So, did anything interesting happen last night?

I fell asleep early.

But as I was resurfacing briefly before plunging back into the arms of Morpheus, I heard Rachel Maddow passing off to Lawrence O’Donnell with some back and forth about Rudy Giuliani on Sean Hannity’s show last night. It sounded like maybe he just blew up Trump’s story about how Stormy Daniels was paid or something. I’m sure I was imagining it.

Either that or Rudy needs a long couple of hours in a Hillary detoxification tank. I can’t imagine any other reason why he would be ruining whatever good memories we have left of him standing up in Manhattan on the day when everyone else was prostrate with shock and grief.

Wait, didn’t I hear he was divorcing Judith, his 3rd or 4th wife? I lose count. Wikipedia says she filed and he contested. Divorcing a narcissist is a nightmare because you aren’t allowed to leave them. They’ll pull out every trick in the book. Maybe Trump is going to help him drive her crazy. The money must be good, though Giuliani would definitely do it for the attention and admiration. I dunno. Trump and Rudy deserve each other.

Anyway, he’s not the famed prosecutor anymore. Or the dictatorial mayor who ruthlessly cleaned up Times Square and made a crime of “living while black”. Whatever he was up to last night, I hope he was well compensated or he might end up toting luggage to taxis from Penn Station for tips.

Oh, and Trump traded some lawyers yesterday. He swapped out Ty Cobb (or was it Pie Traynor? It’s so confusing.) for Emmet Flood. Flood was Clinton’s impeachment attorney. And there was some weird banter about none of Trump’s lawyers getting any information from Trump about what’s in Michael Cohen’s files. Jeez, how bad could it be that you can’t even tell your lawyer about it? Unless Trump really doesn’t understand what conditions are covered by attorney client privilege. More likely he started to fill them in and they stopped him and said, “Hey, easy now. You know what? We don’t want to know. Well, gotta run. Our accountants will be in touch to wrap things up.”.

And what’s up with his doctor? The guy who let Trump write his own medical exam results also let it out of the bag that Trump uses Propecia. No biggy. It’s just a hair growth drug. Bornstein probsbly did violate HIPAA (it doesn’t take much. I’m not even sure you can tell anyone who your patients are if they don’t have a compelling reason to know.) But you’ve got to wonder what Trump doesn’t want us to find out about what the good doctor has done for him. If I were to hazard a guess, it’s his prescriptions for ED, which by the way, are no big deal. It’s just an enzyme inhibitor. Honestly, I can’t understand why this is such a traumatic thing. On the other hand, Trump did run on his “stamina” and we all know what that’s a code word for.

Hey, did you see Jeff Bezos’ rocket?

The dude is the richest man in the world. Now THAT’S stamina.

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Tired of Winning?

The Mueller advising the president that he may be subpoenaed thing is big news. It’s also significant. Not least because it’s out there now that Mueller isn’t playing games. This is not a witch hunt. There have been indictments for real crimes. If the Trumpers had been on the losing side of 2016 and all this stuff had come out about Hillary, especially the election tampering possibilities, she would have been lynched. The difference is that she would have fully cooperated.

It’s just what she does.

But I think the reason the majority of the country is anxious is because the Trump voter just doesn’t get it. There will be some people who will say they’re just really slow learners. But I don’t think it’s stupidity. I heard the explanation this week on The Ezra Klein Show. He was interviewing an expert on polarization who referred to a study about why people choose sides. It turns out that there is no big mysterious reason or ideology initially. That would square with some of the unorthodox stuff I hear from Fox News viewers who wonder why CAN’T we have Medicare for all? Well, why can’t we??

Some holocaust survivor back in the last century did some studies and discovered that people just want their team to win. Even if they lost something in the process, their team winning and the other team losing was more important. Even if both teams agreed on the same things.

So, it should come as no surprise that Trump makes a point of reminding his audience at his rallies that the rest of us are trying to overturn the results of the elections. First of all, after all the Facebook stuff, Russian Trolls, hacking of the DNC and election systems in 21 states, you are never going to convince me that the election of Trump was legitimate. The Trumpers can froth and scream and threaten all they like, there are so many things we do not know right now that the election will always have a big question mark on it. Don’t even with the Michigan thing. We’ve gone over this before. The popular vote should have matched the electoral college. Even when Gore “lost”, the popular vote and the electoral college lined up. No one in presidential history has ever won so many votes and lost an election than Hillary Clinton. There’s something deeply disturbing about that. And I remember back in 2016 when Trump said he would challenge the results in PA if he lost because it would be evidence that the vote was rigged. Now, how could he be so sure he was going to win PA? Sure enough to say it was rigged. In advance. By 2 months. Yeah, I’ll never believe we lost Pennsylvania.

Getting back to the winning thing, it’s not like anybody on Trump’s side won anything. Well, unless you’re a rich donor, in which case, you got out of paying a lot of taxes and will gleefully stick the “winners” with the bill for paying teacher salaries and bridge repairs and stuff like that.

So much winning.

So, is the Mueller investigation all about overturning the results of an elections, which is apparently the only thing Trumpers really care about?

The answer is no. The Mueller investigation is about no one being above the law. If Hillary isn’t above the law, or Martha Stewart or Bill Crosby or any other celebrity who is famous or had their own TV shows, then neither is Donald Trump. His illegal actions centering around the election that made him president do not change that. It’s not better just because it’s not a DUI or a drug bust or something the rest of us have to worry about. In fact, his crimes are doubly bad because if he messed with a vote in any way, shape or form, even if it was through a Russian agent, that’s about the worst thing you can do to your nation because it affects every single citizen.

Now, I understand that Donald Trump is used to winning. He’s used to lying, extorting, bullying, threatening, stonewalling and witness tampering. That’s how he’s gotten so far in life. He has paid his way out of all his problems or walked away from them altogether and let someone else worry about the fallout. And gosh, that certainly looks like winning to me. But as Sansa Stark said last year on Game of Thrones to her sister, the trained assassin, “I’m sure that cutting off heads is very satisfying but it’s not a very good way to get people to work together”.

He is just not used to someone being persistent in holding him accountable for his actions and being held to a different standard in the political world as president. That’s just too damn bad. We’re all more than a little bit irritated with his stupid childish behavior. It’s time he grew a pair and cooperated. This has nothing to do with winning or overturning an election. It’s about being accountable.