Posted: March 23, 2024 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: cat art, caturday, just because | Tags: 2025 Project, Fox News, ISIS, Ken Buck, Leonard Leo, Mike Gallagher, Mike Johnson, Moscow terror attack, MSNBC, NBC, Vladimir Putin |
Happy Caturday!!
Ted Gordon, born Louisville, KY 1924
The images in today’s post are from the Smithsonian collection of cat art.
On to today’s news:
Are NBC and MSNBC trying to compete with Fox News? Are they preparing for a Trump victory in November? The networks recently hired Ronna [Romney] McDaniel, recently deposed Chair of the Republican National Committee and proven liar and insurrectionist, as a commentator. To say this is an unpopular move with viewers is an understatement. There are reports that other networks competed to hire McDaniel, and NBC/MSNBC “won.” BTW, there have been no comments on this hire by Rachel Maddow, Chris Hayes or Lawrence O’Donnell. Do they plan to have her on their shows?
John Knefel at Media Matters: NBC News hires Ronna McDaniel, who played a key role in Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, according to NBC News.
NBC News has hired former Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel to serve as an on-air commentator, meaning that NBC News just hired a key figure in former President Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election, according to NBC News.
McDaniel left the RNC after losing Trump’s favor, only to be welcomed into the warmer waters of television punditry. NBC News’ Carrie Budoff Brown announced the hiring of the former RNC chair to the network, writing in a memo to staff, “It couldn’t be a more important moment to have a voice like Ronna’s on the team.”
What, exactly, are NBC News and MSNBC getting with “a voice like Ronna’s?” Let’s turn to the network’s own coverage for answers.
On June 21, 2022, NBC News published a story under the headline “Trump team orchestrated ‘fake electors’ to try to overturn election, Jan. 6 committee details.” The piece described the then-latest findings of the House January 6 committee and spelled out McDaniel’s role in the scheme. As NBC News reported, Trump called McDaniel and connected her with John Eastman, one of the architects of the subversion plot.
“Essentially he turned the call over to Mr. Eastman who then proceeded to talk about the importance of the RNC helping the campaign gather these contingent electors in case any of the legal challenges that were ongoing changed the result of any of the states,” McDaniel said, according to NBC News.
CNBC reported on another of McDaniel’s statements to the committee, acknowledging her and the RNC’s direct participation in the fake elector plot. McDaniel said that the RNC’s role was “helping them reach out and helping them assemble them, but my understanding is the campaign did take the lead and we just were helping them in that role.”
Or, in the words of MSNBC’s Steve Benen: “Ronna McDaniel acknowledged that the Republican National Committee helped put the slates of fake electors together.”
Click the link to read the rest.
Oliver Darcy at CNN: NBC hires former RNC chair Ronna McDaniel, who has demonized the press and refused to acknowledge Biden was fairly elected.
NBC News on Friday announced that it had hired Ronna McDaniel, the former Republican National Committee chair who has repeatedly attacked the network and its journalists, assailed the news media as “fake news” and promoted false claims around the 2020 vote, as an on-air commentator ahead of the 2024 presidential election….
Benson B. Moore, born Washington, DC 1882-died Stuart, FL 1974
During her time as chair, McDaniel repeatedly attacked the press, which has become increasingly popular in Republican circles over the last several years as Donald Trump demonizes journalists and news institutions.
McDaniel echoed many such attacks, labeling the press as “fake news” and calling the media “corrupt.” At times, she even targeted NBC News and MSNBC with dishonest attacks.
In 2019, for instance, McDaniel accused Richard Engel, NBC News’ chief foreign correspondent, of “actively cheering for an economic downturn.”
“How can NBC let him keep his job when he’s made his bias so clear?” McDaniel asked.
McDaniel has a lengthier history attacking the progressive cable news channel MSNBC, which she will appear on in her new role. In recent years, she has repeatedly attacked the channel for “spreading lies” and blasted those she described as the network’s “primetime propagandists.”
One more commentary from Tim Murphy at Mother Jones: What a Coup! NBC News Just Hired Ronna McDaniel.
While ex-strategists or party chairs ending up with TV deals is hardly unprecedented, Trump’s attacks on the media don’t have a parallel in modern US politics. He has called the press the “enemy of the people” and accused them of “treason.” A close ally has already signaled that Trump would use the powers of his office to crack down on critical outlets, if he wins a second term. Spending seven years running interference for a fascistic fraudster who holds the First Amendment in roughly the same terminal contempt with which he regards women and low-flow toilets is not the kind of thing that should qualify you for a new career in journalism.
But McDaniel did more than shill for the president. She played an important role in public and behind the scenes in Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election—and with it, two and a half centuries of constitutional governance. That should be a clear red line for employers in the truth-telling business. In November 2020 story in Politico, just a few months before the Capitol insurrection, Tim Alberta offered a glimpse of how McDaniel abetted Trump’s lies about the election and allowed her party organization to amplify them in even more absurd ways:
McDaniel told multiple confidants that she doubted there was any scalable voter fraud in Michigan. Nevertheless, McDaniel told friends and fellow Republicans that she needed to stay the course with Trump and his legal team. This wasn’t about indulging him, she said, but rather about demonstrating a willingness to fight—even when the fight couldn’t be won.
This is why McDaniel has sanctioned her employees, beginning with top spokesperson Liz Harrington, to spread countless demonstrable falsehoods in the weeks since Election Day. It’s why the RNC, on McDaniel’s watch, tweeted out a video clip of disgraced lawyer Sidney Powell claiming Trump “won in a landslide” (when he lost by more than 6 million votes nationally) and alleging a global conspiracy to rig the election against him.
Mom and Dad, by William H. Johnson, born Florence, SC 1901-died Central Islip, NY 1970
McDaniel pushed to delay the certification of the presidential results in Michigan, and helped the Trump campaign assemble fake electors, a key part of its plot to throw the Electoral College certification into chaos. This is not standard-issue party-chair stuff. This was a historically dishonest conspiracy. And it is hardly a secret to anyone: As Media Matters noted on Friday, you can read about a lot of this at NBC News itself.
And that’s sort of the larger point here. NBC News is filled with professional journalists doing good work. Many of them have documented in exhausting (or actually quite lively and entertaining) detail the ways in which Trump and his helpers have corroded American democracy. McDaniel, on the other hand, was a major player in a political project that’s antithetical to that mission. Trump’s GOP was and is built on delegitimizing the people and institutions that might otherwise check it—Congress; the judiciary; the electorates of Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, and Pennsylvania. Foremost among the institutions Trump wants to blow up is legacy political media, and its critical, fact-checked information stream. The goal is to erode trust in the press. I’m not sure why the suits at NBC News think it’s in anyone’s best interest to hire someone to do that work for Trump.
How important is it to keep MSNBC from becoming Fox News? At The New York Times, Ruth Ingielnik reports: Republicans Who Do Not Regularly Watch Fox Are Less Likely to Back Trump.
Republicans who get their news from nonconservative mainstream media outlets are less likely to support Donald J. Trump than those who follow conservative outlets. And sizable numbers from the first group say they think Mr. Trump acted criminally, according to a recent New York Times/Siena College poll.
This division could affect his standing among Republicans in the general electorate — a decidedly different group from G.O.P. primary voters. That is in line with research that shows that changing the media habits of Fox News consumers may actually change their views.
One hundred percent of the Republicans in our poll who said they got their news from Fox News or other conservative sources said they intended to support Mr. Trump in the general election. This stands in contrast to Republicans whose main media sources are outlets like CNN and major news organizations: Seventy-nine percent of them plan to vote for Mr. Trump, and 13 percent said they planned to vote for President Biden.
And across many measures, mainstream media Republicans are less supportive of Mr. Trump. They are 20 percentage points less likely than conservative media Republicans to say they are enthusiastic about Mr. Trump as the party’s nominee and more than 30 percentage points less likely to say Mr. Trump’s policies have helped them personally.
Despite the perception that most Republicans watch Fox News, the share of Republicans who said they got their news from sources like CNN and major newspapers was similar to the share who said they primarily consumed conservative media — roughly 30 percent in each case.
These Republicans differ from consumers of conservative media primarily in terms of their ideology: They were much more likely to describe themselves as politically moderate. Nikki Haley had about 30 percent support among these Republicans and 4 percent among conservative media consumers (the poll was taken before Ms. Haley dropped out of the race).
If they watch NBC/MSNBC, they will now hear from insurrectionist and propagandist Ronna McDaniel.
by Neil Leifer, born 1942
In other news, there was a massive terrorist attack in Moscow. The U.S. tried to warn Russia it was coming, but Putin ignored it.
The New York Times: Gunmen Kill at Least 60 at Moscow Concert Hall, Russian Officials Say.
Several camouflage-clad gunmen opened fire at a popular concert venue on the outskirts of Moscow on Friday night, killing about 60 people and wounding more than 100, Russian authorities said, making it the deadliest attack in the capital region in more than a decade.
Hours after the mayhem began, the Russian national guard said its officers were still looking for the attackers. State media agencies reported that there had been up to five perpetrators….
For many Russians, the massacre at a concert hall on the outskirts of Moscow on Friday night brought to mind shootings and bombings across the country in recent decades, events that the authorities often described as terrorism.
The authorities linked many of those attacks to Russia’s wars against Chechen separatists in the 1990s and 2000s. Those conflicts helped enable the rise of Vladimir V. Putin, who over his two decades in power has sought to project an image of being tough on terrorism.
New York Times: U.S. Warned About Possible Moscow Attack Before Concert Hall Shooting.
The U.S. Embassy in Moscow issued a security alert on March 7, warning that its personnel were “monitoring reports that extremists have imminent plans to target large gatherings in Moscow, to include concerts.” The statement warned Americans that an attack could take place in the next 48 hours.
The warning was related to the attack on Friday, according to people briefed on the matter. But it was not related to possible Ukrainian sabotage, American officials said, adding that the State Department would not have used the word “extremists” to warn about actions ordered from Kyiv.
Pro-Kremlin voices immediately seized on the U.S. Embassy’s warning to paint America as trying to scare Russians.
America officials are worried that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia could seek to falsely blame Ukraine for the attack, putting pressure on Western governments to identify who they think may be responsible. Mr. Putin frequently twists events, even tragic ones, to fit his public narrative. And he has been quick to accuse Ukraine of acts of terrorism to justify his invasion of the country.
U.S. officials said Mr. Putin could do that again after Friday’s attack, seeking to use the loss of life to undermine support for Ukraine both domestically and around the world.
On March 19, the Russian leader called the U.S. Embassy statement “obvious blackmail” made with “the intention to intimidate and destabilize our society.” But he had yet to comment directly on the attack Friday.
And that is exactly what Putin did, according to The Guardian: Moscow concert hall attack: Putin tells Russians Ukraine linked to attack which killed 133, claims denied by Kyiv officials – live updates.
But CNN reports that: ISIS claims responsibility for attack at Moscow-area concert venue that left at least 60 dead.
ISIS has claimed responsibility for an attack at a popular concert hall complex near Moscow Friday after assailants stormed the venue with guns and incendiary devices, killing at least 60 people and injuring 145.
Still Life with Cat, by Franklin C. Watkins, born New York City 1894-died Bologna, Italy 1972an from color transparency
The terror group took responsibility for the attack in a short statement published by ISIS-affiliated news agency Amaq on Telegram on Friday. It did not provide evidence to support the claim.
Video footage from the Crocus City Hall shows the vast complex, which is home to both the music hall and a shopping center, on fire with smoke billowing into the air. State-run RIA Novosti reported the armed individuals “opened fire with automatic weapons” and “threw a grenade or an incendiary bomb, which started a fire.” They then “allegedly fled in a white Renault car,” the news agency said.
State media Russia 24 reported the roof of the venue has partially collapsed.
The fire had been brought largely under control more than six hours later. “There are still some pockets of fire, but the fire has been mostly eliminated,” Moscow governor Andrey Vorobyov said on Telegram.
The deadliest terror attack on Moscow in decades, Friday’s assault came less than a week after President Vladimir Putin won a stage-managed election by an overwhelming majority to secure another term in office, tightening his grip on the country he has ruled since the turn of the century.
With attention focused on the country’s war with neighboring Ukraine, Putin had trumpeted a message of national security before Russians went to the polls.
Back in the USA, there are a couple of interesting stories involving Leonard Leo, former head of the Federalist society and staunch supporter of Donald Trump and the 2025 Project.
NBC News: Leonard Leo, Koch networks pour millions into groups prepping for potential second Trump administration.
Huge funding from influential conservative donor networks is flowing into groups affiliated with a conservative venture aimed at creating a Republican “government-in-waiting,” including over $55 million from groups linked to conservative activist Leonard Leo and the Koch network, according to an Accountable.US review shared exclusively with NBC News.
Launched by the Heritage Foundation in April 2022, Project 2025 is a two-pronged initiative to develop staunch conservative policy recommendations and grow a roster of thousands of right-wing personnel ready to fill the next Republican administration. With former President Donald Trump now the GOP’s presumptive 2024 nominee, the effort is essentially laying the groundwork for a potential Trump transition if he wins the election in November.
With contributions from former high-level Trump administration appointees and an advisory board that has grown to over 100 conservative organizations, proponents describe Project 2025 as the most sophisticated transition effort that has existed for conservatives. The initiative includes a manifesto devising a policy agenda for every department, numerous agencies and scores of offices throughout the federal government.
Since 2021, Leo’s network and groups that have gotten funding from it have funneled over $50.7 million to the groups advising the 2025 Presidential Transition Project as part of its “Project 2025 advisory board,” according to tax documents reviewed as part of the analysis by Accountable.US, a progressive advocacy group. That sum includes donations from The 85 Fund, a donor-advised nonprofit group that funnels money from wealthy financiers to other groups, and the Concord Fund, a public-facing organization, which are part of Leo’s network of organizations that seek to influence policy.
According to its 2022 annual return, the 85 Fund gave more than $2.55 million collectively to seven organizations advising Project 2025, including the Heritage Foundation, the Ethics and Public Policy Center, the American Legislative Exchange Council and the Independent Women’s Forum.
In 2021, the 85 Fund gave $2.1 million to the same organizations, less the Heritage Foundation, while the Concord Fund collectively gave $4.32 million to nonprofit groups including Susan B. Anthony List, Independent Women’s Voice and Heritage Action for America.
Read the rest at NBC News.
This is from top notch reporter Heidi Przybyla at Politico: What happens when an AG dares to investigate Leonard Leo’s network.
Allies of Leonard Leo have mounted a monthslong offensive against the man investigating the judicial activist’s network: Washington, D.C., Attorney General Brian Schwalb.
Since news of the probe broke last August, the GOP chairs of powerful congressional committees launched their own investigation of Schwalb’s investigation; conservative media wrote articles criticizing Schwalb on unrelated crime issues — based on a social media post from a top Leo lieutenant; and a group of his Republican law enforcement peers sent letters warning Schwalb to stand down.
Mary Elizabeth Francis, by John F. Francis, born Philadelphia, PA 1808-died Jeffersonville, PA 1886
Leo is the Federalist Society co-chair who has been called former President Donald Trump’s “court whisperer” for helping to choose and advocate for his Supreme Court nominees. His aligned network of tax-exempt nonprofits is also a major contributor to Project 2025, an initiative seeking to create a “government in waiting” for another Trump term.
The white-hot pressure campaign targeting Schwalb attests to the growing range of Leo’s influence. Beyond its work in promoting the conservative legal movement, his billion-dollar network of nonprofits has funded conservative media, Republican attorneys general and the campaign funds of leading congressional figures….
Schwalb has been probing Leo since he received a complaint about whether Leo-aligned groups violated tax laws governing nonprofit organizations, as POLITICO reported last August. Tax-exempt groups in Leo’s network have spent millions of dollars on his for-profit consulting business, CRC Advisors.
But since news of the probe became public, its legal basis has been challenged by 12 GOP attorneys general who are current or former members of the Republican Attorneys General Association. The Concord Fund, one of the Leo network’s primary nonprofits, and its predecessor, the Judicial Crisis Network, have long been RAGA’s biggest funder, directing $20 million to it since 2014, according to annual tax filings.
Meanwhile, GOP Reps. James Jordan, chair of the House Judiciary Committee, and James Comer, who heads the House Oversight Committee, on Oct. 30 announced a probe of Schwalb’s Leo investigation, saying it was politically motivated. According to a federal disclosure form dated Oct. 20, the Concord Fund had hired a Virginia lobbying firm to handle issues related to “oversight” and “law enforcement,” matters over which Jordan and Comer have jurisdiction.
Read the rest at Politico.
Things aren’t going that well for far right members of the House, however. Politico: Johnson’s margin drops to one vote as Gallagher heads for early exit.
Speaker Mike Johnson is about to drop to a one-vote majority, as retiring Rep. Mike Gallagher has decided he will exit the House as soon as next month, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.
In a statement shortly after this story published, Gallagher said he planned to leave April 19.
“I’ve worked closely with House Republican leadership on this timeline and look forward to seeing Speaker Mike Johnson appoint a new chair to carry out the important mission of the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party,” he said.
Wisconsin law dictates that Gallagher’s seat — in a solidly red district — will stay empty for the rest of his term. Departing before April 9 would have triggered a special election.
The Wisconsin Republican announced earlier this year that he would not seek reelection, after he received blowback for voting against impeaching Homeland Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. His allies, however, say he was long jaded by the antics of the House following the ouster of Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
It’s bad timing for Johnson, who is now potentially facing a vote on his ouster in the coming weeks. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) filed the so-called motion to vacate on Friday, over Johnson working with Democrats to pass a massive spending bill, but it’s unclear when she’ll try to force the vote on the floor. At the moment, no other Republicans have said they support her motion.
Gallagher’s decision to not finish out the term also further fuels conference concerns over its trajectory headed into the November election.
“It’s tough, but it’s tough with a five-seat majority, it’s tough with a two-seat majority, one is going to be the same. We all have to work together. We’re all going to have to unite if we’re going get some things done,” Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) said shortly after Gallagher announced his early exit.
When Rep. Ken Buck of Colorado announced his early exit, he said he knew of three more House members who were on the verge of quitting. If that happens, control of the House could switch to the Democrats.
That’s all I have for you today. What do you think? What other stories are you following?
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Posted: March 19, 2022 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: Afternoon Reads | Tags: caturday, daylight saving time, death penalty, Fat Cat Art, firing squad, GOP smears, Josh Hawley, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Lawrence O'Donnell, MSNBC, no fly zone, OAN, QAnon, Russia Ukraine war, South Carolina |
Good Afternoon!!
St.Gertrude herself and cats Zarathustra and David Bowie captured in stained glass
It’s been a long time since I posted Fat Cat Art by Svetlana Petrova & Zarathustra the Cat / FatCatArt.com. Dakinikat posted a comment on Thursday about St. Gertrude, the patron saint of cats, whose feast day is the same as St. Patrick’s day. I was looking for paintings of her when I came across this one at the Fat Cat Art site. The other images in this post are also by Petrova and her late beloved ginger cat Zarathustra.
The Ukraine war rages on, as Putin continues to commit ghastly war crimes by attacking civilians. Reading about what’s happening, let alone watching the images on TV is horrifying. It’s a terribly helpless feeling, and there’s a temptation to want the U.S. to get more actively involved, but that is simply impossible.
Last night on MSNBC, Lawrence O’Donnell gave a powerful explanation of what the U.S. trying to enforce a no fly zone over Ukraine would mean. You can watch it on The Last Word website. It lasts about 7 minutes. Basically, O’Donnell said that the very idea is a fantasy and that a no fly zone has never been enforced against a nuclear power. It would mean U.S. and Russian pilots being shot down and killed and would also involve U.S. planes flying over Russian territory. I recommend watching it if you didn’t see it last night.
For the latest news on Ukraine, I recommend The Guardian’s summary of the latest updates: Russia-Ukraine war: what we know on day 24 of the invasion.
- Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy says the time has come for peace talks, warning that it will otherwise take generations for Russia to recover from losses suffered during the war. He released a video address saying Ukraine wanted meaningful and honest negotiations with Moscow on peace and security without delay, Reuters reported. “The time has come for a meeting – it is time to talk.” Zelenskiy said Russian forces were deliberately blocking humanitarian supplies to cities under attack.
- Ukraine’s position is unchanged in talks with Russia, Ukrainian negotiator Mykhailo Podolyak said. Earlier today, a member of Russia’s negotiating team said Moscow and Kyiv were most aligned on Ukraine’s neutrality and giving up on joining Nato. Podolyak accused Russian statements of attempting “to provoke tension in the media”.
- Russia says it has used a hypersonic weapon for the first time, to destroy an underground military depot in western Ukraine. Hypersonic missiles are fast weapons that can evade detection by missile defence systems. The defence ministry said it had destroyed a large underground depot for missiles and aircraft ammunition in the Ivano-Frankivsk region.
- Ukraine’s interior minster told Associated Press it would take years to find and defuse all of the unexploded ordnance from the country. Denys Monastyrsky said: “A huge number of shells and mines have been fired at Ukraine and a large part haven’t exploded. They remain under the rubble and pose a real threat. It will take years, not months, to defuse them.”
- Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, praised Fox News for its coverage of the war in Ukraine during an in-studio interview with the Russian state-controlled RT network. “We know the manners and the tricks that are being used by the western countries to manipulate media … If you take the United States, only Fox News is trying to present some alternative point of view,” he said.
Click the link for more updates.
Boris Kustodiev. Merchant’s Wife at Cat’s Tea
In other news, Republicans are of course trying to smear Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson and it is sickening.
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Posted: July 25, 2019 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: Afternoon Reads, Media, U.S. Politics | Tags: Brian Williams, Chuck Todd, Donald Trump, impeachment, MSNBC, Robert Mueller |
Good Afternoon!!
If Trump succeeds in destroying our democracy and becoming Hitler 2.0, the responsibility will be equally shared between the GOP and the U.S. political media. Yesterday Robert Mueller confirmed that Trump has committed high crimes and implied that Congress should impeach him. The media responded by reviewing the style and “optics” of his presentation, paying little attention to its content.
The ever-shallow Chuck Todd led the charge on Twitter. I won’t subject you to the video.
So-called leftist Michael Moore agreed with Todd.
The Columbia Journalism Review critiqued Chuck Todd’s remarks as well as those of other MSNBC hosts: MSNBC public editor: The Chuck Todd show.
Todd’s focus on the “entertainment” aspect of politics coverage is often in evidence—for example, in his own recent performance as moderator in the Democratic presidential debate. He managed to talk more than all but three of the candidates, even as he demanded that they keep their own answers brief….
For Chuck Todd all the political world’s a stage, and he’s the star….
And it’s not just Todd. Other MSNBC anchors reacted to the Mueller hearings similarly, finding fault with the Democrats’, and Mueller’s, lack of pizazz as performers. Brian Williams referred to “the caffeine gap” in the Judiciary Committee’s questioning. I can’t help pointing out that excessive concern with caffeinated pizzazz can warp a journalist’s judgement pretty severely, and is best avoided.
At a moment of particular gravity for the country, with the sitting president credibly accused of obstructing justice, and many of his campaign staff and associates under investigation and indictment, may I suggest that if you, a journalist, are bored with the politics of this—if you are demanding somehow to be entertained, right now—you’re not doing your job.
Politics isn’t entertainment, it is not a performance to be critiqued. Reporting on national politics is a public trust of solemn importance that affects hundreds of millions of people.
A sample of headlines from the “savvy” Washington press:
Peter Baker at The New York Times: The Blockbuster That Wasn’t: Mueller Disappoints the Democrats. [I skimmed the story, and could find no quotes from Democrats holding elected office. Several prominent experts were quoted arguing Mueller’s testimony was valuable.]
Sharon LaFraniere, Michael S. Schmidt, Noah Weiland and Adam Goldman at The New York Times: Mueller’s Labored Performance Was a Departure From His Once-Fabled Stamina.
Susan Glasser at The New Yorker: “Accountability”? The Mueller Hearing Is How Trump Escapes. [FYI: Susan Glasser is married to Peter Baker of the NYT.]
Some serious reactions to Mueller’s testimony:
Former Republican Jennifer Rubin: Mueller didn’t fail. The country did.
Being thousands of miles away from home in Portugal, a country that 45 years ago was in the grasp of a brutal dictatorship, gives me an interesting perspective on former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s Wednesday testimony and on the now nearly forgotten — was it only a week ago? — racist call for four nonwhite congresswomen to “go back” to where they came from.
Tom Toles Editorial Cartoon
I worry that we — the media, voters, Congress — are dangerously unserious when it comes to preservation of our democracy. To spend hours of airtime and write hundreds of print and online reports pontificating about the “optics” of Mueller’s performance — when he confirmed that President Trump accepted help from a hostile foreign power and lied about it, that he lied when he claimed exoneration, that he was not completely truthful in written answers, that he could be prosecuted after leaving office and that he misled Americans by calling the investigation a hoax — tells me that we have become untrustworthy guardians of democracy.
The “failure” is not of a prosecutor who found the facts but might be ill equipped to make the political case, but instead, of a country that won’t read his report and a media obsessed with scoring contests rather than focusing on the damning facts at issue.
David Corn at Mother Jones: Mueller Reminds the Public: Trump Betrayed the United States.
There’s an old saying in newsrooms: News is stuff that people have forgotten. Robert Mueller’s dramatic appearance before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday morning was a striking reminder of this adage. The former special counsel did not drop any new revelations about the Trump-Russia affair. Yet in a simple but important manner, he reiterated the basics of this scandal—perhaps the most consequential political scandal in American history. These are the fundamentals that have often been subsumed by all the never-ending partisan squabbling and by the ongoing crusade mounted by Donald Trump and his defenders to distract from his perfidy. These are the facts that Trump has refused to acknowledge, and they are the facts that taint his presidency and undermine its legitimacy.
In his opening statement, Mueller emphasized the key finding from his report: “The Russian government interfered in our election in sweeping and systematic fashion.” And during the questioning, Mueller repeated the conclusion previously reached by the US intelligence community that Russia conducted this covert operation to help Trump get elected. “Did your investigation find that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from one of the candidates winning?” Mueller was asked by Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.). He replied with one word: “Yes.” Lofgren followed up: “And which candidate would that be?” Mueller responded, “Well, it would be Trump.”
So Russia attacked an American election to help Trump. And what did Trump do? “The Trump campaign wasn’t exactly reluctant to take Russian help,” Lofgren remarked to Mueller. “You wrote it expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts, isn’t that correct.”
Mueller answered with another brief sentence: “That’s correct.” That is, Trump sought to exploit a foreign adversary’s clandestine assault. And as Mueller noted in his report, during the campaign Trump dismissed the notion that Russia was intervening in the election, and after he was elected he continued to deny “that Russia aided his election.”
Click the link to read the rest.
David Graham at The Atlantic: The Most Revealing Exchange of the Mueller Hearing.
There’s a logical disconnect in volume 2 of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report that is unmissable to any careful reader.
As Mueller explains in the report, a charge of obstruction of justice requires three elements: an obstructive act, a nexus with an official proceeding, and corrupt intent. And in the report, Mueller’s team laid out several cases where President Donald Trump committed an obstructive act, in connection with an official proceeding, with what Mueller’s team concluded could be a corrupt intent.
But because Mueller had decided at the outset of his report that he could not and would not charge the president with crimes, thanks to Justice Department guidance and in the interest of fairness, Mueller did not make the otherwise obvious jump from laying out the ways that Trump’s behavior met the three-prong test to actually stating that Trump obstructed justice.
During today’s House Judiciary Committee hearing, Democratic Representative Hakeem Jeffries sought to demonstrate the disconnect by walking Mueller through the three-prong test.
“Let me refer you to page 87 and 88 of volume 2 where you conclude the attempt to remove the special counsel would qualify as an obstructive act if it would naturally obstruct the investigation and any grand-jury proceedings that might flow from the inquiry. Correct?” Jeffries asked.
“Yes,” Mueller said, confirming the obstructive act.
“Yes,” Mueller said, confirming the obstructive act.
“Your report found on page 89, volume 2, that substantial evidence indicates that by June 17, the president knew his conduct was under investigation by a federal prosecutor who would present any evidence of federal crimes to a grand jury. True?” Jeffries asked.
“True,” Mueller said, confirming the nexus to an official proceeding.
Jeffries then moved on to the third element, corrupt intent, and Mueller once again effectively affirmed the point:
Jeffries: Is it fair to say the president viewed the special counsel’s investigation as adverse to his own interest?
Mueller: I think that generally is true.
Jeffries: The investigation found evidence, quote, “that the president knew that he should not have directed Don McGahn to fire the special counsel.” Correct?
Mueller: Where do you have that quote?
Jeffries: Page 90, volume 2. “There’s evidence that the president knew he should not have made those calls to McGahn,” closed quote.
Mueller: I see that. Yes, that’s accurate.
Mueller, seeing the trick, tried to cut it off. “Let me just say, if I might, I don’t subscribe necessarily to your—the way you analyzed that. I’m not saying it’s out of the ballpark, but I’m not supportive of that analytical charge,” he said.
Graham writes that Mueller tried to backtrack, but the cat was out of the bag. Ted Lieu did something similar; head over the The Atlantic to read more.
This piece by Jonathan Bernstein at Bloomberg is worth a read: Worst Part of the Mueller Hearings? Republican Conspiracy Theories.
Instead of reading carefully into the evidence and finding contradictions or loose ends, House Republicans largely busied themselves with conspiracy theories. It wasn’t Donald Trump and his campaign who welcomed and benefited from Russian interference in the 2016 election; it was Hillary Clinton! Never mind what U.S. intelligence agencies and Senate investigators have concluded. Never mind that this reality-denying line of inquiry left lawmakers defending Wikileaks and even, seemingly, the Russian agents indicted by Mueller.
For these Republicans, it’s still supposedly inexplicable that the FBI started investigating in the first place. In their stated conception of things, only partisanship and hatred of the president could explain such an otherwise odd decision to look into the rich web of shady contacts between the Trump campaign and Russians. And yet those partisan and hateful investigators didn’t leak anything about the probe when it would’ve put Trump’s election in jeopardy; didn’t indict or recommend impeachment of the president; and didn’t rush to testify to Congress about any of it.
Meanwhile, with the notable exception of Texas Representative Will Hurd, Republicans showed no interest at all in the national-security implications of Russia’s interference. And remember, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is still blocking bipartisan legislation to strengthen U.S. defenses against future attacks.
These are the same Republicans, after all, who spent years looking into conspiracy theories about the deaths of Americans in Benghazi in 2012 without ever attending to the real security vulnerabilities that contributed to them. It was far more important to feed the Republican marketplace with loony ideas about how President Barack Obama (or Hillary Clinton) actively welcomed the disaster than to figure out what had actually gone wrong or what to do about it.
I’ll end with this tweet from the woman who should be president, written after Trump’s latest Nazi/KKK rally.
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Posted: February 21, 2019 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: Andrew McCabe, Andrew Miller, CNN, Donald Trump, Jerome Corsi, Matt Schlapp, Mercedes Schlapp, MSNBC, mystery foreign corporation, Robert Mueller, Roger Stone, Russia investigation, Sarah Isgur Flores, Special Counsel, T. S. Elliot, William Barr |
Good Morning!!
Trump’s handpicked Attorney General has been in place for just a few days, and suddenly multiple news organizations are reporting that the Mueller investigation is ending soon. Interestingly, The New York Times has not yet reported this story.
What’s going on? There are multiple outstanding cases. Roger Stone was only recently arrested and the Special Counsel’s Office can’t possibly have gone through all the materials they collected in searches at three different locations. The Supreme Court has not yet ruled on the mystery foreign company that is resisting the SCO’s subpoena. Andrew Miller is still fighting a grand jury subpoena. What about the case of Jerome Corsi, who said he was told he’d be indicted? What about Donald Trump Jr.?
I think we have to ask if in fact the Trump obstruction has finally worked. I’d also like to know why reporters are so gleeful about the purported end of the investigation? Why is there no skepticism about how coincidental this all seems.
There’s also this:
WTF? Note that Matt Schlapp’s wife Mercedes is the White House Director of Strategic Communications.
One more coincidence: the new politics editor at CNN is Sarah Isgur Flores, a right wing conspiracy theorist who most recently worked as Jeff Sessions’ spokesperson at DOJ. Could she be a source for these stories about the end of the Mueller probe?
Vanity Fair: “She Was Pitching her Intimate Knowledge of the Mueller Probe”: Sarah Isgur Flores, Former Trumper, Talked to MSNBC Before Signing with CNN.
CNN’s hiring of Sarah Isgur Flores, a longtime G.O.P. operative who has worked for Carly Fiorina and Ted Cruz, and most recently served as a spokeswoman for Jeff Sessions in the Justice Department (a position that reportedly involved a loyalty pledge to Donald Trump), caused an immediate and fairly predictable media firestorm. Unlike Corey Lewandowski, who was hired to great consternation during the 2016 election cycle (and then terminated), Flores won’t simply be an ideological talking head—she’ll be playing a larger role in the editorial process. Despite a lack of journalism experience, she will be helping to coordinate CNN’s political coverage across platforms, as well as occasionally appearing on-air as a political analyst, which is the more customary role for former politicians and government officials. Within the media world, she is seen as a controversial and unorthodox appointment. Moreover, Isgur apparently has a history of lambasting the mainstream media on Twitter, including CNN, which she once termed the “Clinton News Network.”
Sarah Isgur Flores
All of this has led to a fair amount of bafflement as to why CNN would hire her in a senior editorial role reporting to political director David Chalian.“Why CNN made this move to begin with is the deeper and more troubling question,” Margaret Sullivan wrote Wednesday in The Washington Post.
As far as how the talks came about in the first place, it appears that Isgur, as she was preparing to exit the D.O.J., wasn’t only shopping around for a media gig at CNN. Cable-news sources told me that she also passed through 30 Rock to discuss a potential role at MSNBC, where she met with top newsroom management in recent months. “She had a detailed idea of what she wanted to do,” someone with knowledge of the discussions told me. “She wanted to do something on-air combined with some sort of quasi-management, behind-the-scenes planning kind of work. I think she looked at Dave Chalian and said, I wanna do that.” A second source with direct knowledge of the talks said that such a role “was never under consideration.” This person added, “She was pitching her intimate knowledge of the Mueller probe as a selling point.”
Read the rest at Vanity Fair.
Here’s some speculation from Emptywheel: The Significance of the Rod Rosenstein/William Barr Window.
This is happening in the window of time when Rod Rosenstein is still around and — because William Barr has presumably not been through an ethics review on the investigation — presumably back in charge of sole day-to-day supervision of the investigation. But it is happening after Barr has been confirmed, and so any problems with the investigation that might stem from having an inferior officer (an unconfirmed hack like the Big Dick Toilet Salesman) supervising Mueller are gone.
I’m fairly certain the concerns about Barr coming in and forcing Mueller to finish this are misplaced. I say that, in part, because Mueller seemed to be preparing for this timing. I say it, too, because Barr is too close to Mueller to do that to him.
That says that Mueller is choosing this timing (and choosing not to wait for the appeals to be done). Whatever reason dictates this timing, by doing it in this window, Mueller can ensure the legitimacy of what happens, both legally (because Barr will be in place) and politically (because it will be clear Rosenstein presided over it).
I still don’t get it. It looks to me like we are going to have to count on the Democrats in the House to continue the investigation. Meanwhile Andrew McCabe is just beginning his book tour and he clearly thinks that Trump is a Russian asset.
This afternoon, Roger Stone will learn whether he is going to jail for threatening the judge in his case or if he at least will have to pay some bail instead of continuing to be free on his own recognizance. It’s also still possible there could be indictments tomorrow. And Mueller could file a detailed “report” in the sentencing memo for Paul Manafort on Friday. It’s also possible that Mueller isn’t really wrapping up. We’ll have to wait and see.
Two More Reads on Mueller’s Supposed End
Neal Kaytal at The New York times: The Mueller Report Is Coming. Here’s What to Expect.
The special counsel Robert Mueller will apparently soon turn in a report to the new attorney general, William Barr. Sure, there is still a lot of activity, including subpoenas, flying around, but that shouldn’t stop Mr. Mueller.
The report is unlikely to be a dictionary-thick tome, which will disappoint some observers. But such brevity is not necessarily good news for the president. In fact, quite the opposite.
For months, the president’s lawyers have tried to discredit Mr. Mueller and this report, but their efforts may have backfired. A concise Mueller report might act as a “road map” to investigation for the Democratic House of Representatives — and it might also lead to further criminal investigation by other prosecutors. A short Mueller report would mark the end of the beginning, not the beginning of the end.
The report is unlikely to be lengthy by design: The special counsel regulations, which I had the privilege of drafting in 1999, envision a report that is concise, “a summary” of what he found. And Mr. Mueller’s mandate is limited: to look into criminal activity and counterintelligence matters surrounding Russia and the 2016 election, as well as any obstruction of justice relating to those investigations.
The regulations require the attorney general to give Congress a report, too. The regulations speak of the need for public confidence in the administration of justice and even have a provision for public release of the attorney general’s report. In a world where Mr. Mueller was the only investigator, the pressure for a comprehensive report to the public would be overwhelming.
This is where the “witch hunt” attacks on Mr. Mueller may have backfired. For 19 months, Mr. Trump and his team have had one target to shoot at, and that target has had limited jurisdiction. But now the investigation resembles the architecture of the internet, with many different nodes, and some of those nodes possess potentially unlimited jurisdiction. Their powers and scope go well beyond Mr. Mueller’s circumscribed mandate; they go to Mr. Trump’s judgment and whether he lied to the American people. They also include law enforcement investigations having nothing to do with Russia, such as whether the president directed the commission of serious campaign finance crimes, as federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York have already stated in filings. These are all critical matters, each with serious factual predicates already uncovered by prosecutors.
Read the rest at the NYT.
Garrett Graff at Wired: 7 Scenarios for how the Mueller Probe Might “Wrap Up.”
THE BREAKING NEWS hit a snowy Washington on Wednesday: Newly installed attorney general William Barrappears to be preparing to announce the end of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.
But what would “Mueller wrapping up” actually mean?
And does the rapid movement, soon after Barr was installed at the Justice Department, indicate that he shut down the Mueller probe prematurely? A recent New York Times article documenting Trump’s two-year-long campaign to obstruct and muddy the investigation exacerbated those fears, as did an ominous tweet by conservative commentator—and White House spouse—Matt Schlapp pronouncing that “Mueller will be gone soon.”
The tea leaves around Mueller in recent weeks seem especially hard to read—and they’re conflicting at best. CNN’s special counsel stakeout has spotted prosecutors working long hours, through snow days and holidays—just as they were in the days before Michael Cohen’s surprise guilty plea last fall for lying to Congress—yet there’s also been no apparent grand jury movement since Roger Stone’s indictment. So even as CNN’s stakeout spotted DC prosecutors entering Mueller’s offices—the type of people who Mueller might hand off cases to as he winds down—and the special counsel’s staff carting out boxes, there’s also recent evidence that Mueller still has a longer game in mind. The Roger Stone prosecution is just getting underway. Mueller is still litigating over a mystery foreign company. And he’s pushing forward trying to gain testimony from a Stone associate, Andrew Miller.
In fact, the list of loose threads at this point is, in some ways, longer than the list of what Mueller has done publicly. There’s conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi’s aborted plea deal; would-be Middle East power broker George Nader’s lengthy cooperation with Mueller, which has resulted in no public charges; the mysterious Seychelles meeting between Blackwater mercenary founder Erik Prince and a Russian businessman; and then—of course—the big question of obstruction of justice. Add to that the host of recent witness testimony from the House Intelligence Committee that representative Adam Schiff has turned over to Mueller’s office, in which other witnesses, Schiff says, appear to have lied to Congress. And besides, there are a host of breadcrumbs that Mueller left in the more than 500 pages of his court filings that would all prove superfluous if further action didn’t lie ahead.
Head over to Wired to read the rest.
What do you think? Please share your thoughts and links on any topic in the comment thread below.
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Posted: December 23, 2017 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: Charles Dickens, Donald Trump, Jared Kushner, Joan Walsh, MSNBC, NATO, Russia |
Good Afternoon!!
The rest of the illustrations in this post are from Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.
What is going on with MSNBC? First they hire Hugh Hewitt and Peggy Noonan, then they dump Joan Walsh two days before Christmas.
TBogg at Raw Story: ‘F*ck you MSNBC’: Network hammered with #KeepJoanWalsh after stunning pre-Christmas firing of commentator.
Decision makers at MSNBC are taking a beating on Twitter after it was revealed late Friday night that they had fired longtime contributor Joan Walsh just days before Christmas.
Taking to Twitter on Saturday morning, Walsh, confirmed her dismissal from the network, writing, “So it’s true: after 12 years on MSNBC, six on contract, I learned Friday night they are not renewing. I’ve given my heart and soul to the network, from the George W. Bush years through today. I’m proud of the work I did.”
She later added that the firing came out of the blue.
“Yes, it’s Christmas weekend,” she tweeted. “I was baking pies with my daughter, who is home for the holidays, when I got the news. It didn’t feel too good. But all of your support helps, a lot. I’m grateful to the people who have fought for me.”
Walsh, who has a large following both online and since she was once an editor at Salon and The Nation, received a wave of support with #KeepJoanWalsh trending on Twitter, as the network was attacked for dropping the liberal commentator while still employing conservative Hugh Hewitt who inexplicably was given his own show.
https://twitter.com/Shakestweetz/status/944597820627214336
Why would MSNBC keep Peggy Noonan over Joan Walsh? Are Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O’Donnell next? Shame on MSNBC!
As an antidote to all the bad news, here’s an interesting long read from the Literary Hub: Charles Dickens Had Serious Beef With America and Its Bad Manners and How It Led to His Writing A Christmas Carol.
Charles Dickens’ unfettered joy at first arriving in Boston Harbor in 1842 reads like Ebenezer Scrooge’s awakening on Christmas morning. Biographer Peter Ackroyd reports that he flew up the steps of the Tremont House Hotel, sprang into the hall, and greeted a curious throng with a bright “Here we are!” He took to the streets that twinkling midnight in his shaggy fur coat, galloping over frozen snow, shouting out the names on shop signs, pulling bell-handles of doors as he passed—giddy with laughter—and even screamed with (one imagines) astonishment and delight at the sight of the old South Church. He had set at last upon the shores of “the Republic of my imagination.”
America returned his ardor. Though not quite 30, Dickens was a literary rock star, the most famous writer in the world, who landed like a conquering hero in a country swept up in an extreme “Boz-o-mania”—the hype of his tour then unprecedented in American history. He wrote his best friend, John Forster, that he didn’t know how to describe “the crowds that pour in and out the whole day; of the people that line the streets when I go out; of the cheering when I went to the theatre; of the copies of verse, letters of congratulations, welcomes of all kinds, balls, dinners, assemblies without end?” When Bostonians renamed their city “Boz-town,” New Yorkers determined to “outdollar . . . and outshine them.” Their great Boz Ball boasted flags, flowers, festoons, wreaths, a huge portrait of the author with a bald eagle overhead, chandeliers hung by gilded ropes, 22 tableaux from the great author’s works, and 3,000 guests, who consumed 50 hams, 50 tongues, 38,000 stewed and pickled oysters, and 4,000 candy kisses. “If I should live to grow old,” Dickens said, “the scenes of this and other evenings will shine as brightly to my dull eyes 50 years hence as now.” [….]
His love affair with an idealized America was short-lived and hard-felt. Apart from the country’s great writers, he found Americans malodorous, ill-mannered and invading his privacy. “I am so enclosed and hemmed about with people, that I am exhausted from want of air,” Dickens complained to Forster. “I go to church for quiet, and there is a violent rush to the neighborhood of the pew I sit in. I take my seat in a railroad car, and the very conductor won’t leave me alone. I can’t drink a glass of water without having a hundred people looking down my throat.” On a tour of the Great Lakes he woke to a crowd gawking through his steamboat cabin window while his wife slept and he washed.
He was repulsed by Americans’ table manners and the tobacco spit everywhere he looked—on even the sidewalks of the nation’s capital, where he found party politics contaminating everything, its leaders “the lice of God’s creation,” and “despicable trickery at elections; under-handed tamperings with public officers; and cowardly attacks upon opponents, with scurrilous newspapers for shields, and hired pens for daggers.”
Bob Chratchit and Tiny Tim, by Frederick Barnard, 1877
Even worse, everyone wanted a piece of the action, from Tiffany’s selling unauthorized copies of his bust, to a barber selling locks of his hair. He found Americans vulgar and insensitive, braggarts, hypocrites, and acquisitive beyond all imagining. “I never knew what it was to feel disgust and contempt,” Dickens said, “‘till I travelled in America.” When he departed in June, he left behind all notions of an Arcadian realm he now regarded as “a vast countinghouse” full of nothing but “humbugs and bores.” (See: A Christmas Carol.)
It sounds a lot like Donald Trump’s American, doesn’t it?
Speaking of Dear Leader, he’s now down in Palm Beach where his handlers will be unable to keep him from talking to his wingnut pals and making impulsive decisions.
CNN: Trump reunites with his kitchen cabinet in Mar-a-Lago.
Minutes before President Donald Trump departed the White House on Friday for his languid Florida hideaway, he appeared to exasperate aides who had hoped he might avoid holding court with the press.
“Helicopter is running out of gas,” his chief of staff, John Kelly, announced, not-so-gently nudging the assembled reporters and cameramen from the Oval Office as Trump continued to happily answer their questions.
White House aides, wishing for the President to depart Washington without venting about the Russia probe or his other political woes, were largely successful in avoiding pratfalls that might obscure the Republicans’ tax victory this week.
Marley’s Ghost
Vacationing in Florida for the first extended period in months, however, Trump isn’t likely to find himself under as strict restraints. At Mar-a-Lago, an oceanfront paean to Trump himself, the President is prone to holding court at will, consulting advisers both real and self-imagined, and basking in the knowledge that he’s the only man in charge.
Topics on the table include the future of key Cabinet officials like Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Middle East policy and the makeup of his political team.
And of course the Russia investigation. Read the rest to learn who’s in the “kitchen cabinet.”
I wonder if Trump cares about this from The Washington Post: Russian submarines are prowling around vital undersea cables. It’s making NATO nervous.
Russian submarines have dramatically stepped up activity around undersea data cables in the North Atlantic, part of a more aggressive naval posture that has driven NATO to revive a Cold War-era command, according to senior military officials.
The apparent Russian focus on the cables, which provide Internet and other communications connections to North America and Europe, could give the Kremlin the power to sever or tap into vital data lines, the officials said. Russian submarine activity has increased to levels unseen since the Cold War, they said, sparking hunts in recent months for the elusive watercraft.
“We are now seeing Russian underwater activity in the vicinity of undersea cables that I don’t believe we have ever seen,” said U.S. Navy Rear Adm. Andrew Lennon, the commander of NATO’s submarine forces. “Russia is clearly taking an interest in NATO and NATO nations’ undersea infrastructure.”
NATO has responded with plans to reestablish a command post, shuttered after the Cold War, to help secure the North Atlantic. NATO allies are also rushing to boost anti-submarine warfare capabilities and to develop advanced submarine-detecting planes.
The Last of the Spirits by Harry Furniss
Yesterday we learned that federal prosecutors in New York are looking into Jared Kushner’s finances.
The New York Times: Prosecutors Said to Seek Kushner Records From Deutsche Bank.
Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn have sought bank records about entities associated with the family company of Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, according to four people briefed on the matter.
In recent weeks, prosecutors from the United States attorney’s office in the Eastern District of New York subpoenaed records from Deutsche Bank, the giant German financial institution that has lent hundreds of millions of dollars to the Kushner family real estate business.
Mr. Kushner, who was the Kushner Companies’ chief executive until January, still owns part of the business after selling some of his stake….
There is no indication that the subpoena is related to the investigation being conducted by Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, into Russian meddling in the 2016 United States presidential election. Three prosecutors on Mr. Mueller’s team previously worked at the United States attorney’s office in Brooklyn, one as recently as this year. Federal prosecutors around the country typically check with Justice Department headquarters when their investigations may overlap.
The Brooklyn United States attorney has been investigating the Kushner businesses’ use of a program known as EB-5. It offers visas to overseas investors in exchange for $500,000 investments in real estate projects.
So if Trump pardons Jared, he’ll still be in legal jeopardy. Good!
There’s tons more news even though we’re going into a big holiday weekend. That’s the new normal in Trump’s America. What stories are you following today?
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