Will Firing Steven Bannon Prove to Be Trump's Undoing?

For the record, I find Steve Bannon to be a foul and toxic individual whose view are often frightening.  Some have tried to argue that Bannon is responsible for unleashing the nastiest elements of Donald Trump's disturbed psyche.  I'd argue instead that Trump has been foul and disturbed for decades.  In Bannon Trump simply found a kindred spirit.  Having fired Bannon, some now predict that Bannon is going to "go nuclear" and that the number one casualty will be the Trump administration.  My only hope is that, if this occurs, that Mike Pence is among those mowed down by Bannon's quest for revenge.  Both Trump and Pence need to be removed from office and I suspects that Bannon knows where the bodies are buried as the saying goes.  The Atlantic has this on Bannon's suspected counterattack: 

In firing Steve Bannon, President Trump has lost his chief ideologue, the man who channeled his base and advocated for the populist-nationalist policies that helped propel Trump to victory.

But he has gained an unpredictable and potentially troublesome outside ally who has long experience running a media organization, and an even longer list of enemies with whom he has scores to settle both outside the administration and inside. “Steve is now unchained,” said a source close to Bannon. “Fully unchained.”

“He’s going nuclear,” said another friend. “You have no idea. This is gonna be really fucking bad.”

Bannon had in recent days mused about leaving, according to people who have spoken with him; he has expressed to friends that he feels the administration is failing and is a sinking ship. And last week, he told people in a meeting that he would have 10 times more influence outside the White House than inside it.

Already, Breitbart is on a war footing. “It may turn out to be the beginning of the end for the Trump administration, the moment Donald Trump became Arnold Schwarzenegger,” editor Joel Pollak wrote on Friday, referring to the actor-turned-California governor, who won office as a populist outsider and exited with a 23 percent approval rating. Another friend of Bannon’s doubted this: “Why would he help them from the outside at this point? Run the outside group and then Jared Kushner takes credit?” Two sources close to Bannon said that he has for some time complained about Kushner being an issue in the Russia investigation; one of the sources said Bannon regards Kushner as “the weak link” in the White House when it comes to the investigation.

Bannon’s animus towards the “globalists” in the administration is well known. Now, from the outside, he no longer has any reason to play nice. . . . “when Steve feels the Trump administration is wrong, will he point to the people he has the inside knowledge about who are pushing for certain policies? I assume he will.”

Bannon’s exit will be extremely consequential to the inner workings of the White House, which has been marked by infighting between his nationalist faction and the more moderate influences who have been brought in. In his departure, the nationalists lose their leader while some of Trump’s key campaign promises—the border wall, for example—still go unfulfilled. Bannon famously kept a whiteboard full of those promises in his office, checking them off as they were fulfilled.

I suspect that Bannon will satisfy his love of blood sport and the already dysfunctional Trump administration will be further rocked by incoming fire from Bannon and his white nationalist followers.  That said, the sooner the Trump administration is destroyed and driven from office, the better for America.

Will the Feds Investigate Chris Christie?

As the day has gone by the circus surrounding Chris Christie and "bridgegate" as some have coined it  seems to keep growing.  One of Christie's aids has taken the 5th Amendment and now their is talk of a federal investigation.  If Christie is shown to have been involved, along with Virginia's Bob McDonnell's "giftgate" demise, it may become a case study on how to destroy one's political future.  Here are highlights from the New York Times:

In a remarkable day of swirling political drama, Gov. Chris Christie tried on Thursday to control the damage from revelations that his administration ordered the revenge-closings of traffic lanes at the George Washington Bridge by firing a top aide, cutting ties with a longtime political adviser and repeatedly apologizing in a nearly two-hour news conference. 

Sounding somber and appearing contrite, the normally garrulous Mr. Christie said he had had no advance knowledge of the lane closings and had been “humiliated” by the entire episode.

Mr. Christie’s emotional news conference unfolded as the United States attorney began an investigation and as — just down the hall — a former associate who was involved in the lane closings refused to answer questions posed by Democrats investigating the matter, saying that he would tell his story only under immunity from prosecution. 

The Democrats promised to release more documents on Friday morning and issue more subpoenas of Christie aides. And the national news media that has so far bathed Mr. Christie in a distant, generally positive light descended on his doorstep here with a phalanx of television cameras and harsh speculation about whether the scandal would hurt his aspirations to be the Republican nominee for president in 2016.

Mr. Christie fired Bridget Anne Kelly, the deputy chief of staff who sent an email approving the lane closings, whom he called “stupid” and “deceitful.” Her deception, he said, led him to mislead the public, but he did so unwittingly. 

He also asked his two-time campaign manager, Bill Stepien, to step down as a consultant to the Republican Governors Association and to withdraw his name from consideration to lead the state Republican Party.

Democrats argued that the increasing number of resignations and dismissals — two other aides resigned in December — and the names of the governor’s staff members on the emails made it hard to believe that the pettiness was, as the governor argued, “the exception and not the rule” of his administration.

“I find it hard to believe that Bridget Kelly on her own came up with the idea to divert traffic lanes in Fort Lee,” said Assemblyman John Wisniewski, a Democrat who has been leading the investigation.

“You have an administration that is very hands-on,” he said. “It strains credibility to say that somebody in as high a position as a deputy chief of staff, somebody in as high a position as the governor’s principal spokesperson, somebody in as high a position as his campaign manager, all of whose names are in these emails, didn’t ever communicate this to the governor.”

The United States attorney for New Jersey, Paul J. Fishman, opened an inquiry after the matter was referred to his office by the inspector general for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Some legal experts, however, said it was difficult to imagine how the scandal could yield criminal charges.

The fallout from the release of the emails, which are as brazen as they are blunt, reverberated nationally, threatening to undermine Mr. Christie’s carefully cultivated image.

The controversy is unlikely to abate anytime soon, with New Jersey Democrats vowing to subpoena everyone mentioned in the emails. The State Assembly on Friday will release an additional 900 pages of documents turned over by David Wildstein, a high school friend of Mr. Christie’s who worked at the Port Authority, which could continue to produce more embarrassing revelations.

Will Chris Christie Implode?

Of any one in the potential GOP field of likely presidential candidates, Chris Christie seemingly would have the best odds of appealing to independents and moderates in a general election.  Yet the growing scandal over shenanigans to seek revenge on a Democratic mayor - causing huge traffic jams in the process and possibly one death as well - may be what causes the Christie phenomenon to implode.  Yes, the ultra far right in the GOP who cannot forgive Christie for working with Obama must be salivating, if not openly celebrating, but those who hoped for a rational GOP standard bearer should be disappointed by what may take Christie down.  Here are a compilation of thoughts via Andrew Sullivan:

The emails do not suggest a bad apple each at Port Authority and the Governor’s office up to no good. This is a range of Christie staffers and appointees sitting back observing and chuckling as a big multi-day traffic snarl unfolds.

If Christie didn’t know about this there must have been a concerted effort on the top of his top people to keep him in the dark.

Tomasky sees three possibilities:

1. He’s telling the whole and complete truth in yesterday’s statement, that this was the first he’d known that the lane closings were political;
2. He was in on it from the start and helped mastermind it or at least winkingly approved it;
3. The middle position, which is that he didn’t have prior knowledge but he learned it was political some time ago—not long after it happened, say—and is now lying about having just learned.
If it’s two or three, I’d say you can forget not only his presidential ambitions. He’ll have to resign the governorship. Right? Hard to see any way around it. To have lied to your people for months about something like this, if that’s what he did, is a pretty good definition of being unfit for office.

Allahpundit is on the same page:

[A]t this point, given his emphatic denials that he had anything to do with the lane closings, what’s the alternative to resigning if a smoking gun emerges proving that he did? He’s not going to stand at the podium, cop to having lied baldfaced to the world about his role in punishing the public in order to retaliate against a political enemy, and then say, “Oh well, see you tomorrow.” His whole shtick is that he’s a straight talker who tells the truths that more polished politicians are too afraid to tell. He can’t admit to having lied to protect himself and then go back to business as usual. So what’s the alternative to resignation if he gets caught red-handed? Which, I guess, is another way of saying that the odds of him getting caught red-handed are verrry low or else his denials wouldn’t be so emphatic.

Chris Christie - Just a Big Fat Bully?

Chris Christie has worked to build an image of being a direct, no excuses politician who speaks his mind.  But now this image is unraveling as it becomes clear that he is also a petty bully willing to screw over constituents when seeking to punish those who do not yield to his demands.  What else explains the now exposed deliberate decision to punish commuters at the George Washington Bridge that connects New Jersey to northern Manhattan.  The paper trail - or should we say e-mail trail - isn't pretty and Christie seemingly is not going to get off easy.  A main editorial in the New York Times takes Christie to task for trying to throw subordinates under the bus to protect his more than ample ass.  Here are excerpts:

Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey has explanations to make, apologies to give and an administrative house to clean now that his top aides and political cronies were shown to have been fully and gleefully aware of the chaos they caused by ordering up lane closings — and a four-day traffic jam — in September at the George Washington Bridge.

New Jersey residents had suspected for months that the sudden, mysterious shutdown of traffic lanes to the bridge in Fort Lee, N.J., may have had something to do with the refusal of the town’s mayor, Mark Sokolich, a Democrat, to endorse Mr. Christie for re-election. 

That sounded far-fetched, even for someone known to be as sensitive to slights and as politically belligerent as Mr. Christie. He and his aides said such speculation was crazy talk

Turns out it was his old friend David Wildstein, whom Mr. Christie had appointed as director of interstate capital projects at the Port Authority, who ordered the closings. Text messages and emails made public on Wednesday show that Mr. Wildstein and Mr. Christie’s deputy chief of staff, Bridget Anne Kelly, discussed the closings as political payback for Mr. Sokolich, who had no idea the closings were coming. 

The correspondence shows that the lane closings were indeed a stunningly stupid act of petty revenge. They were also an egregious abuse of power. 

“Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee,” Ms. Kelly said in an email to Mr. Wildstein in August, a few weeks before the closings. 

When the Port Authority’s executive director, Patrick Foye, learned what was happening in Fort Lee, he immediately ordered the lanes reopened, calling the closings dangerous, “abusive,” and probably illegal. 

Mr. Christie, caught out on Wednesday, could no longer scoff at or dismiss the scandal, or blame Democrats for it. There were two possible explanations: either he had been pathetically misled by his scheming staff, and failed for months to get to the bottom of the scandal, or he had spent those months dissembling to any and all. His excuse? He was a dupe. 

Mr. Christie can start by getting rid of every one of his aides and cronies who knew about this scheme and show what actions he will take against the person with ultimate responsibility for his administration: himself. 

 My opinion of Christie certainly has been lowered.  I suspect that I am not alone.