The walls close in on Trump
Over the coming week, we might, unfortunately, look for President Donald Trump to slide further into the deep end.
Even before the Senate's tax plan got crazier and before Michael Flynn pleaded guilty with a clear intent to cooperate with Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Trump was struggling.
News reports informed us that Trump is reviving talk about former President Barack Obama's fictional birth in Kenya and that Trump no longer admits that the voice on the infamous "Access Hollywood" tape is his own.
On Wednesday, he retweeted false and bigoted anti-Muslim videos from Britain First, a British fascist organization, for heaven's sake. Prime Minister Theresa May of Britain condemned his action, members of Parliament demanded his invitation to visit be rescinded. Trump then went after a different Theresa May on Twitter.
In another tweet, our president insinuated that MSNBC host Joe Scarborough killed an intern in 2001, when he was a congressman.
One can only imagine what this week will be like in the adult day care center known as the White House.
Lock him up, lock him up!
It became much clearer Friday why President Trump asked then-FBI chief Jim Comey to back off his investigation of Michael Flynn and Russia's interference with our 2016 presidential election.
On Dec. 28, the same day then-President Obama signed U.S. sanctions against Russia in response to Russia's actions, the Russian ambassador contacted Flynn, the soon-to-be U.S. National Security Adviser, and the two began talking about those sanctions - something forbidden by a little-used law known as the Logan Act, because after all, our country can only have one presidential administration at a time.
The next day, according to federal documents filed with Flynn's Friday guilty plea, "Flynn called a senior official of the Presidential Transition Team who was with other senior members of the presidential transition team at the Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach to discuss what if anything to communicate to the Russian Ambassador about the U.S. sanctions."
Later Flynn called the Russian ambassador and asked that Russia not escalate the situation, then Flynn spoke with the transition official again to report on the conversation.
On the next day, Dec. 30, Russian president Vladimir Putin released a statement indicating that Russia would not take retaliatory measures in response to the sanctions, and the next day, the Russian ambassador called Flynn to inform him that that action was made in response to Flynn's request. Flynn then again "spoke with senior members" of the president's transition team about the conversation.
There was a similar set of conversations with Russia about Egypt and a United Nations Security Council resolution a week before, just before Christmas. Sources who said they were in the room with Flynn at the time of those conversations with Russia told news organizations that Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law, was the senior transition official that Flynn consulted.
Trump was not sworn into office until Jan. 20.
Flynn was fired about 24 days after Trump took office - ostensibly for lying to Vice President Mike Pence about whether he talked with the Russian ambassador about the sanctions. By the way, Pence was the head of the transition team when Flynn's conversations with Russia took place.
And remember, this is just a tip of the Russia interference iceberg.
Let's talk taxes
Set aside for a moment the fact that at least six new amendments were added to the tax reform plan just on Friday afternoon alone, so we know without question that all senators could not know what they were voting for.
Also set aside the fact that after the Joint Committee on Taxation figures showed the plan would clearly add $1 trillion to the national debt and suddenly drew fresh attention to the fact that the Trump administration never followed through on its commitment to release an analysis to back up its claims that those tax cuts would pay for themselves.
Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, had said repeatedly that more than 100 people on his staff are "working around the clock on running scenarios for us." But the report analysis never materialized, and now the Treasury inspector general has announced he will open an inquiry into whether Mnuchin misled the Senate or tried to hide the department's analysis.
But here's what the Senate does know with certainty, thanks to a Bloomberg story pulling together corporate America's recent reactions to the plan and its growth assumptions:
"Major companies including Cisco Systems Inc., Pfizer Inc. and Coca-Cola Co. say they'll turn over most gains from proposed corporate tax cuts to their shareholders, undercutting President Donald Trump's promise that his plan will create jobs and boost wages for the middle class," Bloomberg wrote.
Instead of hiring more workers or raising their pay, many companies had said for months that they would first use their tax savings to increase dividends or buy back their own shares, the paper reported.
U.S. voters disapproved of the Republican tax legislation by enormous margins, according to polls, but the Senate didn't care.
The corporate tax cuts are to be permanent. The small ones we individuals might get at first will expire in a few years.
The rich get richer.