No Break From the Drama, Of Course

The dust has not yet settled from the midterm elections, partly due to a handful of lingering undecided races, including all but certainly lost senate and governor’s seats in Florida and the governor’s seat in Georgia, and a probable loss in the upcoming senate runoff election in Mississippi. Of course, the dust is still being whipped up by unfounded claims of voter fraud, particularly in Florida, by Trump and Rick Scott et al. And also predictably, Florida continues to be a voting catastrophe, particularly in heavily Democratic South Florida counties. At any rate, the Democrats will have a comfortable majority in the new House, but will have probably lost two seats in the Senate, both pretty much as previously predicted. Fortunately, Democrats also made gains in multiple state elections. By the way, it is no surprise that Trump has nearly completely stopped talking and tweeting about the migrant caravans about to invade the southern border!

We didn’t even have time to take a deep breath after Election Day before the drama ramped up again, with the rapid firing of Jeff Sessions and appointment of Matt Whitaker as acting AG, which is still at the center of a smoldering political firestorm and court challenges.  Now as the investigative implications of a Democratic House begin to sink in, and after a contentious and poorly reviewed trip to France for the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I, as well as a humiliating and unprecedented public feud between Melania Trump and a female top national security aide who Trump was then forced to reassign/fire, Trump is reportedly decompensating in private. Also fueling his ire was spending a couple of days with his lawyers going over the written questions regarding collusion from the special counsel‘s office, after which Trump is strongly lashing out again on Twitter against Mueller himself and his investigation. Now, however, he has his own flunky in charge of the Justice Department and the investigation, which if he wanted, Trump could use to both eavesdrop on and stifle the investigation. In the middle of all this, there are strong rumors about more upcoming high level staff shakeups in the west wing, including the Homeland Security secretary, chief of staff Kelly, and also possibly even Defense secretary Mattis. Throw into the mix the current fight over White House press privileges following the revocation of CNN reporter Jim Acosta’s press pass, which is now in a court battle, and you have nonstop barely controlled chaos, exactly what Trump reportedly loves. However, in addition to wearing down a lot of the country, this constant crisis atmosphere creates a situation ripe for impulsive and potentially calamitous actions by POTUS, particularly with regard to the Mueller investigation. The next thing I’m waiting for is more indictments from that investigation, which could now be blocked by the acting AG, although if that happened, I would hope that it would be leaked out and produce another political firestorm. It’s always something!!