Is Trump worried about the 25th?

Looks like McMaster is out again. For a while, we heard rumors that his head was on the chopping block, then we got word that his head was safe. Now he's fired again, or very close to fired. For obvious reasons.

Same thing with John Kelly, who was set to exit today, but now may be back in Trump's good graces.

I can't find the link at this moment, but apparently a White House source told a CNN reporter to expect a big "season finale" soon. Even Trump jokes about the tumult.

Apparently, the big plan -- and I wish I were kidding -- is to to take out those who might possess any professional skills and replace them with Fox News hacks. Bill O'Reilly could be the new Chief of Staff.

Even by Trumpian standards, this situation is surreal.

Count me among those favoring the theory that this madness must be linked to the 25th Amendment. I think that Trump got wind of a plot.

Stormy times ahead. Michael Avenatti says that another six women have claimed relationships with Trump.

"We've been approached by six separate women who have claimed to have similar stories to that of my client," Michael Avenatti told CNN's "New Day" Friday morning. "Two of them -- at least two have (nondisclosure agreements). We're in the very early stages of vetting those stories."

But this development is of even greater importance:

The lawyer representing Stormy Daniels, the porn star suing President Donald Trump, claimed Friday that she has faced physical threats.

"My client was physically threatened to stay silent about what she knew about Donald Trump," Michael Avenatti told CNN's Chris Cuomo on "New Day." He said more details would be forthcoming in Daniels' upcoming interview on CBS's "60 Minutes," which is scheduled to air later this month.

I've been saying it for a while. We are talking about mobsters here. They think like mobsters and they act like mobsters.

Take Steve Bannon, for example: He's a naturally combative fellow who clearly looks down on Trump. Yet Bannon stonewalled the House Intel Committee at some personal risk, refusing to answer questions or to say anything in public that might be construed as critical of Der Donald. We know from Sam Nunberg that Roger Stone now feels that Trump screwed him over -- yet Stone (usually a vindictive man) won't say one public word against Trump.

Why? The answer should be obvious.

And if it isn't obvious to you yet, run your eyeballs over this story.

Nikolai Glushkov: Russian exile murdered at London home by 'compression to neck', police say

An exiled Russian businessman associated with a leading critic of Vladimir Putin was murdered at his London home, police have revealed just days after a nerve agent attack on a former spy.

The bodies are piling up in the UK. Very soon, we'll see corpses here in the U.S. In fact, the stateside murders have already begun. Neo-Nazi thugs make excellent hit men: They are easy to manipulate and plausibly deniable.

At this point, I wouldn't be surprised to see a hit against Stormy herself, or perhaps her lawyer. A really obvious gesture of that sort would send a message to others. (Of course, if Stormy sleeps with the fishes, Alex Jones will blame Hillary.)

That's the country in which we now live. That's what happens when mobsters take power.

Wealth and morals. This tweet from the 11th Hour offers a remarkable quote from Larry Kudlow:

Trump's new econ adviser Larry Kudlow: The wealthy "have no need to steal or engage in corruption" because "they know how to achieve goals and convince skeptics that good deals can be made to the benefit of both sides."

Dig it: It's not enough for the wealthy to have all the money; we must now pretend that they have all the morality as well. The French have a saying: There is no great wealth without a crime. Kudlow thinks that there is no crime among the wealthy -- that the wealthy, by definition, are incapable of corruption.

Ted Lieu responded:

Your statement below is really stupid. Here's some wealthy people who are convicted felons: Jeff Skilling, Enron Dennis Kozlowski, Tyco Bernie Ebbers, Worldcom Raj Rajaratnam, Galleon Group Sam Waksal, ImClone Martin Shkreli, Retrophin Bernie Madoff Get it?

I would add that those convictions occurred even though we live in a world in which the wealthy are the hardest to put behind bars, because wealth confers power and influence. The previous sentence used to be non-controversial, but Kudlow wants that idea to be considered Thoughtcrime Most Foul, at least when applied to any non-Democrat.

The most obvious disproof of Kudlow's ludicrous assertion would be the oligarch class in Russia. Who can say where the oligarchy ends and the mafia begins? Is there any dividing line at all?

The same can be said of the oligarchies in all other countries. For example, everyone knows that Dubai was built on slave labor. So, for that matter, was much of the United States. Slavery is always a crime -- perhaps the worst of crimes -- and slavery is more prevalent now than at any other time in the world's history. Do poor people buy slaves? No. Rich people commit that crime.

Can any honest and intelligent person look at our alleged president and not see a gangster and a conman? How much money has he laundered? How many investors has he defrauded? How many contractors has he stiffed? Did the naive rubes scammed by Trump University come away from their experience thinking that the wealthy have no need to steal?

Kudlow's statement represents the triumph of libertarian theology over reality. The man isn't stupid. He's corrupt. And in his desperation to get ahead, he's doing a deep-dish rim-job on people who are even more corrupt.