the statement that he believes EVERY conversation with him should be considered classified – that is a joke.  So, when it comes to determining what’s classified and what is not, I don’t have a lot of confidence that this administration has much credibility in making those arguments.  On the other hand, John Bolton has served under multiple presidents and is highly versed in national security issues and has a pretty good idea what is and is not classified.  Given the lack of credibility of this administration, I have to land on the side of Bolton on this one.    I have never been a big John Bolton fan, but I will read the book and draw my own conclusions.

The track for the record for the administration this past week has not been good. They tried to suppress publication of Bolton’s book – they lost.  The Supreme Court handed down decisions on DACA and LGBTQ rights that went against Trump’s administration.   There was the attempted ‘Friday night massacre’ of Geoffrey Berman, the attorney from the Southern District of New York, that turned into a spectacle and exposed the administration’s ongoing attempts to interfere with any and all investigations of Trump and anyone close to him.  There was the ‘spectacle’ in Tulsa which was a dismal failure and an embarrassment to the president given the poor turnout.  (Trump’s campaign manager, Brad Parscale, should be updating his resume.  I predict he will be soon joining the growing crowd ‘under the bus’.)  And, of course, there is the ongoing pandemic which Trump keeps trying to wish out of existence but which continues to kill thousands of Americans (120,000+ so far) and is on the uptick in 23 states.  Lastly, there are the polls showing that Trump is well behind Biden almost everywhere.  Yes, we have an angry, desperate President on our hands!

I won’t even try to predict what will happen this week.  But amidst the growing chorus of senior government and military officials who characterize Trump as ‘incompetent’, ‘irrational’, and driven solely by concerns over winning the election, anything is possible.  Buckle up!