Jesus, the Rats Are Abandoning the Sinking Ship

Carl Icahn has stepped down from his role as a special adviser to President Donald Trump, the billionaire investor announced on Friday.

[...]

Icahn’s resignation announcement follows the news Friday that former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon was fired. He steps away from the role as multiple presidential advisory committees disassembled this week after Trump’s controversial statements about the white nationalist rallies in Charlottesville, Va. last weekend.

  MSN Money

But that can't possibly be the reason Icahn is leaving.

“I chose to end this arrangement (with your blessing) because I did not want partisan bickering about my role to in any way cloud your administration,” Icahn wrote in a letter to Trump. “I sincerely regret that because of your extremely busy schedule, as well as my own, I have not had the opportunity to spend nearly as much time as I’d hoped on regulatory issues.”

I'm not buying it any more than I'm buying what they're trying to sell about Bannon leaving. WTF is going on? Neither one of them has any conscience and neither depends upon public approval, so Charlottesville isn't why they're out. It's possible Trump fired Bannon. And if he did, it was because Bannon was getting too much publicity - articles calling him Trump's brain. But that doesn't explain why Bannon did that interview a la Scaramucci. That was beyond bizarre.

This New York magazine article suggests Icahn was fired - and then quit! Why would Trump fire him? Do either of these guys leaving have anything to do with Mueller's investigation? Something is rotten in Denmark.

Check out this New Yorker story on the guy Donald Trump wants to be.  Excerpt:

In the months after the election, the stock price of CVR, Icahn’s refiner, nearly doubled—a surge that is difficult to explain without acknowledging the appointment of the company’s lead shareholder to a White House position. The rally meant a personal benefit for Icahn, at least on paper, of half a billion dollars. There was an expectation in the market—an expectation created, in part, by Icahn’s own remarks—that, with Trump in the White House and Icahn playing consigliere, the rules were about to change, and not just at the E.P.A. Icahn’s empire ranges across many economic sectors, from energy to pharmaceuticals to auto supplies to mining, and all of them are governed by the types of regulations about which he would now potentially be advising Trump.

[...]

Icahn is worth more than the Trump family and all the members of the Cabinet combined—and, with no constraint on his license to counsel the President on regulations that might help his businesses, he was poised to become much richer.

  New Yorker

So WTF?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

After reading the entire New Yorker article, it looks more to me like the Mueller angle (meaning, he's onto Icahn in his investigations) may well be the reason Icahn left the administration.  Not that leaving would necessarily be enough to cover his ass anyway.  But IF he's under Mueller's microscope, maybe he's being granted some immunity in exchange for some information, or even some grace in exchange for leaving.

Jesse Lynn told me that he has reviewed the relevant law, and that it does not apply to Icahn: “Unlike a government employee, Mr. Icahn has no official role or duties and he is not in a position to set policy.” Painter disagrees. “That is clearly an official title,” he said. “If he was advising on a matter where he had an interest, then Icahn was in direct violation of the criminal statute.”

And one more point:

I asked several people who know Icahn whether he even has policy interests beyond his own investments. They noted Icahn’s commitment to education—he has built eight charter schools in the Bronx—but struggled to offer other examples.

Where's the game show claxon? Building charter schools is not something rich people do because they care about education. They do it because it pays dividends.

UPDATE 8/25:

Rep Don Beyer lays out the salient points of the Icahn appointment to the Trump administration showing it for what it was: a gift to Carl Icahn.  Start here: