The Week in Washington: “I Never Worked for Russia!”
Did Donald Trump tell Michael Cohen to lie to congress about a Moscow Trump Tower deal? Yes, reported BuzzFeed on Thursday, giving rise to frantic Democratic calls for immediate impeachment proceedings. But no—not so fast, replied the Mueller team Friday night, in an exceedingly rare statement taking BuzzFeed to task: “BuzzFeed’s description of specific statements to the Special Counsel’s Office, and characterization of documents and testimony obtained by this office, regarding Michael Cohen’s Congressional testimony are not accurate,” Peter Carr, a spokesman for Mueller’s office, offered. But the Buzzers buzzed back, responding, “We are continuing to report and determine what the special counsel is disputing. We remain confident in the accuracy of our report.”
While you were pondering these twists and turns, the president commandeered the airwaves once again on Saturday, with a new plan to end the shutdown, now officially the longest in the history of the republic. In a proposal reportedly cooked up by VP Mike Pence and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, the new scheme traded temporary protection for DACA recipients and some other immigrants in exchange for $5.7 billion for that damnable wall. The Dems immediately nixed this devil’s bargain, and even Ann Coulter didn’t like it, snorting via twitter: “Trump proposes amnesty. We voted for Trump and got Jeb!” (Who among us, desperate in this dark night of the soul, doesn’t sometimes secretly wish we got Jeb?)
On Wednesday, Rudolph Giuliani, continuing to stun, blabbed the following to CNN: “I never said there was no collusion between the campaign or between people in the campaign.” But the next day he dialed it back, insisting, “There was no collusion by President Trump in any way, shape or form. Likewise, I have no knowledge of any collusion by any of the thousands of people who worked on the campaign.”
On Monday, we were treated to the extraordinary sight of a president on the lawn of the White House declaring, ‘‘I never worked for Russia!” On Wednesday, Nancy Pelosi sent a letter to the White House saying that considering security concerns caused by the shutdown, the commander in chief should consider delaying his State of the Union address. On Thursday, the president retaliated, telling the speaker of the house that she and her team had better fly commercial if they still intended to embark on a planned trip Afghanistan. (It has now been postponed, since the president blew their cover.) “In light of the 800,000 great American workers not receiving pay, I am sure you would agree that postponing this public relations event is totally appropriate,” Trump wrote. (A few beautifully manicured eyebrows were raised when it came to light that Melania chose not to fly commercial to Palm Beach this week, but took a government plane as per usual.)
In other news, on Tuesday, William Barr, the administration’s nominee for attorney general, wouldn’t promise to share with the public the complete Mueller report, on that great day when this document is finally released. On the other hand, he did tell members of the Senate Judiciary Committee that he thought Mueller was a “straight shooter,” and said he didn’t believe the Russia investigation was a “witch hunt,” which is the president’s preferred term for the probe.
And guess who was formally stripped of his committee seats on Monday night? The notoriously xenophobic Iowa congressman Steve King, who told The New York Times last week, “White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization—how did that language become offensive?” This statement was apparently too much even for Republicans, who have heretofore remained silent on this guy’s racist ravings, even though King has been stinking up Washington since 2003.
Finally, on Thursday we learned that the child-separation policies of the current administration were far worse than first reported. According to The New York Times, “The Trump administration most likely separated thousands more children from their parents at the Southern border than was previously believed, according to a report by government inspectors . . . . The federal government has reported that nearly 3,000 children were forcibly separated from their parents under last year’s ‘zero tolerance’ immigration policy, under which nearly all adults entering the country illegally were prosecuted, and any children accompanying them were put into shelters or foster care.”
