Is Mulvaney Gonesky? Trump's Smoothly Functioning Something Or Other... Plus More Adventures Of Igor And Lev

Chris Wallace-- not on Comcast-TV, but on Fox-TV-- gave Mick Mulvaney enough rope to hang himself. And he did, painfully, excruciatingly. Watch the video above; Mulvaney struggled to de-infuriate Trump by trying, weakly, to walk back his quid pro quo statement about the Democrats' biggest major impeachment weapon. The Wall Street Journal quoted Trumpanzee-whisperer Sean Hannity explaining why play-Acting White House Chief of Staff Mulvaney is making such a complete muddle of everything lately: "I just think he’s dumb, I really do. I don’t even think he knows what he’s talking about." The sentiment is taking hold in the Trump White House.

Kushner-in-law has been sending out feelers to unnamed Trumpists asking if anyone would be willing to take on the play-Acting Chief of Staff job. And yesterday CBS reported that top White House lawyer, Pat Cipollone, and Mulvaney are feuding. "Internal feuds are nothing new in the Trump White House. And Mulvaney, like predecessors Reince Priebus and John Kelly, has faced maneuvering against him and rumors of his imminent demise. Mulvaney's status, however, appears more open to question now, and even his allies consider Cipollone a central rival. The two top administration officials are now vying for the chief of staff position and Mr. Trump's support as the White House continues to fend off the launched a month ago by the Democratic-led House, two sources familiar with the intensifying rivalry told CBS News. 'It's a death match,' according to one source."

According to the sources, Cipollone and his allies within the administration faulted Mulvaney for the botched effort to enlist former South Carolina Congressman Trey Gowdy to join the president's legal defense team to counter the impeachment inquiry.

Those close to Mulvaney contend Cipollone is a bigger problem, primarily his hard-nosed legal advice-- so far accepted by Trump-- to ignore the House impeachment inquiry and refuse all cooperation with requests for documents and witnesses. One Mulvaney ally described Cipollone's maneuvering as a "smokescreen for his own malpractice."

In an effort to retain his White House post, which he is exercising alongside his role as director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), Mulvaney has worked extensively to keep in good graces with White House senior advisers Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, the two sources said.

During a White House press briefing Thursday, Mulvaney sent tremors throughout Washington when he appeared to brashly admit that the administration had in fact engaged in a quid pro quo with the government of Ukraine.

"[Did] he also mentioned to me, in the past, that the corruption related to the DNC server?" Mulvaney told reporters on Thursday, referring to the president. "Absolutely, no question about that. But that's it. And that's why we held up the money."

"The look back to what happened in 2016 certainly was part of the thing that he was worried about in corruption with that nation. And that is absolutely appropriate," he added.

The comments undercut the president's frequent denials of any type of quid pro quo with Ukraine, and they were quickly portrayed by Democrats as a confession that showed the White House had conducted foreign policy with the objective of furthering Mr. Trump's political ambitions.  

Trump also insisted he doesn't know Igor and Lev-- both in jail, unable to raise the $1 million bail (each). The Wall Street Journal, helpfully, released this catch-up with Lev video clip yesterday:





Judd Legum, at his Popular Info newsletter, reiterated that on the laughable Trumpist anti-impeachment website, Stop The Madness, a top talking point is always: No Quid Pro Quo:

"Yesterday," Legum wrote on Monday, "Mulvaney appeared on Fox News Sunday to try to clean up the mess. He made things worse. Mulvaney's strategy during his Fox News Sunday interview was to simply deny what he said in front of dozens of cameras. The results were predictably disastrous." If you didn't watch the video up top, take a minute and take in the scope of Mulvaney tap dancing.

Trump's belief that Ukraine has the DNC server that would reveal the true origins of the Russia investigation is a completely illogical conspiracy theory.

The conspiracy theory, which has its origins in an anonymous post on 4chan, a site favored by internet trolls, posits that "CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity firm that worked with the Democratic National Committee and had been contracted to investigate a hack of its servers, fabricated a forensics report to frame Russia for election interference."

Online, this claim was bolstered by fake documents produced by a British internet troll. The British man, Tim Leonard, "ran an international disinformation campaign that has provided US President Donald Trump with fake evidence and false arguments to deny that Russia interfered to help him win the election."

In the phone call with Zelensky, Trump suggests that CrowdStrike is owned by a wealthy Ukranian and that the DNC server is now located in Ukraine. Both of these claims are false. CrowdStrike is owned by U.S. citizens. The company explained that it has "never taken physical possession of any DNC servers." Rather, its investigation involved creating "an exact byte-for-byte copy of the hard drives."

  The purpose of the conspiracy theory is to absolve Russia, which has been named as the responsible party by the entire U.S. intelligence community and the Mueller investigation. Mulvaney's contention is that conditioning hundreds of millions in military aid, which had already been approved by Congress, on a Ukrainian "investigation" of this conspiracy theory was "completely legitimate."