I’ve burned myself out on the #TrumpRussia issue for today. I’ve got a lot more fascinating stuff in the pipeline but each one of these pieces is exhausting to write. There’s a temptation to try to explain everything and tie it all together with a bow, but the blog format and length won’t allow that.
For my second piece today I will focus on something else instead. You’ve probably seen the headlines today about the dispute over who is going to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau now that director Richard Cordray has resigned to run for office in Ohio.
Is Mick Mulvaney the acting director or does that honor go to Cordray’s deputy, Leandra English?
That’ll all get hashed out in fairly quick order.
Personally, I think Greg Sargent captured the nature of the controversy with this headline: Trump wants to destroy Elizabeth Warren’s brainchild. In other words, erstwhile OMB Director Mick Mulvaney has been tapped to destroy the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Leandra English is trying to fight back. Sargent managed to get Senator Warren to comment on the matter:
In her first interview on this standoff since it erupted, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) — the agency’s creator — predicted that if Trump installs his own director, its mission could be hollowed out, emboldening further financial elite defrauding of consumers. Warren suggested that this is part of a pattern in which Trump has embraced conventional GOP plutocracy in betrayal of his campaign posture as a kind of working-class avenger delivering tough justice to predatory financial elites.
“This is about whose side President Trump is on — big banks, or working families,” Warren told me. “So far in his administration, he has chosen the big banks time after time. Is he going to stand up for the working families who helped elect him?”
The president decided he couldn’t let any of those accusations stand. So, this happened:
President Trump on Monday referred to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) as “Pocahontas” at an event honoring Native American Code Talkers who served in World War II.
“You were here long before any of us were here,” Trump said, standing beneath a portrait of former President Andrew Jackson. “Although we have a representative in Congress who they say was here a long time ago. They call her Pocahontas.”
Turning to the veterans, Trump said “but do you know what? I like you.”
The president made the remark in the Oval Office standing beside three Navajos who helped the U.S. Marine Corps develop a secret code during WWII.
The three Code Talkers did not react to Trump’s remark.
I can’t really muster the appropriate amount of outrage here, probably due to my aforementioned exhaustion. Just the portrait of Andrew “Trail of Tears” Jackson alone is enough to make my blood boil. But to make these elderly war heroes listen to a U.S. president make stupid jokes about Pocahontas is something beyond all forgiveness.
