The Commentariat -- October 21, 2017

Afternoon Update:

With Obama's "Re-education camps" Defeated, Dr./Mrs. Tom Price Wants to Establish HIV Colonies. Politico: "The lawmaker wife of former Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price asked this week whether the government could quarantine people with HIV to limit transmission of the virus that causes AIDS. Betty Price, a Georgia state representative from the Atlanta suburbs, made the inquiry during a Georgia House of Representatives study committee meeting about barriers to accessing adequate care. Price, an anesthesiologist, raised the question during an exchange with the director of the Georgia Department of Public Health's HIV/AIDS epidemiology section." Mrs. McC: This has been the top story on Politico for much of the day Saturday. I'd guess most readers -- even those familiar with Dr. Betty's husband Dr. Tom -- can't believe anyone could be such a monster. ...

     ... As Forrest M. asks, "Wouldn't it be better to work on getting a little more money for research and treatment? No, I guess not."

Akela Lacy of Politico: "... Donald Trump on Saturday continued the White House's ongoing war of words with Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-Fla.) over his response to the deaths of four U.S. troops in Niger. 'I hope the Fake News Media keeps talking about Wacky Congresswoman Wilson in that she, as a representative, is killing the Democrat Party!' President Trump tweeted Saturday morning." Mrs. McC: If you want to know what they're saying on Fox "News" but you can't stand to watch, just check TrumpyTweets. As for "killing the Democrat Party," I'd say Wilson is showing people how she stands up for her constituents.

O Really, O'Reilly? Emily Steel & Michael Schmidt of the New York Times: "Last January, six months after Fox News ousted its chairman amid a sexual harassment scandal, the network's top-rated host at the time, Bill O'Reilly, struck a $32 million agreement with a longtime network analyst [-- Lis Wiehl --] to settle new sexual harassment allegations, according to two people briefed on the matter -- an extraordinarily large amount for such cases. Although the deal has not been previously made public, the network's parent company, 21st Century Fox, acknowledges that it was aware of the woman's complaints about Mr. O'Reilly.... It was at least the sixth agreement -- and by far the largest -- made by either Mr. O'Reilly or the company to settle harassment allegations against him. Despite that record, 21st Century Fox began contract negotiations with Mr. O'Reilly, and in February granted him a four-year extension that paid $25 million a year.... But by April, the Murdochs decided to jettison Mr. O'Reilly as some of the settlements became public and posed a significant threat to their business empire."

Raphael Minder of the New York Times: "The escalating confrontation over Catalonia's independence drive took its most serious turn on Saturday as Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy of Spain announced that he would remove the leadership of the restive region and initiate a process of direct rule by the central government in Madrid. It was the first time that Spain's government had moved to strip the autonomy of one of its 17 regions, and the first time that a leader had invoked Article 155 of the Spanish Constitution -- a broad tool intended to protect the 'general interests' of the nation. The unexpectedly forceful moves by Mr. Rajoy, made after an emergency cabinet meeting, thrust Spain into uncharted waters as he tried to put down one of the gravest constitutional crises his country has faced since embracing democracy after the death of its dictator Gen. Francisco Franco in 1975."

*****

Today in the Kakistocracy:

Trump World Runs on Venom, Spite & Sadism. Amy Goldstein of the Washington Post: "Millions of Americans with insurance through the Affordable Care Act could find themselves locked into health plans they do not want for the coming year because of the Trump administration's schedule for the enrollment season that starts in less than two weeks. The complication arises when people who already have health plans under the law are automatically re-enrolled in the same plan. In the past, a few million consumers each year have been auto-enrolled and then were sent government notices encouraging them to check whether they could find better or more affordable coverage. This time, according to a federal document obtained by The Washington Post, the automatic enrollment will take place after it is too late to make any changes. Auto-enrollment will occur immediately after the last day of the ACA sign-up season, which the Trump administration has shortened, leaving the vast majority of such consumers stranded without any way to switch to a plan they might prefer." Emphasis added.

Ken Dilanian & Courtney Kube of NBC News: "A senior congressional aide who has been briefed on the deaths of four U.S. servicemen in Niger says the ambush by militants stemmed in part from a 'massive intelligence failure.'... There was no U.S. overhead surveillance of the mission, he said, and no American quick-reaction force available to rescue the troops if things went wrong. If it weren't for the arrival of French fighter jets, he said, things could have been much worse for the Americans."

David Choi of Business Insider: "... Donald Trump said White House chief of staff John Kelly was 'offended' that a Congresswoman was listening to the commander in chief's condolence call to the widow of one of the four US soldiers in Niger.... 'He was so offended, because he was in the room when I made the call and so were other people,' Trump said. 'And the call was a very nice call. He was so offended that a woman would be -- that somebody would be listening to that call.'" ...

     ... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: Okey-dokey. It's "offensive" that "somebody ... a woman" would listen to a conversation which unnamed White House staffers also overheard. I suppose that's not a double standard because a despot & his minions are way more equal than others. ...

... Louis Nelson of Politico: "[Sarah Sanders] on Friday aggressively defended chief of staff John Kelly's accusations against a Florida congresswoman, denying that he had misrepresented her remarks during a FBI field office dedication and slamming the famously behatted Rep. Frederica Wilson as 'all hat, no cattle.'"

... John Wagner of the Washington Post: "White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told a reporter Friday that it would be 'highly inappropriate' to get into a debate with 'a four-star Marine general' over whether he misstated facts." It's worth reading the whole report of the exchange. Mrs. McC: I have never or seldom heard such arrogant horseshit."...

     ... Brandon Carter of the Hill: "Old tweets posted by President Trump in which he attacked generals resurfaced Friday after the White House said it was 'inappropriate' to criticize them.... In July 2016, Trump called out retired four-star Gen. John Allen, saying he 'failed badly' in the fight against ISIS and called his record 'BAD.'... In September of last year, Trump also attacked retired four-star Gen. Colin Powell for 'his weak understanding of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.'" ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: And what about that time a year ago when Trump told Matt Lauer, "I think the generals have been reduced to rubble.... They have been reduced to a point where it's embarrassing to our country." Then he insinuated he would fire them and get "different generals." How "appropriate" was that, Ms. Huckleberry?

... MEANWHILE, it would be swell if one of those great patriots roaming around the White House would endow Ms. Huckleberry with a pocket Constitution -- that one where civilians control the military & not the other way around. Wait till she gets to the First Amendment! Wow, there's this freedom of the press part where journalists get to question the authorities -- even if the authorities are 4-star generals. And maybe somebody could slip her a copy of Lincoln's Gettysburg address -- it's short enough for 4th-graders to memorize! I hope Ms. Huckleberry doesn't get all confused by that last part about government of the people, by the people and for the people. Did I mention Lincoln was a Republican? Most people don't know that. ...

... David Nakamura of the Washington Post: "A video of a 2015 dedication of an FBI building in South Florida shows that White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly was wrong when he stated Thursday that Rep. Frederica S. Wilson (D-Fla.) had boasted of securing funding for the project. Kelly's criticism of Wilson, during which he referred to her as an 'empty barrel,' drew swift denials from the congresswoman's staff and denunciations from her supporters, who said the retired Marine Corps general was inaccurate and out of line. A White House spokesman issued a statement Thursday evening saying the White House stands by Kelly's account.... [Kelly said in the briefing that Wilson] 'talked about how she was instrumental in getting the funding for that building, and how she took care of her constituents because she got the money, and she just called up President Obama, and on that phone call, he gave the money, the $20 million,'... But a video from the Sun-Sentinel of Fort Lauderdale of Wilson's remarks at the April 10, 2015, dedication shows that she said no such thing.... Wilson did recount [at the dedication ceremony, which Kelly also attended] how she went into 'attack mode' to ensure that Congress and Obama expedited a bill to name the building after two fallen FBI agents.... When initially told that such legislation could take as long as a year, Wilson recalled, 'I said -- I'm a school principal -- and I said, excuse my French, "Aw, hell no, we're going to get this done.'" Wilson spread credit to others for helping in the effort, including House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio). She also told the stories of the heroism of the two agents." ...

... The New York Times report, by Yamiche Alcindor & Michael Shear, is also a good read.

     ... The Sun-Sentinel video of Wilson's full speech is here. ...

Dear Gen. Kelly, A word of unsolicited advice: the next time you plan to go out & lie about somebody, make sure there's no video tape. Hint: if prominent public figures attend an event of local interest, there's apt to be a recording. s/Mrs. Bea McCrabbie. P.S. You did make a total ass of yourself, you know, and you won't be able to live it down.

     ... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: I'll bet Kelly is writing his letter of apology to Wilson right now. And Ms. Huckleberry is phoning up reporter Chip Reid to apologize, too. Oh, no, turns out she was ready with a follow-up lie. From Wagner's report: "Pressed on the discrepancy Friday by veteran CBS News correspondent Chip Reid during the daily news briefing, Sanders said that Wilson had 'also made quite a few comments that day that weren't part of that speech and weren't part of that video that were also witnessed by the many people who were there.' Asked by Reid what those comments were, Sanders characterized them as 'exactly' what Kelly had described during his appearance in the briefing room Thursday." Tarring & feathering is way too good for that giant, lying sack of shit. ...

... Mrs. McCrabbie: It's possible that Kelly truly did not remember what Wilson said in her speech. Unless somebody says something unusual, I don't necessarily remember what-all s/he said a couple of years later; I may recall only a "general impression" of the tone & thrust of the speech. But if Kelly "misremembered" what Wilson said, it's because his impression of Wilson's remarks was highly negative, so negative that it morphed in his mind to something different -- and worse. So you have to ask yourself what caused Kelly's negative feelings about Wilson. Was she too assertive? Too "unsacred"? Too powerful? Too black? Whether Kelly purposely made up the gist of his attack on Wilson or if he accidentally "forgot," he has exposed himself as just another Trump sycophant willing to trash Trump's critics with lies, galling sanctimony, and more than a touch of misogyny & racism. If he thought his little speech would change some hearts & minds, he was right. I had not formed an opinion of his character before, and now I have. As his boss would say, "It's not good." ...

... Washington Post Editors: "WHITE HOUSE Chief of Staff John F. Kelly owes Rep. Frederica S. Wilson (D-Fla.) an apology.... To bolster [his negative] characterization [of Wilson], he offered up his remembrance of the dedication of the FBI building in memory of two FBI agents who had been killed in the line of duty. He claimed Ms. Wilson used the occasion to take unseemly credit for securing federal funding for the building.... Mr. Kelly got it all wrong. [Wilson] did not say she got money for the building. She was generous and graceful in sharing credit for how legislation naming the building was fast-tracked. And she spent most of her nine-minute speech praising the FBI agents killed in a gunfight with drug dealers." ...

... Dara Lind of Vox: "... when Kelly waxed nostalgic about the days when certain things were 'sacred' -- women, religion, and battlefield sacrifice -- he wasn't just echoing the complaints of so many who support Donald Trump.... He was saying that there are Americans who have kept the flame of American greatness alive -- those who serve the country for a living -- and that the best thing the rest of America can do is keep a respectful distance. Maybe it's an understandable bit of chauvinism from a career Marine. But that doesn't stop it from being a worrisome attitude when it becomes an unquestioning fealty to anything those people can do while in uniform. Kelly's rhetoric can be reminiscent of Jack Nicholson's character Col. Jessup in A Few Good Men -- 'I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it' -- but Jessup was the villain." ...

... John Donnelly of Roll Call: "In the hours after ... Donald Trump said on an Oct. 17 radio broadcast that he had contacted nearly every family that had lost a military servicemember this year, the White House was hustling to learn from the Pentagon the identities and contact information for those families, according to an internal Defense Department email. The email exchange, which has not been previously reported, shows that senior White House aides were aware on the day the president made the statement that it was not accurate -- but that they should try to make it accurate as soon as possible, given the gathering controversy. Not only had the president not contacted virtually all the families of military personnel killed this year [as he said], the White House did not even have an up-to-date list of those who had been killed.... Since [Trump made his false claim], the Associated Press contacted 20 families and found that half had not heard from Trump.... The internal document also sheds light on how the White House staff, on this and other occasions, has had to go into damage-control mode when the president makes inaccurate statements." ...

... Hey, Don't Forget It's "Character Counts Week"! How'd That Go? David Graham of the Atlantic: "First the president, and then his chief of staff, made a series of easily disprovable false claims. Trump, by needlessly calling attention to his condolences to soldiers, revealed himself to have been negligent. Meanwhile, his untruths about both calling the soldiers and, based on [John] Kelly's account, the content of his call have managed to somehow even further degrade his honesty. Kelly, too, has besmirched himself. Like H.R. McMaster, he entered the Trump administration enjoying nearly universal respect.... Kelly is demonstrating how quickly the job of defending Trump can destroy a carefully earned reputation. Between his own inaccurate account of the Florida event and [Sarah] Sanders's doubling down on his version, reporters will now know just how seriously to take Kelly when the White House next sends him out to try to clean things up." ...

... Steve M. is not worried about a military coup. He thinks Trump is too cowardly to engineer it.

... Weird Update. Judd Legum of ThinkProgress: Lara Trump -- wife of Eric -- told Fox "News" she had read a transcript of the conversation between her fat fucking father-in-law & Mrs. Johnson, and she pretty much confirmed what Rep. Wilson & John Kelly said about the conversation. "Lara Trump, paraphrasing the conversation, says her father-in-law told Johnson 'your husband went in to battle, you know, knowing that he could be injured, knowing that he could be killed.'... It's also unclear why Lara Trump [-- who is not a government official & does not work in the White House --] would have access to official White House transcripts of the call while the general public does not.... Update: ... Sarah Sanders denies there is a transcript of the call." Who are you going to believe? Somebody dumb enough to marry Eric or somebody who stands on a podium & lies most every day of the week? Its' a conundrum. ...

... Oh, Mah Stahs & Gahtahs. Mrs. Wilson Has Given Mr. Graham the Vapahs. Addie Baird of ThinkProgress: "Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said Friday that Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-FL) 'started something that was rude' by questioning Trump about his comments to a Gold Star widow. '[Wilson] is not a big fan of the president,' Graham said, talking to reporters at the Capitol Friday. 'I think she started something that was rude. I would never do that.'" ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Oh, like that time way last month when you accused Jimmy Kimmel of spouting "absolute garbage" even though the "absolute garbage" was actually your own bill?

Brianna Ehley, et al., of Politico: "... Donald Trump overrode his own advisers when he promised to deliver an emergency declaration next week to combat the nation's worsening opioid crisis. 'That is a very, very big statement,' he said Monday. 'It's a very important step. ... We're going to be doing it in the next week.' Blindsided officials are now scrambling to develop such a plan, but it is unclear when it will be announced, how or if it will be done, and whether the administration has the permanent leadership to execute it, said two administration officials.... Trump's off-script statement stunned top agency officials, who said there is no consensus on how to implement an emergency declaration for the drug epidemic, according to interviews with officials from the White House, a half dozen federal agencies, state health directors and lobbyists."

Trump Erases Advice & Consent Clause from Constitution. Andrew Restuccia & Nahal Toosi of Politico: "The Trump administration is pushing the limits of an obscure federal law that restricts nominees from serving in federal positions before they're approved by the Senate. A Politico review has identified four officials at three different agencies doing substantially similar work to the position for which they have been nominated -- despite not yet getting a green-light from the Senate.... Lawyers and other experts said the moves -- including by the Environmental Protection Agency, the State Department and the White House Office of Management and Budget -- to have unconfirmed nominees show up for work appears to skirt the Federal Vacancies Reform Act, which prohibits most people who have been nominated to fill a vacant government position from performing that office's duties in an acting capacity." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: This idea of checks & balances among the three branches of government is so 18th century.

When the President Does It, It's to Protect His Own Interests. Seung Min Kim & John Bresnahan of Politico: "... Donald Trump has personally interviewed at least two potential candidates for U.S. attorney positions in New York, according to two sources familiar with the matter -- a move that critics say raises questions about whether they can be sufficiently independent from the president.... The Southern District of New York is an especially notable position since it has jurisdiction over Trump Tower. Preet Bharara, the former U.S. attorney there, has said he had been told that Trump would keep him on despite the change in administrations. Yet he was among those abruptly fired by Trump in March. 'It is neither normal nor advisable for Trump to personally interview candidates for US Attorney positions, especially the one in Manhattan,' Bharara tweeted Wednesday.... Documents submitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this year showed Trump met with Jessie Liu, the candidate for U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, earlier this spring as she was being interviewed for the federal prosecutor post.... 'The U.S. attorney for the Eastern and Southern Districts of New York -- like the U.S. attorney for Washington D.C. -- would have jurisdiction over many important cases, including those involving President Trump's personal and family business interests,' [Sen. Dianne] Feinstein [D-Cal.] said in a statement Thursday. She added: 'There's no reason for President Trump to be meeting with candidates for these positions, which create the appearance that he may be trying to influence or elicit inappropriate commitments from potential U.S. attorneys. U.S. attorneys must be loyal to the Constitution -- not the president.'" ...

... "The Extraordinary Arrogance of Trump." Paul Callan of CNN: "The President has the legal right to conduct such interviews because as the nation's chief executive he is the nominal head of the entire Justice Department and is also the highest ranking law enforcement authority in the United States.... Exercising this right, though, is an act of extraordinary arrogance by a President who should have learned a lesson from the Comey and Bharara fiascos. The real question many will have is whether the President is using personal interviews to either demand or inspire loyalty from his newly minted federal legal top guns."

The Commentariat -- October 20, 2017

Brad Reed of the Raw Story: "... Donald Trump on Friday falsely claimed that a recent rise in crime in the United Kingdom was because of the country's refusal to fight 'radical Islamic terror.' 'Just out report: "United Kingdom crime rises 13% annually amid spread of Radical Islamic terror,"' Trump wrote on Twitter Friday. 'Not good, we must keep America safe!'... However, as the Telegraph notes, much of the violent crime spike is due to increased gang-related activities, and not because of Islamist terrorism. Given Trump's botched interpretation of the data, many U.K. politicians were quick to slam the president for making faulty assumptions that further revealed his own ignorance."

Eugene Scott of the Washington Post: John "Kelly said Thursday during the White House news briefing that he was shocked that [Rep. Frederica] Wilson was even a part of the conversation. 'It stuns me that a member of Congress would have listened in on that conversation,' he said Thursday in the White House briefing room. Perhaps Kelly, who also listened to the call, would be less stunned if he realized that Wilson's primary identity to the Johnson family isn't as a member of Congress. The Johnsons have known Wilson for decades -- most of those years before the former educator moved to Washington to join Congress.... Wilson's connection to the family goes back at least one generation.... These relationships were part of why Wilson was with the family -- not just because she was 'a member of Congress.'"

*****

An Old Marine Falls on His Sword (and Exposes Another POTUS* Lie & His Own Prejudices). Michael Shear of the New York Times: "John F. Kelly, the White House chief of staff, delivered an emotional, personal defense of President Trump's call this week to the widow of a slain soldier, describing the trauma of learning about his own son's death in Afghanistan and calling the criticism of Mr. Trump's call unfair. Mr. Kelly said that he was stunned to see the criticism, which came from a Democratic congresswoman, Representative Frederica S. Wilson of Florida, after Mr. Trump delivered a similar message to the widow of one of the [other??] soldiers killed in Niger.... He confirmed what Mr. Trump had alluded to publicly this week: that former President Barack Obama had not called him after Lieutenant Kelly was killed. 'That was not a criticism, that was simply to say I don't believe President Obama called,' Mr. Kelly said, adding that President George W. Bush and other presidents did not always make personal phone calls to family members.... Mr. Kelly said that Mr. Trump had tried, in the call, to express what Mr. Kelly had talked to him about ahead of time." ...

... Video & transcript of Kelly's remarks, via the New York Times, are here. ...

... Adam Raymond of New York: "White House Chief of Staff John Kelly tried to explain on Thursday what President Trump meant when he told the wife of a slain U.S. soldier that her husband 'knew what he signed up for.' Despite Trump's claim that Florida representative Frederica Wilson 'totally fabricated what I said,' Kelly suggested that Wilson's version of the conversation between the president and the wife of Sergeant La David T. Johnson was accurate. But he wanted to focus not on what Trump said, but on what he meant, along with the impropriety of Wilson politicizing the conversation." ...

When I was a kid growing up, a lot of things were sacred in our country. Women were sacred. Looked upon with great honor. That's obviously not the case anymore, as we see from recent cases. Life, the dignity of life is sacred. That's gone. Religion, that seems to be gone as well. -- John Kelly, Thursday

... Melanie Schmitz of ThinkProgress: "Kelly, of course, failed to acknowledge the fact that he currently works in an administration headed by a man who's been accused of sexual assault by more than a dozen women. ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Maybe Schmitz is right -- that Kelly "appeared to be referencing the recent slew of sexual assault and harassment allegations against movie mogul Harvey Weinstein." But what grabbed me about Kelly's remark was how offensively archaic it was. "Women are sacred"? That is precisely the excuse men have used, perhaps since prehistoric times, to keep women powerless and dependent upon men. Women must not be defiled sexually; they must not sully themselves by working in the cutthroat business world; they must remain chattel, "protected" by patriarchs, hidden from view in "sacred" rooms. Kelly is in cult-of-the-Virgin-Mary territory here. This view is what has allowed & continues to allow men like Trump & Weinstein to sexually abuse women, while they and other men literally keep women in their socioeconomic place. If you want to know why Kelly was "stunned" by Rep. Frederica Wilson's criticisms of Trump, it was because it is not a woman's "place" -- and perhaps especially not a black woman's place -- to criticize the national patriarch. I am repulsed. ...

... Wait! Kelly showed his paternalistic bias again. Erica Pandey of Axios: "'It stuns me' that a member of Congress listened in on that phone call. 'I thought at least that's sacred,' [Kelly] said." Mrs. McC: First, Wilson had known La David Johnson for years. But more important, it was La David's widow Myeshia who decided who could listen to Trump's call. By letting family members & friends listen in, according to Kelly, Myeshia was defiling her husband's memory. She was denying his "sacred" sacrifice. Kelly believes that a young woman should have no control over how she relates to her family and friends, on what information she shares with them. Myeshia Johnson made a choice. There was nothing wrong with her choice; nor would there have been anything wrong with choosing to listen privately. Kelly's criticism was repulsive. ...

A congresswoman stood up, and in a long tradition of empty barrels making the most noise, stood up there in all of that and talked about how she was instrumental in getting the funding for that building, and how she took care of her constituents because she got the money, and she just called up President Obama, and on that phone call, he gave the money, the $20 million, to build the building, and she sat down. -- John Kelly, at yesterday's briefing relating a story about a building dedication he had attended with Rep. Frederica Wilson ...

... ** Oops, Kelly Himself Is a Big Fat Liar, Too. Alex Daugherty & other McClatchy News reporters relate what really happened. Wilson did not boast about how "she got the money" for the Grogan & Dove federal building in the Miami area, because she didn't get the money & she didn't pretend to. "Washington approved the money before she was even in Congress," Wilson told the McClatchy reporters yesterday. Rather, Wilson sponsored a bill to name the building after federal agents "Benjamin Grogan and Jerry Dove, killed during a 1986 shootout with bank robbers south of Miami.... In 2015, Wilson won praise from Miami Republicans for sponsoring the bill to name the long anticipated federal building after two agents who became legends in local law enforcement. At the dedication ceremony, James Comey, then director of the FBI, lauded Wilson's legislation, which was signed into law by President Barack Obama three days before the April 2015 ceremony. 'Rep. Wilson truly did the impossible, and we are eternally grateful,' Comey said in his remarks. On Thursday evening, [a Trump] administration spokesman issued a statement that said: 'The White House stands by Gen. Kelly’s account of the event.'" ...

... Mrs. McCrabbie: BTW, nowhere in Kelly's remarks does he call Rep. Wilson (or for that matter, La David or Myeshia Johnson) by name. It's a "that woman" kind of delivery: Kelly puts distance between himself & the woman he is criticizing & falsely accusing. If Bill Clinton's "that woman" denial was a tell, so is Kelly's. ...

The Fake News is going crazy with wacky Congresswoman Wilson(D), who was SECRETLY on a very personal call, and gave a total lie on content! -- Donald Trump, in a tweet at about 11 pm ET Thursday ...

... Mrs. McCrabbie: The one useful thing Kelly did yesterday was confirm that Wilson told the truth about the content of Trump's "consolation call" & that Trump falsely denied it & defamed Wilson. Here was Trump's own chief of staff "defending" him by verifying that Trump, not Wilson, was the liar. But so what? Trump just dug his heels in & insisted she told "a total lie."

... ** Please take a moment to read commentary at the end of yesterday's Comments thread on Kelly's attack on Khizr & Ghazala Khan. Right, right and right. Mrs. McC. P.S. Here again we have a dark-hued couple who don't know their "place," and have criticized a white man for showing disrespect to military heroes.

... Question of the Day. Mrs. McCrabbie: I can see that a reasonable person might find distasteful some remarks by the Khans & Wilson. I don't, but we all have different standards of "acceptable speech." But, excuse me. How can a person who works at the right hand of Trump -- a man who daily makes vile, cruel, untrue attacks on others, sometimes with no provocation at all -- be "stunned" by the manners of others? The same goes for other Trump toadies -- like Huckleberry Sanders -- who regularly express "shock" at people who criticize or question Trump. ...

... Derek Hawkins of the Washington Post reports on Rep. Frederica Wilson's long history of mentoring young people & finding in their untimely deaths reasons to call out "stupid" wars, careless gun laws & other public policy issues. Calling out a grotesquely insensitive president* was part & parcel of who she is. Mrs. McC: Read Hawkins' story & you won't think of Wilson as just some Congressional backbencher. She has been an audacious hero for decades.

... Adam Raymond: "Asked on Thursday to rate the federal government's response to the two hurricanes that hit Puerto Rico last month, President Trump said it was a 'ten.' ... "I think this was worse than Katrina, in many ways worse than anything people have ever seen.' The American people don’t agree with Trump's assessment." ...

... ** Peter Beinart of the Atlantic: "Donald Trump minimizes suffering for which he might be held responsible. That's likely what he was doing in his conversation with Myeshia Johnson. And it's not just insensitive; it's dangerous. As the former Missouri senate candidate, and former army intelligence officer, Jason Kander observed on Wednesday night on CNN, people say, 'He knew what he signed up for' because 'they are seeking emotional distance from the situation. People say that because they want to avoid feeling that pain.' That's worrying, Kander added, because 'I want the president, any president .. when they're making a decision about sending people to a dangerous place, I want them to have as one of the things in their mind, the visceral, emotional feeling' that comes from absorbing a widow's inconsolable grief. That's the key point. Trump's comments bespeak a refusal to face the human costs of violence and war that could have frightening consequences for American foreign policy." Read on.

Trumpity-Doo-Dah Floats New Conspiracy Theory. Tom Embury-Dennis of the (U.K.) Independent: "Donald Trump has appeared to suggest, without providing evidence, that the FBI and Russia may have colluded to fund the infamous dossier that alleged links between his team and the Kremlin. Taking to Twitter, the US President said: 'Workers of firm involved with the discredited and Fake Dossier take the 5th. Who paid for it, Russia, the FBI or the Dems (or all)?' Mr Trump's outlandish claim comes after two bosses of Fusion GPS, the firm that helped produce the dossier, refused to answer questions on Wednesday in a private meeting with the House Intelligence Agency.... Fusion GPS had originally been hired by Republican opponents of Mr Trump in September 2015. [Investigator Christopher] Steele joined the team eight months later in June. After winning his party's nomination in July 2016, Democrats took over and began paying Mr Steele and Fusion GPS to look into the billionaire's activities."

We've seen nationalism distorted into nativism, forgotten the dynamism that immigration has always brought to America. We see a fading confidence in the value of free markets and international trade, forgetting that conflict, instability and poverty follow in the wake of protectionism. We've seen the return of isolationist sentiments, forgetting that American security is directly threatened by the chaos and despair of distant places. -- President George W. Bush, in a speech, Thursday ...

... Peter Baker of the New York Times: "Former President George W. Bush never mentioned his name but delivered what sounded like a sustained rebuke to President Trump on Thursday, decrying nationalism, protectionism and the coarsening of public debate while calling for a robust response to Russian interference in American democracy. In a speech in New York, Mr. Bush defended free trade, globalization and immigration even as Mr. Trump seeks to raise barriers to international commerce and newcomers from overseas. He condemned the 'casual cruelty' he sees in public discourse and denounced white supremacy two months after Mr. Trump suggested that 'both sides' were to blame at a neo-Nazi rally ... in Virginia." ...

... David Nakamura of the Washington Post: "Former president George W. Bush on Thursday delivered a rare political speech in which he warned of threats to American democracy and a decay of civic engagement, a message that was interpreted as a rebuke of President Trump's divisive leadership style.... The scene was remarkable in part because Bush has largely remained out of the political spotlight since leaving office amid low popularity in 2009 and had made a point not to criticize or second-guess his Democratic successor, Barack Obama. Just hours after Bush completed his speech, Obama also made a veiled critique of the Trump era, calling on Democrats at a New Jersey campaign event to 'send a message to the world that we are rejecting a politics of division, we are rejecting a politics of fear.' That Trump's two most recent predecessors felt liberated, or perhaps compelled, to reenter the political arena in a manner that offered an implicit criticism of him is virtually unprecedented in modern politics, historians said."

Paul Krugman: "Breaking up Nafta would be terrible for Mexico and bad for the U.S. It would horrify major U.S. business interests, which have spent two decades building their competitive strategies around an integrated North American market. But it might be good for Trump's fragile ego. And that's a reason to fear the worst.... We've now seen Trump deliberately hurt millions of people and inflict billions of losses on a major industry out of sheer spite. If he's willing to do that on health care, why assume he won't do the same thing on international trade policy?"

Greg Miller of the Washington Post: "CIA Director Mike Pompeo declared Thursday that U.S. intelligence agencies determined that Russia's interference in the 2016 American presidential election did not alter the outcome, a statement that distorted spy agency findings.... His comment suggested -- falsely -- that a report released by U.S. intelligence agencies in January had ruled out any impact that could be attributed to a covert Russian interference campaign that involved leaks of tens of thousands of stolen emails, the flooding of social media sites with false claims and the purchase of ads on Facebook. A report compiled by the CIA and other agencies described that Russian operation as unprecedented in its scale and concluded that Moscow's goals were to undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process and help elect Donald Trump. But the report reached no conclusions about whether that interference had altered the outcome -- an issue that U.S. intelligence officials made clear was considered beyond the scope of their inquiry." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Thank you, Greg Miller for calling out a lie right in your lede. ...

... Michael Crowley of Politico: "CIA Director Mike Pompeo drew sharp criticism Thursday after wrongly stating that the U.S. intelligence community had found that Russian meddling did not tilt the 2016 presidential election."

** Thomas Kaplan of the New York Times: "The Senate took a significant step toward rewriting the tax code on Thursday night with the passage of a budget blueprint that would protect a $1.5 trillion tax cut from a Democratic filibuster. The budget resolution could also pave the way for opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to oil exploration by ensuring that drilling legislation can pass with only Republican votes. The Senate voted 51 to 49 to approve the blueprint. Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, who had complained about what he viewed as excessive war funding in the budget plan, was the lone Republican to vote against the measure.... The House could pick up the Senate-passed budget as early as next week and give final approval to parliamentary language protecting the Republicans' coveted tax effort." Mrs. McC: Time to hold a lawn party, Donnie. ...

     ... Earlier That Same Day... Niv Elis of the Hill: "Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) lambasted the budgetary process ahead of a key vote Thursday, calling the Senate budget a hoax and saying that he would dismantle the Senate Budget Committee. 'The only thing about this that matters is preparation for the tax reform,' said Corker, who is retiring at the end of the Congress. 'Other than that, these amendment votes, everything about this is a hoax. A hoax. It has no impact on anything whatsoever.... If I were chairman of the budget committee, I would dismantle it. I would move to end it immediately in its current form,' Corker said. 'Unless we create a real budget process, which this is not, our country's fiscal situation will continue to go down the tube, and we have no mechanism to control real spending, 70 percent of which is mandatory, that's not even covered by this,' he continued." Mrs. McC: So then he voted for the hoax. ...

... Talk about "Process!" Jim Tankersley of the New York Times: "Almost no one on or off Capitol Hill has seen the tax overhaul bill that Republicans are drafting behind closed doors. Congressional staff members have not settled on many key details. Yet party leaders are preparing to move ahead on a timeline even more aggressive than their unsuccessful attempts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. The swift pace to complete, release and quickly vote on a tax cut is aimed at leaving little time for the type of dissent that has scuttled previous tax proposals.... Republicans have been meeting for weeks in closed-door sessions to debate details of the tax plan...."

Burgess Everett & Jennifer Haberkorn of Politico: "Key Senate Republicans are urgently trying to get ... Donald Trump to reconsider his apparent opposition to a bipartisan deal shoring up health insurance markets, several senators said Thursday morning.... Trump canceled the cost-sharing reduction payments last week, and days later [Lamar] Alexander and [Patty] Murray struck a deal to fund the payments for two years while providing new flexibility for states to get waivers from some Obamacare regulations. Trump has sent contradictory signals about whether he would sign the bill, calling it a 'good solution' the same day he said it amounted to 'bailouts' for the insurance companies. On Thursday, Trump again sounded warmer to the idea. He praised Alexander and Murray but warned that he wants only a short-term solution to keep repeal alive and doesn't want insurance companies to benefit.... The indecision puzzles Republicans and infuriates Democrats.... 'He's for the bill one day, against it the next,' said an exasperated Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Thursday.... Schumer later told reporters all 48 Democrats support the bill. With the dozen Republican co-sponsors, that would be enough for passage if Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell brings it to the floor."

Maureen Feighan of the Detroit News: "U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders will not speak at the Women's Convention in Detroit this month, his office announced Thursday, just days after controversy surfaced about the senator's role in the women-led convention.... Critics lambasted convention organizers last week when it was announced that Sanders would be speaking at the convention, which runs Oct. 27-29 at Cobo Center. Some questioned why a male politician would take such a prominent role at a women's convention. Others challenged Sanders' track record as a progressive politician."

Arpaio Is Still Guilty as Charged. Josh Gerstein of Politico: "A federal judge has ruled that ... Donald Trump's pardon of former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio ends his prosecution for criminal contempt of court, but does not wipe out the guilty verdict she returned or any other rulings in the case. In her order Thursday, Phoenix-based U.S. District Court Judge Susan Bolton rejected arguments from Arpaio's lawyers and Justice Department prosecutors that the longtime Maricopa County sheriff was entitled to have all rulings in the case vacated.... 'The power to pardon is an executive prerogative of mercy, not of judicial recordkeeping,' Bolton wrote, quoting an appeals court ruling. 'To vacate all rulings in this case would run afoul of this important distinction. The Court found Defendant guilty of criminal contempt. The President issued the pardon. Defendant accepted. The pardon undoubtedly spared Defendant from any punishment that might otherwise have been imposed. It did not, however, "revise the historical facts" of this case."

Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Avery Anapol of the Hill: "A man who claimed to be a Vietnam veteran and Navy SEAL in a Fox News segment earlier this month has admitted to lying about his service and faking his awards, including two Purple Hearts. John Garofalo appeared on Fox in an Oct. 8 segment to show off a massive hand-cut glass presidential seal that he made as a gift to honor President Trump.... Don Shipley, a retired Navy SEAL who outs false service claims first contacted Fox News about the story the day after it aired, and when it was not immediately retracted, he spoke with the Military Times and provided official records that disputed Garofalo's claims.... Fox retracted the story on Oct. 19, eleven days after it aired, and issued an apology." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: If a reporter doing a live segment interviews everyday citizens cold -- as, say, for their responses to some disaster -- the reporter is not responsible for any tall tales the interviewees tell. But if a news outlet has invited a guest to be the star of a prepared, non-essential segment, the outlet has an obvious responsibility to make a cursory check of his or her bona fides. But at Fox "News," "vetting" amounts to finding out if the guest supports the Fox agenda. I think I'll call up the Fox "News" bookers & tell them I'm a Democratic state senator from Nebraska (I'm not) & I totally back President Trump. They'd probably book me right then and there.

Richard Winton & Victoria Kim of the Los Angeles Times: "An Italian model-actress met with Los Angeles police detectives for more than two hours Thursday morning, providing a detailed account of new allegations that movie mogul Harvey Weinstein sexually assaulted her at a hotel in 2013. She is the sixth woman to accuse Weinstein of rape or forcible sex acts. Los Angeles police Capt. Billy Hayes confirmed that the department has launched an investigation into the matter. It is the first case related to Weinstein to be reported in Southern California. New York police already have two active sex crime probes and London's Metropolitan Police is investigating allegations made by three women. The new allegation could be legally troubling for Weinstein because it falls within the 10-year statute of limitations for the crime that existed at the time of the alleged incident, legal experts say."

The Commentariat -- October 19, 2017

Betsy Woodruff & others at the Daily Beast have an interesting account of a Trump-Russia confluence, which I just linked below at 10:30 am ET. -- Mrs. McCrabbie

The Saboteurs. Alayna Treene of Axios: "Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) sat down with Mike Allen immediately after getting off the phone with President Trump, who called to encourage him about the bipartisan health care bill he announced yesterday with Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.). Trump told Alexander that he supports the effort, is glad they're trying, but still needs to review the deal to 'reserve his options.'...'Trump completely engineered the plan that we announced yesterday,' by calling me repeatedly and asking Sen. Murray to be a part of it. He wanted a bipartisan bill for the short term.' Yes, but: Minutes later, Trump tweeted: 'I am supportive of Lamar as a person & also of the process, but I can never support bailing out ins co's who have made a fortune w/ O'Care.' House Speaker Paul Ryan's take: 'The speaker does not see anything that changes his view that the Senate should keep its focus on repeal and replace of Obamacare,' Doug Andres, Ryan's press secretary, told Axios." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... The Price Americans Pay for Trump's Ignorance. Thomas Kaplan & Robert Pear of the New York Times: "President Trump on Wednesday backed away from his endorsement of a bipartisan Senate proposal to stabilize health insurance markets, throwing the legislative effort into doubt even as the chief architect of the deal predicted that it would become law before the end of the year. The latest actions by the White House confused Republicans on Capitol Hill and irked Democrats -- but in the end, their effect was not clear. The effort to calm roiled insurance markets appears destined for a showdown in December, when supporters of the compromise, drafted by Senators Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee, and Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington, will have the most leverage.... Sarah Huckabee Sanders said later that Mr. Trump did not support the deal in its current form but indicated that changes could win him over. 'We want something that doesn't just bail out the insurance companies but actually provides relief for all Americans,' she said, adding that the deal was 'a good step in the right direction.'... An unavoidable fiscal deadline this year still offers an opportunity for lawmakers to demand that the subsidies be funded, regardless of the president's position." Mrs. McC: As Rex likes to say, Trump is a moron. ...

     ... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: You might think there was a way to drum something into the space between Trump's ears, but apparently there is not. Following her master like a puppy too dense to be housebroken, Sanders claimed that the subsidies "just bail[ed] out the insurance companies." It is really, really easy to explain that isn't true, but Trump just can't get it. The "subsidies," therefore, must be rebranded. Alexander & Murray should get out their find-and-replace word processing tool, and wherever the word "subsidy" or "subsidies" shows up, drop in "Donald Trump's middle-class white people's excellent healthcare deal." Then they can send the bill to Trump, otherwise unchanged, & he'll sign it. ...

We want the money to go to the people. We don't want the money to go into the pockets. I have a list here where it talks about the insurance companies. ... Anthem, big company, from the beginning of Obamacare, 270 percent increase in their stock price. Humana, 420 percent up. Aetna, 470 percent increase from Obamacare. Cigna, 480 percent increase since Obamacare. The insurance companies have absolutely taken advantage of this country and our people. And I stopped it by stopping the CSRs. -- President Trump, responding to a question from Mike Sacks of E.W. Scripps, Oct. 17

... insurance companies do not make money through the cost-sharing provision, estimated to be worth about $7 billion in fiscal 2017. They're being paid back for money they've already spent. If they do not get repaid for doing what is required under law, companies say they will raise premiums to make up the difference.... That in turn will raise the cost to taxpayers, because whatever savings result from eliminating the CSRs will be exceeded by additional costs for higher tax credits to defray the new premiums.... As a one-time business executive, Trump should realize there are many ways that health insurance companies can earn profits, especially in a good economy. But the one place they are not making money is in the Obamacare exchanges. He says they have earned a fortune, but they have actually lost billions, according to company filings and industry analysts. That's why many of the companies he named have left the business. -- Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post

As a one-time business executive, Trump realizes only that there are many ways that companies can earn profits, especially by ripping off contractors, investors & customers alike. -- Mrs. Bea McCrabbie

Dana Milbank: "So now we know: Free trade causes abortion, wife-beating and infertility. This exciting new discovery was made -- or, rather, made up -- by the Trump White House as it sought to find arguments to justify scuttling the Trans-Pacific Partnership, NAFTA and other vehicles of international trade.... It's true that job loss can lead to social ills, but the Trump White House officials involved in such social-science 'research' made some enormous leaps of logic -- that the social ills are caused specifically by the loss of manufacturing jobs and by nothing else, and that the job losses are caused by free trade rather than, say, productivity, technology or the failure of government policies. To use the technical, social-scientific lingo, [Trump economic advisor Peter] Navarro 'pulled this one out of his butt.' Curiously, [WashPo reporter Damian] Paletta reported that the wackadoodle documents 'alarmed other White House officials, who worried that such unverified information could end up steering White House policy.' Since when is anybody in this White House worried about bad information steering official policy? Trump's policies rely on bad information."

Dan Lamothe, et al., of the Washington Post: "President Trump, in a personal phone call to a grieving military father, offered him $25,000 and said he would direct his staff to establish an online fundraiser for the family, but neither happened, the father said. Chris Baldridge, the father of Army Sgt. Dillon Baldridge, said that Trump called him at his home in Zebulon, N.C., a few weeks after his 22-year-old son and two fellow soldiers were fatally shot by an Afghan police officer on June 10.... In a statement Wednesday afternoon, White House spokeswoman Lindsay Walters said: 'The check has been sent. It's disgusting that the media is taking something that should be recognized as a generous and sincere gesture, made privately by the President, and using it to advance the media's biased agenda.'... Trump said this week that he has 'called every family of somebody that's died, and it's the hardest call to make.' At least 20 Americans have been killed in action since he became commander in chief in January. The Post interviewed the families of 13. About half had received phone calls, they said. The others said they had not heard from the president." Mrs. McC: Gosh, Lindsay, I'm not hearing an apology there. ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: AND there's this from the WashPo story: "It took 18 months for President Barack Obama to fulfill a similar promise made to the family of Kayla Mueller, who was killed in 2015 while she was held captive by the Islamic State in Syria. Obama's undisclosed sum, for a charity set up in Mueller's name, arrived only after a report by ABC News called attention to what the president later described as an oversight." From an ABC News report dated November 1, 2016: "The Obamas' check for the Kayla's Hands Foundation arrived from the first family's Chicago residence shortly after the segment, 'The Girl Left Behind,' aired on ABC News '20/20' in August. It was soon followed by a personal note handwritten by the President on White House stationary apologizing for the 18-month delay in keeping his word, according to Kayla's parents. 'He thought it had already been taken care of,' Kayla's mother, Marsha Mueller, told ABC News." Judging from the tone of Walters' response to the WashPo, I don't think Mr. Baldridge should be sitting by the mailbox waiting for a hand-crayoned apology from Trump. We'll see if the $25K shows up in said mailbox, or if it's perpetually "in the mail." BTW, I'll bet it was somebody besides President Obama who dropped the ball on the Mueller foundation donation, but he was too nice to say so.

Nahal Toosi of Politico: "Staffers at the National Security Council drafted and circulated a statement of condolence for ... Donald Trump to make almost immediately after a deadly ambush of U.S. soldiers in Niger earlier this month. But Trump never publicly issued the statement, and, some two weeks later, is now in hot water over his initial silence on the soldiers' deaths and alleged controversial comments he made to a widow of one of the dead. The draft statement, a copy of which was seen by Politico on Wednesday, was put together on Oct. 5.... The NSC staffer, who apparently wrote the original draft and emailed it first to herself and then others shortly after 10 a.m. on Oct. 5, hung up on a Politico reporter who called to ask about it." ...

... NEW. CBS Miami: "Rep. Frederica Wilson's office claims multiple threatening phone calls directed at congresswoman came into her D.C. office on Wednesday. Her staff told CBS4's Carey Codd the calls were directly related to the phone call from the president to the wife of Army Sgt. La David Johnson. The congresswoman's staff said they alerted the Capital Police, Miami Garden Police and the threat division of the U.S. House of Representatives." ...

... Yamiche Alcindor, et al., of the New York Times: "The mother of a soldier killed in an ambush in Niger said Wednesday that President Trump disrespected her family during a call with the man's widow by saying the soldier 'knew what he signed up for.' President Trump denied he said those words to Sgt. La David T. Johnson's wife during a Tuesday phone call and escalated his dispute with Representative Frederica Wilson, Democrat of Florida, who first described the exchange on Tuesday.... When asked about Ms. Wilson's account of the call on Wednesday, Mr. Johnson's mother, Cowanda Jones-Johnson, backed the congresswoman's version. 'Yes, he did state that comment,' Ms. Jones-Johnson said of Mr. Trump, corresponding via Facebook.... On Tuesday, Ms. Wilson was in the car with the widow, and said she overheard the phone call from the president, who was on speakerphone." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

     ... This story has several significant updates, & Mark Landler has been added to the byline. "Twelve days after four Americans were killed in an Oct. 4 ambush in Niger, the president called the widow of Sgt. La David T. Johnson, who was among the slain, and said that her husband 'knew what he signed up for,' referring to the soldier only as 'your guy,' according to Sergeant Johnson's mother and a Democratic congresswoman, who both listened to the call. Mr. Trump angrily disputed that account, insisting that he 'had a very nice conversation with the woman, with the wife, who sounded like a lovely woman.'... By midafternoon, the White House was no longer disputing [Rep. Frederica] Wilson's account of Mr. Trump's choice of words. [Sarah] Sanders said the White House did not tape the call. But she said Ms. Wilson had willfully mischaracterized the spirit of the conversation." Rep. Wilson pointed out that Trump never named Sgt. Johnson in his call, nor did he name Johnson's widow, Myeshia Johnson, in his comments to the press, calling him "your guy" & her "the woman" and "the wife."

... Dan Merica, et al., of CNN: "Chief of Staff John Kelly told ... Donald Trump that President Barack Obama never called him after his son's death prior to Trump raising the issue in a Tuesday radio interview, multiple White House officials told CNN. But, according to these sources, Kelly never thought the President would use that information publicly. Kelly and much of the White House were caught off-guard by Trump's comments, one official said, struck by how the President took a story Kelly has tried to keep private -- the death of his son -- and used it to defend his handling of four soldiers killed in Niger.... White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said Wednesday that Kelly might not have been specifically aware Trump was going to raise his son's death during an interview, but slammed the media for, in her words, politicizing Robert Kelly's death.... Kelly 'is disgusted by the way this has been politicized and that the focus has come on the process, and not the fact that American lives were lost. I think he is disgusted and frustrated by that,' Sanders said, pointing the finger at media coverage." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: The bad news: Sanders just broke my new hypocrisy meter. The good news: the Hypocrisy Club has crowned her Queen of Hypocrisia. So Trump politicized John Kelly's deceased son to further his on-going war with Obama & make the deaths of four American troops all about Trump instead of about the soldiers. Now, we are supposed to believe Kelly is all upset at the media for reporting Trump's disgusting behavior. See, Sarah, when you and your asshole boss do or say something disgusting, it's you-all who are disgusting, not the reporters who write it down.

... Greg Sargent: "... in an interview with me this morning..., Rep. Frederica S. Wilson (D-Fla.) ... shared some new details that will thicken this plot: She said there were other witnesses in the car and also noted that she has known the slain soldier for a long time and 'mentored' him.... When I reiterated that Trump claims to have proof [she was not truthful about the content of his 'condolence' call to Myeshia Johnson], she said, 'How about you go get that proof and call me back?'... Wilson said ... that [La David Johnson] had passed through the mentoring program for boys of color she founded in Miami in 1993." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Ben Matthis-Lilley of Slate: Wednesday morning Trump tweeted that he had "proof" Rep. Wilson "totally fabricated" her account of Trump's phone call to Myeshia Johnson. "As others have pointed out, the proof' in this case will no doubt be released on the same day as the explosive evidence that Trump's investigators allegedly uncovered about Barack Obama's birth certificate in 2011 and the 'tapes' that prove James Comey was lying about his and Trump's conversations regarding Michael Flynn. Which is to say that release will take place on the 11^th of Never in the year of Two Thousand and He Doesn't Have Any of This Stuff." ...

... Margaret Hartmann: "The ngoing dispute over Trump's treatment of Gold Star families runs the risk of overshadowing a more significant concern: More than two weeks after the attack, we don't really know what happened in Niger. Several lawmakers have called for a fuller explanation, and when asked on Thursday if the Trump administration is being up-front about the attack, which has been attributed to an ISIS-linked group, Senator John McCain said 'no.' He added that as chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, he intends to get the information the panel 'deserves and needs.'.... Here's a rundown of what we know, and the biggest questions about the attack." ...

... After all this Trump crap, you might want to wash up & read about the life of La David Johnson, who was supposed to be one of four centers of attention after their deaths. Kristine Phillips of the Washington Post has a report memorializing Johnson.

Mrs. McCrabbie: I never read Andrew Sullivan because his opinions are consistently inconsistent & some are downright foolish. But this short essay, titled "Trump's Mindless Nihilism" & published last Friday, makes a valid point: "... it’s the impossible reactionary agenda that is the core problem. And the reason we have a president increasingly isolated, ever more deranged, legislatively impotent, diplomatically catastrophic, and constitutionally dangerous, is not just because he is a fucking moron requiring an adult day-care center to avoid catastrophe daily. It's because he's a reactionary fantasist, whose policies stir the emotions but are stalled in the headwinds of reality.

Basically, Russia loaded the gun. The Trump team fired. -- Former FBI agent Clint Watts, on the Trump campaign team's use of Russia-generated "news" content. ...

... NEW. Betsy Woodruff, et al., of the Daily Beast: "Some of the Trump campaign's most prominent names and supporters, including Trump's campaign manager, digital director, and son, pushed tweets from professional trolls paid by the Russian government in the heat of the 2016 election campaign. The Twitter account @Ten_GOP, which called itself the 'Unofficial Twitter account of Tennessee Republicans,' was operated from the Kremlin-backed 'Russian troll farm,' or Internet Research Agency, a source familiar with the account confirmed with The Daily Beast.... The discovery of the now-unavailable tweets presents the first evidence that several members of the Trump campaign pushed covert Russian propaganda on social media in the run-up to the 2016 election." ...

... Kevin Collier of BuzzFeed: "Twitter took 11 months to close a Russian troll account that claimed to speak for the Tennessee Republican Party even after that state's real GOP notified the social media company that the account was a fake. The account, @TEN_GOP, was enormously popular, amassing at least 136,000 followers between its creation in November 2015 and when Twitter shut it down in August [2017].... The actual Tennessee Republican Party tried unsuccessfully for months to get Twitter to shut @TEN_GOP down." ...

... Kyle Cheney of Politico: "Democrats pressed Wednesday for Rep. Trey Gowdy -- the Republican chairman of the powerful House oversight committee -- to subpoena the White House for documents related to former national security adviser Michael Flynn. Flynn has faced questions about payments from foreign governments and business interests that he failed to disclose while he sought a security clearance.... He resigned in February.... But the White House spurned bipartisan requests for details about Flynn's background by the oversight committee in March, when the panel was chaired by then-Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah). Now, the committee's Democrats, led by ranking member Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), are asking Gowdy to force the issue. '[T]he White House has been openly defying this Committee's bipartisan request for documents regarding General Flynn for months without any assertion of privilege of any kind,' the Democrats wrote in a 10-page letter to Gowdy sent Wednesday morning." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... John Solomon of the Hill: "The Senate Judiciary Committee has launched a probe into a Russian nuclear bribery case, demanding several federal agencies disclose whether they knew the FBI had uncovered the corruption before the Obama administration in 2010 approved a controversial uranium deal with Moscow. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the committee chairman, on Wednesday raised the issue in public during questioning of Attorney General Jeff Sessions during an oversight hearing. The senator cited a series of The Hill stories that showed the FBI had evidence that Russian nuclear officials were involved in a racketeering scheme as early as 2009, well before the uranium deal was approved." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Dartunorro Clark of NBC News: "Attorney General Jeff Sessions dodged questions at a Senate hearing Wednesday regarding the firing of FBI Director James Comey, alleged Russia meddling in the 2016 election and the controversial pardoning of an Arizona sheriff, citing the confidentiality of his conversations with ... Donald Trump.... Lawmakers grew frustrated with Sessions on Wednesday, particularly Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., who said the attorney general had 'misled' the committee when asked in June if he had had any contacts with the Russians during the 2016 election." Worth reading Clark's full report. ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Sessions didn't exactly invoke executive privilege; he instead cited "confidentiality." Not sure if that's quite a distinction with a difference; I think in either case, the committee could cite him for contempt of Congress for refusing to answer members' questions. Of course the committee will do no such thing because ... Republicans. ...

... This is amusing:

NEW. Ken Vogel & Cecilia Kang of the New York Times: "Senator John McCain and two Democratic senators will move on Thursday to force Facebook, Google and other internet companies to disclose who is purchasing online political advertising, after revelations that Russian-linked operatives bought deceptive ads in the run-up to the 2016 election with no disclosure required. But the tech industry, which has worked to thwart previous efforts to mandate such disclosure, is mobilizing an army of lobbyists and lawyers -- including a senior adviser to Hillary Clinton's campaign -- to help shape proposed regulations. Long before the 2016 election, the adviser, Marc E. Elias, helped Facebook and Google request exemptions from the Federal Election Commission to existing disclosure rules, arguing that ads on the respective platforms were too small to fit disclaimers listing their sponsors."

Matt Flegenheimer of the New York Times: "... inside a federal courtroom on Wednesday in Lower Manhattan, with the full force of the Justice Department defending him, Mr. Trump will be the focus, in absentia, of a remarkable legal drama: Is a sitting president -- disinclined to relinquish his gilded empire before taking office -- violating the Constitution by continuing to own and profit from his businesses? At issue is a lawsuit filed this year in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York by a legal watchdog group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW. It has argued that Mr. Trump is violating a constitutional provision that a president may not accept any economic benefit from foreign governments or the United States government beyond a salary."

Emily Tillett of CBS News: "A Maryland federal judge is the second to rule against the latest version of President Trump's travel ban in the space of two days, putting the brakes on the administration's plans to restrict travel by citizens from eight countries, the Washington Post first reported. U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang issued the ruling early Wednesday, citing Mr. Trump's own remarks on the 2016 campaign trail, official campaign statements and his past Tweets were effectively an unconstitutional Muslim ban. 'The evidence offered by Plaintiffs includes numerous statements by President Trump expressing an intent to issue a Muslim ban or otherwise conveying anti-Muslim sentiments,' wrote Chuang."

Ooh! Gossip with the Imprimatur of Substance & Significant Ramifications! MarK Stern of Slate: Legendary Supremes reporter & chronicler Nina Totenberg of NPR said on a podcast Monday, "'My surmise, from what I'm hearing, is that Justice [Elena] Kagan really has taken [Neil Gorsuch] on in conference. And that it's a pretty tough battle and it's going to get tougher. And she is about as tough as they come, and I am not sure he's as tough -- or dare I say it, maybe not as smart. I always thought he was very smart, but he has a tin ear somehow, and he doesn't seem to bring anything new to the conversation.'... It's astonishing that any reporter would hear details from conference.... If rumors leak about a justice's behavior in conference -- and they basically never do -- it is almost certainly a justice who leaked them. And when justices leak -- which again, happens very rarely -- they do so on purpose.... The substance of the leak is also startling since conference is not intended to foster the kind of arguments that Totenberg described." Stern summarizes reports that the justices all dislike Gorsuch, even the conservatives.

AND Here's Some Genuine Fake News. Maria Puente of USA Today: "Soon after a tweet asserting [that Trump had a Melania double by his side] was posted, the reaction tweets were off to the races as jokesters, paranoids, gif-makers and Trump supporters vied with one another to make the case, knock it down or just have a good time posting clever pictures and videos. For the record, there is no Melania Trump body double, but that didn't stop the blathering about it." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Even more stupid, but not fake: a little while back, Melania went out in yard for a photo-op in which she pretended to tend Michelle Obama's garden. Her outfit looked quite appropriate for the occasion, but it wasn't: she was wearing a $1,300 plaid shirt. I can't tell if it's flannel, but I can tell you that you can get a nice one that looks like Melania's shirt for $50 to $60, full price, at L.L. Bean. (The photo of the well-dressed gardener is the 14th in a slideshow at the bottom of the USA Today story linked above.)

Way Beyond the Beltway

Crisis in Catalonia. William Booth of the Washington Post: "Spain's central government announced Thursday it would quickly move to take control of the autonomous Catalonia and restore 'constitutional order' after the region's president refused to back away from a push for independence."