The latest revelation from Mark Meadow's book, released today, that has Trump climbing the walls down in Mar-A-Lago is about his thought process around the Kavanaugh SCOTUS nomination. Politico reported today that Señor Trumpanzee "strongly considered" withdrawing the nomination and replacing Kavanaugh with a "stronger candidate." Trump could care less about Kavanaugh molesting women but what rankled him, according to Meadows, is that Kavanaugh admitted he liked beer-- which Trump eschews-- and that he was coming across too weak and apologetic in the televised hearings.
Meadows writes that Trump, a teetotaler who was “extremely put off” by Kavanaugh’s professed affection for suds, proposed the idea of dropping Kavanaugh during a flight on Air Force One while Meadows was still a sitting congressman. Meadows advised against it for fear the “blowback would be severe.”
At the time he was having private reservations about Kavanaugh, Trump was publicly fighting for his confirmation, mocking Blasey Ford’s testimony at a rally and brushing off concerns from GOP lawmakers about his viability as a Supreme Court nominee.
...For all his praise of Trump, Meadows offers plenty of criticism of those in Trump’s orbit. He describes his chief of staff predecessor, Mick Mulvaney, as out to lunch as the White House scrambled to respond to the pandemic at the beginning of March as cases were on the rise. Mulvaney was in Las Vegas on a golf trip, Meadows writes, and suggests that made Trump apoplectic.
“Let’s just say displeased when he learned this news. I don’t know who was in the room with him when he found out, but I certainly don’t envy them,” Meadows writes.
Meadows also says Trump was “furious” when news leaked to the press that he retreated to a secure bunker beneath the White House as violent protests over the murder of George Floyd erupted in Washington. Meadows writes that Trump demanded to know who leaked the news and ordered him to find out who it could be.
“I could already tell, based on the way the story was reported, that the leaker was probably not someone with firsthand knowledge of Secret Service protocols,” Meadows wrote. “To this day, everyone has a theory about where the leak came from. If I had to bet, I would say that it was probably Stephanie Grisham, Emma Doyle, or someone from the VP’s team.” Grisham was chief of staff to the first lady, and Doyle was deputy chief of staff for policy to the first lady in the White House at the time.
Throughout his book, Meadows-- like his boss-- pays close attention to press coverage, taking note of positive and negative coverage, mentioning reporters by name, and discussing Trump’s famous media diet.
Meadows takes repeated swipes at Fox News and its Washington managing editor, Bill Sammon, who he said rebuffed his entreaties to cover Trump more favorably (Meadows portrays this as heretical). Sammon, he writes, told him he did “not answer to the president’s chief of staff, and your opinion on Fox’s programming is not important to me.”
Meadows, peeved that Dana Perino’s show had aired a Biden rally instead of one from Trump, responded by threatening to block White House officials from going on her show through the election.
Maybe Trump will be pacified now that Meadows is halting his cooperation with the select committee investigating Trump's attempted coup. According to CNN, Meadow's attorney, George Twewilliger, sent the committee a letter stating that "We agreed to provide thousands of pages of responsive documents and Mr. Meadows was willing to appear voluntarily, not under compulsion of the Select Committee's subpoena to him, for a deposition to answer questions about non-privileged matters. Now actions by the Select Committee have made such an appearance untenable. In short, we now have every indication from the information supplied to us last Friday-- upon which Mr. Meadows could expect to be questioned-- that the Select Committee has no intention of respecting boundaries concerning Executive Privilege... As a result of careful and deliberate consideration of these factors, we now must decline the opportunity to appear voluntarily for a deposition."
This means the Committee will wind up referring him to the Justice Department for criminal contempt, which is exactly what Trump wants, not just for Meadows, but for all subpoenaed witnesses.
Meanwhile, right-wing Texas congressman, Dan Crenshaw-- generally a lunatic-- spoke at a Texas Liberty Alliance event and took the opportunity to attack fascists in his party, particularly Marjorie Traitor Greene, Mo Brooks, Louie Gohmert (currently running for Texas Attorney General), Paul Gosar and Gym Jordan. "I've been in Congress for almost 3 years now," Crenshaw told his audience. "There's two types of members of Congress. There's performance artists; there's legislators. Now performance artists are the ones who get all the attention, the ones you think are more conservative 'cause they know how to say slogans real well. They know how to recite the lines that they know our voters want to hear. Let me tell you something. In the first two years of Trump's presidency, when Republicans were in control, when every single time we were voting on Donald Trump's agenda-- who do you think was at the top of that list, voting with Trump, and who do you think was at the bottom? A lot of names that you would recognize were at the bottom of that list; a lot of names that you would recognize were at the top of that list. #2-- probably going to make you crazy a little bit-- Adam Kinzinger... voted with Trump almost 99%. He was #2. And at the bottom? Everybody in the Freedom Caucus-- all of them. What you hear so often is not true; it's not true. We have grifters in our midst... in the conservative movement. Lie after lie after lie, because they know something psychologically about the conservative heart."
OK, so he said "Everybody in the Freedom Caucus-- all of them." Wonder who that includes? Let's start with his own state:
Louie Gohmert, Ronny Jackson, Randy Weber, Chip Roy and Michael Cloud. Here are the others, arranged by state:
Barry Moore (R-AL)
Mo Brooks (R-AL)
Gary Palmer (R-AL)
Paul Gosar (R-AZ)
Andy Biggs (R-AZ)
David Schweikert (R-AZ)
Debbie Lesko (R-AZ)
Lauren Boebert (Q-CO)
Ken Buck (R-CO)
Matt Gaetz (R-FL)
Bill Posey (R-FL)
Greg Steube (R-FL)
Byron Donalds (R-FL)
Andrew Clyde (R-GA)
Jody Hice (R-GA)
Marjorie Traitor Greene (Q-GA)
Russ Fulcher (R-ID)
Mary Miller (Q-IL)
Clay Higgins (R-LA)
Mike Johnson (R-LA)
Andy Harris (R-MD)
Matt Rosendale (R-MT)
Greg Murphy (R-NC)
Dan Bishop (R-NC)
Madison Cawthorn (Nazi-NC)
Tedd Budd (R-NC)
Gym Jordan (R-OH)
Warren Davidson (R-OH)
Scott Perry (R-PA)
Jeff Ducan (R-SC)
Ralph Norman (R-SC)
Scott DesJarlais (R-TN)
Mark Green (R-TN)
Bob Good (R-VA)
Ben Cline (R-VA)
Morgan Griffith (R-VA)
Alex Mooney (R-WV)
Tom Tiffany (R-WI)
