The Commentariat -- January 8, 2018

Afternoon Update:

Carol Leonnig of the Washington Post: "Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III has raised the likelihood with President Trump's legal team that his office will seek an interview with the president, triggering a discussion among his attorneys about how to avoid a sit-down encounter or set limits on such a session, according to two people familiar with the talks. Mueller brought up the issue of interviewing Trump during a late December meeting with the president's lawyers, John Dowd and Jay Sekulow. Mueller deputy James Quarles, who oversees the White House portion of the special counsel investigation, also attended. The special counsel's team could interview Trump very soon on some limited portion of questions -- possibly within the next several weeks, according to a person close to the president who was granted anonymity to describe internal conversations."

Robert Barnes of the Washington Post: "The Supreme Court on Monday gave a black death row inmate in Georgia a chance to challenge his death sentence because a white juror in his case later used a racial epithet in an affidavit and questioned whether black people have souls. The justices stayed the execution last fall of Keith Leroy Tharpe, who was sentenced to death in 1991 for the murder of his sister-in-law, Jaquelin Freeman. He shot and killed Freeman and left her body in a ditch while kidnapping and later raping his estranged wife."

Pete Williams of NBC News: "The U.S. Supreme Court declined Monday to take up a legal battle over a Mississippi law that allows state employees and private businesses to deny services to LGBT people based on religious objections. Signed into law in 2016 in response to the Supreme Court's gay marriage ruling, it allows county clerks to avoid issuing marriage licenses to gay couples and protects businesses from lawsuits if they refuse to serve LGBT customers. The law was immediately challenged. But lower courts, without ruling on the merits of the law, said those suing could not show that they would be harmed by it. A new round of challenges is expected from residents who have been denied service, and the issue could come back to the Supreme Court's doorstep." See also Akhilleus's comment below. ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Seems as if the Supremes may have declined to take the case because the law's challengers were deemed to have failed the "standing" test. That doesn't mean the underlying case doesn't have merit; it just means the challengers are going to have to find more convincing victims. That should be pretty easy. I'd guess there are already a number of Mississippi couples who were denied marriage licenses or were refused services because their names were John & Joe or Emily & Heather.

Miriam Jordan of the New York Times on the Trump administration's latest deportation extravaganza: this time, 200,000 Salvadorans who have enjoyed temporary protection status for more than a decade. Mrs. McC: once again, this isn't just cruel; it's stupid.

If you're in danger of imminent arrest & detention, try to look good in your mugshot -- it could pay off.

*****

NEW. Get Out! Washington Post: "The Department of Homeland Security will not renew the Temporary Protected Status designation that has allowed the Salvadorans to remain in the United States since at least 2001, when their country was struck by a pair of devastating earthquakes, according to multiple people with knowledge of the plan." This is a breaking story & will be updated. Mrs. McC: Disgusting how every Trump administration immigration decision is an "only whitey-white people allowed" decision.

NEW. Brian Stelter of CNN: "Oprah Winfrey is 'actively thinking' about running for president, two of her close friends told CNN Monday. The two friends, who requested anonymity in order to speak freely, talked in the wake of Winfrey's extraordinary speech at the Golden Globes Sunday night, which spurred chatter about a 2020 run. Some of Winfrey's confidants have been privately urging her to run, the sources said. One of the sources said these conversations date back several months. The person emphasized that Winfrey has not made up her mind about running." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: We've had two celebrity presidents in the last half-century (and one of them had been governor of California for eight years). How'd that work out? Of course I'd like to see a woman become POTUS, but please, not one who made Dr. Phil a star.

NEW. Yeah, #StableGenius. Louis Nelson of Politico: "For a few minutes Sunday night..., Donald Trump claimed his has been an 'enormously consensual' presidency. The claim was a typo, part of a string of tweets excerpting a New York Post column praising Trump's administration. The original post was soon replaced with a new one that contained the correct word, 'consequential,' but that didn't stop the president's tweet from becoming the subject of online ridicule.... The tweet stood out in part because multiple women have accused the president of harassment or abuse." ...

... Susannah Cullinane of CNN: Conservative New York Post columnist Michael"Goodwin [who wrote the laudatory column Trump misquoted] appears to have retweeted Trump's initial post, thanking the President on his Twitter feed above a box that Sunday night read, 'This tweet is unavailable,' before retweeting Trump's replacement version. Others on Twitter denied that they had 'consented' to Trump's leadership and a number included the hashtag #StableGenius when commenting on Trump's typo...."

"Executive Time." Jonathan Swan of Axios: "Trump's days in the Oval Office are relatively short -- from around 11am to 6pm, then he's back to the residence. During that time he usually has a meeting or two, but spends a good deal of time making phone calls and watching cable news in the dining room adjoining the Oval. Then he's back to the residence for more phone calls and more TV.... This is largely to meet Trump's demands for more 'Executive Time,' which almost always means TV and Twitter time alone in the residence, officials tell us. The schedules shown to me are different than the sanitized ones released to the media and public.... In the earliest days of the Trump administration it began earlier and ended later." ...

... Jacqueline Thomsen of the Hill: "Trump's schedule is significantly shorter than those of past presidents. Former President George W. Bush would arrive in the Oval Office by 6:45 a.m., and former President Obama would arrive between 9 and 10 a.m. after his morning workout. [Mrs. McC: Obama also worked late into the evening after having dinner with his family.] The New York Times reported that Trump spends up to 8 hours a day watching television, which Trump has disputed." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Turns out those fake "working vacations" Trump takes every weekend have stretched into every weekday. ...

... It's Not Trump Who's Unstable; It's Fox "News"! Matthew Gertz in Politico Magazine (Jan. 5): "Everyone has a theory about Trump's hyperaggressive early morning tweetstorms.... But my many hours following the president's tweets for Media Matters for America, the progressive media watchdog organization, have convinced me the truth is often much simpler: The president is just live-tweeting Fox, particularly the network's Trump-loving morning show, Fox & Friends.... After comparing the president's tweets with Fox's coverage every day since October, I can tell you that the Fox-Trump feedback loop is happening far more often than you think. There is no strategy to Trump's Twitter feed; he is not trying to distract the media. He is being distracted. He darts with quark-like speed from topic to topic in his tweets because that's how cable news works."

"Where's My Roy Cohn?" Washington Post Editors: "ALL OFFICIALS entering government must swear an oath of loyalty to the Constitution of the United States. President Trump made his own such promise. Yet he appears to believe that the public servants of the Justice Department owe their allegiance not to the Constitution but to him. The litany of Mr. Trump's attacks on the integrity of federal law enforcement is lengthy.... Most disturbingly, Mr. Trump seems not to recognize anything wrong or unusual in his conduct.... It's the responsibility of those who work with Mr. Trump to restrain him as best they can from destroying the norms he fails to recognize -- as [White House counsel Don] McGahn allegedly failed to do. And it's the responsibility of Congress to fulfill its constitutional role as a check to the president's abuses. The Senate can start by refusing to consider any future U.S. attorney nominee who has been interviewed by Mr. Trump." ...

     ... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: This editorial would have been a lot better if the writers had mentioned that Trump's attempt to manipulate the DOJ is an important & dangerous piece of his dictatorial intention to run the federal government as his private fiefdom. (Or as a Chinese political analyst put it, according to Evan Osnos of the New Yorker, Trump practiced "jiatianxia..., an obscure phrase from feudal China [that means] 'to treat the state as your possession.'") "As long as critics write, "Well, he shouldn't have done this," & in another column write, "He shouldn't have done that," the public will not grasp the whole picture.

Ana Swanson & Jim Tankersley of the New York Times: "President Trump will head to Tennessee on Monday to appeal to farmers, a key demographic that helped elect him, as he promotes his tax law and previews a new White House strategy to help rural America. But back in Washington, some of the economic policies his administration is pursuing are at odds with what many in the farm industry say is needed, from a potentially drastic shift in trade policies that have long supported agriculture to some little-noticed tax increases in the $1.5 trillion tax law."

Jeremy Peters, et al., of the New York Times: "Isolated from his political allies and cut off from his financial patrons, Stephen K. Bannon ... issued a striking mea culpa on Sunday for comments he had made that were critical of the president's eldest son. Mr. Bannon, who is quoted in a new book calling Donald Trump Jr.'s meeting with Russians in 2016 'treasonous,' tried to reverse his statements completely, saying that the younger Mr. Trump was 'both a patriot and a good man.' Mr. Bannon spoke out after five days of silence, a delay that he said he regretted. He said his reference to 'treason' had not been aimed at the president's son, but at another campaign official who attended the 2016 Trump Tower meeting, Paul Manafort." Also, Stephen Miller got in a fight with Jake Tapper. & Tapper kicked Miller off the air. More on Miller's grand performance below. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Here's Bannon's full statement, via the New York Times. You may recall that a few days ago Asawin Suebsaeng of The Daily Beast reported that "On Wednesday morning, Steve Bannon and his closest advisers were preparing a statement to atone for scorched-earth comments he'd made about ... Donald Trump and his eldest son Donald Trump Jr., that had been printed in Michael Wolff's new book on the Trump White House. But before Team Bannon was able to make its statement public, the president dropped atomic tonnage on his former White House chief strategist." So Bannon decided not to publish his mea culpa." ...

... David Nakamura, et al., of the Washington Post: "Stephen K. Bannon's mea culpa came as Trump and his senior aides continued a barrage of public insults against him.... Trump on Sunday continued to lambaste Wolff on Twitter, denouncing the 'Fake Book, written by a totally discredited author.'... The president's top policy adviser, Stephen Miller, on Sunday called Bannon an 'angry, vindictive person' whose 'grotesque comments are so out of touch with reality.'" ...

... Chris Cillizza of CNN: "White House senior adviser Stephen Miller was by turns combative and obsequious in an interview Sunday with CNN's Jake Tapper -- veering from savaging former ally Steve Bannon and author Michael Wolff to lauding ... Donald Trump's intelligence and political savvy. It was something to behold. Below are the most memorable Miller lines from an epic back-and-forth. (It's worth watching the whole thing!)" Cillizza suggests Miller's "24 most grotesque lines" from the interview. Thanks to MAG for the link. ...

... BUT, as Tapper suggested, Miller's target audience liked it: Trump tweeted "Jake Tapper of Fake News CNN just got destroyed in his interview with Stephen Miller of the Trump Administration. Watch the hatred and unfairness of this CNN flunky!" "Tapper led off his next segment with the words, 'Welcome back to CNN and planet Earth.'" ...

... Wait, Wait, There's a Coda! Linette Lopez of Business Insider: "White House adviser Stephen Miller was escorted off the set of CNN's 'State of the Union' on Sunday after a contentious interview with host Jake Tapper. Two sources close to the situation told Business Insider that after the taping was done, Miller was politely asked to leave several times. He ignored those requests and ultimately security was called and he was escorted out, the sources said." Mrs. McC: This must be the first time in history a top White House official has been throw out of a TV studio. Maybe Miller can share notes with Omarosa, who also knows how it feels to be unceremoniously "escorted" off the premises.

E.J. Dionne: Michael Wolff "deserves our thanks for creating Trump's 'emperor has no clothes' moment, even if this point should have been reached before, say, Nov. 8, 2016. Trump's tweets on Saturday pronouncing himself 'a very stable genius' only underscored the damage Wolff has done and Trump's dumbfounding insecurity.... In response to what is little more than a traditional right-wing agenda, there has been a marked erosion of loyalty to Trump among voters who thought they were casting ballots for a populist and are getting ideological and plutocratic policies instead. A Pew Research Center survey last month found Trump losing ground particularly among whites without college degrees and white evangelical Christians.... On the other hand, the more Trump proves his populism to be phony and behaves like a traditional Republican, the more the congressional GOP will want to prop him up." ...

... Jacqueline Thomsen: "WikiLeaks posted the full text of Michael Wolff's explosive new book about President Trump on Sunday. The website's official account tweeted a link to a Google Drive containing the full text of the book.... 'New Trump book "Fire and Fury" by Michael Wolff. Full PDF: https://t.co/sf7vj4IYAx" ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie Update: BTW, I tried the link & it didn't work. First I got a notice from Google that I had to "authorized"; then I got an e-mail from Google that "the address couldn't be found." ...

... Turns out That Was Not Trump's Hair on Fire. Laura Dimon & Terence Cullen of the New York Daily News: "A small fire broke out on the roof of Trump Tower on Monday morning, officials said. Smoke was seen billowing off the top of the Manhattan skyscraper, carrying for several blocks. The blaze appeared to break out in the building's heating and cooling system, the FDNY said. Two people suffered injuries, including one man who was taken away on a stretcher after battling the rooftop fire. Eric Trump ... confirmed the rooftop cooling tower ignited [Mrs. McC: and made a misstatement, which is a requirement for all Trumpentweets]. 'Fire crews are responding to a fire at Trump Tower. There have been no injuries or evacuations, and the President is not currently at Trump Tower,'" Eric Trump tweeted.

Kristen Welker, et al., of NBC News: "Anticipating that Special Counsel Robert Mueller will ask to interview ... Donald Trump, the president's legal team is discussing a range of potential options for the format, including written responses to questions in lieu of a formal sit-down, according to three people familiar with the matter. Lawyers for Trump have been discussing with FBI investigators a possible interview by the special counsel with the president as part of the inquiry into whether Trump's campaign colluded with Russia during the 2016 election.... Trump's legal team has been debating whether it would be possible to simply avoid it.... Justice Department veterans cast doubt on the possibility that Mueller, who served as FBI director for 12 years, would forgo the chance to interview the president directly." The writers note that both Bill (while president) & Hillary Clinton have allowed federal investigators to depose them. Mrs. McC: The feds should put Trump under oath, not so he'll tell the truth but so they'll have another charge against him -- lying under oath to federal investigators, a charge that also would bolster an obstruction indictment. ...

... Jesse Drucker of the New York Times: "... the Kushner Companies' extensive financial ties to Israel continue to deepen, even with [Jared Kushner's] prominent diplomatic role in the Middle East. The arrangement could undermine the ability of the United States to be seen as an independent broker in the region.... Mr. Kushner resigned as chief executive of Kushner Companies when he joined the White House last January. But he remains the beneficiary of a series of trusts that own stakes in Kushner properties and other investments. Those are worth as much as $761 million, according to government ethics filings, and most likely much more.... The Baltimore-area buildings in which Menora [-- an insurer that is one of Israel's largest financial institutions --] invested were the subject of an article by a ProPublica reporter in the The New York Times Magazine last year that documented the poor living conditions and aggressive tactics used by Kushner Companies, including garnishing the bank accounts of low-income tenants and turning off heat and hot water." ...

     ... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: It's kinda hard to reckon why a huge Israeli investment fund would want to traffic in Baltimore slum property -- unless, unless -- Jared!

Chip, Chip, Chipping Away. Juliet Eilperin of the Washington Post: "The Interior Department has approved a land swap deal that will allow a remote Alaskan village to construct a road through the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge, according to local officials. The action effectively overrules wilderness protections that have kept the area off limits to vehicles for decades. The land exchange, which has been agreed to but not formally signed, sets in motion a process that would improve King Cove's access to the closest regional airport. The village, with roughly 925 residents, has lobbied federal officials for decades to construct a 12-mile gravel road connecting it to the neighboring town of Cold Bay.... Environmentalists, along with two Democratic administrations, have blocked the road on the grounds that it would bisect a stretch of tundra and lagoons that provide a vital feeding ground for migrating birds as well as habitat for bears, caribou and other species. The refuge was established by President Dwight Eisenhower, and all but 15,000 of its 315,000 acres have been designated as wilderness since 1980. Motorized vehicle access is traditionally prohibited in such areas."

Beyond the Beltway

Matt Arco of NJ.com interviewed Chris Christie during his last days as governor of New Jersey. Among the things Christie said, "He grades himself as a B+ governor (with 'A moments') and thinks people will come to the same conclusion. He says he doesn't care about his bad poll numbers, but blames them on the media -- mostly the New Jersey press and other 'know-nothing voyeurs' -- who he said attacked him mercilessly after Bridgegate with a 'floodgate' of negative stories and attention. He concedes that scandal over closed lanes on the George Washington Bridge changed the course of his administration and political career because he lost 'the benefit of the doubt.' He 'absolutely' believes he'd be president if Donald Trump didn't enter the race." ...

... Jon Swaine of the Guardian: "An acclaimed book about discrimination against African Americans in the criminal justice system has been banned from some prisons in New Jersey, according to newly obtained records. The New Jim Crow, an award-winning book by Michelle Alexander published in 2010, appears on lists of publications that inmates in state correctional facilities may not possess. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which obtained the banned book lists in response to a public records request, called for the ban to be lifted and said it violated the rights of inmates under the first amendment to the US constitution."

The Commentariat -- January 7, 2018

Afternoon Update:

Jeremy Peters, et al., of the New York Times: "Isolated from his political allies and cut off from his financial patrons, Stephen K. Bannon ... issued a striking mea culpa on Sunday for comments he had made that were critical of the president's eldest son. Mr. Bannon, who is quoted in a new book calling Donald Trump Jr.'s meeting with Russians in 2016 'treasonous,' tried to reverse his statements completely, saying that the younger Mr. Trump was 'both a patriot and a good man.' Mr. Bannon spoke out after five days of silence, a delay that he said he regretted. He said his reference to 'treason' had not been aimed at the president's son, but at another campaign official who attended the 2016 Trump Tower meeting, Paul Manafort." Also, Stephen Miller got in a fight with Jake Tapper. ...

... A video of the interview is here. Mrs. McC: I haven't watched the Sunday showz in years. I might have to start watching "State of the Union" now.

*****

I thought Jeanne taught us a new word yesterday: "clunkweasel." But, even better, it turns out she coined a new word. In the vast universe of the Googles, this is the only place a "clunkweasel" has been spotted. It applies it to fellows like Lindsey Graham & Chuck Grassley. But oh so many others. -- Mrs. Bea McCrabbie

Old Man Goes Camping with Bought-and-Paid-for "Friends." Michael Tackett of the New York Times: "President Trump again insisted on Saturday that he was not under investigation by Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel investigating Russian influence on the 2016 election, adding that 'there's been no collusion, there's been no crime.' 'Everything I've done is 100 percent proper,' Mr. Trump said during a news conference at Camp David, where he was asked about a New York Times report that he had pressed Attorney General Jeff Sessions not to recuse himself from the Russia inquiry. 'That is what I do, is I do things proper.'" Mrs. McC: Among the things you don't do "proper" is modifying verbs. In other news, Mitch wore jeans. ...

... Chas Danner of New York has a good rundown of the newsy items in Trump's impromptu presser. Mrs. McC: Also, Mitch wore jeans. ...

... "Trump Is Shocked ... Reporters Check Facts." Caroline Orr of Shareblue: "... many journalists have cautioned readers that [Michael] Wolff's credibility is not exactly rock solid. That's what journalists do -- at least most of them. At Fox News, however..., facts tend to be treated as optional. According to Politifact, 60 percent of the claims they fact-checked from Fox and Fox News have been rated 'Mostly False,' 'False,' or 'Pants on Fire.'... At Camp David, Trump [said,] 'What I really was heartened by ... was the fact that so many of the people that I talk about in terms of fake news actually came to the defense of this great administration, and even myself, because they know the author and they know he's a fraud,' Trump said. In Trump's eyes, journalists who stuck to the facts were coming to his defense. In reality, they were just doing their jobs. But when Fox News is your standard, sticking to the facts is anything but ordinary. Really, though, it shouldn't come as a surprise that Trump thinks everything is 'fake news' -- because on Fox, most of it is."

Dan Balz of the Washington Post: "In a White House marked by a string of high-level comings and goings, an extraordinary level of palace intrigue and a general sense of unpredictability, there remains but one constant. That is the disorder at the center.... The first week of the year was breathtaking for its shock value: a presidential tweetstorm of personal animus and policy provocation that overshadowed positive news about the economy.... Meanwhile, almost every news organization has reported about the private rages, the lack of focus, the indiscipline and the isolation that also define the style of the 45th president.... Trump continues to make himself the issue. The past week proved it once again, and Saturday's tweets added a startling exclamation point." ...

... Josh Marshall: "The most important thing to know about this debate [over Trump's mental health] is that it simply doesn't matter.... For public purposes, clinical diagnoses are only relevant as predictors of behavior. If the President has a cognitive deficiency or mental illness that might cause him to act in unpredictable or dangerous ways or simply be unable to do the job, we need to know. But My God, we do know!... All the diagnosis of a mental illness could tell us is that Trump might be prone to act in ways that we literally see him acting in every day: impulsive, erratic, driven by petty aggressions and paranoia, showing poor impulsive control, an inability to moderate self-destructive behavior. He is frequently either frighteningly out of touch with reality or sufficiently pathological in his lying that it is impossible to tell." ...

... David Atkins in the Washington Monthly: "The President of the United States got up [Saturday] morning, watched Fox And Friends do a segment on his mental health, and used his Twitter thumbs to give the world a textbook example of the Dunning Kruger effect[.] (Jim Fallows explains the Dunning Kruger effect in an article linked below.) (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

     ... David Frum of the Atlantic: "There's a key difference between film and reality, though: The Corleone family had the awareness and vigilance to exclude Fredo from power. The American political system did not do so well." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Another difference between the Fredo character & Trump is that Fredo made his assertion privately to his brother while Trump made his in writing for the world to see. ...

... AND Here Is How Actual, Like, Smart People Act. Jim Fallows of the Atlantic: "Here are three traits I would report from a long trail of meeting and interviewing people who by any reckoning are very intelligent. They all know it.... Virtually none of them (need to) say it.... They know what they don't know. This to me is the most consistent marker of real intelligence. The more acute someone's ability to perceive and assess, the more likely that person is to recognize his or her limits.... On the other hand, we have something known as the Dunning-Kruger effect: the more limited someone is in reality, the more talented the person imagines himself to be. Or, as David Dunning and Justin Kruger put it in the title of their original scientific-journal article, 'Unskilled and unaware of it: how difficulties in recognizing one's own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments.'" ...

... Steve M. finds quite a few tweeters who were driven to writing Gilbert & Sullivan ditties in response to the Twit-in-Chief's defense of his gen-i-us. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Mrs. McCrabbie: It's essential to remember that Trump is not only mentally unstable; he is also destabilizing the federal government & international relations:

Steven Erlanger of the New York Times: "Two things stand out about the foreign policy messages Mr. Trump has posted on Twitter since taking office: How far they veer from the traditional ways American presidents express themselves, let alone handle diplomacy. And how rarely Mr. Trump has followed through on his words. Indeed, nearly a year after he entered the White House, the rest of the world is trying to figure out whether Mr. Trump is more mouth than fist, more paper tiger than actual one.... There is an increasing sense that the credibility of the administration, and the presidency itself, is being eroded." ...

... AND Here at Home, Jeff Toobin of the New Yorker takes a look at many ways Trump has subverted -- or attempted to subvert -- the rule of law. One way is by not bothering to appoint officials to key posts but instead putting "acting" officials in place, thus skirting the confirmation process & relying on officials who report only to Trump's Cabinet members & Trump himself. "Trump's Presidency may look like a series of chaotic lurches. But there is, alas, madness to his method." Mrs. McC: And Toobin doesn't even mention the pardoning Joe Arpaio, when is a screaming emblem of Trump's disdain for the rule of law. As Mueller closes in on the Von Trump Family Stinkers & sundry members of the Von Trump Choir, we are likely to see that pardon pen run out of ink.

Jim Acosta of CNN: "More White House officials were involved in the effort to persuade Attorney General Jeff Sessions to not recuse himself in the Russia investigation beyond counsel Don McGahn, a senior administration official said Friday. Among those who participated in calls between the White House and Justice Department were former chief of staff Reince Priebus and ex-press secretary Sean Spicer, the senior administration official said.... Earlier Friday, Spicer said on Good Morning America that he wasn't aware of the President's reported request that [White Housel counsel Don] McGahn urge Sessions to decide against recusal.... In one of the calls, Spicer said 'he (Sessions) doesn't need to recuse himself,' according to the official.... This official asked on one of the calls how Spicer, who is not an attorney, could reach such a conclusion.... 'It was just chaos,' the official said about the conversations with Sessions' team." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: It is impossible to believe three top White House officials -- counsel, chief-of-staff & press secretary -- just happened to call up Sessions of their own volition to urge him not to recuse. Trump did it with a hammer in the Oval Office. ...

... Natasha Bertrand of Business Insider interviewed Simona Mangiante, George Papadopoulos' fiancee. Shortly after the FBI arrested Papadopoulos, "Mangiante flew to Chicago to see Papadopoulos and was promptly served with a subpoena by a federal agent working for special counsel Robert Mueller. 'The interview [with agents working for Mueller] lasted about two hours, and they asked a lot of questions about Joseph Mifsud, Mangiante said, referring to the London-based professor who told Papadopoulos in April 2016 that the Russians had 'dirt' on Hillary Clinton in the form of 'thousands of emails.'... Mangiante ... work[ed] for Mifsud -- from September through November of 2016 -- at the London Centre of International Law Practice." Bertrand goes on to describe what's publicly known about Mifsud. ...

... More Trump Family Troubles. David Cloud of the Los Angeles Times: "Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III has recalled for questioning at least one participant in a controversial meeting with a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer at Trump Tower in June 2016, and is looking into President Trump's misleading claim that the discussion focused on adoption, rather than an offer to provide damaging information about Hillary Clinton. Some defense lawyers involved in the case view Mueller's latest push as a sign that investigators are focusing on possible obstruction of justice by Trump and several of his closest advisors for their statements about the politically sensitive meeting, rather than for collusion with the Russians. Investigators also are exploring the involvement of the president's daughter, Ivanka Trump, who did not attend the half-hour sit-down on June 9, 2016, but briefly spoke with two of the participants, a Russian lawyer and a Russian-born Washington lobbyist. Details of the encounter were not previously known." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Okay, that's three Trump kiddies (Junior, Eric & Ivanka) & one son-in-law who are now under investigation. Couldn't be more pleased. And who better to design the orange jumpsuits than Ivanka? Maybe a family crest? ...

... Brennan Weiss of Business Insider: "The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has launched a probe into Kushner Companies, the New York real-estate firm owned by the family of ... Jared Kushner, The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday. The investigation reportedly focuses on the company's use of the EB-5 visa program, which allows 10,000 immigrant visas each year in an effort to promote investment from foreign countries into less-developed regions or create jobs in the US." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Julia Manchester of the Hill: "A Breitbart editor blasted a tweet from President Trump attacking his former chief strategist and current Breitbart chairman Stephen Bannon.... 'This is outrageous even by POTUS standards,' Breitbart London editor-in-chief Raheem Kassam tweeted late Friday, responding to a tweet from Trump that went after 'Sloppy Steve Bannon.' In a tweet blasting a new tell-all book, Trump claimed that Bannon 'cried when he got fired and begged for his job. Now Sloppy Steve has been dumped like a dog by almost everyone. Too bad!'" ...

Cold as ICE. Mark Curnutte of the Cincinnati Enquirer: "Federal immigration officials said Friday they will proceed with the deportation of an Ohio man who is the sole provider and trained medical caregiver of a 6-year-old paraplegic boy. The Detroit office of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement issued a statement via email to The Cincinnati Enquirer, which profiled the boy, Ricky Solis, and had requested an update on the case on Wednesday. Yancarlos Mendez, 27, of Springdale has lived with the boy's mother, Sandra Mendoza, since 2014 and has become the only father Ricky has known. His birth father is no longer in Ricky's life after he had beaten and emotionally abused Mendoza." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

All the Best People, Ctd. Darryl Fears of the Washington Post: "A former National Park Service official who improperly helped Washington Redskins owner Daniel Snyder cut down more than 130 trees to improve a river view at his Potomac, Md., estate has been chosen by the Trump administration to be one of the agency's highest-ranking leaders. According to an internal email circulated at the Department of the Interior, P. Daniel Smith will assume the agency's deputy director position on Monday.... [To help Snyder remove the trees,] Smith pressured lower-level officials to approve a deal that disregarded federal environmental laws, harmed the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal National Historical Park and left the agency vulnerable to charges of favoritism, according to an Inspector General report." ...

     ... Mrs. McC: We know from the early days of the transition that Trump was promising to be a horrible president, based solely on his first picks for high-level positions. It seems to me that his picks are purposely making a mockery of the government he is supposedly running. Of course, this particular in-your-face appointment is probably what Trump considers an apt response to all of the environmental roadblocks here & abroad (Scotland) that Trump has faced in building his golf resorts. Wealthy people, after all, should be free to do what they want, & if what they want leads to local environmental degradation, well, so what?

No, Irony Isn't Dead. Adam Raymond of New York: "National Security Agency head Admiral Mike Rogers is retiring in the spring, he reportedly told staffers in a 'classified memo' Friday. The memo has since leaked to NPR and Politico, among others. It's a fitting end to Rogers's four-year tenure at the NSA, which was marked by high-profile intelligence leaks and his efforts to prevent them. Brought on in the aftermath of Edward Snowden's bombshell NSA leaks, Rogers was tasked with making sure nothing of the sort ever happened again. But he wasn't successful." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

John Wagner of the Washington Post: "President Trump may have killed his panel probing allegations of widespread voter fraud, but the controversy surrounding its mission appears destined to continue. Upon issuing an executive order last week terminating the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity -- which met only twice and faced a flood of lawsuits -- Trump said he had asked the Department of Homeland Security to take a look at the panels work and 'determine next courses of action.' Boosters of the commission, including its vice chairman and driving force, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R), are pushing for the DHS to focus on using data that the department collects on citizenship to ferret out illegal voters on state voting rolls."

Max Greenwood of the Hill: "New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu is coming out against President Trump's plan to expand offshore drilling in federal waters off the U.S. coast. 'Of course I oppose drilling off of New Hampshire's coastline,' Sununu, a Republican, said Saturday, according to The Associated Press. The Trump administration announced a plan on Thursday to drastically expand the federal waters in both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans available for offshore oil and natural gas drilling." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: This is pretty great because, by one official measure, New Hampshire has only 13 miles of coastline.

Tim Arango of the New York Times: "... the growing divide between California and the Trump administration erupted this past week over a dizzying range of flash points.... What had been a rhetorical battle between a liberal state and a conservative administration is now a full-fledged fight. Just as Californians were enjoying their first days of legal pot smoking, the Trump administration moved to enforce federal laws against the drug. On the same day, the federal government said it would expand offshore oil drilling, which California's Senate leader called an assault on 'our pristine coastline.' When President Trump signed a law that would raise the tax bills of many Californians by restricting deductions, lawmakers in this state proposed a creative end-around -- essentially making state taxes charitable contributions, and fully deductible.... New laws that went into effect on Jan. 1 in California raised the minimum wage, allowed parents to withhold gender on birth certificates and strengthened what were already some of the toughest gun laws in the country by restricting ammunition sales and assault weapons, and barring school officials from carrying concealed weapons at work. Taken together, the measures are the surest signs yet of how California is setting itself apart from Washington -- and many parts of America, too."

Ruby Cramer of BuzzFeed: "One of the Democratic Party's biggest donors says she is reconsidering her support for the women in the U.S. Senate who called for Al Franken's resignation following multiple allegations of sexual misconduct and inappropriate touching. The San Francisco-based donor, Susie Tompkins Buell, 75, has given millions of dollars to Democratic causes since the 1990s. She is best known as a staunch supporter of Hillary Clinton, but has also contributed for decades to Democratic women senators, hosting a regular spring fundraiser for the lawmakers in California called 'Women on the Road to the Senate.'... In two interviews this week, Buell described the push for Franken's departure as 'unfair,' 'cavalier,' and somewhat politically motivated -- 'a stampede,' 'like a rampage,' she said, speaking in stark terms about senators she has backed for years, naming [Kirsten] Gillibrand [D-N.Y.] in particular." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Katherine Stewart in a New York Times op-ed: "The Museum of the Bible, which sits a few blocks southwest of the United States Capitol..., is a safe space for Christian nationalists, and that is the key to understanding its political mission.... Ralph Drollinger, the founder and president of Capitol Ministries and one of the most politically influential pastors in America..., held a training conference for some 80 international associates at the museum on the topic of 'creating and sustaining discipleship ministries to political leaders.' Mr. Drollinger believes that social welfare programs 'have no basis in Scripture,' that Christians in government have an obligation to hire only Christians and that women should not be allowed to teach grown men.... Mr. Drollinger was an early, passionate supporter of Donald Trump's presidential candidacy.... The participants in his groups, however, aren't just anybody. They include Mike Pompeo...; Jeff Sessions...; Mike Pence; Betsy DeVos ...; and other senior officials in the Trump administration." The museum's founder is Steve Green of Hobby Lobby infamy. "Given the theologico-political goals of its founders and patrons, it isn't hard to see that the location of this museum was an act of symbolic and practical genius. If you're going to build a Christian nation, this is where you start."

News Lede

New York Times: "John W. Young, who walked on the moon, commanded the first space shuttle mission and became the first person to fly in space six times, died on Friday at his home in Houston. He was 87.... Mr. Young joined NASA in the early years of manned spaceflight and was still flying, at age 53, in the era of space shuttles. He was the only astronaut to fly in the Gemini, Apollo and shuttle programs. He was also chief of NASA's astronauts office for 13 years and a leading executive at the Johnson Space Center in Houston."

The Commentariat -- January 6, 2018

Afternoon Update:

David Atkins in the Washington Monthly: "The President of the United States got up this morning, watched Fox And Friends do a segment on his mental health, and used his Twitter thumbs to give the world a textbook example of the Dunning Kruger effect[.] ...

     ... David Frum of the Atlantic: "There's a key difference between film and reality, though: The Corleone family had the awareness and vigilance to exclude Fredo from power. The American political system did not do so well." ...

... Steve M. finds quite a few tweeters who were driven to writing Gilbert & Sullivan ditties in response to the Twit-in-Chief's defense of his gen-i-us.

Naturally, no one told Eric the family had scheduled a group portrait. More Trump Family Troubles. David Cloud of the Los Angeles Times: "Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III has recalled for questioning at least one participant in a controversial meeting with a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer at Trump Tower in June 2016, and is looking into President Trump's misleading claim that the discussion focused on adoption, rather than an offer to provide damaging information about Hillary Clinton. Some defense lawyers involved in the case view Mueller's latest push as a sign that investigators are focusing on possible obstruction of justice by Trump and several of his closest advisors..., rather than for collusion with the Russians. Investigators also are exploring the involvement of the president's daughter, Ivanka Trump, who did not attend the half-hour sit-down on June 9, 2016, but briefly spoke with two of the participants, a Russian lawyer and a Russian-born Washington lobbyist. Details of the encounter were not previously known." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Okay then, that's three Trump kiddies (Junior, Eric & Ivanka) & one son-in-law who are now under investigation. Couldn't be more pleased. And who better to design the orange jumpsuits than Ivanka? Maybe a family crest?

Brennan Weiss of Business Insider: "The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has launched a probe into Kushner Companies, the New York real-estate firm owned by the family of ... Jared Kushner, The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday. The investigation reportedly focuses on the company's use of the EB-5 visa program, which allows 10,000 immigrant visas each year in an effort to promote investment from foreign countries into less-developed regions or create jobs in the US."

Cold as ICE. Mark Curnutte of the Cincinnati Enquirer: "Federal immigration officials said Friday they will proceed with the deportation of an Ohio man who is the sole provider and trained medical caregiver of a 6-year-old paraplegic boy. The Detroit office of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement issued a statement via email to The Cincinnati Enquirer, which profiled the boy, Ricky Solis, and had requested an update on the case on Wednesday. Yancarlos Mendez, 27, of Springdale has lived with the boy's mother, Sandra Mendoza, since 2014 and has become the only father Ricky has known. His birth father is no longer in Ricky's life after he had beaten and emotionally abused Mendoza."

Oh, Good News. Irony Has Been Resuscitated Already. Adam Raymond of New York: "National Security Agency head Admiral Mike Rogers is retiring in the spring, he reportedly told staffers in a 'classified memo' Friday. The memo has since leaked to NPR and Politico, among others. It's a fitting end to Rogers's four-year tenure at the NSA, which was marked by high-profile intelligence leaks and his efforts to prevent them. Brought on in the aftermath of Edward Snowden's bombshell NSA leaks.... But he wasn't successful."

Ruby Cramer of BuzzFeed: "One of the Democratic Party's biggest donors says she is reconsidering her support for the women in the U.S. Senate who called for Al Franken's resignation following multiple allegations of sexual misconduct and inappropriate touching. The San Francisco-based donor, Susie Tompkins Buell, 75, has given millions of dollars to Democratic causes since the 1990s. She is best known as a staunch supporter of Hillary Clinton, but has also contributed for decades to Democratic women senators, hosting a regular spring fundraiser for the lawmakers in California called 'Women on the Road to the Senate.'... In two interviews this week, Buell described the push for Franken's departure as 'unfair,' 'cavalier,' and somewhat politically motivated -- 'a stampede,' 'like a rampage,' she said, speaking in stark terms about senators she has backed for years, naming [Kirsten] Gillibrand [D-N.Y.] in particular."

*****

David Remnick of the New Yorker: "Future scholars will sift through Trump's digital proclamations the way we now read the chroniclers of Nero's Rome -- to understand how an unhinged emperor can make a mockery of republican institutions, undo the collective nervous system of a country, and degrade the whole of public life.... There is little doubt about who Donald Trump is, the harm he has done already, and the greater harm he threatens. He is unfit to hold any public office, much less the highest in the land. This is not merely an orthodoxy of the opposition; his panicked courtiers have been leaking word of it from his first weeks in office. The President of the United States has become a leading security threat to the United States." ...

... Jordan Fabian & Jacqueline Thomsen of the Hill: "President Trump on Saturday launched a remarkable defense of his mental fitness for office.... Trump made the defense in a series of tweets that appeared to push back on questions raised by a new book that painted a chaotic and dysfunctional picture of his campaign and early months of his presidency. 'Actually, throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart,' Trump tweeted. The president said doubts about his mental capacity have been frequently raised by his critics, but he proved them wrong with his stunning victory in the 2016 election and his career in television and business. 'I think that would qualify as not smart, but genius....and a very stable genius at that!' he said." Thanks to Marvin S. for the lead. ...

... Michael Tackett of the New York Times: "By taking on the issue so directly, the president ensures that the discussion of his capacity will only intensify. He is set to undergo a physical examination this coming week, but those tests for presidents do not generally involve mental acuity.... Democrats in Congress have introduced legislation to force the president to submit to psychological evaluation. Mental health professionals have signed a petition calling for his removal from office." Includes screenshots of this morning's Twitterstorm.

The president believes in making sure that information is accurate before pushing it out as fact, when [the Wolff book] certainly and clearly is not. -- Sarah Sanders, Jan. 4

For the second straight day Thursday, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders fought back against Michael Wolff's Trump tell-all. And in doing so, she may have finally killed off what's left of irony in the White House briefing room. -- Aaron Blake of the Washington Post, Jan. 5

... The Trumpies. Dana Milbank: "It's no small irony that book excerpts [from Michael Wolff's Fire & Fury] showing Trump's perfidy appeared the day after Trump announced that he would host 'THE MOST DISHONEST & CORRUPT MEDIA AWARDS,' featuring 'Bad Reporting in various categories.' Call it the Trumpies? For once in his life, Trump is being modest. In the field of dishonesty, it is he who deserves the Cecil B. DeMille Award for Lifetime Achievement: Obama wiretapped him. He had the largest inauguration audience ever. The Russia story is fake news. Muslims celebrated in New Jersey on 9/11. He only got a small loan from dad. Hillary Clinton started the 'birther' movement. The tax cut will cost him a fortune." Milbank goes on to suggest "various categories" Trump would win, like "Best Actor in a Misleading Role." ...

Look, I think it's absolutely insane to think all of these individuals, reporters and others, who suddenly have a medical degree and think that they can diagnose somebody, many times who they've never even had a conversation with.... What I think is really mentally unstable is people that don't see the positive impact that this president is having on the country. -- Sarah Sanders, on Fox "News"

So it's "insane" for nonprofessionals to "diagnose" Trump's psychological disabilities from afar, but it's A-OK for Sanders to mass-diagnose tens of millions of unnamed Americans as "mentally unstable" based on their disliking Trump. That's pretty much the view of dictators who lock opponents & suspected dissidents in mental institutions. -- Mrs. Bea McCrabbie

Mea Culpa, Mea Culpa, Mea Maxi.... Oh, Never Mind. Asawin Suebsaeng of The Daily Beast: "On Wednesday morning, Steve Bannon and his closest advisers were preparing a statement to atone for scorched-earth comments he'd made about ... Donald Trump and his eldest son Donald Trump Jr., that had been printed in Michael Wolff's new book on the Trump White House. But before Team Bannon was able to make its statement public, the president dropped atomic tonnage on his former White House chief strategist. 'Steve Bannon has nothing to do with me or my Presidency,' read Trump's statement, which as The Daily Beast reported, he personally dictated key parts of.... After Trump made his statement, Bannon quickly spiked his own, according to The Hill and Axios. The Daily Beast has obtained portions of the final draft of Bannon's unreleased statement.... The text of Bannon's written statement that was obtained by The Daily Beast does not mention Kushner...."

Trump Takes Young Hostages. Sheryl Stolberg & Michael Tackett of the New York Times: "The White House on Friday presented Congress with an expansive list of hard-line immigration measures, including an $18 billion request to build a wall at the Mexican border, that President Trump is demanding in exchange for protecting young undocumented immigrants. The request, which totals $33 billion over a period of 10 years for border security measures including the wall, could jeopardize bipartisan talks aimed at getting an immigration deal. Among the items on Mr. Trump's immigration wish-list: money to hire 10,000 additional immigration officers, tougher laws for those seeking asylum, and denial of federal grants to so-called 'sanctuary cities.' The list, delivered to Senator Richard J. Durbin, the Illinois Democrat who has been leading the talks related to young immigrants without documentation, is identical to one Democrats declared a non-starter when the White House issued it in October." Durbin & other Democrats were not amused.

Trump Weaponizes the DOJ. Adam Goldman & Matt Apuzzo of the New York Times: "F.B.I. agents have renewed asking questions about the dealings of the Clinton Foundation amid calls from President Trump and top Republicans for the Justice Department to take a fresh look at politically charged accusations of corruption. People familiar with the F.B.I.'s steps said on Friday that agents have interviewed people connected to the foundation about whether any donations were made in exchange for political favors while Hillary Clinton was secretary of state from 2009 to 2013. Career prosecutors shut down that investigation in 2016 for lack of evidence.... [Trump] briefly struck a ... magnanimous tone after the election.... That has changed as Mr. Trump's legal problems have mounted.... He has openly called for Mrs. Clinton to be investigated and one of her top aides to be imprisoned.... Since the Watergate scandal, the Justice Department has conducted criminal investigations largely free of White House political influence. Mr. Trump, by contrast, has declared he has 'absolute authority' over the Justice Department." ...

... Matt Zapotosky & Devlin Barrett of the Washington Post: "The FBI has been investigating the Clinton Foundation for months, reviving a probe that was dialed back during the 2016 campaign amid tensions between Justice Department prosecutors and FBI agents about the politically charged case, according to people familiar with the matter. The inquiry resumed about a year ago. Agents are now trying to determine if any donations made to the foundation were linked to official acts when Hillary Clinton was secretary of state from 2009 to 2013, these people said. The people did not identify what specific donations or interactions agents were scrutinizing." ...

... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: The last time the U.S. had a federal "justice" system nearly this corrupt, J. Edgar Hoover was head of the FBI & John Mitchell was attorney general. ...

... Trump Enablers Pounce. Nicholas Fandos & Matthew Rosenberg of the New York Times: "More than a year after Republican leaders promised to investigate Russian interference in the presidential election, two influential Republicans on Friday made the first known congressional criminal referral in connection with the meddling -- against one of the people who sought to expose it. Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a senior committee member, told the Justice Department that they had reason to believe that a former British spy, Christopher Steele, lied to federal authorities about his contacts with reporters regarding information in a dossier, and they urged the department to investigate.... The decision by Mr. Grassley and Mr. Graham to single out the former intelligence officer behind the dossier -- and not anyone who may have taken part in the Russian interference -- infuriated Democrats and raised the stakes in the growing partisan battle over the investigations into Mr. Trump, his campaign team and Russia." ...

... Let's add to this the DOJ's newest investigation of Hillary Clinton's e-mail server, which Betsy Woodruff of the Daily Beast reported earlier this week. (Also linked yesterday.) ...

     ... Kevin Johnson of USA Today: "FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, whom President Trump has blamed for influencing the decision not to criminally charge Hillary Clinton for her use of private email server, did not oversee that inquiry while his wife was running for state office in Virginia as a Democrat, according to bureau records released Friday. The internal documents, published on the FBI's website, support what the bureau has asserted previously: that McCabe had no conflicts when he assumed oversight of the Clinton investigation. His role began in February 2016, following his appointment as deputy director and three months after his wife, Jill McCabe, lost her bid for a state Senate seat. McCabe has been repeatedly targeted by Trump and some Republican lawmakers.... As recently as last month, Trump seized on McCabe's role in the Clinton inquiry and his wife's political bid, noting that Jill McCabe received nearly $470,000 from a political action committee associated with Clinton ally and Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe."

... ** Conservative Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post: "This is an outrageous political stunt, one with no legal ramifications and obviously designed to take the heat off the White House as damning reports bolstering an obstruction-of-justice claim and questioning the president's mental fitness have sent the White House spinning. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), a member of the Judiciary Committee and a former prosecutor, tells me, 'I cannot understand why it would be necessary for members of Congress to make a criminal referral to the FBI concerning information we know the FBI already has.' The referral itself is devoid of any particulars, simply accusing [Christopher] Steele of making false comments relating to the dossier. Were these under oath? How do they have knowledge of such comments?... [Committee] Democrats were never consulted on this.... Moreover, the statute that Grassley and Graham cite -- 18. U.S.C. 1001 -- requires that a misstatement be intentionally wrong and material. It is ironic that the Justice Committee chairman who witnessed now-Attorney General Jeff Sessions repeatedly make false statements under oath would ignore these misstatements of fact and choose instead to vaguely point to ones apparently made to other people." Read on. Rubin cites several other experts who make clear this is what a real "witch hunt" looks like. Emphasis original. ...

... David Corn of Mother Jones: "... the public now knows that the United States was attacked by Putin, that Trump associates were interacting with Russians during this period, and that Trump and his crew, intentionally or not, provided cover for Moscow by insisting no such operation was occurring. Yet what now draws the ire of congressional Republicans the most is [Christopher] Steele and his reports.... And it's not the first distraction they have tried to create. Remember the so-called 'unmasking' scandal of last spring?... The Republican Party, which for decades claimed it was the party that championed patriotism and national security, has jettisoned these priorities for Trump protectionism." ...

... Jonathan Chait: "Republicans Are Weaponizing Law Enforcement Against Trump;s Enemies.... Two Republican senators, one of whom chairs the Judiciary Committee, have taken up Trump;s demands to treat the dossier's author, a well-respected British intelligence agent, like a criminal.... The [Clinton] foundation's arrangements may have been unwise, or even unethical, for a presidential candidate, but it has survived intense scrutiny without a hint of any criminal behavior.... It is impossible to imagine any new lead or legitimate reason to reopen an investigation [of Hillary Clinton's e-mails] that was completed last year, other than to satisfy Trump's lust to criminalize his opponents. At minimum, the effect will be to feed the right-wing news media's message that Trump's opponents are the real criminals, in order to supply a distraction for his base. At maximum, the 'charges' will allow Trump to have something to trade away -- he could fire Mueller while 'magnanimously' pardoning his enemies in the alleged spirit of letting old feuds die. In either case, the threat of investigation can be used to make any potential Trump critic think twice." ...

... Steve M.: "The GOP is a party of limitless bad faith -- we see that in the way they legislate, the way they investigate, the way they bottle up Democratic appointees. We use the word 'normalization' to attack efforts to minimize the baroque villainy of Trump -- but what about the media's normalization of the Benghazi inquisitions or the refusal to consider Merrick Garland's appointment? The press has made some serious efforts not to normalize Trump, and bravo for that. But McConnell and Ryan, Graham and Grassley, Nunes and Gowdy have all been normalized for years. The press hasn't been willing to portray them as the scoundrels they are. After we're rid of Trump, that will continue to be the case with regard to his enablers." ...

... Paul Krugman: "... we now have the Republican party as a whole fully complicit in Trump's crimes -- because that's what they are, whether or not he and those around him are ever brought to justice. What this means, among other things, is that expecting the GOP to exercise any oversight or constrain Trump in any way is just foolish at this point. Massive electoral defeat -- massive enough to overwhelm gerrymandering and other structural advantages of the right -- is the only way out." It's worth noting that Krugman wrote this before Grassley & Graham decided to initiate this latest hoax. ...

... Kevin Drum: "The American legal system is really getting a workout these days, now that we have a president who sees courts and the Justice Department primarily as tools to take revenge on his enemies. I hope it's up to the task."

Trump Family Scandal. Natasha Bertrand of Business Insider: "The digital director of the Trump campaign said Friday that the president's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and son Eric Trump 'were joint deputy campaign managers' whose 'approval' was required for every decision before the 2016 election. 'Nobody else. Not one person made a decision without their approval,' the digital director, Brad Parscale, tweeted.... Kushner was Parscale's 'patron.'... Kushner got Parscale hired, the person said, 'despite the fact that a number of people in the campaign wondered whether he had any idea what he was doing.'... Federal and congressional investigators are reportedly scrutinizing the data operation Kushner supervised and Parscale directed, looking into whether it colluded with Russian bots and trolls that targeted voters with disinformation and propaganda before the US election. Congressional committees are also investigating whether voter information stolen by Russian hackers from election databases in several US states made its way to the Trump campaign." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: I, for one, am way thrilled that Eric von Trump has finally made his way into the Trump Family Scandal. The family that preys together stays together. Sweet! ...

... Alex Zielinski of the San Antonio Current: "Senator Dianne Feinstein has summoned Brad Parscale -- web director of San Antonio's Giles-Parscale design firm -- to testify and submit documents to the Senate Judiciary Committee on any interaction he's had with Russian nationals. This, of course, has to do with Parscale's integral role in Donald Trump's presidential campaign in which he led the team's digital media efforts. As the main guy pouring campaign money into the Facebook advertisements and marketing strategies that ushered Trump into the White House, Parscale has inevitably been linked to those in Trump's camp suspected of letting Russia interfere with the 2016 election. Parscale, who's called the Trumps 'family,' has previously denied any corroboration with Russia in regards to his campaign work." ...

... Russia Scandal Began with Sex, After All. David Wroe of the Sydney (Australia) Morning Herald: "It was a chance romantic encounter by George Papadopoulos that set in train the events that led to the Australian government tipping off Washington about what it knew of Russian hacking efforts to swing the US presidential election. Fairfax Media can reveal a woman in London with whom Papadopoulos became involved happened to know Alexander Downer [-- Australia's ambassador to the U.K. --] and told ... [him] about Papadopoulos, a newly signed staffer for Donald Trump. Downer ... followed it up and arranged a meeting with the young American, who was mostly living in London at the time. What followed was the now infamous May 2016 conversation over many glasses of wine at the swanky Kensington Wine Rooms, during which the 28-year-old Papadopoulos spilled to Downer that he knew of a Russian dirt file on the rival Clinton campaign consisting of thousands of hacked emails. That night was a key moment that helped spark the FBI probe...." ...

... Conservative Jack Goldsmith in Lawfare: Deputy Attorney General Rod "Rosenstein ... appears to be smack in the middle of [Robert] Mueller's ostensible obstruction investigation. Indeed, he appears to have contributed to the firing and provided a seemingly neutral basis for it, with the knowledge that the president was motivated at least in part by the Russia investigation. If the president abused his power in firing [James] Comey due to the Russia investigation, Rosenstein appears to have knowingly contributed to it. I cannot fathom how, in this light, he remains the supervisor in charge of that investigation, since a reasonable person would question his impartiality in the matter.... Rosenstein's non-recusal might, despite the many stories to the contrary, be evidence that Mueller is not in fact investigating whether Trump obstructed justice or otherwise violated the law in firing Comey.... A second possibility is that Mueller is investigating obstruction by the president and that, with respect to that issue, Rosenstein has in fact recused himself but not publicly announced it.... A third possibility is that Rosenstein is bending the rules a bit.... Something here doesn't make sense."

Josh Dawsey of the Washington Post: "President Trump has begun telling advisers that it will likely be impossible to advance legislation this year to reduce welfare spending and enrollment -- a priority he previously embraced with the backing of House Speaker Paul D. Ryan and a number of conservative activists.... Some Republicans want to reduce health-care, housing and food-stamp spending by making it tougher for beneficiaries to receive the dollars -- such as through new work requirements.... A number of White House officials and advisers have begun tamping down expectations..., and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has told Trump it's a nonstarter in his chamber because he would need the support of Democrats who oppose the idea...." ...

... Elizabeth Bruenig of the Washington Post: "If the poor must work to earn every dollar, shouldn't the rich?... Before deciding whether it's morally right for [needy Americans] to receive income without working, consider a far larger group that takes in far more money without toil: the idle rich. They soak up plenty of unearned money from the economy, in the form of rent, dividends and capital income. Salaries and wages -- that is, money paid for work -- only make up about 15 percent of the income of Americans making $10 million per year or more; the rest is capital income from simply owning assets.... [Yet] the government shells out huge sums of money to the rich every year through tax breaks and subsidies."

Tim Egan: "We know Attorney General Jeff Sessions is a small, backward-looking man with even smaller, more backward-looking ideas, but what was the thinking behind his new federal crackdown on legal marijuana? Punish the blue states? Create cannabis chaos in the large swath of the American West and the other states where voters have said they want the police to spend their time on real crime? Or is it just another betrayal of the fools who voted for a man aptly described from inside the White House in Michael Wolff's new book, as 'less a person than a collection of terrible traits'?... And yet, after the government spent more than $1 trillion over the last four decades on the failed drug war, Trump now wants to double down on the most failed aspect of modern prohibition.... More people are arrested for pot possession than all the crimes that the F.B.I. classifies as violent -- one arrest every minute. This at a time when only 14 percent of the people think marijuana should be illegal."

Nothing to Worry About, Folks. Rebecca Shabad of CBS News: "The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has scheduled a briefing for later this month to outline how the public can prepare for nuclear war. 'While a nuclear detonation is unlikely, it would have devastating results and there would be limited time to take critical protection steps. Despite the fear surrounding such an event, planning and preparation can lessen deaths and illness,' the notice about the Jan. 16 briefing says on the CDC's website, which features a photo of a mushroom cloud. The notice went on to say that most people don't know that sheltering in place for at least 24 hours is 'crucial to saving lives and reducing exposure to radiation.'... This comes amid rising tensions between the U.S. and North Korea. President Trump tweeted Tuesday night, boasting about the size of his 'nuclear button' and how it's 'much bigger & more powerful' than North Korea's."

Trump Has "Absolute Right" to Do What He Wants with DOJ AND Twitter. Brian Feldman of New York: "Having twisted itself in knots over the last few years trying to defend its free-speech absolutism as its platform grew increasingly toxic, Twitter has recently earned a lot of flack for continuing to offer Donald Trump a place to drop his bad ideas.... In a short blog post, the company writes, 'Blocking a world leader from Twitter or removing their controversial Tweets, would hide important information people should be able to see and debate. It would also not silence that leader, but it would certainly hamper necessary discussion around their words and actions.'... This is probably as straightforward an articulation of Twitter's messy internal thinking as we're going to get. 'He's the president, duh' makes more sense than most of the reasons Twitter has tried to supply."

Beyond the Beltway

Marwa Eltagouri of the Washington Post: "The home of Tina Johnson, who accused former U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore of groping her, was destroyed Wednesday in a fire that is being investigated as an arson, though officials say they do not believe it is related to the Moore allegations." ...

... The AL.com story, by Anna Vollers, is here.