Day 123: More games in the Middle East

Trump's visit to the Middle East isn't going as badly as expected. Again, however, he has only been set the lowest of bars to pass.

• Here's a good overview of the weirder aspects of Trump's visit to Saudi Arabia.
• Trump visited the "Western Wall" today. I wonder why no US President has ever visited it before? Perhaps because they were working hard not to strain Israeli-Palestinian relations?
• There was also this little issue where he just insulted everybody in the room... 
• Meanwhile, his Commerce Secretary said that he hadn't seen any protestors in Saudi Arabia, so obviously everybody loves Trump. Evidently, he was ignorant of the fact that being arrested for protesting in Saudi Arabia leads to a death sentence, one of the many human rights violations that the Trump administration is conveniently ignoring.
• Flynn is pleading the fifth in response to congressional subpoenas. I can understand not wanting to incriminate yourself, but damn you look incredibly shady in doing so.
• Trump made some wildly inappropriate requests to his intelligence chiefs to push back against the Russia probe. This is beyond his request to Comey. Wow.
• Taking another notch on the authoritarian totem pole, Trump asked Comey to throw reporters in jail. This administration will stop at nothing.
• The Office of Government Ethics has lambasted the Trump administration over their refusal to supply copies of ethics waivers. Despite having promised to drain the swamp and reduce the influence of lobbyists, the Trump team is taking them on at an unprecedented rate with confidential ethics waivers. Shady as hell.
• The Dodd-Frank banking regulations have essentially been gutted in all but name. This article suggests that we're basically back to where we were before the 2008 crisis, except that now the banks are even bigger.