Mulvaney Feeds The Fox

George Conway, husband to Kellyanne Conway, is a bold, brave, and well-informed lawyer and Never Trumper. He is, however, wrong:

A former Turkish ambassador to the United States contemptuously mocks the president of the United States.

This is what the world thinks of you, @realDonaldTrump. Because you’re an incompetent, deranged fool. https://t.co/MG4oFeTOn9

— George Conway (@gtconway3d) October 18, 2019

Understandably, then, he believes also

Mulvaney should have just stood up there and taken the Fifth.

— George Conway (@gtconway3d) October 17, 2019

Donald J. Trump, who got elected President after firmly endorsing sexual assault and is using the presidency to become the billionaire he always has claimed to be, is no fool. The most recent evidence comes by way an incident which at first glance seems to offer further evidence of Conway's assessment. Acting Chief of Staff Mike Mulvaney

made a stunning admission Thursday by confirming that President Donald Trump froze nearly $400 million in US security aid to Ukraine in part to pressure that country into investigating Democrats.

Hours later, Mulvaney then denied ever saying those words.

The dramatic admission came during an afternoon news conference where Mulvaney insisted that he knew only of a US request to investigate the handling of a Democratic National Committee server hacked in the 2016 election, but text messages between US diplomats show efforts to get Ukraine to commit to an investigation into Burisma, the company on whose board former Vice President Joe Biden's son sat. There is no evidence of wrongdoing in Ukraine by either Biden.

"That's why we held up the money," Mulvaney said after listing the 2016-related investigation and Trump's broader concerns about corruption in Ukraine.

We already knew that there was a quid pro quo, that the House of Representatives is very likely to impeach President Trump primarily because of it, and that the Senate will vote to acquit.

Comedian Trevor Noah maintained “It’s like the murder suspect in a Law & Order episode confessing in the middle of the scene." A Fox News host lamented that Mulvaney "stood at the podium and connected the dots for Democrats and said, ‘You are darn right… that we were holding up aid to Ukraine because the president wanted an investigation of corruption!'" House Speaker Pelosi charged "what he said, was of course, a confession, but it's also a cavalier attitude of get over it. It's so disrespectful of our Constitution, and it's just not the way our founders expected."

Mulvaney said nothing that was not already obvious. Further, he did not make the statement under oath (and in fact, recounted shortly afterward).  If he ever actually testifies, he always can fall on his sword, claiming that he had misunderstood the President. And he answers to one individual, one deity alone.

But he got Donald Trump's message out there by stating "Did he also mention to me in passing the corruption related to the DNC server? Absolutely."

And there you have it, the White House screaming "the Democrats made me do it."  It is part of the GOP's "it wasn't us, it was you" playbook," which neatly folds into the Trump theme that all are corrupt, aiding and abetting his effort to undermine faith in the democratic process. It gives Republicans in Congress and at the grass roots the all-purpose "DNC" excuse for Donald Russia's behavior.

Moreover, planting this theory reinforces the myth to which Trump and many of his die-hard supporters cling to, that the Kremlin did not interfere in the 2016 election.  Why would Trump & Co. even bring up the 2016 election if it were the actual beneficiary of meddling?

Mulvaney announced "It was almost like they built this building"- Trump's Doral resort- to host the G-7 meeting..  That is an obvious violation of the enoluments clause, an invitation to impeachment, unprecedented presidential influence-peddling, and an appeal to other nations to expect a return on their investment at a Trump property.

Of course, that got lost in the other news. It is thus yet another indication that if Donald Trump, whatever his mental, psychological or physical debilitation, is "crazy," it is only as a fox.

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Open Book

It has become famous now, the video in which

Trump, during an interview with ABC News' George Stephanopoulos that aired Sunday, was in the middle of telling the journalist about releasing a financial statement when Mulvaney sounded off a cough that can be heard during the President's remark.

"Let's do that over. He's coughing in the middle of my answer," Trump said, pointing toward Mulvaney.

"Yeah. OK," Stephanopoulos said.

"I don't like that, you know, I don't like that," Trump said, as Stephanopoulos notes that the cough is from "your chief of staff."

"If you're going to cough, please leave the room. You just can't, you just can't cough," Trump said, shaking his head. "Boy, oh boy."

The camera then swings around as the crew works to rearrange and restart the shot. A crew member tells the President that "we just changed the angle."

Trump then briefly looks directly into the camera before finishing his answer....

CNN legal analyst Gloria Borger had an interesting take, remarking

this is a reality TV star who became president of the United States....he's used to taping hours and hours of interviews. He did 30 with George Stephanopoulos and having it cut down. So he said, stop. What he didn't expect was for ABC to use that....

Suppose, however, that Borger inadvertently flipped the script (pun intended). Consider the possibility that, as a former (Un)Reality TV star Donald Trump knew exactly what he was doing and how it would be perceived. If so, he would be showing a bad side of himself- a rude, intolerant germaphobe who enjoys humiliating subordinates- and was only too happy to do so.

He might then let it all hang out, be transparently reprehensible, on a different topic. He might even come up with

.....news is that at the end of 6 years, after America has been made GREAT again and I leave the beautiful White House (do you think the people would demand that I stay longer? KEEP AMERICA GREAT), both of these horrible papers will quickly go out of business & be forever gone!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 16, 2019

.....news is that at the end of 6 years, after America has been made GREAT again and I leave the beautiful White House (do you think the people would demand that I stay longer? KEEP AMERICA GREAT), both of these horrible papers will quickly go out of business & be forever gone!

Do not avert your eyes or be distracted by the question "do you think the people would demand that I stay longer?" It's entirely rhetorical. Many supporters of his would demand, unprompted, that he stay longer. And strengthened by eight years in the White House- and the disappearance of America's two greatest newspapers- President Trump's bullhorn would be the loudest and strongest in the nation.

The bully pulpit would be maximized and utilized as never before.  And why not? He will have earned it, after eighteen months of (initial) campaigning and eight years of ruling in which he will have made it clear who- no, what- he is.

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Carrying Out Trump's Agenda

Six days before the last presidential election, Mick Mulvaney admitted "yes, I'm supporting Donald Trump. I'm doing so as enthusiastically as I can given the fact that I think he's a terrible human being."

In Mulvaney's defense, he said two accurate and honest things: 1) Donald Trump is a terrible human being; and 2) he was, very likely, supporting Trump as enthusiastically as possible.  That's a reasonable conclusion given that, Mulvaney, head of the Office of Management and Budget, acting White House chief of staff, and director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, has

fired the agency’s 25-member advisory board Wednesday, days after some of its members criticized his leadership of the watchdog agency.

The CFPB said it will revamp the Consumer Advisory Board, known as the CAB, in the fall with all new members.

The panel has traditionally played an influential role in advising the CFPB’s leadership on new regulations and policies. But some members, who include prominent consumer advocates, academics and industry executives, began to complain that Mulvaney was ignoring them and making unwise decisions about the agency’s future.

You will be shocked! shocked! to learn that one of Donald Trump's appointees has apparently been playing footsie with the law:

On Monday, 11 CAB members held a news conference and criticized Mulvaney for, among other things, canceling legally required meetings with the group.

On Wednesday, group members were notified that they were being replaced — and that they could not reapply for spots on the new board.

And where "stakeholders" is spelled "banks, mortgage institutions, real estate companies," etc.

In a statement, the agency’s spokesman, John Czwartacki, took a final swipe at the group. “The outspoken members of the Consumer Advisory Board seem more concerned about protecting their taxpayer funded junkets to Washington, D.C., and being wined and dined by the Bureau than protecting consumers,” he said.

Revamping the board is part of the CFPB’s new approach to reaching out to stakeholders to “increase high quality feedback,” the bureau said in an email to the group. The CFPB will hold more town halls and roundtable discussions, the letter said, and the new CAB will have fewer members.

When Mulvaney was Representative Mulvaney, he labeled the CFBB a joke and wanted its activism on behalf of American consumers restricted. And so

“Mick Mulvaney has no intention of putting consumers above financial firms that cheat them. This is what happens when you put someone in charge of an agency they think shouldn’t exist,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who helped conceive of the bureau, said in a statement.

Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) said: “Mulvaney has proven once again he would rather cozy up with payday lenders and industry insiders than listen to consumer advocates who want to make sure hard-working Americans are not cheated by financial scams.”

Mulvaney already had

stripped enforcement powers from a CFPB unit responsible for pursuing discrimination cases and proposed that lawmakers curb the agency’s powers.

Last week, Mulvaney sided with payday lenders who sued the CFPB to block implementation of new industry regulations. The CFPB filed a joint motion with the payday lenders asking the judge to delay the case until the bureau completes a review of the rules, which could take years.

Firing current members of the advisory board is a huge red flag in this administration’s ongoing erosion of critical consumer financial protections that help average families,” said Chi Chi Wu, an attorney for the National Consumer Law Center who has been a board member since 2016.

 The Consumer Advisory Board is required under the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial law. Members also included the head of retail banking at Citi, the founder of NerdWallet and a director at Texas Appleseed, a public interest law center. Members of two other boards — the Community Bank Advisory Council and the Credit Union Advisory Council — were also dismissed.

A year ago, Mulvaney declared "we are still Elizabeth Warren's baby. Until we break that we will never be considered a gold standard institution." We have a better idea now what Mulvaney- and Trump- would consider "gold standard." "After Trump's election," Emily Bazelon writes in The New York Times magazine

(Elizabeth) Warren and (Bernie) Sanders said that if Trump followed through on his promise to rebuild the economy for workers and their families, they would help. If Trump had championed labor over corporations, he could have scrambled American politics by creating new alliances. But that version of his presidency didn’t come to pass.

It didn't come to pass with President Reagan nor the presidents Bush and, with Mick Mulvaney's assistance, it's full steam ahead for corporate America with consumers getting run over in the process.

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