The Juntoo

For some time now, Americans have hungered for a decent healthcare bill. President and Madame Clinton couldn’t get it into the books two decades ago. Their vision was universal, but their result was untenable. Bush’s prospects were no better. His design was humbler, more targeted, and more incremental. Best remembered is he, though, for covering prescription drugs and not changing things much for the better. Obama, the most ambitious of the three, seems only to have come nearest to success—howsoever that might be defined. He shared in a universal vision—like that of the Clintons before him—but his was fraught from the start. The linchpin was cross-subsidization, which looked to many as if it were a shakedown. The young, salubrious part of society would be forced to pay for the care of their elders. Ignoring or protesting would mean a punitive tax.

Taken as a whole, if these four have proven nothing else, they’ve shown that healthcare is a beast. Regardless of who’s at the helm, Republican or Democrat, it continues to be an intractable political sticking point. It’s a cumbersome issue and one that reliably yields frustrating and unpalatable results.

Now, it’s President Trump’s turn to give it a go. His administration and the Republican-dominated Congress is taking its stab at a healthcare bill. Predictably, though, it is not going over well. History’s tendency for repeating itself seldom fails, in the same way that healthcare legislation seldom succeeds.

The Senate has attempted to hurry through its chamber a bill first proposed in the House of Representatives. The original House bill, dubbed the “American Healthcare Act”, or AHCA, was promising, but ultimately doomed. Upon further analysis by the Congressional Budget office, or CBO, the bill, if implemented, would have increased America’s uninsured to 23 million people. The public’s response to this was swift, and its elected officials took note. The CBO’s report dampened any wish for a hasty bill to be made into law.

So, the Senate was passed the baton. All of the Senate’s Democrats, and even a surprising number of its Conservatives, thought the House bill lacking. To improve upon its faults, Republicans scrapped much of its framework and patched together their own. In 142 pages, they presented a bill called the “Better Care Reconciliation Act”, or—you guessed it—the BCRA. In its name is the process whereby they hope to see the bill pass. Republicans want to go through reconciliation, which would require the proposed bill to be two of two things: deficit neutral and agreed upon by a simple majority.

It looks increasingly less probable, however, that they’ll get that chance. As it is, the bill is limping toward an imminent defeat. Liberals are corralling in a unified attack against it. They’ve denounced it wholesale. As they see it, and perhaps not without justification, the bill is as callous as it is cursory. If implemented, preliminary data suggests it will increased the uninsured by many millions. The cold-hard truth is that this bill would contract Medicaid spending while giving high-earning individuals payroll and investment income tax breaks. This is much to the contrary of Obamacare, which redistributed wealth by taxing these same high earners (and the healthcare industry at-large) to pay for the care of penurious Medicaid recipients. As such, Medicaid would be changed fundamentally. Currently, over 74 million Americans rely on Medicaid as their primary form of insurance. These many millions make up a large and diverse swath of people, most of whom share in being either indigent, young, chronically afflicted, or a wretched combination of all three. As it is, in its present form, the federal government funds Medicaid by sending to each state a “blank check”. The state then doles out the welfare as it sees fit. Under the GOP plan, however, Medicaid would change from a “blank check” to a “per capita”, or per person, funding system, wherein states would receive capped block grants to supply the state’s welfare enrollees.

This system, again, proposed by the Senate, has been decried as being callous, but it is admittedly less so than the House’s. Unlike in the House bill, more federal dollars will make their way to the states. These allotments will increase until 2021, at which time the Medicaid “expansion” (a concept detested in Republican circles) would begin to contract. The timeframe might seem suspicious, and that’s because it is. When 2021 comes around, which would be a year after then next presidential election, Republicans may not control the Executive or Legislative Branches. If this turns out to be the case, the Democratic ideal of expansive Medicaid would be no worse for the wear. The exact point at which welfare would be set to contract, they could be ones best positioned to stop it.

In addition to changes in funding, Senate Republicans are also flirting with the idea of work requirements. This concept (which is lauded on the Right and loathed on the Left) would require able-bodied Medicaid beneficiaries to work for their keep. Excepting pregnant women, children, elderly individuals, and people with incapacitating disabilities, Medicaid recipients would partake in public sector jobs—most of which would be menial and physical. A few states have trialed the program to varying degrees of success. If implemented judiciously and well, it could be a valuable thing. And while Democrats oppose it, the idea does have teeth.

Work requirements are a point of contention, but they are not the point of contention. No, that award belongs to the issue of pre-existing conditions. Democrats want them to be covered unconditionally. Conservatives, if they’re to remain true to their creed, do not. The House bill wanted to dispense with Obama’s call for insurers to cover pre-existing conditions. This, they thought, would be a practical return to the status quo ante, before the ACA was imposed. Republican Senators, though, recognized that once a benefit is given (like guaranteed coverage of pre-existing conditions) it is not so easily rescinded. In an attempt to split the baby, Republican Senators have proposed a system in which states would be given the option to waive benefit requirements. The option to opt out or remain in would be theirs.

On the whole, that’s the Senate bill. One can see how Democrats think it’s callous. But I also mentioned its being cursory. While one can dispute its callousness, the same can’t be said for how hastily it’s been put before a vote. Senators Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and Mike Lee (R-UT), both conservative stalwarts, were basically ignorant of the bill’s details. Neither was given the chance to examine the bill as it evolved behind closed doors. They, in particular, should’ve had a role in its construction, but instead, they hadn’t an inkling of what was happening. Such a monumental piece of legislation—a sweeping healthcare bill—demands the meeting of many, many minds. Unfortunately, they were left on the outside looking in, and now find a bill foisted into their laps.

Obamacare is imperfect. Republicans like Hatch and Lee think it irreparably so. Slowly, Democrats are coming to the realization that it must change if it’s to survive. They think that there’s potential in its improvement, but that it needn’t be eviscerated—yet. The problem is that they, the Democrats, didn’t want to acknowledge this on the Republicans’ terms. But as the minority party, they must. Still, though, the BCRA isn’t as far a stretch from the ACA as it could’ve been. The effects of Medicaid reform and pre-existing conditions notwithstanding, much of the BCRA retains Obamacare’s content. And, as pointed out, states will have the option to keep the Obamacare structure, should they choose to do so.

You can’t please everyone in life. No truer are these words when you’re in the thicket of healthcare reform. It’s the dense under-belly of the beast of public opinion. Except maybe for taxes, healthcare is the most personally-relevant political issue for society as a whole. This means that, more than any other issue, it lends itself to sentimentality and irrationality. Obscured by these emotions of the heart and not the mind is the fact that this could be a decent bill. It could be just the right mix of Obama’s bureaucracy and Trump’s liberalism; a dash of the old and a garnish the new. An insatiate society awaits.

Like King Lear, the deranged old dotard and master of the Brits, President Trump needs flattery. Perhaps it’s the symptom of men who dream of monarchy and achieve something quite near it. It’s something Trump hungers for daily, if not hourly, and his appetite is ravenous. Morsels won’t do, only quaffs of compliments will fill his belly. As for Lear, he didn’t need to look beyond his daughters to sate the need. Save for dearest Cordelia, whose stubborn morals cost her a kingdom, Lear bathed in praise from the wily Regan and the treacherous Goneril. It was all a ruse, but a wise one, and for a while, it secured them an empire.

Trump has to look elsewhere for compliments, for filial piety isn’t always on demand (Ivanka’s at work and Tiffany has made herself sparse). But this doesn’t mean that he has to look far. He has an obsequious staff playing the part of Lear’s little girls. During an introductory event this week, meant above all to offer a “who’s who” look at the president’s cabinet, staff members fed their boss with a steady diet of overdone flattery. The fawning-fest descended nearly into satire, as each attendee tried to one-up the other and nuzzle closer to Trump’s heart.

The plaudits began with Vice President Pence, who said that it was “the greatest pleasure” of his life to “serve as vice president to a president who’s keeping his word to the American people”. Really…the greatest pleasure, you say? I’m sure his lovely wife and children won’t bat an eye or furrow a brow to know they’re second best—at best. A wedding day with one and birthdays with the others are nothing compared to working one second for his capricious boss.

The paean gained steam, as Pence stepped aside to let Attorney General Jeff Sessions say a word or two. Sessions lauded the president by telling him that he’s “set the exact right message” and that “the response is fabulous around the country”. Perhaps the meaning of the word “fabulous” has been re-defined since I last checked. A fabulous response mightn’t entail massive protests in the streets by women and scientists and Muslims and LGBT activists and environmentalists—need I go on? Nor would it include a reported 36% approval rating, the lowest any president has suffered in nearly as many years. In keeping with the definition I know best, I have to ask, is this fabulous? I should think not. But is it tempestuous? Quite a bit.

Chief of Staff Reince Priebus was next. He took hold of the baton and gave the golden godhead that is President Trump his due. With an anointing flare, he thanked the president for the “opportunity and blessing” bestowed upon him to “serve his agenda”. Writing these words is almost as painful as having heard them the first time around; like mites the sycophancy crawls under my skin. But no one else scratched an itch or seemed to care. They were all too busy worshipping as a cabinet, nay, a congregation before the divine. One next to other, they surrounded President Trump with genuflected knees, groveling hands, and pursed and puckered lips kissing at his patent leather feet. It was a paean fit for a king. Lear, if you’re listening, don’t be jealous. You know best of all. No one so exalted meets a happy end.

Hasty climbers have sudden falls, while hasty thumbs tweet folderol.

While scaling a political mountain, whose bulk has grown in size as he churns, stirs, and tosses up the earth from below, President Trump is tweeting himself into trouble. On Friday, Trump responded on the social media network to something Rod Rosenstein—his deputy attorney general and general bête noire—said a day before. In an ambiguous remark, Rosenstein advised Americans to be skeptical of anonymous allegations and news stories from unknown sources. He warned us to be especially leery of sources peddling stories from outside the U.S. In all, he implored us to be on-guard. These imperatives of news consumption should go without saying, but I suppose they bear repeating from time to time.

But the fact that it was Rosenstein giving the lesson was odd. He’s known above all to be a rather taciturn chap, rarely seeking the spotlight in an administration over-crowded with shiny personalities. He’s an inconspicuous operator, but an important one. Howsoever small his presence may be in the public eye, his shadow looms large in the White House. He is in charge of the investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election and it potential collusion with president Trump. This is why his warning raised more than a few eyebrows.

Seeking a rationale, observers thought that Rosenstein might have issued this statement to get ahead of a burgeoning story. It could be that he was referring to the developing story that told of Jared Kushner’s, President Trump’s son-in-law and chief confidante, entanglement with a Russian bank. Fittingly, the bank had been sanctioned under the Obama administration for dealing in Vladimir Putin’s palm. Because of this, Kushner shouldn’t have been doing business, let alone communicating with the bank. But he was, and the FBI has since opened an investigation into the matter accordingly.

It could be that Rosenstein issued his statement at the White House’s behest. It’s well within the bounds of what administration officials say on a fairly regular basis. He didn’t go so far as to inveigh against the news media’s veracity, but he hinted that there’s always more (or less) to a story than there seems.

So, it was peculiar that Rosenstein felt compelled to say this, but palatable if understood in that light. Things to a bewildering turn though, when President Trump sounded off a response. He lashed out at Rosenstein, saying that he was “being investigated by the man who told me to fire the FBI director…Witch Hunt!”

Like bacteria that accrete in small spaces, it’s amazing how many issues sprout up in such a terse tweet. Deconstructing it from its first word to its last, Trump appears to have confirmed what was long suspected. Namely, that he is indeed under an FBI investigation for colluding with Russia. Until Trump sent those two affirmative words, “I am being investigated”, the idea of this was little more than a Liberal’s dream. It was a sweven, a vision, a prophecy, but it had no ground in reality. It was but a week ago that Trump rejoiced upon hearing James Comey, the former FBI director mentioned in the tweet, say that he was not personally under investigation. Trump celebrated, and declared himself “completely vindicated”. It seems now that he may have spoken too soon.

While we’re on the all-too familiar topic of James Comey, the second problem with this tweet can be flushed out. Trump referenced, “the man who told me to fire the FBI director”. “The man”, in this case, is of course Rod Rosenstein. Ostensibly, it was his recommendation that led us to into this intractable situation. By asserting now that it was Rosenstein’s, and not his own decision, to fire Comey, the president is blatantly contradicting himself. You’ll recall Trump’s infamous and brazen confession to Lester Holt, in which he admitted that he fired Comey without heeding Rosenstein’s advice. Now, the lines are blurred. It’s unclear, as it was before, where the onus for Comey’s ousting should lay. It seems the buck has been passed back to the deputy attorney general.

The third of this tweet’s trinity of issues is Trump’s clear frustration with Rosenstein. He’s upset about his continued greenlighting of Special Counselor Robert Mueller’s investigation. Trump has poorly held his tongue when it comes to complaining about Mueller’s team and the damage it might inflict. Rosenstein is the man who instituted Mueller, and save for the president, is the only one who can take him out. Trump would love nothing more, and media nothing less, than to have Rosenstein enjoin the investigation at once—pack it up and send it home. The president knows that Mueller will likely stop at nothing, digging until bedrock is struck, to find some damning gem that can be hurled into an impeachment proceeding. A little pressure on Rosenstein, Trump’s thinking goes, could nip this inevitability in the bud.

But Rosenstein won’t budge. His heels are dug, his skin in the game. So, onward and deeper the investigation goes.

This is the only thing about which we can be sure. And that’s no small thing, because matters were confused further on Sunday. On the morning’s talk show programs, President Trump’s personal lawyer, Jay Sekulow, told hosts and audiences that in fact the president is not under investigation. If we are to give credence to Sekulow’s account, Trump simply tweeted too hastily. He was responding to cursory information—unverified press reports instead of bona fide intel. This, I think you’ll agree, is a weak defense. The president has at his hands the most robust intel on planet Earth. He’s privy to all things, but I suppose this doesn’t mean he’s interested in knowing them. Just because he habitually responds with bad information, doesn’t make it more venial. There’s also the issue of dissonance within the White House itself. Trump’s staff seems to be abridged of the situation, while the president is either in the dark or his own head—or perhaps both, or perhaps they’re one in the same.

Sekulow went on to explain, as though it required explaining, that the president “is not spending a lot of time composing the tweets”. A shock to no one, Sekulow conceded this while still displaying the utmost pride in his boss. So, Trump needs more time. He’s not a prodigiously quick composer like a Joseph Haydn. He needs to muse and ponder before he publishes his Twitter symphonies.

All joking aside, though, this begs the question: with how much seriousness and attention should we be receiving Trump’s tweets? His advocates and apologists say we should take them “seriously” but not “literally”. Is this the standard we’d apply to any other world leader? Has it come to point where the President of the United States’—the most important man in the world—words should be taken as mere whimsies? It’s utterly insane. For all his flaws, Trump must be taken seriously and literally and gravely so. He might be impetuous with his tweets, but he’s not impervious to the demands of the office.

All said, the mountain grows. Trump keeps burying himself and climbing out, and burying himself again. All the while, the ground beneath Rosenstein’s feet wears thin. One more ill-thought, hasty tweet could send both tumbling down.

Few and far between are the moments that bring this country together. More and more, solidarity has shifted from a relic to a memory, something known to history but not to us. A sense of community and togetherness are exceptions, things we’re slow to embrace, and quick to let go. And never is it in joy that we’re brought together in brotherly or sisterly affection. Reliably, it’s when something tragic occurs. Only tragedy, and nothing short of it, can stir within us the empathy and kinship that gauges the strength of a nation.

Such a tragedy, or a near tragedy, occurred this week. A lone gunman, James T. Hodgkinson, went to a local baseball field in the Virginia suburbs and opened fire. Four people were shot, in a wanton act of violence. Among those wounded, left lying on the field in critical but not mortal peril, were a Republican congressional staff member, a Tyson food lobbyist, a member of the Capitol police force, and Representative Steve Scalise, a Republican congressman from Louisiana. The four were gathered in the early Washington morn, just outside the city limits, to squeeze in some baseball practice. It was a final day’s dress rehearsal before the annual congressional baseball game, which pits Democrats against Republicans at the Washington Nationals’ stadium. So seldom is it one sees these elected enemies on the left and right competing as good-sports. Only on the diamond will they deign to do it, and the game is a good bit of fun.

The attack in itself was jarring, as all mass shootings are, but this one was particularly frightful. The sheer spontaneity of it and the congressman’s vulnerability were most alarming. He and his pals were fenced in at a field whose base path and sod are more familiar to children at play and dogs on leashes. Like any other creature fenced in, confined to its space, the men were easy targets. Knowing this, James T. Hodgkinson discharged a flurry of fifty rounds at the men in this wide-open space. Fortunately, his plans were better than his aim. Although they were sitting ducks, he was only able to critically wound Representative Scalise, who was felled by a bullet to the hip. The other three were scathed, but not fatally so.

If not for the intrepid security detail present on the scene, this might not have been the case and a body-count might’ve blossomed. With alacrity, security guards were able to locate the spot whence the bullets came. They captured the grisly sixty-six-year-old Hodgkinson in their sights, and volleyed a return. Hodgkinson was struck, and his wound proved less merciful than the one he’d given Scalise. A small justice was paid in his death, and we have the brave security guards to thank for that.

The mind of a killer is one that can’t be fully understood. The pathologist can exhume it in death, or the psychologist can analyze it in life, but in either case, a murderer’s motivations can never be known. The case of James T. Hodgkinson will further prove this point. In discussions with previous acquaintances, of whom there appear to be few, investigators have painted a picture of an unassuming man. At the time of his attack, he was unemployed, having once worked as a home inspector in Illinois. The only notable exception to his benign history was a prior arrest for domestic battery and aggravated discharge of a firearm. With all the cliché of a hillbilly dad flailing about with a shotgun on the front porch, he threatened his daughter’s boyfriend for intruding upon his property and his little girl. The charge was later dismissed.

From that time until this, no other incident arose in which he relapsed and acted out in violent pique. It seems as though he was able to stifle his baser instincts, which, needing an outlet, he re-directed to online discussions and Facebook groups. It’s in those chatrooms and message boards that barbarity matures. This is where his unbridled diatribes danced freely. He subscribed to leftist groups on the social-network site with names like “The Road to Hell is Paved with Republicans” and “Terminate the Republican Party”. Both ominous names, it gives one chills to think about which “group” presaged his actions. In posts, Hodgkinson called upon President Trump to resign (a demand any number of Democrats have made and continue to make) and called him “the biggest a**hole we have ever had in the oval office”. Again, nothing new there. Most portentously of all, however, was his post in which he said that “it’s time to destroy Trump & Co”.

The trouble is in deciding whether Hodgkinson was merely caught in the political talk of the day—a brutally vituperative vernacular, distinct, I think, from pre-Trumpian days—or if he was afflicted by something more extreme. Many so-called “moderate” people have been just as swept away in this wave of senseless apoplexy. Finding Trump not just distasteful but unpalatable, many Leftists and Democrats have taken to using language similar to Hodgkinson’s. The thoughts he expressed, I’ve heard countless times before, and months after Scalise heals and Hodgkinson is forgotten, I’ll surely hear again. The difference, of course, is that he acted out his insane impulsivity, but the soil from which it sprang is common ground trodden by other like-minded people.

Only in this age can Hodgkinson’s language fall under the penumbra of normal political discourse. We’ve entered a new nadir. His posts and groups represent the most thoughtlessly divisive and moronic parts of our politics. It’s an uncivil, unintelligent, loathsome little corner, but it’s one that’s beginning to sprawl and encroach upon more and more space. Those inhabiting it speak in a common tongue known to the ignorant, the arrogant, and the troglodyte. It’s a language that’s arisen from a defeated Babel, where mouths flap grievance and gripe without a structured thought in their heads.

Hodgkinson is just another example of this thoughtlessness pushed too far. He is the tide of tribalism that that is washing over the nation. He’s a man who acted at the fringe, but voiced on websites and in conversations opinions of the mainstream.

We can hope, that in his death, Hodgkinson might open our eyes. Within him we find the worst of us: a hardened, heartless man whose political vitriol led him to unspeakable carnage. We see a man so swept up in deranged pique that he was willing to take the lives of others and sacrifice his own. The lesson found in him, if one is to be had, might be this. We need to elevate our discourse. We need to sublimate our ill-will. We need to be a country grounded in rational compassion and above all at this time, solidarity.

 

If former FBI director James Comey’s testimony was le plat de resistance, the much-awaited main dish that had America licking its lips, Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ was le fromage puant—a second course of stinky-cheese. For five days, Washington bounced in anticipation and simmered with speculation to hear what Sessions had to say. He was scheduled to testify before a senate sub-committee organized on Capitol Hill. The thought was that he would corroborate or repudiate much of what Comey had just declaimed. Added to the anticipation was the fact that Sessions and President Trump’s relationship had lately been on the rocks. Whispers of a growing rift between the two had been wafting in the air for some time. This added to what might’ve been a second act of high drama. Sessions could have closed the chasm and found himself again in Trump’s temporary high regard, or enflamed the controversy and estranged himself for eternity.

Where we were expecting a firework, we found little more than a dud. Sessions’ performance turned out to be an underwhelming and, frankly, inutile affair. He served his congressional inquisitors before him a steady diet of demurrals, evasion, and indignation. He acted in a manner of pure defense and survival, like a soldier caught before a hostile audience. He remonstrated profusely against the most damning parts of Comey’s testimony. He swatted away many questions and swallowed just as many answers. For the most part, he stymied all inquiries raised about conversations he’d held with President Trump. The committee wanted to learn more about the things Trump might’ve confided in him pertaining to Comey’s firing and the Russia investigation. The objective in doing this was to corroborate Comey’s incendiary account.

Instead of playing ball, Sessions leaned on what’s known as “executive privilege”. It’s a useful little shield that immunizes members of the executive branch from testifying against their boss—President Trump, in this case. It’s an expedient gadget for the person employing it, and a salvific blessing for the person whose protection it guarantees. But above all else, it’s a nuisance for those doing the digging and searching for answers.

So while Sessions dallied with this privilege, he provoked the frustrations of an impatient sub-committee. They asked him time and again by what right he had to persist in so unforthcoming a way. Reliably, Sessions retreated to the bastion executive privilege, as outlined above. The problem with this, however, was that it wasn’t clear if Sessions was employing the privilege properly. As a member of the executive branch, Sessions could have independently invoked the privilege without first addressing the situation with President Trump. He instead told the committee that he was protecting information that the president might, in theory, want concealed. It was all a bit more theoretical than actual. There was no substantive reason for him to do this. President Trump could’ve proactively declared executive privilege and Sessions’ would’ve been in the clear.

What ultimately came of the day were tired tergiversations without meaning or value. Sessions avoided answering most of the questions asked of him. Many of the questions had the potential to rebuke or prove James Comey’s testimony. They were urgently relevant to the circumstances surrounding Comey’s firing and Russia’s involvement in the whole mess. It was a situation in which Sessions’ voice could’ve un-muddied the waters unlike anyone else’s.

But the swamp remains murky. Democratic senators, who were at first displeased and then exasperated at having been made to stand in the dark for so long, became unkind toward their former colleague. Martin Heinrich (D-NM) and Ron Wyden (D-OR) assailed Sessions for impeding the investigation and obstructing justice—both formidable charges. Kamala Harris (D-CA) took a different approach. She fired off a salvo of questions with polished prosecutorial rapidity, in what seemed to be an attempt catch Sessions unwittingly in a lie. In responding to Harris’ flurry of questions poisoned with “perjury” on their tips, Sessions meekly replied, “I’m not able to be rushed this fast. It makes me nervous”. It wasn’t an especially heroic courtroom rejoinder, but—meek and bathetic though it was—it probably saved Sessions’ skin.

This is perhaps the greatest risk any number of Trump administration officials run during hearings like this (and doubtless, there are bound to be more). By continuously responding with a phrase like, “I don’t recall…” (which Sessions did over and again to everyone’s consternation), he protects himself from an unforced error. It’s evasive and costive, but self-preserving and affective. It’s one sure way to be protected against accusations of perjury destined to come down the road.

Republican senators, for their part, were far less churlish than the Democrats in questioning Sessions. Evidence of this abounded, but no more so than when Tom Cotton took the floor. The Arkansas Republican squandered precious time, thinking it better to talk at length about spy films. He likened the circumstances surrounding Sessions’ meeting with the Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak as something out of the annals of literary espionage. It was a droning digression, but one Sessions surely welcomed. Cotton’s point might have been more succinctly made—and with less frivolity—had he not beaten his point with so heavy a hammer. But, at least, his point wasn’t lost. It’s highly unlikely, as Cotton pointed out, that Jeff Sessions—armed only with his innocuous charm and ingenuous Southern cordiality—orchestrated Russia’s meddling scheme behind everyone’s back. It’s an unlikelihood that Democrats have been slow to consider, let alone accept.

With this, the open hearing concluded. All attendees then transitioned to an adjoining room where a closed session was set to begin. Not being privy to goings-on inside those doors, one can safely bet it was more of the same: Sessions dodging, Democrats castigating—on camera or off, some things don’t change.