TGIF 8/10/18

How was your week, pretty calm?

I think some folks might have wished that were the case.  Take Omarosa. You remember her, right? The thrice-fired Apprentice, who was also fired by the Trump Administration and was booted from Big Brother, another pseudo-reality TV show, is making the media rounds in advance of her latest book, Unhinged: An Insider Account of the Trump White House.

Why is she having a bad week? Well, for starters, her interviews appear to contradict her book - which is a no-no in the business - and do so on her big bombshell, that there are tapes of then Celebrity Blowhard Donald Trump using the n-word.  And she may have heard the tapes, even though she was only told that he used the n-word, she never heard him actually say it. Or, maybe she did or didn't hear anything at all, who knows.

Actually, what might be more damaging than her missteps on the book tour are the authors she's lumped with in the "people who bought this book also bought" list. Omarosa is in fine company (um, yeah, that's what it is) - see for yourself:

• Jeanine Pirro: Liars, Leakers and Liberals, The Case Against the Anti-Trump Conspiracy
• Gregg Jarrett: The Russia Hoax, The Illicit Scheme to Clear Hillary Clinton and Frame Donald Trump
• Newt Gingrich: Trump's America, The Truth about Our Nation's Greatest Comeback
• Jerome B. Corsi: Killing the Deep State, The Fight to Save president Trump

Whether she's telling the truth either in the interviews or in the book, and even if she's bunched in with an "interesting" group of authors, she still probably had a better week than this guy, Buffalo-area Republican Congressman Chris Collins. 

Collins, you have likely heard, has been charged with insider trading; the charges stem from him being on the board of an Australian pharma company, and him allegedly using information he learned about the failure of one of the company's drugs, which he then allegedly shared with his son (perhaps as he attended a White House gathering, if the timeline is correct), and his son allegedly shared the information with his soon-to-be father-in-law. Collins son and his FIL sold shares of stock in advance of the public announcement of the bad news, and that is bad news for the Congressman. 

Everyone's pleaded not guilty, and Collins plans on staying on the ballot, at least he does for now. This whole thing would be much less interesting, and we'd be hearing much less about it, if Collins hadn't been the first member of Congress to jump on the Trump bandwagon. And it would be much less interesting if, around the time he allegedly called his son to warn him, there was some way he could have protected his daughter, too - because, according to this report, she allegedly lost over a million bucks on her shares in the pharma company.

And speaking of alleged things, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) went to Russia; he had a letter with him that he passed to Putin's people. According to Paul, the letter was from the Trump Administration and contained stuff about important things; in fact, Paul suggested that Trump send the letter. Except that the White House is saying the letter was meant to introduce Paul to Putin, and that's why the Senator wanted the letter. And the contents? Those were Rand Paul's topics of interest, not the presidents. After all, he's allegedly been talking to Putin regularly since the #HELLinHELSINKI2018 summit last month.

Finally, an update on this week's Wondering on Wednesday post, which included a reference to Kris Kobach, the Trump-loving election fraud conspiracy theorist and Kansas Secretary of State who's locked in a tight gubernatorial primary race with the state's current Governor. Kobach had said that he would not recuse himself, should a recount be requested. Kobach has changed his mind since Wednesday, as his already thin lead was cut in half and concerns about discrepancies and about Kobach's guidance to county election officials has been called into question. He has transferred his oversight activities to his top aide. 

TGIF, everyone.