President Trump: The NEW one and only politics thread

Under Senate's Obamacare repeal, some Americans would have to pay more than their total income for health coverage

 

At least that would make it an easy choice. At "more than my income," the obvious answer is "fuck coverage."

At my current "31.6 percent of my income for a low-deductible plan" or "$7,300 out of pocket before insurance pays out a single penny", I waver somewhat.

 

So much for privacy Mooch

 

"There's a great big beautiful tomorrow, shining at the end of every day."

 

McCain got the reaction he wanted. But it may be a case of winning the battle but losing the war.

 

Glioblastomas - awful. Hate to say it, but he's a dead man walking, and I would be surprised if he is alive a year from now unless he tries that Duke polio treatment.

I think he meant to firmly cement his legacy as a maverick, pure and simple. And probably voice displeasure at the current state of affairs in DC.

 

Dude, you're the McCain expert here.

 

How so? McCain likely isn't running again in six years so he doesn't worry about that. Plus doesn't this force the GOP to actually come up with a plan for an Obamacare fix rather than just this hamfisted "we'll fix it later" or "let's make insurance prohibitively expensive"?

 

I think McCain decided, "I've taken just about enough shit out of that fucking freak-show baboon and his fan club of imbeciles, and I'm gonna jam it up their ass big time."

 

OK, here's a little White House scuttlebutt – leaks! – that I heard this week and would like to pass along. Caveats: This is 2nd/3rd hand, and I really can't get into specifics of how/whom I heard this from (I'm already "public" on here, though I'm no longer a journalist, and was never in news/politics). But I believe it to be accurate, or at least an accurate reflection of what these people currently think. Anyway, enough throat-clearing:

– They generally don't feel that there's going to be anything truly damaging on the collusion angle. The DJT Jr. email thread is about as bad (or good, depending on your view) as it will likely get. There wasn't (according to them) any concerted collusion effort, at least not in a direct way that would leave hard evidence. More like "just" – and this is my speculation – in the wink-wink, once we get in we'll see what we can do about sanctions, etc. But nothing that would approach bringing down a presidency.

– However, there seems to be genuine fear about what Mueller will turn up in his increasingly close look at Trump's finances, especially as it pertains to Russians. Now, some of this next part, I'm not certain whether they actually said this explicitly or it was the read of what they said, but it sounds like Trump does in fact have significant debts to Russian interests, which I took to mean as oligarchs/banks/Putin cronies, which are all basically the same thing. Plus some, maybe most, of this debt may be hidden through laundering and/or other shady practices that could potentially be unraveled. This is the area where these WH folks seemed to feel there was legitimate potential exposure for Trump and, by extension, the WH.

Given the second point, that's my guess as to why Trump has seemed particularly unhinged (even by his standards) over the past 10 days or so, ever since it came out that Mueller was in fact looking into his past business dealings, and could also get access to his tax returns. Why Trump seemed surprised by that is anyone's guess, but hey, I'm trying to spend less time these days analyzing Trump's thought process as if there's some coherent pattern to be found. There's also (again, this is me musing, not what I heard) Preet Bharara's case that was looking into Deutsche Bank's alleged tied to Russian money laundering; Deutsche Bank is Trump's primary private lender, at least the one he publicly admits to. Preet, of course, got canned by Trump, and I think it's a pretty reasonable conclusion that happened in an attempt to short-circuit that and/or other Trump-related cases. I have no proof of that, of course. But I'm not Bob Mueller, and I don't have his mandate and resources.

FWIW.

 

Well, if that Reddit thread had been right—and I don't believe it is—then that narrative would have fit McCain perfectly. He understands the Senate and its rules better than anybody else in that room, he loves the Senate and its old ways of bipartisan operation (the first time I saw him in real political action was when he was negotiating a bill with Ted Kennedy in an elevator), he plays a long game, he likes attention, and he can hold a grudge like a motherfucker. My thinking is that he was hoping that McConnell would listen to his speech after the "yes" vote and take the bill to committee. McConnell didn't, and I don't think McCain trusts Paul Ryan and the House, so McCain was like, Eat shit. Maybe that's all it was. Or it might be as simple as he knows his time is limited and he doesn't want to go out as a toadie.

But I still wonder whether this is part of some larger play that I can't quite see.