Donald Trump's Really Bad Week
The stock market tanked last week, in part, because investors discovered that there really is nothing the President won't lie about. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose nearly 300 points on Monday after Trump's announcement of a trade truce between the U.S. and China, but when the administration was forced to backtrack on Tuesday about auto tariffs and agricultural purchases, Wall Street imploded.
Vanity Fair: "Goldman Sachs, for one, noted that “the actual amount of concrete progress made at this meeting appears to have been quite limited.” Morgan Stanley pointed out that Trump essentially “agreed to pause tariffs without any meaningful concessions on the toughest negotiating points.” And JPMorgan all but called the president a liar and a fraud, writing: “It doesn’t seem like anything was actually agreed to at the dinner and White House officials are contorting themselves into pretzels to reconcile Trump’s tweets (which seem if not completely fabricated then grossly exaggerated) with reality.”
The President also found out that Robert Mueller has been working diligently putting the puzzle pieces together to prove that he and his staff were involved in a variety of illegal schemes during and after the 2016 election. "Individual 1" seems to be in substantial legal peril, so expect his supporters to change their argument from "there is no proof of collusion" to "you can't indict a sitting President".
CBS: "Key pieces of special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation appear to be falling into place."
"In three court filings Friday, prosecutors for the first time connected President Trump to a crime involving hush money payments to a porn actress. They revealed new details about outreach from Russia early in Mr. Trump's presidential campaign. They detailed how they say two central figures, lawyer Michael Cohen and onetime campaign chairman Paul Manafort, were continually tripped up by lies."
The President seems to be in denial about all of this and claimed Friday in a tweet that evidence of guilt is actually confirmation of innocence [Totally clears the President. Thank you!]. The comments under his tweet give you some idea of what the rest of the planet thinks. Some of the memes are priceless.
Trump also suffered a major set-back on Saudi Arabia as the Senate is poised to sanction the Kingdom responsible for the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi and numerous human rights abuses in Yemen.
The Hill: "The Senate is expected to vote next week on a resolution that would withdraw U.S. troops in or “affecting” the civil war in Yemen unless they are fighting al Qaeda."
"The resolution, which targets U.S. support for the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen’s civil war, picked up momentum as senators grew aghast at the killing of Khashoggi, a U.S-based Saudi dissident journalist, and the Trump administration’s response to it."
"Senators emerged from a classified CIA briefing this week convinced Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was involved in the killing."
The President was also embarrassed again by his dear friend in North Korea as another new report established that Kim Jong-un continues to build out his nuclear weapons program. And curbing N. Korea's nuclear ambitions was supposed to be Trump's one foreign policy achievement.
The National Interest: "According to a new report from the Middlebury Institute Jeffrey Lewis and David Schmerler, the North Koreans are expanding a missile base near Yeongjeo-dong close to the Chinese border. And that’s not all; nearby, a second facility was discovered, one that was not previously shielded from the public domain. All of these new disclosures come weeks after researchers at the Center for Strategic and International Studies identified a network of 13 undeclared North Korean missile bases across the country, some of which are no doubt capable of storing intercontinental ballistic missiles."
Also this week, one of Trump's supporters at Fox News, Tucker Carlson, turned on him, calling him "not capable", his chief of staff, General John Kelly, planned his exit before things get too dicey, America found out the President hired undocumented workers at his golf course in New Jersey, and oil prices jumped after OPEC and Russia agreed to a larger than expected production cut.
Trump's house of cards is starting to collapse. It's time for Republicans in the Senate to join with the new Democratic majority in the House to ensure America doesn't suffer the consequences.
