* Three takeaways from the notorious Rob Porter case.
>It is–or at least should be–unconscionable that a security-challenged, blackmail-vulnerable, ultimate insider would have gotten that far for that long. This chaotic, Amateur Hour administration gives dysfunctional a bad name.
>In a White House of influential rogues who also looked the part, Porter looked relatively safe. Not Conway or Bannonesque. Clean cut and Ivy League educated. Rhodes Scholar Mormon. And that, ironically, should have been a NASCAR red flag. Why the hell would someone that clean cut with that kind of education credential want in on anything Trump? That even transcends self-serving, amoral ambition. There had to be something else going on.
<“I am totally opposed to domestic violence and everybody here knows that.”–Donald Trump. Imagine having to actually say that?
* Three things we can say after the Justice Department’s special counsel announced the indictment of 13 Russians and three Russian companies for criminally interfering with the 2016 elections. First, it’s more than a “witch hunt” and a “hoax,” regardless of whether Trump-campaign “collusion” is proven or not. Second, the Russians obviously sought to undermine the Clinton campaign, which begs the obvious question of their motivation for de facto helping the Trump campaign. Why? That’s truly scary. Third, Russia had confidence that outside trolls and bots could manipulate enough manifestly vulnerable voters in purple states to make a difference. Exact results can never be known, but the motivation and efforts for electoral sabotage are both alarming and insulting.
* As long as there is a Trump Administration, there will be a place in the news cycle for the likes of Stormy Daniels. But that doesn’t mean that legitimate media, such as the Tampa Bay Times, should play titillating (yes, pun intended) enabler with front page–below the fold–coverage, so to speak, of Daniels’ appearance and, uh, performance at Thee Dollhouse. Gross, pathetic, sad.
* Speaks volumes, doesn’t it, when the president criticizes Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, Rep. Adam Schiff and others over their connections to the Russian probe but no criticism of Vlad Putin. Maybe those dossier “golden showers” rumors–not just an authoritarian bromance–are having an impact.
* So how vulnerable is the U.S. to Russian meddling in this year’s mid-terms? There are approximately 10,000 U.S. voting jurisdictions that mostly run on obsolete and imperfectly secured technology. Ouch. Talk about infrastructure issues.
* Life imitates art (of the deal)? Here’s the second paragraph from Trump’s 1987 “The Art of the Deal.”
“Most people are surprised by the way I work. I play it very loose. I don’t carry a briefcase. I try not to schedule too many meetings. I leave my door open. You can’t be imaginative or entrepreneurial if you’ve got too much structure. I prefer to come to work each day and just see what develops.”
Thirty-one years later, most people would have never thought this work ethic would have wormed its way into the Oval Office. Most people, indeed, have been seeing what has been developing. Who knew what the artifice of the deal would have presaged?