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Heeeellllooooo Friday! Welcome to the end of yet another week in the wide world of WTF that we call 2017 in America.
The good news is that we seem to be gaining adult supervision in the White House for the moment. And in Congress. And also at the FBI.
For a while there, the establishment GOP was letting Trump do as he pleased and the results were…Scaramucci. The results were Anthony Scaramucci. Trump hired this smarmy-looking hedge fund guy to oversee communications and the next thing we knew, Reince Preibus and Sean Spicer (the strongest links between Trump and the RNC) were out the door. The Mooch decided to mark his territory by calling a reporter and ranting at him for a while, much to the amusement of everyone who read the reporter's write up of the on-the-record call. It looked like we were headed into an unprecedented era of mayhem.
Before we could descend completely into chaos, however, we got a reprieve in the form of a four-star general. For reasons that we don’t entirely know but should be grateful for, Trump decided to bring his Homeland Security Secretary over as his new White House Chief of Staff. General Kelly agreed to take the job on the condition that everyone in the White House goes through him to get to Trump.
Oh, and by everyone he meant everyone except the Mooch. No more Mooch.
The Senate is exerting their authority as a co-equal branch by refusing to fully recess because they don’t trust Trump to behave himself while they’re out of town. There were rumors that he wanted to fire his attorney general Jeff Sessions and replace him with…I dunno. Possibly a second act for the Mooch? That part was unclear.
Anyway, the Senate decided they couldn’t risk that so they’ll be holding pro forma session during their summer break so that there is no recess for any recess appointments to happen.
Finally we have, Robert Mueller, the independent counsel tasked with figuring out if the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to steal the election, and if Trump obstructed justice when he fired James Comey in an attempt to halt the investigation. Mueller has been steadily hiring a dream team of prosecutors to help with the investigation. This week he added another layer of scrutiny to the proceedings by impanelling a grand jury to hear evidence from the investigation.
What does that mean? It means that they have found things that may or may not lead to indictments and and the jury needs to weigh in.
How does all of this make Trump feel? Well, the man himself is headed to New Jersey to vacation at one of his golf resorts. So he feels the same as he feels all the time — like he’d rather be playing golf.
I, for one, would welcome a little order in Washington and I hope we start to see it. Lord knows, we’ve seen enough chaos to last us a lifetime.
