Will Trump Dump Pence in a Last-Minute Game Changer Attempt?

Is Pence about to be thrown under the bus?

I dislike Mike Pence just as much as I dislike Donald Trump.  Indeed, in some ways Pence may be the more despicable of the two since, unlike Trump, he can't plead mental health issues as the cause of his lack of morals and sky high hypocrisy.  Faced with a likely loss if he had run for reelection as governor of Indiana, Pence sold his soul to Trump for two reasons: (i) joining the Trump ticket gave him a plausible reason to not seek reelection and an embarrassing loss, and (ii) it played to Pence's delusional belief that god wants him to be president. Having sold his soul, Pence has participated in every horror Trump has unleashed on the nation, including the disastrous response to the Covid-19 pandemic. With Trump seemingly increasingly desperate as poll after poll suggests he will lose to Joe Biden in November, he needs something to change the conversation if you will.  Dumping Pence and selecting a new VP candidate for the 2020 ticket might be something Trump might grasp at.  Should that happen, the irony would be that the self-loathing, seemingly closeted Pence would have sold his soul for nothing long term.  That prospect is delicious to contemplate.  Trump's big problem will be finding someone as willing as Pence to sell their soul and face the possibility of being on a ticket that goes down to a horrific defeat.  A piece in New York Magazine looks at this possibility.  Here are highlights:

On two previous occasions I have addressed and dismissed rumors that [Trump] the president wanted to dump his intensely loyal vice-president, Mike Pence, before voters go to the polls this year. In November 2018, we heard reports that Trump was having his own misgivings about the stolid veep. In August 2019, the person incessantly mentioned to be a possible replacement for Pence, former South Carolina Governor and Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, conspicuously pledged her allegiance to Trump-Pence 2020, making it certain that everyone heard the rumors she denied.

On both occasions I figured that Pence was just too valuable to Trump as his ambassador to white conservative evangelicals to be discarded, despite some reports that Trump thinks he has forged sufficient bonds with that constituency to no longer need help.

So what might have altered that calculation in the last year? Two things: First, Trump is in very serious danger of not being reelected. He needs a game-changer to reset the race, and a fresh veep is a time-honored way to do that, even if it involves (to quote the words said to John McCain in 2008 about choosing Sarah Palin ) “high risk [and potentially] high reward.” Indeed, if, like Trump, you have no real second-term agenda to tout and no capacity to “pivot to the center” and pursue swing voters via messaging or policies, it’s one of the few cards in the deck.

In a podcast at FiveThirtyEight in which Nate Silver, Claire Malone, and Perry Bacon Jr. batted around various emergency steps Team Trump could take to turn it all around, a switch in running-mates was the one that made the most sense to them.

Second, Trump could perhaps try to blame Pence for his administration’s deadliest and most politically damaging error, its mishandling of COVID-19 from the get-go. The veep is, after all, the head of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, even though he has consistently given up the spotlight to Trump and to public health advisers like Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx. In an administration with constant personnel changes and little sense of reciprocal loyalty, it wouldn’t be that out of the ordinary for the Sycophant-in-Chief to be asked to step aside as one last act of service to the Warrior-King: taking the fall for a public health disaster.

In the FiveThirtyEight discussion, Haley was regarded as the most likely Pence replacement. As a woman of color who took down her state’s Confederate flags, she could obviously help address the perception that the president’s reelection effort is one long exercise in white male reactionary culture war politics.

Another name you occasionally hear as a substitute veep is Haley’s own 2016 candidate, Marco Rubio, a Latino pol whose presence on the ticket could arguably be worth a couple of points in must-win Florida. Like Haley’s, his positions on cultural issues would minimize conservative evangelical heartburn over Pence’s defenestration. If and when the trap door drops on the Hoosier incumbent, all sort of possibilities might open up.

A final reason it could actually happen now is the strong possibility that the Republican convention in Charlotte and Jacksonville will turn out to be a logistical and public health fiasco. The GOP will need some counter-programming to distract media from the mess, and an unexpected ticket is probably the most newsworthy thing Trump can offer. He would, however, have a lot of Trump-Pence posters and merch to liquidate.

If Pence gets dumped, it could not happen to a more self-prostituting hypocrite than Pence.  Keep your fingers crossed.

Ken Cuccinelli Defends Trump's Anti-Refugee Bigotry

Racist - and homophobe - Ken "Kookinelli" Cuccinelli.

Decent and moral Virginians have long known that Ken "Kookinelli" Cuccinelli is a miserable excuse for a human being who feigns supposed Catholic religiosity while engaging in the types of hatred and bigotry decried not only by the Gospel message but also the Catholic Church's social gospel. Before losing his gubernatorial bid in 2013, Cuccinelli pushed every right wing Christian message of division and hate - ironically, the man is in my view a self-loathing closeted gay - while embracing an agenda that sought to disenfranchise anyone with non-white skin color.  Now, as Trump's acting U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Director, Cuccinelli is vigorously pursuing the Trump/Pence regime's anti-refugee against not only Hispanic refugees at the nation's southern border but also in the context of Bahamians seeking entry to the U.S. A. in the wake of Hurricane Dorian's almost unimaginable devastation of the northern Bahamas.  A piece in Crooks and Liars - an apt title for Kookinelli - looks at Cuccinelli's despicable conduct.  Here are article highlights:

Acting U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Director Ken Cuccinelli insisted on Sunday that Bahamians should help themselves instead of fleeing to the United States after thousands were left homeless by Hurricane Dorian.

During an interview with CBS host Margaret Brennan, Cuccinelli was asked why the Trump administration is making it "harder to flee to this country" for Bahamians who were left homeless by the hurricane.

Cuccinelli, however, argued that the Trump administration is "making it easier" for Bahamians to travel to the U.S.

"The Bahamas is a perfectly legitimate country capable of taking care of their own," the USCIS chief said. "We rushed resources in, whether it was from USAID or the Coast Guard, who were downright heroic."

"I've got to leave it there," Brennan said, concluding the interview, without pointing out that Cuccinelli's orders actually forced Customs agents to refuse entry to Bahamians who were made homeless by the hurricane for not having the proper travel visas.

A piece in Time noted why the Trump/Cuccinelli visa requirements were so discriminatory against Bahamian refugees, the majority of who - you guessed it - are not white:

U.S. Sens. Marco Rubio and Rick Scott [both Republicans] wrote an open letter to Trump asking the president’s administration to “waive, or otherwise suspend, certain visa requirements” for Bahamian citizens who have relatives in the U.S. as the country recovered from Hurricane Dorian. Rubio also noted that many lost — or lost access to — their identification and other relevant documents during the hurricane.

Cuccinelli personifies why so many of the under 30 generations want nothing to do with Catholicism and Christianity itself. The  man is simple horrible and a hypocrite.

Senate Republicans Ready to Quash Cuccinelli Nomination

As noted in a previous post, Donald Trump, a/k/a Der Trumpenführer, is said to be set to appoint former Virginia AG Ken "Kookinelli" Cuccinelli for director of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.  Sane Virginians - i.e., those not in the thrall of The Family Foundation, Virginia's leading hate group which has its antecedents in white supremacists who backed "Massive Resistance" - know Cuccinelli as a religious extremist and ideologue who I personally would not nominate even for a position of dogcatcher.  In my opinion, Cuccinelli has some screws loose not to mention that he's a raving self-loathing closet case who projects his self-hatred on the entire LGBT community - all of which makes him a darling of the Christofascist and professional Christian set.  Thankfully, as Politico is reporting Republican U.S. Senate members may be poised to torpedo Cuccinelli's nomination. Here are article highlights:

President Donald Trump wants Cuccinelli, who most recently led the anti-establishment Senate Conservatives Fund, to be director of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. But there may be nobody in Washington whom McConnell and his allies would take more pleasure in defeating, and the bottom line is Cuccinelli has little chance of getting approved for the job, Republican senators said.

“He’s spent a fair amount of his career attacking Republicans in the Senate, so it strikes me as an odd position for him to put himself in to seek Senate confirmation,” said Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, who ran the GOP’s campaign arm for two election cycles. “It’s unlikely he’s going to be confirmed if he is nominated.”

Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, the Senate GOP’s chief vote-counter, called the bid “a long shot,” adding, “They’ll go forward with it or they won’t, but I will suspect he’ll have plenty of obstacles once he gets here.”

The nascent nomination fight is again pitting the president against his own party in Congress. Just this spring, because of strong and very public opposition from Senate Republicans, Trump yanked his two preferred picks for the Federal Reserve’s board of governors before they even had been formally nominated.
 And immigration has been a particular sore spot: Every leadership position at the Department of Homeland Security related to immigration is filled only by people serving in an acting capacity — and White House officials are mulling the prospect of having Cuccinelli do the same.

Some senators are still hoping to persuade Trump not to formally nominate or appoint Cuccinelli, but if the president goes through with it, the former Virginia attorney general likely will be either rejected or blocked from a floor vote entirely.

White House officials said Cuccinelli, always spoiling for a fight, is enthusiastic about another clash with McConnell. In a statement for this story, Cuccinelli showed no signs of backing down.

The pushback against Trump’s attempt to install an immigration hard-liner to run the country’s legal immigration system is the climax of Senate Republicans’ yearslong battle with Cuccinelli and his organization, which has tried to oust GOP incumbents in favor of more conservative challengers.

Cuccinelli also has taken aim at some of the senators needed to confirm him — calling on McConnell to resign as majority leader, backing Roy Moore in Alabama’s Senate race to the chagrin of the GOP rank and file, and criticizing the record of Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) as a “major disappointment.”

On Tuesday, McConnell reiterated in a brief interview his strong “lack of enthusiasm” for Cuccinelli.

“It seems to me to be very difficult [to confirm him], based upon what I have read that McConnell says. I get the opinion that McConnell is not going to bring it up,” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said. “So if McConnell’s not going to bring it up, it ain’t going to come up.”

Grassley predicted Cuccinelli will be temporarily installed in an acting role. . . . . Cuccinelli’s elevation itself is a blow to Grassley, whose former staffer Francis Cissna was ousted from USCIS despite Grassley’s pleas to keep him amid Trump’s broader purge of the Department of Homeland Security.

The Cuccinelli nomination reflects the persistent bind Trump has faced when it comes to immigration. Senate Republicans are reluctant to confirm the sorts of people who share his views, such as Cuccinelli and Kris Kobach, a former Kansas secretary of state who was considered as a replacement for former Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.

Trump’s preferred Federal Reserve picks, Stephen Moore and Herman Cain, were scuttled by GOP resistance. And Cuccinelli could be headed for the same buzz saw, though one Senate Republican worried “then we get Kris Kobach, who’s probably worse.

“I don’t know why the president keeps putting these people out without just making a few phone calls and saying: ‘Can you confirm this person?’” the senator said.

In my opinion, Cuccinelli is a raving crazy person which why Virginians rejected his gubernatorial bid and elected Democrat Terry McAullife.  Virginia did not want Cuccinelli and the country as a whole should not want him either. He needs to disappear into total obscurity.