The Things We Knew We Knew

Trump's first comments to the media since the release
of the Mueller report came with the Easter Bunny nearby

In the days since the release of the redacted Special Counsel's report drafted by Robert Mueller and his hand-picked dream team of investigators and prosecutors, a remarkable trove of disturbing information about a dysfunctional and dangerously authoritarian White House has been revealed to the public.

Among other things Trump directed Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to lie and say it was him, and not Trump's idea, to fire former FBI director James Comey - as if anyone else in Washington would even consider such a flagrant overreach of power.

Or the stunning revelation of the extent of to which Vladimir Putin, and the extensive network operating on his behalf, went to in order to interfere in the outcome of the 2016 U.S. presidential elections (in favor of Trump) using proxies such as the Internet Research Agency (IRA) and a host of Russian cyber criminals.

Speaking of which, if you didn't catch 60 Minutes on Sunday night, please be sure to take a few minutes to check out Lesley Stahl's segment on the "unholy alliance" between Russian intelligence and the elusive Russian cyber criminals who operate on their behalf - and under their protection.

And how American intelligence (with the help of Microsoft and other private internet security firms) finally discovered the massive global hacking criminal enterprise of prolific Russian hacker Evgeniy Bogachev - it's truly disturbing.   

In his first comments directly to members of the press since the release of the Mueller report last Thursday, Trump mostly avoided any tough questions about the content of the report as he strutted about the South Lawn of the White House with the Easter Bunny during the annual WH Easter Egg Roll on Monday.

As the New York Times reported, the embattled POTUS did find time to assure a young child that the Wall was indeed on track, assuring the attendee, "Oh, it's happening. It's being built now." 

Lying White House Press Sec. Sarah Sanders 

Like many people, I'm still in the process of trying to make sense of the 448-page Mueller report.

I'm absorbing the conclusions of journalists as they sift through it, and I'm also in the painstaking process of reading through it myself.

But it's going to take time.

(By the way you can download the PDF from the DOJ Website for free.)

If you're interested in a quick overview of some of the more interesting revelations from the Mueller report that haven't gotten a whole lot of media coverage as of yet (including Don Junior's interaction with Wikileaks and Trump ordering former White House counsel Don McGahn to fire Mueller and then lie about it to the press) take a few minutes to listen to the first segment from Monday morning's Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC.

Aside from all the things in the report that were't public, one of the things that struck me was the sheer volume of things in the report that we basically already knew we knew.

Like the fact that the widely-despised White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders has habitually lied to the press and the American people in a pathetic effort to put some kind of "spin" on the almost unceasing torrent of lies, partisan half-truths and assorted hogwash that spew out of Boss Trump's mouth and Twitter feed on a daily basis.

Even though she admitted under oath to Mueller that she lied about "countless" employees of the FBI disliking former FBI director James Comey, she's embarked on this bizarre press campaign to insist that she is not, in fact, the lying sack of shit she's proven herself to be.

We didn't need the Mueller report to know that Sanders was a liar, but it's important that there's now irrevocable proof that she is one.

Equally disturbing were the revelations that many top White House advisers simply ignored Trump's most bat-shit-crazy requests, knowing that his childlike attention span is so short, that he'd eventually just forget about it, pick up his phone to Tweet something and simply wander off to watch TV and eventually move on the next nut-job idea or proposal that popped into his head.

Again, these were things we knew we knew, but the Mueller report just now confirms it for the world (and history) to see - all these "known knowns" and efforts by a White House to manipulate the truth for nefarious reasons reminded me of the heady days of George W. Bush; when things that we knew we knew had far more deadly consequences.

Let's take a quick look back.

Ex-Defense Sec. Donald Rumsfeld's now-infamous
Pentagon press briefing February 12, 2002

By February 12, 2002 when the eclectic former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld stepped to the Pentagon podium for a press briefing, it was just about five months to the day since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

There were many still-traumatized Americans anxious to see the U.S. government unleash its military to deliver righteous retribution to the terrorist networks responsible for the murder of innocent people on 9/11.

By the time Rumsfeld gave his now-infamous press briefing on February 12, 2002, the U.S. and a coalition of its allies including the United Kingdom had been engaged in combat operations against the Taliban in Afghanistan since October, 2001 - but the Bush White House had grander designs.

As we now know, an alignment of hawkish Neo-conservatives (Neo-Cons), reactionary politicians, murky think-tanks and corporations with ties to the defense industry complex and the oil industry were building a movement to support an invasion of Iraq under the false pretense that former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was a supporter of radical Islamic terrorists and possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMD) which (supposedly) posed a dire threat to security in the Mid-East and to the United States and its allies.

The White House and the Pentagon continued to push the false narrative that Saddam Hussein was somehow linked to the 9/11 attacks even though 11 of the 19 attackers were from Saudi Arabia.

But some members of Congress, intelligence agencies (both in the U.S. and in other nations), the press, members of the American public and people around the globe were highly skeptical about the existence of proof that tied Iraq to the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

So on February 12, 2002, in response to a reporter questioning the lack of evidence proving that Hussein had, or would provide WMD's to terrorists, Donald Rumsfeld gave the following answer:

In 2003 ex-Sec. of State Colin Powell gave evidence of
WMD's CIA Dir. George Tenet (left) knew was false 

"Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. 

But there are also unknown unknowns - the ones we don't know we don't know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones." 

Rumsfeld wasn't alone in peddling false or unprovable "facts" to try and justify a military invasion of Iraq - on February 5, 2003 former Secretary of State Colin Powell famously took to the floor of the United Nations to present "evidence" that Iraq possessed WMD's.

As journalist Seymour Hersh detailed in a March 23, 2003 New Yorker article, former-CIA Director George Tenet knew that the widely-circulated claim about Iraq trying to buy 500 tons of Uranium Oxide from Niger to enrich for use in a nuclear weapon was not true - and not supported by fact.

Powell made that claim in front of the UN with Tenet sitting behind him (pictured above), a speech he has since called a "blot" on his lengthy public service record.

Sadly, after an estimated 655,000 casualties and trillions of American tax dollars spent on the Iraq War, we know all too well the devastating consequences of those lies.

Saudi Prince Mohammed Bin Salman high-fives Russian
President Vladimir Putin at the 2018 G-20 summit

At the time Rumsfeld said that now-infamous quote above, many people mocked him for engaging in what some saw as a murky kind of double-speak - a slippery attempt to evade the growing criticism that there was no link between the 9/11 attacks and Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

But the quote is paraphrased from engineers and scientists who'd used the term "known unknowns" decades before to describe inherent structural or system risks in aircraft.

Unforeseen dangers or catastrophic accidents which couldn't be mathematically predicted because they were unknown problems which had never appeared before.

Or, like the 9/11 terrorist attack, simply couldn't be imagined.

Personally I think Rumsfeld's quote helps to offer valuable perspective on the complex layers of the Mueller report - and what it reveals about the Trump campaign's murky connections with foreign governments including Russia, the Ukraine and Saudi Arabia. 

Unquestionably there are more layers yet to be revealed from the Mueller report, especially if the Democratic-controlled House is able to subpoena an un-redacted version.

The things we knew we knew about the Trump White House are certainly disturbing enough, but as Rumsfeld's quote suggests, it's the "unknown unknowns - the ones we don't know we don't know" that could prove to be the biggest threat to America's imperfect democracy.

And may just prove to be the undoing of the Trump presidency as well.

Down the Hatch!

Retiring Republican Senator Orrin Hatch

Well if nothing else, Republican Utah Senator Orrin Hatch arguably deserves credit for knowing when to pull the ripcord and bail out of his Senate seat ahead of the maelstrom that the 2018 mid-term elections are shaping up to be.

From a purely objective standpoint, the former-boxer-turned lawyer-turned published songwriter turned-career politician's timing couldn't be better.

Democrats Ralph Northam and Phil Murphy were elected governor in Virginia, and New Jersey in November.

Democrat Doug Jones was just sworn in for a six-year senate term after recently winning a tight race in the reliably-Republican state of Alabama.

And after a controversial race to decide control of the Virginia House of Delegates, Republican David Yancey was just declared the winner over Democratic candidate Shelly Simonds - leaving the chamber with a slim 51-49 Republican majority.

But remember, Republicans controlled the 100-member VA House of Delegates with 66 seats (a healthy 2/3 majority) before the recent election - and after a 11,607-vote tie was declared, Yancey only won the election after his name was literally picked out of a bowl to decide the winner.

So just looking at the results of those four widely-watched races, all of which have national political implications, my sense is that the 84-year-old Hatch read the writing on the wall on how mainstream American voters are feeling about the Republican Party and their erratic POTUS.   

After 40-plus years in the Senate, it's also fairly reasonable to speculate that Hatch has no desire to further soil his reputation by eventually being forced into the awkward position of potentially having to defend Donald Trump from impeachment charges related to the mounting evidence that he colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election if Democrats take back the House and Senate in November.

When bad haircuts are the least of our worries

Especially after Trump started the new year a couple days ago with yet another series of wildly unhinged tweets attacking everyone from Hillary Clinton's longtime aide Huma Abedin to the Palestinian Authority.

The tweet in which he childishly taunted North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un about who had the bigger nuclear button prompted two concerned Democratic lawmakers to propose legislation that would limit Trump's authority to independently order a nuclear launch without prior Congressional approval.

So given all of that, I'm guessing Orrin Hatch simply decided that enough was enough, and let's be honest - he has to be aware that Trump's impeachment is no longer just wishful thinking.

A Democratic-controlled Congress would almost surely take up impeachment hearings against Trump; a possibility that American University history professor Allan Lichtman says is very real.

Take a few minutes to listen to his thoughts about a Trump impeachment from his CBS interview.

Professor Lichtman has correctly picked almost every winning presidential candidate since 1984, and was one of the few to go on record and predict Trump's victory two months before the 2016 election - and well before former FBI Director James Comey decided to re-open an already closed investigation of Hillary Clinton's emails days before Americans headed to the polls.

Did you read Annie Karni's Politico article about Yale University professor Brandy X. Lee being invited to Capitol Hill for two days in December to brief a group of Democratic lawmakers (and one Republican Senator) on Trump's mental fitness to serve in office?

As Dr. Lee told Politico, "We feel that the rush of tweeting is an indication of his falling apart under stress. Trump is going to get worse and will become uncontainable with the pressures of the presidency."

Trump discusses the GOP tax bill via video while
he's only 50-feet away in the Oval Office - WTF?

If Trump's actions today are any indicator, the pressure is clearly getting to him.

Not only did he announce his intent to sue Henry Holt & co., the publishers of journalist Michael Wolff's new book "Fire and Fury" which chronicles Trump's election and first chaotic year in the White House (in which Steve Bannon called Don. Jr.'s meeting with a Russian lawyer "treasonous").

He announced he's allowing offshore drilling off any coastal area in the U.S.

He's lighting up social media today after White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders coyly announced a "message from a special guest" before Trump's head appeared on two video monitors on either side of her podium to speak live about the hugely-unpopular Republican tax bill.

Which he insisted is "already delivering major economic gains" despite the nation-wide confusion over how newly-imposed limitations on federal deductions for state and local taxes will impact American homeowners and the fact that relatively few Americans have actually filed their taxes yet.

Why Trump chose to appear via video when he was 50-feet away in the Oval Office is anyone's best guest and has led to some pretty amusing speculation on social media.

One of my personal favorites: The Twitter account for Full Frontal, Samantha Bee's hysterical political satire show on TBS, asked followers to send in suggestions on why Trump elected to appear at the press conference via video instead of just walking down the hall.

Oh and he also banned White House staff and guests from using their personal cell phones - almost forgot to mention that one.

Sen. Ted Kennedy confers with Sen. Orrin Hatch in
far less politically-partisan times

But to get back to the by-now-relieved Utah Senator Orrin Hatch, the increasingly-partisan Senate is going to miss his willingness to reach across the aisle to work with Democratic colleagues on legislation.

As he often famously did with former Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy.

Not that Hatch has actually done a whole lot of that bipartisan stuff lately - as the current chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Hatch has been pretty preoccupied in recent weeks.


He's been busy behind the scenes helping lobbyists, lawyers for various special interests and other Republican politicians stuff as much pork as possible into the recently-passed Republican tax bill to appease the billionaire Republican donor base, corporations and the 1% of Americans who are already butt-ass rich score tax cuts they don't need.

And that seems to be the legacy the seven-term senator (the longest-serving in U.S. history) seems content to end his career on.

Which is kind of sad considering that over the course of his career, he's actually been fairly progressive on some issues despite being a respected conservative.

He supported legislation legalizing unions between same-sex couples and publicly backed the right for "gay people [to have] the same rights as married people" even though he personally believes marriage is an act between a man and woman.

Image from the CHIP landing page on Medicaid.gov 

Most famously he was one of the architects of the Child Health Insurance Program (CHIP), a program jointly-financed by Medicaid and various state-administered CHIP programs to provide health insurance for eligible children that was signed into law back in 1997 by Bill Clinton.

As Martin Pengelly wrote in an article for The Guardian, CHIP covers about 9 million American children and 370,000 pregnant women - it costs U.S. taxpayers about $15 billion a year.

But Republicans essentially defunded the program over their petty and vindictive attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act and strip healthcare from millions of Americans.

Hatch had the temerity to stand on the floor of the Senate and insist, "Nobody believes in the CHIP program more than I...but the reason CHIP's having trouble is because we don't have money anymore. But to just add more and more spending and more and more spending...I have a rough time wanting to spend billions and billions and trillions of dollars to help people who won't help themselves -won't lift a finger - and expect the federal government to do everything."

Remember folks, he's talking about children and pregnant women.

Of course Hatch helped draft and pass the gargantuan $1.5 trillion tax cut that overwhelmingly benefits the wealthiest Americans.

Orrin Hatch (right) next to smirking tax cut fetishist
Speaker Paul Ryan as Mitch McConnell gloats

So in the end, I guess he found money for what he wanted to find it for.

I know I'm not the only tax-paying American who finds it disgraceful that Republicans would eliminate a program that provides health insurance for children that costs $15 billion a year to finance tax relief for the wealthiest Americans.

Check out the widely-circulated Salt Lake Tribune op-ed in published on Christmas Day titled, "Why Orrin Hatch Is the Utahn of the Year"

Journalists from his home state criticized Hatch for among other things, "His utter lack of integrity that rises from his unquenchable thirst for power."

As the Salt Lake Tribune op-ed opines, Trump did Hatch a big favor by using his authority to revoke the national monument status of Utah's Bears Ears and Staircase-Escalante national parks in order to open up thousands of acres of pristine natural lands to private corporations to pillage it for minerals, oil, natural gas and lumber.

In turn, Hatch helped Trump by announcing that he's leaving the senate after helping to pass a massive tax bill that will ensure that both men avoid millions in federal taxes - just in time for retirement.

Only time will tell how history views Hatch's years in the senate, but there's little doubt that he's leaving on a wave of enlightened self-interest.

Saying goodbye to Capitol Hill at a divisive time when principled leadership is needed most, and abandoning his own commitment to make sure the federal government helps America's most vulnerable children get the healthcare they need.

Maybe Orrin Hatch just grew tired and cynical in the age of Trump - and perhaps in the end, his wallet was simply more important than the lofty principles he once espoused.

Utahn of the year indeed.