Tag: Gail Collins

FOUNDERING IN THE STORM: Trump & His Lawyers Deserve Each Other — That’s Why Stormy & Friends Have Been Outmaneuvering “Team Trump!”

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/21/opinion/donald-trump-lawyers.html

Gail Collins in the NYT:

“Gee, we’ve been hearing a ton about the turmoil in the president’s legal team. You probably have questions.

Is this something else I have to think about in the middle of the night when I’m staring at the ceiling? Because really, I’ve got enough.

We’re talking about chaos and turnover among the people defending Donald Trump in his multitudinous legal battles. If that’s the kind of thing that keeps you awake at night, it’s time to prioritize. Have a drink and relax.

I need to know immediately if I am paying to protect the president from Stormy Daniels.

No, the people getting taxpayer salaries work in the White House counsel’s office, and their job is to advise the president about what’s legal. Like, whether or not he could sign a bill banning imported scallops. Or, say, sabotage the Russia probe. The current counsel, Don McGahn, reportedly threatened to resign when Trump wanted to can Robert Mueller.

I’ve been looking for somebody to admire in the White House. Should it be Don McGahn?

Up to you. He was formerly a member of the Federal Election Commission who hated campaign-finance reform so much he once tore up the F.E.C. rule book at a meeting and threw the shredded chunks at a Democrat. He lobbied Jeff Sessions not to recuse himself from the Russia investigation. He was an enabler on that immigrant travel ban.

On the other hand, he used to be a guitarist in a rock band.

Everybody used to be a guitarist in a rock band. But about the president’s team: I know a lot of recent law school graduates who are desperate for jobs. They’re cleaning tables at Arby’s. Should I tell them there’s a lot of turnover and they ought to send in a résumé?

Have they ever been on Fox News? It definitely helps if you were a guest on Fox a lot.

I don’t understand how these busy lawyers have so much time to appear on TV.

Totally part of the job. Trump just hired Joe diGenova, who’s currently famous for having argued on Fox that a secret cabal of F.B.I. agents created the whole Russia investigation to “frame Donald Trump with a falsely created crime.”

O.K., I’ll ask the people who want to get lawyer gigs if they’d mind going on right-wing radio and saying something about how Trump is a victim of the deep state. Is the pay good?

On the government side, $179,700 is the top.

I think my friends could handle that.

There’s a guy named Ty Cobb who sort of coordinates between the president’s personal lawyers and the government on all the Russia stuff. It’s on the public tab, and to take it, he left a job that paid at least a million dollars a year.

Just tell me if he’s related to the baseball player.

I think vaguely. Anyhow, he’s gotten in trouble for talking about office politics — loudly — in a public restaurant. So I guess value depends on your perspective.

Meanwhile, the president’s lawyer John Dowd just made a fuss when he called for an end to the special counsel investigation. Which he said was Trump’s idea. Then he denied it. But it probably was.

Trump must be a difficult client, right?

Well, Michael Cohen, the Trump lawyer handling the Stormy Daniels case, said he used his very own home equity line of credit to raise the $130,000 he gave her in hush money.

On his own house? What kind of lawyer does that?

I guess a super-dedicated one. Unless somehow the president or his friends managed to funnel the cash back in a manner so subtle it will never be revealed. Until the next leak.

I can see why there’s so much turnover.

Yet sometimes it feels as if nobody ever really goes away. One of the early Trump lawyers, Marc Kasowitz, seemed to be getting crazier and crazier last summer. When a man wrote an email that he should resign, Kasowitz came back with a message that said, in part: “I’m Jewish. I presume you are, too. … I already know where you live. I’m on to you. You might as well call me. You will see me. I promise. Bro.”

For a while it looked as if Kasowitz was fading away. But now he’s back! In court arguing that as a sitting president, Trump cannot be sued by a woman who says he molested her during his “Apprentice” days.

That would be Stormy Daniels?

Oh gosh no. This is Summer Zervos, who says Trump came on with an unnerving series of gropes, and then when she resisted claimed “that he did not believe that she had ever known love or been in love.”

The interesting thing about this one is that Zervos is only suing Trump for $2,914 for defaming her when he denied the story. Kasowitz has so far been unsuccessful in arguing that the president’s denial is “political speech” protected by the First Amendment.

So the worse the team gets, the better for the country?

Right now, Stormy’s lawyer is making mincemeat of Trump’s legal representation. For the sake of argument, let’s say the special prosecutor has assembled at least as strong a team as the stripper did.

Could be an, um, stormy summer.”

**********************************************

Sure enough, John Dowd, one of Trump’s personal lawyers on the “Russia Team” resigned on Thursday!

PWS

03-23-18

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SESSIONS FAILS IN BID TO BE NAMED “CABINET’S WORST” — FINISHES IN DEAD HEAT FOR RUNNER-UP WITH EPA’S PRUITT — DE VOS JUST “TOO BAD TO LOSE!”

Sports fans, I thought I had this one pegged for sure! Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions was an early favorite in the NY Times/Gail Collins Reader’s Poll Competition for “Worst Cabinet Member.”  And, to be honest, I didn’t see any way he could blow this one (after all, it’s not like having to remember whether you met the Russian Ambassador a few months ago) despite the undeniably fierce and well-unqualified competition. But, in the end, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos wouldn’t be denied; she “out-worsted” the field. I have to admit that I had underestimated her worst characteristics (although not by much). Still, as pointed out below, timing could have hurt Sessions’s bid.

Collins reports:

“It was a hard-fought race, people. But the results of our Worst Trump Cabinet Member reader poll are in.

And the winner is — Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos!

With a near tie for second place between Scott Pruitt of the Environmental Protection Agency and Attorney General Jeff Sessions. “It’s hard to be worse than Sessions or Pruitt. But DeVos deals with … children,” wrote a Michigan reader.

DeVos really hates public schools — something you don’t find often in a secretary of education. Her goal seems to be replacing them with charter schools, none of which will need much oversight because, you know, the choice thing.

Many readers noted that our secretary of education does not seem to be … all that bright. (“DeVos is a solid choice based on irony alone.”)

But I can’t help thinking Sessions might have taken the prize if his appearance before the Senate Intelligence Committee had gone on just a little longer. He clearly wowed viewers with his alleged inability to remember things. (“Wins by a Pinocchio.”) Some were taken by his resemblance to a bad hobbit or gremlin (“malevolent pixie”). But others simply found Sessions … bad. (“He is detestable and should have little tiny horns on the back of his head.”)

. . . .

Let’s be extremely clear that this was not a scientific survey. In fact, it was pretty hard to get any count at all since many readers couldn’t resist the temptation to take the easy route and pick all of the above. (“I’ve seen better cabinets at Ikea.”) Or to name five. Or to complain that selecting one Worst was too hard. (“Trying to pick a winner from this bunch is like trying to knit a sweater with wet spaghetti.”)

It’s not that everyone was negative — there were a few kind words for James Mattis, the secretary of defense, and some mixed reviews on Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. But a lot of folks still seem to be in a state of trauma over that big meeting President Trump called last week, in which the cabinet members tried to one-up each other in the fulsomeness of their praise for their commander in chief. (“That cabinet meeting looked like one of those cheap TV ads you see where people praise a tomato slicer. …”)

Unfortunately, we couldn’t count the Worst Cabinet Member votes that were given to somebody who wasn’t actually in the cabinet. Donald Trump cannot get the prize. Nor can Jared or Ivanka or Omarosa. Also we cannot name Eric Trump’s wedding planner, even though she has just been named to one of the top jobs in the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

One reader was unnerved by rumors that Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback, after having finished wrecking his state’s economy, is now in line for a federal job and asked if he could be nominated Worst in advance.

Special tip of the hat to readers who chose Rick Perry. I have to admit I didn’t even mention him when I wrote the column proposing the Worst vote-off. But a number nominated him, generally pointing to the fact that when Perry took the job, he was unaware that the Department of Energy’s main responsibility was tending the nation’s nuclear arsenal, not traveling the world to boost the sale of American oil and gas.

Just as balloting came to a close, Perry gave an interview on CNBC in which he downplayed carbon dioxide’s role in global warming, explaining that “most likely the primary control knob is the ocean waters and this environment that we live in.”

This is a man who just keeps on campaigning. Plus, as one correspondent noted, if Perry ever won the Worst award “his acceptance speech would be epic.”

We saw a lot of votes for Tom Price, the secretary of health and human services, for his heroic efforts to ruin national health care and the social safety net. And Ben Carson got a surprising amount of support, considering that we barely ever hear about him doing anything. One reader was apparently won over by the painting the secretary of housing and urban development has in his home, showing Jesus with his arm around Ben Carson.

But DeVos is definitely our Worst Cabinet winner. For now. Do you think we should do this every few months? And what should the award look like? Anything’s possible. After all, we’ve got another three and a half years.”

You can read Collin’s entire piece (I “shorted” the coverage of Scott Pruitt) at this link: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/22/opinion/betsy-devos-trump-worst-cabinet-member.html?em_pos=small&emc=edit_ty_20170622&nl=opinion-today&nl_art=1&nlid=79213886&ref=headline&te=1

If Trump doesn’t fire him or force him to resign first, I think Gonzo has a realistic shot at destroying the entire U.S. legal system that it has taken us more than 200 years to build and putting half our population in privately run prisons or detention centers to boot. Now, that would have to make him the hands-down “winner!”

PWS

06-22-17

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