Donald Trump has a new Secretary of Health and Human Services.
His name is Alex Azar, and he was confirmed yesterday by Mitch McConnell’s Senate, having previously served at HHS in the Bush Two Administration.
Some in Denver speculate that Azar is the son of notorious, flamboyant Denver personal injury attorney Frank Azar, a noticeably unpretty man whose "Strong Arm" TV ads blanket the airwaves in the Mile High City.
It was Azar who, in 2016, used dark money in an unsuccessful attempt to defeat Beth McCann in the contentious race for Denver District Attorney in her Democratic primary. McCann is the first woman District Attorney in Denver history, and she previously served superbly as your solitary reporter’s State Representative for eight years.
Before his confirmation, Secretary Azar was the head of the U.S. division of Eli Lilly and Company, a major pharmaceutical company based in former conservative radio talk show host Mike Pence’s home state of Indiana. Associate solitary reporter Susanna Sherman and her numerous colleagues speculate that Trump’s Chief of Staff, General John Kelly, and his legislative liaison, Marc Short, may have made a backroom deal under which Azar would supply the White House with badly needed psychmeds for Trump’s classic narcissistic personality disorder and obsessive personality disorder. Sherman was lucky enough to spot large delivery trucks delivering huge quantities of haldol, a typical antipsychotic medication, to the White House, and she noticed Admiral Jerome Adams, Trump’s Surgeon General and an African American, being admitted to the Oval Office by a back entrance. Admiral Adams is an anesthesiologist, well trained in the techniques of injecting haldol intravenously.
Elsewhere, in Davos, Switzerland, at the World Economic Forum, Trump’s Treasury Secretary, former Goldman Sachs executive Stephen Mnuchin, made some interesting comments yesterday: “Obviously, a weaker dollar is good for us [in the United States] as it relates to trade and opportunities."
This is interesting to our chief international correspondent, associate solitary reporter Larry Theis, who is frequently seen on the slopes of the Madrisa ski area, near Davos (Theis is a retired Olympic skier, who dazzled thousands of other skiers at the world-famous slopes in Chamonix, France. Theis is bilingual in French and English).
As Theis observed, Mnuchin’s plug for a weak US dollar flies in the face of establishment Republican politics.
The dollar continued its recent descent following Mnuchin’s remarks. It is now down to about 10% against a basket of other currencies since last January, when Trump said that the greenback is “too strong,” making it hard for US companies to compete against China and other countries.
The timing is very interesting, because on Tuesday, Trump slapped huge tariffs on solar panels coming from China and on refrigerators coming from overseas. This is, essentially, a slap on the face to the GOP establishment, which believes in free trade.