What a week! Any week that starts with the FBI Director testifying to Congress that members of the White House staff are under investigation for possible collusion with Russia in influencing a US Presidential election has gotta be good. Let’s just focus on three big themes.

Trump’s Wiretapping Fantasy

Two weeks ago, our esteemed President, after watching a Fox News show, tweeted that the former President had tapped his phones – “Sick (bad) man”. Again, the President of the United States accused the former President, in a public media forum, of illegally spying on him without any evidence to support this outrageous claim. Not based on Top Secret briefings or reports, but on a Fox television show by a Fox pundit who was subsequently disciplined for his report alleging foreign government involvement in this fiasco. Imagine, disciplined by Fox because he went too far! Of course, the accusation is absurd, but in this case the absurdity was the driver for the response and the investigations, in my opinion. I think almost everyone involved wanted a piece of this one. So, they lined up – NSA Director, FBI Director, Senate Majority Leader, Senator McCain, the Senate Intelligence Committee, former National Security Advisor – the list was long. Everyone stating unequivocally that there was no proof of the insane accusation.

Trump was uncharacteristically silent in follow up. He left that to his minions and they butchered it. The worst, as usual, was good old Sean Spicer. He implied, based on the previous mentioned Fox news personality,  Judge Napolitano’s, report that Obama had the British Intelligence Spying Agency do the wiretapping for him. The Brits called the report “nonsense” and Spicer was backtracking again. What does all of this look like from outside the US???

The piece de resistance of this whole affair came on Monday when FBI Director James Comey testified to Congress that there was “no evidence” that President Obama or anyone else tapped Trump Tower phones. Please recall that James Comey did more to ensure the election of  Donald Trump than anyone except Vladimir Putin and even Comey showed his severe distaste for this ridiculous investigation.

I believe this fiasco has finally had a stake run through its heart, but it reflects very badly on the clown in charge and his flying monkeys. Spicer has no credibility left at all, not that there was a vast reservoir.

Russia Ties

Director Comey’s testimony did much more than just embarrass the sitting President and obliterate one of his conspiracies, he dropped a bombshell by admitting that there is an ongoing investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 Presidential election, including the possibility of collusion between Putin’s people and Trump associates.

Let’s quickly review the links that have been made public among Trump associates and Russia. Long time Trump friend and advisor Roger Stone; former foreign policy advisor Carter Page; former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn; and now Paul Manafort, former Trump Election Campaign Chairman, with very strong ties ($10 million contract) to  a Russian billionaire to “advance the interests of Russian President Putin”. Of course, Sean Spicer characterized Manafort’s 5 month stint as campaign chair as “playing a very limited role for a very limited amount of time”. Now, leaks are indicating that the FBI has information that Trump campaign officials worked with Russian operatives to coordinate the release of information damaging to Hillary Clinton.That information supposedly includes travel, business, and phone records and even accounts of in-person meetings. This is starting to look like a lot more than “just smoke”. Leaked information also indicates that all 4 of the above named persons are presently subject of FBI investigations.

The Russia story cannot end this week without taking a quick look at Devin Nunes, Republican Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. The Intelligence Committee is just beginning to investigate the Russia election interference and the Trump/Russia ties. Again, Nunes is the Chair of the House committee investigating the Trump Administration. As Chair, he was reading secret reports on intercepts of Russian communications that he says swept up members of the Trump transition team. Does Nunes share this information with the Ranking Member of the committee? Does he even share this information with other Republicans on the committee? No, he immediately goes to the White House to brief the President, the SUBJECT of much of this investigation, with what he has read in secret reports. Why? Well, he had been a member of the Trump transition team and an early supporter of candidate Trump. So, you know he’s not that bright. But here was his truly classic response to being raked over the coals for his abdication of his role as Chair of an investigating House committee, “It was a judgement call on my part. Sometimes you make the right decision, sometimes you make the wrong decision.” I hope he will be removed as chair and have no further role in these investigations. He cannot be trusted and he’s confused as to the role of a member of Congress when a sitting President is unhinged.

Trumpcare

The wheels have fallen off. So, we progressives say, “Thank God this awful bill won’t pass and throw 22 million people off medical insurance and gut Medicaid to put more money in the pockets of the Koch brothers and their ilk.” No, not at all. The failure of this horribly written bill to pass (while that is a good thing) is not for us to cheer. The Republicans will not pass this bill because it is TOO GENEROUS. There is a group of Simon Legree wannabes in the House called the Freedom Caucus. These are the worst of the worse. They are the hard right in a hard right House. They think that the baby-starving Speaker, Paul Ryan, is way too liberal. I plan to write about them later because they are a hateful group, but for now let’s just stay on health care.

Trump and Ryan are giving in to all of the Freedom Caucus demands. The average voter cannot know exactly what those demands are because all of these negotiations are being held in back rooms. So much for transparency. In fact, even other Republican members of Congress are being kept in the dark. We do know that one of the demands is that the most important consumer protection plank of Obamacare, requiring that all insurers cover 10 essential health benefits, be stricken from any new bill. Supposedly, Ryan and Trump have already agreed to remove that requirement. So, under this new bill, insurers would not have to cover: pediatric services; pregnancy, maternity and newborn care; outpatient care; prevention services; chronic disease management; hospitalization; prescription drugs; and others. Keep in mind that before Obamacare, 62% of non-employer plans did not cover pregnancy, maternity, and newborn care. They won’t again. If you really want to focus this down, these House members want to make sure that pregnancy, maternity, and newborn care are not required coverages in the Federal health care bill. Do I need to add that each of these members is staunchly anti-choice? So go ahead and have that baby, but I hope you have Congressional-type health insurance. Otherwise, as the Republicans like to say, “This is going to hurt you more than it will hurt me”.

As of the close of this week, it doesn’t look like Trumpcare is going to pass in its present form, whatever that is. Then again, who knows?

This was another weird week and next week promises the same. Down the rabbit hole we went and here is where we stay.