BY BRIAN BEUTLER

& CROOKED MEDIA

Wednesday, March 20, 2019

—Donald on the verge of a nervous breakdown

TWEET AND SOUR

Whenever President Trump seems more unhinged than usual, he fans speculation that Special Counsel Robert Mueller is about to pounce. In the past, Trump’s demeanor has been a poor guide to Mueller’s plans, but there are a few reasons to suspect his ongoing meltdown could different. Let’s speculate. We deserve it.

Trump definitely has been more, shall we see, loose, lately. In the past week, on Twitter and in real-life tirades, he has:

• Repeatedly attacked and lied about Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who is dead. He specifically blamed McCain (falsely) for launching the Russia investigation by giving the Steele/pee-tape dossier to the FBI.

• Obsessively mocked and lied about the conservative lawyer George Conway, who is married to his top adviser Kellyanne Conway. This could be interpreted as a loyalty test—because he’ll need loyalty if Mueller issues a damning report or further indictments. (Kellyanne Conway sided with Trump over her husband, obviously.)

• Lashed out at Fox News for sidelining his favorite pro-Trump host Jeanine Pirro (who managed to be too bigoted for Fox News primetime, a genuine achievement)

• Attacked Mueller himself: “I know that he's conflicted and I know that his best friend is Comey, who's a bad cop. And I know that there are other things, obviously.”

There are other signs as well. On Tuesday, we learned Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein—who appointed Mueller and has overseen the investigation—has delayed his departure from the Justice Department, reportedly because he “wants to stay around so he can be the ‘heat shield,’ or absorb the punches, if there is fallout from the Mueller report.”

Trump is already testing the heat shield for weaknesses. On Wednesday, Trump once again tried to delegitimize Rosenstein and Mueller and the whole investigation, “You know—never figured that one out. A man gets appointed by a deputy; he writes a report. I had the greatest electoral victory—one of them—in the history of our country. Tremendous success. Tens of millions of voters. And now somebody is going to write a report who never got a vote.”

At the very least, this is not the behavior of a president eager to see the results of an investigation because he’s done nothing wrong. But that’s been true for a while. The question is whether it’s the uncertainty of what’s coming that’s eating away at him, or whether it’s that he already knows.

“From November 2016 through March 2017... Democrats overperformed by an average of 9 points compared to 2016 in nine special elections. Since the midterms, Republicans have overperformed by an average of 1 point—and have picked up four seats that were held by Democrats.”

It’s natural that the Trump resistance has relaxed a little bit after propelling Democrats back into control of the House, and it’s understandable, with so many high-profile Democrats running for president, that Democratic voters are again distracted from critical down-ballot races. But it’s NOT IDEAL and it would be great if the congressional leaders and presidential candidates who have absorbed so much of the grassroots energy did more to remind the grassroots that its work isn’t done.

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Fortunately, not everyone has taken their eyes off the ball. Former Tallahassee, FL, mayor and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Andew Gillum has launched a new group dedicated to registering voters, to maximize Democrats’ chances of defeating Donald Trump and regaining power in the state.

President Trump complained that he didn’t get a thank you after he “gave” his arch-nemesis-for-no-reason John McCain “the funeral that he wanted,” providing Senate Republicans a great opportunity to tweet nice things about McCain without actually condemning Trump for anything.

The federal investigation of the conspiracy between President Trump, Michael Cohen, and others to defraud voters apparently remains active, based upon redactions to the Michael Cohen search warrants, which the Justice Department released Tuesday pursuant to a court order.

Beto O’Rourke agrees that abolishing the filibuster is “something that we should seriously consider.”

The Pentagon’s internal watchdog is investigating Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan because Shanahan “allegedly took actions to promote his former employer, Boeing, and disparage its competitors.” Gross

Speaking of which: Last year, an off-duty pilot serendipitously stepped in to save a Boeing 737 Max aircraft from entering a catastrophic dive. The next day that same Lion Air plane crashed into the Java Sea killing 189 people. AWFUL.

MoveOn wants Democratic 2020 presidential candidates to boycott AIPAC’s annual conference, because the group tried to sabotage the Iran nuclear deal, tolerates anti-Muslim rhetoric, supports Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and has refused to condemn some antisemitic Republicans.

Bernie Sanders has hired Tyson Brody, the former Hillary Clinton staffer who assembled her Sanders opposition-research file, as his new research chief.

Gov. Matt Bevin (R-KY) exposed his children to chicken pox in lieu of vaccinating them. What the fuck is wrong with these people?!

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House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler has stepped up his wide-ranging investigation of President Trump’s abuses of power.

• He has given the Justice Department until March 29 to assert executive privilege over the answers to his questions about whether Trump sought to meddle in criminal investigations of himself while Matthew Whitaker was his acting attorney general.

• He intends to issue more document requests to Trump’s associates—this time related to Trump's abuse of the pardon power and his violation of the emoluments clause.

• He has already obtained tens of thousands of pages of documents in response to earlier requests, and has secured the cooperation of Trump’s former spokeswoman Hope Hicks.

• He has also subpoenaed everyone who may have told Don Jr. it was a good idea to grow a beard.

But the Democrats’ by-the-book approach to oversight is hitting a brick wall in other realms. Specifically, the White House has refused to give House investigators anything. At all. According to House oversight committee chairman Elijah Cummings, the Trump White House has made zero witnesses available and produced zero documents related to six separate investigations. It’s no surprise that Trump has decided to be historically uncooperative with oversight, but that makes the Democrats’ reluctance to skip pleasantries hard to explain. We’re already about one-eighth of the way through this Congress, and Trump will eat up as much time as Dems will let him.

Cyclone Idai has destroyed over 90 percent of Mozambique’s fourth largest city, Beira, and the country’s president, Filipe Nyusi, estimates that the storm has killed more than 1,000 of the city’s 500,000 residents. Climate change is already with us, and it is already very deadly.

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