The Dealmaker-in-Chief Strikes Out in Vietnam While Michael Cohen Strikes Out at Him in Congress

It was a very eventful week in Washington but turned out to be very uneventful in Hanoi, where the dealmaker-in-chief ended up walking away early (without any hindrance from his draft-disqualifying heel bone spurs!) from his long-touted second summit with the North Korean dictator with no deal at all. This after Kim pushed for lifting of all US sanctions without a promise of total denuclearization in return. This highlights Trump’s naivety/stupidity in the arena of foreign diplomacy, with the North Koreans obviously aware that Trump was desperate for a diplomatic win, emboldening them to ask for the moon. One has to wonder whether it was POTUS’s call or that of his chief advisors to say no! Despite this, Trump of course claimed they made great progress, an obviously lie, and that he and Kim still have a wonderful relationship. He also not at all surprisingly publicly accepted Kim’s completely absurd assertion that the dictator knew nothing about the situation with Otto Warmbier until some “later”. This is just another example of Trump’s shameful eagerness to side with dictators, never mind the facts or US intelligence conclusions. Trump is obviously fascinated and awed by, as well as highly envious of, men with more power in their positions than he has, and seems to feel the pathological need to suck up to them, whether Kim, Putin or the Saudi royals. 

The public highlight of Michael Cohen’s three day Congressional marathon was of course Wednesday’s all day public hearing before the House oversight committee. It was predictably all political theater on the Republican side and to some extent on the Democratic side, with the Republicans relentlessly trashing Cohen‘s character and credibility without dealing with or even seeming to care about the substance of his allegations. Of course there was plenty, and maybe too much, of expected Trump character assassination by Cohen. Although there was some interesting new material revealed, Cohen‘s credibility is still a legitimate issue, and it will be difficult or impossible to corroborate much of what he claimed to have seen and heard, notably including Don Junior personally telling Trump in his presence about something being all arranged, which Cohen believes referred to the infamous June 2016 Trump Tower meeting. The bottom line is that whatever Cohen (or anyone else) says, it is unlikely to change the minds of many people on either side about Trump. At least his public and closed door testimony will provide a lot of fodder for further committee investigations. And the references to ongoing SDNY investigations which Cohen was unwilling to discuss are certainly tantalizing!

Another interesting revelation is that both Trump and Ivanka apparently recently publicly lied during interviews about the process by which Jared Kushner got his top secret security clearance, which the New York Times has reported was only done at Trump‘s direction over the objections of the career FBI, CIA and WH officials tasked with approving security clearances. It is reported that both chief of staff John Kelly and White House Council Don McGahn opposed granting the clearance and also memorialized this at the time in memos. Hard to believe that Ivanka would not have been aware of all this. So is there a Trump lying gene at work here, or just upbringing, or both?!