‘A Big Fat Con Job’

In a recent Northern Slant podcast, the newly-appointed Consul General to Northern Ireland, Elizabeth Kennedy Trudeau, said that Donald Trump had “revolutionized communication” in a manner unprecedented among world leaders.

There is no doubt he has certainly done that.

Those same world leaders got to witness the ‘revolution’ up close at the UN General Assembly this week, but we’ll come back to that later.

In what was frankly a jaw-dropping eighty-minute train wreck of a press conference in New York on Wednesday evening, the president – in between insults, exaggerations and egomania – appeared to open a door to reversing course on his controversial Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

While saying the allegations of sexual misconduct against Kavanaugh were “all false to me” the president called the accusations “a big fat con job” by the Democrats. But he then went on to suggest that his mind could be changed. “I’m going to see what happens tomorrow. I’m going to be watching,” he said. “I’m going to see what’s said. It’s possible they will be convincing.” And he said: “I can be persuaded also.”

Literally as soon as the press conference was finished, NBC reported that a new anonymous accuser had emerged.

Before last night’s genuinely stunning performance – which the Washington Post’s Ashley Parker described as “a televised drama that was as much public therapy session as a question-and-answer opportunity with reporters,” Americans had a day of split-screen political theatre in store on Thursday; with Trump set for what could have been a showdown meeting with his deputy attorney-general Rod Rosenstein, at the same time as the Kavanaugh hearing reached its potentially crucial stage.

The Republican party has hired a prominent female lawyer to ask the questions in tomorrow’s hearing; conscious, many believe, of the negative optics of an all-male Republican delegation on the Senate Judiciary Committee grilling Kavanaugh’s accuser, Prof Christine Blasey Ford.

You can read Brett Kavanaugh’s initial prepared testimony here

and

Christine Blasey Ford’s initial prepared testimony here

The hearing is due to begin at 10am Washington time (3pm UK).

During last night’s presser (and you can follow a Twitter commentary as it happened by the Toronto Star’s Daniel Dale here) the president – as he inevitably does – wanted to talk about the media, to the media. Acknowledging his co-dependent relationship with the press, he said the “failing” New York Times and pretty much every major news organization was going to endorse him in 2020. “Can you imagine if you didn’t have me?” He then invited a reporter from the Times to say “Thank you Mr Trump.” The reporter declined.

The president also called a Kurdish journalist “Mr Kurd” – the reporter apparently loved it – and said that the Chinese respected his “very, very large brain” before misquoting Elton John. Oh, and he also accused a foreign country of meddling in the midterm elections and it wasn’t Russia.

It was, as Jack Holmes writes in Esquire, “difficult to overstate how unhinged, and legitimately scary, that was.”

But of course, there will always be plenty of people who see things completely differently.

It was clear the president was enjoying being the centre of attention. He hadn’t held a press conference in what seemed like forever and had obviously been storing it up. And it’s impossible he believes there’s no more to be said. All eyes tomorrow will therefore inevitably be on his Twitter feed for a real-time commentary, his direct line to the faithful devotees of the MAGA army.

Perhaps thankfully, though, one way the president won’t be able to communicate with the American people is through FEMA’s new emergency alert system.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency initially cancelled a proposed test of the alert in the aftermath of Hurricane Florence after a wave of people had said they wanted to be disconnected. That FEMA would think it might a good idea to let the president send an unsolicited text to every American simultaneously, from which they couldn’t opt out sounds, in the current context, like – forgive me – a disaster waiting to happen.

After last night’s press conference, however, it seems there’s always something for the president to hit the panic button about. And now probably more than usual, with a new survey showing voters across the country “highly motivated” for the November midterms and Democrats with a 10-point lead in generic polling; as well as stories of two big Republican donors – Les Wexner and Seth Klarman – publicly distancing themselves from the party.

But it’s the Kavanaugh nomination, which appears to be now spiralling out of the GOP’s control, that is consuming Washington. For the Supreme Court, an institution that “reveres precedent,” as David A Graham writes in The Atlantic, what is happening is simply without a roadmap or previous model. “Seldom does a nomination reach this point without a clearer expectation of the result.”

The New York Post’s coverage of Brett Kavanaugh’s interview appearance on Fox News

Kavanaugh himself has referred to his situation as something “from the Twilight Zone” and while a delay in the hearing is still possible, were his nomination not to proceed to a committee vote on Friday – despite Sen Majority leader Mitch McConnell’s previous guarantees of success – it’s difficult to know exactly what impact that could have on the party or on the wider electorate. It’s also possible that a defeat for Kavanaugh, rather than the withdrawal of his nomination, could have the effect of rallying the GOP base, but it’s perhaps significant that a new poll shows an 18-point fall in support for Kavanaugh among Republican women.

Meanwhile, in today’s “other” drama, it was reported last night that Trump was close to delaying his meeting with Rod Rosenstein – which up until comparatively recently was thought to be the more likely source of chaos and uncertainty scheduled for tomorrow. The president said at his press conference that he wanted to focus his attention on the Kavanaugh situation and may “ask for a little delay to this meeting,” but that he would “much prefer keeping Rod Rosenstein.”

But Trump also said during the presser that: “There’s no obstruction except for the fact that I fight back, if you call that obstruction.” So while it’s clear exactly why Trump’s lawyers wouldn’t want him to sit down for an interview with Robert Mueller, it’s also clear that the whole situation over the direction of the investigation is far from resolved, and still feels like it could turn into a “slow motion Saturday night massacre.”

Earlier this year, former Nixon White House counsel John Dean said that if Fox News had existed during Watergate, Nixon wouldn’t have had to resign. Although it’s now unlikely to happen tomorrow, would Trump survive firing Rosenstein, Attorney-General Jeff Sessions or even Mueller? If he does, The Washington Post’s Margaret Sullivan writes, it’s largely because of Fox News – and in particular, Sean Hannity.

She says: “Night after night — for many months — Trump’s sycophant-in-chief, Sean Hannity, has been softening the ground. And his message is sinking in. In a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll, three of four Republicans said they believed the Justice Department and the FBI are actively working to undermine Trump.”

During last night’s press conference, when the president was asked about sexual misconduct allegations against himself, he said: “I was accused by, I believe it was four women, you can check with Sean Hannity.”

The actual number of the president’s accusers is anything from 12 to 20.

The last laugh?

Finally – although there’s never really a “finally” in Trumpworld, is there? – the difference between being inside the Trump circle and part of the ‘real world’ became obvious with the President’s realization, no matter how much he protests that he meant it, that delegates at the UN General Assembly were laughing at him, not with him during his speech on Tuesday.

It was one of his frequent go-to lines during the campaign, that America was somehow the laughing stock of the world. (Narrator’s voice: this time it wasn’t America). And the media reaction in both the US and abroad was predictable; even if – as if reinforcing Margaret Sullivan’s point – Fox’s coverage of the speech raised some eyebrows.

But, as Trump’s defenders would argue, there could yet be a different punchline. Don’t forget, there are those who believe that it was his anger at the relentless comedic pounding he took at the 2011 White House Correspondents dinner that in part drove him to run for the highest office. He doesn’t forget being insulted.

Julian Borger at The Guardian writes that: “His fellow leaders may have chuckled, but Trump’s words were intended for another audience: his core supporters who despise the UN and all it represents. They are as determined as their hero to wipe the smiles off the faces of the “globalist” enemy.”

And perhaps a last, cautionary, word should go to global risk expert Ian Bremmer of the Eurasia Group, who wrote on Facebook that “Laughing at Trump’s narcissism is easy. But the foreign policy establishment needs to understand that momentum is with the “patriots” and populists, not the globalists. And they’re/we’re part of the reason why.”