The Ledes

Thursday, September 26, 2024

The New York Times:' live updates of Hurricane Helene developments today are here. “Hurricane Helene was barreling through the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday en route to Florida, where residents were bracing for extreme rain, destructive winds and deadly storm surge ahead of the storm’s expected landfall. The storm could intensify to a Category 4, if not higher, before making landfall late Thursday, and forecasters warned Helene’s anticipated large size could make its impacts felt across an extensive area. Areas as distant as Atlanta and the Appalachians are at risk for heavy rains.... Many forecast models show the storm making landfall late Thursday near Florida’s Big Bend Coast, a sparsely populated stretch....” ~~~

     ~~~ The Washington Post has forecasts for some cites in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina & Tennessee that are in or near the probable path of Helene. ~~~

     ~~~ This morning, an MSNBC weatherperson said Tallahassee (which is inland) would experience wind gusts of up to 120 m.p.h. and that the National Weather Service said expected 20-foot storm surges near the coast would be “unsurvivable.”

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The Ledes

Wednesday, September 25, 2024

The New York Times is live-updating developments in the progress of Hurricane Helene. “Helene continued to power north in the Caribbean Sea, strengthening into a hurricane Wednesday morning, on a path that forecasters expect will bring heavy amounts of rain to Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula and western Cuba before it begins to move toward Florida’s Gulf Coast.” ~~~

~~~ CNN: “Helene rapidly intensified into a hurricane Wednesday as it plows toward a Florida landfall as the strongest hurricane to hit the United States in over a year. The storm will also grow into a massive, sprawling monster as it continues to intensify, one that won’t just slam Florida, but also much of the Southeast.... Thousands of Florida residents have already been forced to evacuate and nearly the entire state is under alerts as the storm threatens to unleash flooding rainfall, damaging winds and life-threatening storm surge.... The hurricane unleashed its fury on parts of Mexico’s Yucátan Peninsula and Cuba Wednesday.“

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The New York Times lists Emmy winners. The AP has an overview story here.

New York Times: “Hvaldimir, a beluga whale who had captured the public’s imagination since 2019 after he was spotted wearing a harness seemingly designed for a camera, was found dead on Saturday in Norway, according to a nonprofit that worked to protect the whale.... [Hvaldimir] was wearing a harness that identified it as “equipment” from St. Petersburg. There also appeared to be a camera mount. Some wondered if the whale was on a Russian reconnaissance mission. Russia has never claimed ownership of the whale. If Hvaldimir was a spy, he was an exceptionally friendly one. The whale showed signs of domestication, and was comfortable around people. He remained in busier waters than are typical for belugas....” ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: Oh, Lord, do not let Bobby Kennedy, Jr., near that carcass. ~~~

     ~~~ AP Update: “There’s no evidence that a well-known beluga whale that lived off Norway’s coast and whose harness ignited speculation it was a Russian spy was shot to death last month as claimed by animal rights groups, Norwegian police said Monday.... Police said that the Norwegian Veterinary Institute conducted a preliminary autopsy on the animal, which was become known as 'Hvaldimir,' combining the Norwegian word for whale — hval — and the first name of Russian President Vladimir Putin. 'There are no findings from the autopsy that indicate that Hvaldimir has been shot,' police said in a statement.”

New York Times: Botswana's “President Mokgweetsi Masisi grinned as he lifted the diamond, a 2,492-carat stone that is the biggest diamond unearthed in more than a century and the second-largest ever found, according to the Vancouver-based mining operator Lucara, which owns the mine where it was found. This exceptional discovery could bring back the luster of the natural diamond mining industry, mining companies and experts say. The diamond was discovered in the same relatively small mine in northeastern Botswana that has produced several of the largest such stones in living memory. Such gemstones typically surface as a result of volcanic activity.... The diamond will likely sell in the range of tens of millions of dollars....”

Click on photo to enlarge.

~~~ Guardian: "On a distant reef 16,000km from Paris, surfer Gabriel Medina has given Olympic viewers one of the most memorable images of the Games yet, with an airborne celebration so well poised it looked too good to be true. The Brazilian took off a thundering wave at Teahupo’o in Tahiti on Monday, emerging from a barrelling section before soaring into the air and appearing to settle on a Pacific cloud, pointing to the sky with biblical serenity, his movements mirrored precisely by his surfboard. The shot was taken by Agence France-Presse photographer Jérôme Brouillet, who said “the conditions were perfect, the waves were taller than we expected”. He took the photo while aboard a boat nearby, capturing the surreal image with such accuracy that at first some suspected Photoshop or AI." 

Washington Post: “'Mary Cassatt at Work' is a large and mostly satisfying exhibition devoted to the career of the great American artist beloved for her sensitive and often sentimental views of family life. The 'at work' in the title of the Philadelphia Museum of Art show references the curators’ interest in Cassatt’s pioneering effort to establish herself as a professional artist within a male-dominated field. Throughout the show, which includes some 130 paintings, pastels, prints and drawings, the wall text and the art on view stresses Cassatt’s fixation on art as a career rather than a pastime.... Mary Cassatt at Work is on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art through Sept. 8. philamuseum.org”

New York Times: “Bob Newhart, who died on Thursday at the age of 94, has been such a beloved giant of popular culture for so long that it’s easy to forget how unlikely it was that he became one of the founding fathers of stand-up comedy. Before basically inventing the hit stand-up special, with the 1960 Grammy-winning album 'The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart' — that doesn’t even count his pay-per-view event broadcast on Canadian television that some cite as the first filmed special — he was a soft-spoken accountant who had never done a set in a nightclub. That he made a classic with so little preparation is one of the great miracles in the history of comedy.... Bob Newhart holds up. In fact, it’s hard to think of a stand-up from that era who is a better argument against the commonplace idea that comedy does not age well.”

Washington Post: “An early Titian masterpiece — once looted by Napolean’s troops and a part of royal collections for centuries — caused a stir when it was stolen from the home of a British marquess in 1995. Seven years later, it was found inside an unassuming white and blue plastic bag at a bus stop in southwest London by an art detective, and returned. This week, the oil painting 'The Rest on the Flight into Egypt' sold for more than $22 million at Christie’s. It was a record for the Renaissance artist, whom museums describe as the greatest painter of 16th-century Venice. Ahead of the sale in April, the auction house billed it as 'the most important work by Titian to come to the auction market in more than a generation.'”

Washington Post: The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., which houses the world's largest collection of Shakespeare material, has undergone a major renovation. "The change to the building is pervasive, both subtle and transformational."

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Publisher & Editor: Marie Burns


Thursday
Jul192018

The Commentariat -- July 20, 2018

Afternoon Update:

Lordy, I Hope There Are Tapes. Matt Apuzzo, et al., of the New York Times: "President Trump’s longtime lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, secretly recorded a conversation with Mr. Trump two months before the presidential election in which they discussed payments to a former Playboy model [Karen McDougal] who said she had an affair with Mr. Trump, according to lawyers and others familiar with the recording. The F.B.I. seized the recording this year during a raid on Mr. Cohen's office. The Justice Department is investigating Mr. Cohen's involvement in paying women to tamp down embarrassing news stories about Mr. Trump ahead of the 2016 election. Prosecutors want to know whether that violated federal campaign finance laws, and any conversation with Mr. Trump about those payments would be of keen interest to them. The recording's existence further draws Mr. Trump into questions about tactics he and his associates used to keep aspects of his personal and business life a secret.... The men discussed a payment from Mr. Trump to Ms. McDougal -- separate from the Enquirer payment -- to buy her story, [Rudy] Giuliani said. Such a payment would ensure that Ms. McDougal was silenced going forward. No payment was ever made, Mr. Giuliani said...." ...

... Matt Naham of Law & Crime. Rudy "Giuliani claims that Cohen's recording of a conversation about paying off a Playboy model for silence about an affair with his client is actually great and 'powerful' news.... Giuliani confirmed that there was such a conversation between Trump and Cohen, but Giuliani says it actually shows Trump did nothing wrong. He said no payment was ever made and that the recording was under two minutes in length. 'Nothing in that conversation suggests that [Trump] had any knowledge of it in advance,' he said. 'In the big scheme of things, it’s powerful exculpatory evidence.'"

Ana Swanson, et al., of the New York Times: "President Trump accused China and the European Union of manipulating their currencies and continued to criticize the Federal Reserve for raising interest rates, saying those moves are putting the United States at a disadvantage. In a flurry of early-morning Twitter posts, Mr. Trump complained that the Fed's rate increases and a 'stronger and stronger' United States dollar are 'taking away our big competitive edge.' He also said the Fed's plan to raise rates -- known as tightening because it makes borrowing more expensive -- 'hurts all that we have done.'... His comments once again break with longstanding White House norms, in which American presidents tend to talk sparingly about the United States dollar and, when they do, generally reiterate that a strong dollar is in the national interest.... While financial markets seemed to shrug off Mr. Trump's initial comments on the Federal Reserve on Thursday, his Twitter posts on Friday -- all of which seemed aimed at pushing the dollar lower -- drew a reaction. The dollar, as measured by the U.S. Dollar Index, fell sharply, by roughly 0.6 percent. Prices of 30-year United States Treasury bonds ... also dropped, pushing yields -- which move in the opposite direction -- higher. Prices for gold, a traditional hedge against inflation risk, rose.... Eswar Prasad, a professor at Cornell University, said the president's tweets displayed 'a breezy ignorance of facts and limited understanding of basic principles of economics.'"

Sad! Rosie Perper of Business Insider: "Trump-themed flags and hats made in China are reportedly being held up at US customs amid an intensifying trade war."

Robert Barnes of the Washington Post: "A Russian company accused by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III of being part of an online operation to disrupt the 2016 presidential campaign is leaning in part on a decision by Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh to argue that the charge against it should be thrown out. The 2011 decision by Kavanaugh, writing for a three-judge panel, concerned the role that foreign nationals may play in U.S. elections. It upheld a federal law that said foreigners temporarily in the country may not donate money to candidates, contribute to political parties and groups or spend money advocating for or against candidates. But it did not rule out letting foreigners spend money on independent advocacy campaigns."

Elizabeth Williamson & Emily Steel of the New York Times: "Bill Shine, a former co-president of Fox News hired this month as President Trump's communications chief..., was ousted from Fox News last year in the wake of a sexual harassment scandal at the network. Mr. Shine was never publicly accused of harassment, but he was accused in multiple civil lawsuits of covering up misconduct by Roger E. Ailes, the founding chairman of Fox News, and dismissing concerns from colleagues who complained.... In one previously undisclosed action, Mr. Shine was subpoenaed last year by a federal grand jury in New York as part of a criminal investigation into Fox News's handling of sexual harassment complaints.... (He is the fourth person in 18 months to hold the post under Mr. Trump, and others have filled in.) His wife, Darla, was found to have made racially charged remarks on a Twitter account that has since been deleted."

Megan Garber of the Atlantic: Sarah "Sanders, on behalf of the president she works for, ... takes for granted an assumption that ... there are things that are more important than truth.... It is ... an approach that is wholly consistent with the Trumpian worldview -- one that valorizes strength above all..., one that is populated by a collective of uses and thems, one whose sum, always, is zero.... This is a White House that subscribes to the incontrovertible realities of the world according to one man. Donaldpolitik." Thanks to PD Pepe for the link.

Courtney Kube, et al., of NBC News: "Iranian hackers have laid the groundwork to carry out extensive cyberattacks on U.S. and European infrastructure and on private companies, and the U.S. is warning allies, hardening its defenses and weighing a counterattack, say multiple senior U.S. officials. Despite Iran having positioned cyber weapons to carry out attacks, there is no suggestion an offensive operation is imminent, according to the officials...."

*****

Mark Landler of the New York Times: "President Trump plans to invite President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to visit Washington in the fall, the White House said Thursday.... The announcement came as ... uncertainty spread throughout the government about whether he had reached agreements with Mr. Putin on Syria and Ukraine, leaving his military and diplomatic corps in the dark.... In a tweet Thursday morning, Mr. Trump said he looked forward to a second meeting with Mr. Putin so that we can start implementing some of the many things discussed.' He listed Ukraine, Israel's security, nuclear proliferation, trade, North Korea, and Middle East peace. At the Pentagon, Mr. Trump's reference to Ukraine alarmed officials, who have tried to reassure skittish European allies that the United States will stand with them to prevent Russia from carrying out the same predatory moves it imposed there." ...

... Ilya Arkhipov of Bloomberg: "Vladimir Putin told Russian diplomats that he made a proposal to Donald Trump at their summit this week to hold a referendum to help resolve the conflict in eastern Ukraine, but agreed not to disclose the plan publicly so the U.S. president could consider it, according to two people who attended Putin's closed-door speech on Thursday. Details of what the two leaders discussed in their summit in Helsinki, Finland, remain scarce, with much of the description so far coming from Russia.... One of the people said that Trump had requested Putin not discuss the referendum idea at the press conference after the summit in order to give the U.S. leader time to mull it.... If Putin's account of Trump's reaction is accurate, it would suggest a more flexible approach than the U.S. has shown to date on the issue." ...

... "Say That Again?... Okaaay." Julian Barnes of the New York Times: "The nation's intelligence chief continued on Thursday to harden his warnings about the cyberthreat from Russia and expressed surprise at hearing that President Trump planned to invite its leader, President Vladimir V. Putin, to the White House, but promised to deliver a candid assessment to Mr. Trump about the dangers of such a visit. Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence, appeared genuinely astonished during a national security conference in Aspen, Colo., when he was told that the White House announced plans to invite Mr. Putin to Washington. 'Say that again?' Mr. Coats asked Andrea Mitchell of NBC, the event moderator, before uttering an exaggerated and drawn-out 'O.K.' He added, 'That is going to be special.'... Mr. Coats also said he was not fully aware of what Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin discussed in their one-on-one meeting on Monday in Helsinki, Finland, but that he hopes to learn soon, a remarkable admission for a cabinet-level national security official.... He was not alone in his skepticism over a White House invitation for Mr. Putin. Current and former senior American intelligence officials expressed deep concern and skepticism. 'It seems this is a reward for bad behavior,' said James R. Clapper Jr., Mr. Coats's predecessor as director of national intelligence. Mr. Clapper said that bringing Mr. Putin, a former K.G.B. chief, into the White House would pose stiff intelligence risks. 'This will be a complex intelligence and counterintelligence challenge,' he said.... Mr. Coats also said ... that he had not been aware of the 2017 meeting in the Oval Office between Mr. Trump and Sergey V. Lavrov, Russia's foreign minister, along with Sergey I. Kislyak, then the Russian ambassador to the United States. During their discussion, Mr. Trump revealed sensitive Israeli intelligence. That meeting, Mr. Coats said, was 'probably not the best thing." ...

Shane Harris, et al., of the Washington Post: "Coats said he would have advised against Trump and Putin's private meeting in Helsinki, which worried U.S. security officials because no notes were taken and only two interpreters were present, but that he had not been consulted. Underscoring how little is known about the meeting, Coats acknowledged that he has not been told what happened in the room. Asked whether it was possible Putin had secretly recorded the more-than two-hour meeting, Coats answered, 'That risk is always there.'... Inside the White House, Trump's advisers were in an uproar over Coats's interview in Aspen, Colo. They said the optics were especially damaging, noting that at moments Coats appeared to be laughing at the president, playing to his audience of the intellectual elite in a manner that was sure to infuriate Trump. 'Coats has gone rogue,' said one senior White House official...." ...

... Louis Nelson of Politico: "... Donald Trump wrote online Thursday that he is looking forward to a second meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.... 'The Summit with Russia was a great success, except with the real enemy of the people, the Fake News Media. I look forward to our second meeting so that we can start implementing some of the many things discussed, including stopping terrorism, security for Israel, nuclear proliferation, cyber attacks, trade, Ukraine, Middle East peace, North Korea and more,' the president wrote on Twitter. 'There are many answers, some easy and some hard, to these problems...but they can ALL be solved!'" (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) Mrs. McC: The announcement blindsided many top administration officials. ...

... Katie Rogers & Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: "President Trump spent much of Thursday playing up his economic accomplishments and attacking his regular list of rivals, including Hillary Clinton and the news media, which he again called the enemy of the people.... Intentionally or not, Mr. Trump was set on testing the limits of his ability to move on without consequences.... Mr. Trump was deploying a familiar tactic: barreling into the next news cycle by supplying the next bit of incendiary programming." ...

... Susan Glasser of the New Yorker: "... The real scandal of Helsinki may be only just emerging.... We are witnessing nothing less than the breakdown of American foreign policy.... On Thursday, Putin gave a public address to Russian diplomats in which he claimed that specific 'useful agreements' were reached with Trump in their one-on-one meeting at the summit, a private meeting that Trump himself insisted on.... Unlike Putin, Trump did not brief his own diplomats on the Helsinki meeting.... 'There is no word on agreements,' a senior U.S. official told me.... 'Nothing,' [a U.S ambassador] told me. 'We are completely in the dark. Completely.'... Days after the Helsinki summit, Trump's advisers have offered no information -- literally zero -- about any such agreements. His own government apparently remains unaware of any deals that Trump made with Putin, or any plans for a second meeting.... The fragmentary evidence that has emerged, from the Russian comments and Trump's various interviews, suggests there is reason for serious concern." ...

... Adam Silverman in Balloon Juice: "... because the President is considered to be a security risk when it comes to intelligence/information by US, allied, and partnered intelligence officials, the US was going to be at a disadvantage in regard to intelligence matters. What we know from both Andrea Mitchell's interview with DNI Coats and Susan Glasser's reporting, is that the President is compounding this problem by not telling his own senior appointees what they need to know to actually do their jobs effectively." ...

Will Kane of the (U.C.) Berkeley News: "'Russia's goal is undermining the West and NATO and undermining democracy around the world,' said M. Steven Fish, a professor of Political Science at UC Berkeley. 'Russian leaders have dreamed of doing this for a century and Soviet leaders weren't able to even make a nick in our alliances, or in the struggle against the United States. But in the last 18 months Russia made more progress toward that end than any time in the previous century.'... [Trump's performance in Helsinki] 'is textbook treason. This is what treason looks like. The fact that it's been so brazenly committed, and on an ongoing basis over a two-year period, is blinding.'... 'Yet most Democratic politicians continue to treat the American voter as exclusively concerned with government benefits, distribution of the tax burden, personal identity, and reproductive rights.'" Thanks to Monoloco for the link.

... Eliana Johnson of Politico: "... Donald Trump's disastrous performance since his news conference alongside Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin has sent West Wing morale to its lowest level since the Charlottesville fiasco almost a year ago. As happened last August, when the president refused to condemn neo-Nazi demonstrators, Trump's attempts to tamp down outrage have backfired. Stilted statements followed by ad-libbed remarks left even his allies feeling that while the president was technically acknowledging a mistake, he actually meant what he'd said on the first go-round -- that he believed Putin&'s denials of Russian meddling in the 2016 election." Mrs. McC: Their morale is low? They took jobs working for an infamous lowlife, & they're continually surprised by his outrageous behavior? Trump makes me physically ill, as he does many of us. The Trumpies should suffer more than we. ...

... Carol Morello, et al., of the Washington Post: "What began as Trump's attempt to repair relations that had been deteriorating since the Obama administration ended up causing a bigger rift. The fact he had even considered making Americans submit to questioning by Russian authorities sowed suspicion and outrage among current and former diplomats.... Trump initially called the offer 'interesting.'... The State Department has called the request for the Americans 'absolutely absurd.'... [Former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael] McFaul is one of 11 U.S. citizens a Russian prosecutor wants to question in connection with an investigation many U.S. officials say is bogus. The list is believed to include at least two other former diplomats, a congressional staffer, a CIA agent, a staffer for the National Security Council and two employees at the Department of Homeland Security.... Many of the Americans on the list were involved in some way with the Magnitsky Act, a 2012 U.S. law that has imposed stiff sanctions against Russia for human rights abuses, or have been harsh critics of human rights abuses in Russia under Putin.... [Financier Bill] Browder [-- who successfully lobbied the U.S. Congress & other governments to pass the Magnitsky Act (named for his former attorney Sergei Magnitsky)--], which imposed sanctions against certain Russians --] said he was 'aghast' by White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders's remark [Wednesday] that the president was considering the Russian request." ...

... "He Was For It Before He Was Against It." -- MAG. Kevin Liptak & Marshall Cohen of CNN: "... Donald Trump now disagrees with a proposal raised by his Russian counterpart to interrogate Americans in exchange for assistance in the FBI's Russia probe, the White House said on Thursday, another reversal in a week of cleanup following a maligned summit with Vladimir Putin. 'It is a proposal that was made in sincerity by President Putin, but President Trump disagrees with it,' press secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement....Sanders [had] indicated on Wednesday that no final decision had been made, but that the proposal was under consideration. 'The President's going to meet with his team and we'll let you know when we have an announcement on that,' she said.... The flip was the third forced clarification following Trump's talks with Putin. On Tuesday, Trump declared he misspoke when he cast doubt on US intelligence assessments that Russia interfered in the US election. And on Wednesday, Sanders told reporters that Trump's 'no' in response to a query about Russia's continued attempts to meddle was in fact a declaration that he wouldn't answer the question." ...

     ... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: What a shame. Here Putin made a generous offer "in sincerity" & Trump, who thought the offer was "incredible" -- in a good way -- has had to turn down Vlad's well-meaning & sincere offer. Is Sanders stupid or just an unprincipled lackey? ...

... Elana Schor of Politico: "The Senate overwhelmingly approved a resolution on Thursday stating that the United States should refuse to make any current or former official available for questioning by Vladimir Putin's government. The 98-0 vote amounts to a bipartisan slap at ... Donald Trump, whose White House on Thursday reversed its previous openness to giving Moscow access to former U.S. ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul and other longtime Putin critics. But beyond the lopsided vote to pass the symbolic resolution, proposed earlier in the day by Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), it remained unclear if the Senate would move ahead on any substantive action in response to ... Trump's widely criticized appearance with ... Putin. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said after a meeting with Banking Chairman Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) and Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) that he had asked their two committees to hold hearings on the implementation of last year's bipartisan Russia sanctions bill 'and to recommend to the Senate additional measures that could respond to or deter Russian malign behavior.'" ...

... Elana Schor: "Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) are stepping up a push for action on their bipartisan proposal to hit Russia with automatic new sanctions if it interferes in future U.S. elections.... Introduced in January, the Rubio-Van Hollen bill picked up eight new cosponsors on Thursday, evenly divided between both parties. The bill's momentum has grown steadily since Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) mentioned it on Tuesday as one option on the table for the Senate to respond to ... Donald Trump's warm posture toward Vladimir Putin's government...." ...

... Rep. Will Hurd (R-Texas), in a New York Times op-ed: "Over the course of my career as an undercover officer in the C.I.A., I saw Russian intelligence manipulate many people. I never thought I would see the day when an American president would be one of them.... By playing into Vladimir Putin's hands, the leader of the free world actively participated in a Russian disinformation campaign that legitimized Russian denial and weakened the credibility of the United States.... As a member of Congress, a coequal branch of government designed by our founders to provide checks and balances on the executive branch, I believe that lawmakers must fulfill our oversight duty as well as keep the American people informed of the current danger.... If necessary, Congress should take the lead on European security issues as it has in recent years.... Congress must act to give the men and women of our intelligence agencies the tools they need to confront Moscow and prevent this from happening in the future." ...

... Ellen Nakamura of the Washington Post: "The Justice Department plans to alert the public to foreign operations targeting U.S. democracy under a new policy designed to counter hacking and disinformation campaigns such as the one Russia undertook in 2016 to disrupt the presidential election. The government will inform American companies, private organizations and individuals that they are being covertly attacked by foreign actors attempting to affect elections or the political process. 'Exposing schemes to the public is an important way to neutralize them,' said Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, who announced the policy at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado. Rosenstein, who has drawn President Trump's ire for appointing a special counsel to probe Russian election interference, got a standing ovation.... Rosenstein said the Russian effort to influence the 2016 election 'is just one tree in a growing forest. Focusing merely on a single election misses the point.'" ...

... John Parkinson of ABC News: "Republicans blocked an attempt Thursday morning to subpoena the interpreter who sat in on ... Donald Trump's one-on-one meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, Finland on Monday. Rep. Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, joined with fellow California Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell to make a motion to subpoena Marina Gross, a State Department official." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Erica Werner of the Washington Post: "House Republicans on Thursday approved a spending bill that excludes new money for election security grants to states, provoking a furious reaction from Democrats amid a national controversy over Russian election interference. The spending bill passed 217-199. Democrats' bid to add hundreds of millions more in election spending was rejected 182-232 -- as Republicans were unmoved by Democrats floor speeches decrying the funding changes and chanting 'USA! USA!'" This is an update of a story linked below. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

** Terry Gross of NPR: "Carole Cadwalladr's investigation into Cambridge Analytica's role in Brexit led her to Russian connections and the Trump campaign. She says British investigators are working 'closely with the FBI.'" Gross interviews Cadwalladr for "Fresh Air." Cadwalladr: "... the through-link who I keep coming back to is this character called Nigel Farage.... [Steve] Bannon actually opened a branch of Breitbart in London in 2012, specifically to support Nigel Farage's mission to take Britain out of the EU.... Wherever Steve Bannon was, Robert Mercer's money was. And when Robert Mercer started funding Donald Trump's presidential election, that was when Bannon was brought in as his campaign manager." Farange was the connection between Trump & Julian Assange. Cadwalladr gave all of her stuff to the New York Times, partly because the U.S. has less stringent libel laws. Cadwalladr (and apparently Mueller) also has made the connections among "strange" financial Arron Banks & the Russian ambassador to Great Britain Alexander Yakovenko, Farange & the Trump campaign. "And Ambassador Yakovenko is described by Mueller [in an indictment] as a high-level contact between the Trump campaign in the Kremlin.... It comes back to, time and time again, the role of Silicon Valley in these elections is the really, really key thing. And Russia exposed that weakness. And, as I say, it happened in darkness. And Mark Zuckerberg is sort of absolutely responsible, still now, for not giving us the answers that we need to sort of understand that more fully." ...

"Congratulations, Mr. President." Ryan Mac & Charlie Warzel of BuzzFeed: "In the days following Donald Trump's election victory over Hillary Clinton, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg placed a secret, previously unreported call to the president-elect during which, sources told BuzzFeed News, he congratulated the Trump team on its victory and successful campaign, which spent millions of dollars on advertising with Facebook. The private call between Zuckerberg and Trump, which was confirmed by three people familiar with the conversation, is just one in a series of private endorsements from Facebook employees of the Trump campaign's ad efforts on the platform.... While Facebook has been reluctant to publicly acknowledge how well Trump used its social network to reach voters, it has celebrated the Republican presidential candidate's campaign internally as one of the most imaginative uses of the company's powerful advertising platform.... People familiar with the Trump campaign described a close working relationship with Facebook throughout the campaign."

The Latest Trumposphere Talking Points. Mackay Coppins of the Atlantic: "Skimming #MAGA Twitter, it's easy to see the outlines of the pro-Russian-meddling argument emerging: America interferes in other countries' elections, so it can't be that bad; exposing Democrats' hacked emails was a victory for transparency; keeping Clinton out of office was so urgent and important that it warranted some foreign intervention.... When the term 'collusion' first entered the political conversation in the wake of the 2016 election, the initial response was to dismiss the idea outright.... But as evidence of communication with Russia mounted in the months that followed, Trump's allies were forced to pivot repeatedly.... Given this pattern of deflection and rationalization, is it really so implausible that a significant segment of Trump-backers might complete the journey from denying Russian meddling to celebrating it?"

... Mrs. McCrabbie: Instead of seeing 1930s Germany as a cautionary tale, contemporary events here are teaching me how ordinary Germans could have fallen into line with Naziism. Stories like Coppins' convince me that Bacevich (linked next) is wrong. ...

... Andrew Bacevich in the Boston Globe: "... I am increasingly persuaded that Trump's election has induced a paranoid response, one that, unless curbed, may well pose a greater danger to the country than Trump himself. This paranoid response finds expression in obsessive attention given to just about anything Trump says, along with equally obsessive speculation about what he might do next -- this despite the fact that most of what he says is nonsense and much of what he does is reversed, contradicted, or watered down within the span of a single news cycle.... He is not a precursor of fascism. He does not endanger our democracy. Nor does he pose a threat to the rights enumerated in the Constitution.... The likelihood of Trump himself addressing any of [the nation's] problems is nil. But unless we get on with the process of identifying solutions, there will likely be more Trumps in our future." Thanks to Keith H. for the link.


Jacqueline Thomsen of the Hill: "President Trump in an interview that aired Friday said that he's 'ready to go' with $500 billion in tariffs on China after already slapping the country with a series of tariffs.... Bloomberg reported that about $500 billion worth of Chinese goods were imported into the U.S. last year."

Jim Tankersley of the New York Times: "President Trump criticized the Federal Reserve on Thursday for raising interest rates, a rare rebuke by a sitting president that upends longstanding White House protocol to avoid commenting on monetary policy.Mr. Trump, in an interview with CNBC set to air on Friday morning, said that he was 'not thrilled' about the Fed's decision to raise interest rates twice so far this year, to a current range of 1.75 to 2 percent. He implied that the moves, which are aimed at getting interest rates back to historically normal levels, could derail his administration's efforts to bolster the economy and put the United States at a disadvantage. 'I don't like all of this work that we're putting into the economy and then I see rates going up,' Mr. Trump said, according to excerpts released by CNBC. 'I am not happy about it.'... Mr. Trump said that he understood he was breaking with that protocol, but that he did not care.... During his presidential campaign, Mr. Trump accused the Fed of getting political, saying that the bank's chairwoman at the time, Janet L. Yellen, should be 'ashamed' for keeping interest rates low -- a move he said was meant to help President Barack Obama." ...

Now I'm just saying the same thing that I would have said as a private citizen. So somebody would say, 'Oh, maybe you shouldn't say that as president.' I couldn't care less what they say, because my views haven't changed. -- Donald Trump, to CNBC

... Ed Kilgore: Trump "went back and forth on [interest rates] during the 2016 presidential campaign. In May he called himself a 'low-interest rate person' but by September [he was criticizing Yellin for shamefully propping up the Obama economy.]... As president, of course, he ... perceives Fed policies predictably aimed at keeping the economy on an even keel as subversive.... Trump's ambivalent expressions about interest rates over time ... are highly disruptive to markets for whom monetary policy is extremely important.... It's alarming that the president doesn't understand his wandering opinions on this sensitive topic matter more than they did when he was a mere real estate mogul and reality-show host." ** See also MAG's comment in today's thread.

Lisa Rein of the Washington Post: "Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) announced Thursday that the Senate will vote Monday on the confirmation of top Pentagon official Robert Wilkie as veterans affairs secretary.... The move follows a report in The Washington Post on Wednesday that VA officials who are supportive of President Trump have been taking aggressive steps to sideline or reassign employees who are perceived to be disloyal.... Democratic lawmakers and the reassigned employees have accused [Peter] O'Rourke..., a former Trump campaign staff member who has been serving as VA's acting secretary..., of carrying out a loyalty purge based on the perceived political leanings of civil servants, whose jobs are supposed to be nonpartisan.... Also Thursday, nine Democrats led by Rep. Tim Walz (Minn.), the ranking Democrat on the House Veterans' Affairs Committee, called for an investigation of whether O'Rourke violated a federal law that prohibits on-duty political activity during his tenure as acting secretary."

Elana Schor & Burgess Everett of Politico: Mitch McConnell "privately told senior Republicans on Wednesday that if Democrats keep pushing for access to upwards of a million pages in records from ... Donald Trump's high court pick, he’s prepared to let Kavanaugh's confirmation vote slip until just before November's midterm elections, according to multiple sources. Delaying the vote past September would serve a dual purpose for McConnell, keeping vulnerable red-state Democrats off the campaign trail while potentially forcing anti-Kavanaugh liberals to swallow a demoralizing defeat just ahead of the midterms." ... Mrs. McC: Mitch is a canny guy, but I'm not sure his thinking on this is right. Maybe he can get Mark Zuckerberg & Cambridge Analytica (whatever it calls itself now) to help him decide on the best strategy.

Thomas Kaplan of the New York Times: "... a nominee for a key federal appeals court was pulled [by the White House] to avoid an embarrassing defeat on the Senate floor. The nomination of Ryan W. Bounds to serve on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit faced opposition over his writings in college, which included a column in which he railed against 'race-focused groups' on campus and 'race-think.' The Senate's only black Republican, Tim Scott of South Carolina, had concerns about ... Mr. Bounds's inability to clarify how his thinking had changed since then.... 'After talking with the nominee..., I had unanswered questions that led to me being unable to support him,' Mr. Scott said in a statement.... Adding conservative judges to the Ninth Circuit ... has been a longtime priority of Republicans. But Mr. Bounds, a federal prosecutor in Oregon, had faced strenuous opposition from Oregon's senators, Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley, both Democrats. Senate Republicans moved ahead with the nomination over their objections, generating howls of protest from Democrats, who accused the majority party of running roughshod over the Senate's tradition of deference to home-state senators."

Lisa Friedman, et al., of the New York Times: "The Interior Department on Thursday proposed the most sweeping set of changes in decades to the Endangered Species Act, the law that brought the bald eagle and the Yellowstone grizzly bear back from the edge of extinction but which Republicans say is cumbersome and restricts economic development. The proposed revisions have far-reaching implications, potentially making it easier for roads, pipelines and other construction projects to gain approvals than under current rules."

Kate Irby of McClatchy News: "Rep. Devin Nunes used political donations to pay for nearly $15,000 in tickets to Boston Celtics basketball games as well as winery tours and lavish trips to Las Vegas, according to reports from the Federal Election Commission and two nonpartisan watchdog groups.... His PAC also spent about $42,741 since 2013 on catering, site rentals, hotels and meals in Las Vegas. The most recent instance was March 9, when the PAC spent $7,229 at seven different restaurants and hotels in Las Vegas.... Leadership PACs such as the one Nunes runs are supposed to be used to allow members of Congress to donate money to other political campaigns, but using them for other expenses in connection with fundraising is common among members of Congress." Mrs. McC: All this should make Nunes a top contender for a key Cabinet appointment. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Presidential Election 2020. Look, Joe Biden ran three times. He never got more than 1 percent and President Obama took him out of the garbage heap, and everybody was shocked that he did. I'd love to have it be Biden. -- Donald Trump, on who his 2020 opponent might be

** Report from Wichita. Sarah Shmarsh in a New York Times op-ed: "Most struggling whites I know live lives of quiet desperation mad at their white bosses, not resentment of their co-workers or neighbors of color.... Like many Midwestern workers I know, my dad has more in common ideologically with New York's Democratic Socialist congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez than with the white Republicans who run our state.... Media coverage suggests that economically distressed whiteness elected Mr. Trump, when in fact it was just plain whiteness.... The greatest con of 2016 was not persuading a white laborer to vote for a nasty billionaire with soft hands. Rather, it was persuading a watchdog press to cast every working-class American in the same mold." Thanks to Patrick for the link. ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: My hope is that those "roving reporters" & their editors at the NYT all read their paper's opinion page. My impression of New York Times reporting on "real America" (and that includes the "reporting" by opinion writers -- here's looking at you, David Brooks) is that editors send young reporters out to the hinterlands in search of chatty racist rubes in shabby diners. "These men are smart; they know not to say 'the coloreds' and 'bra-burners,' but they blame liberal Democrats like Mr. Obama & Mrs. Clinton for the closed widget factory here in Nowheresville."

John Schwartz of the New York Times: "A federal judge has rejected New York City's lawsuit to make fossil fuel companies help pay the costs of dealing with climate change. Judge John F. Keenan of United States District Court for the Southern District of New York wrote that climate change must be addressed by the executive branch and Congress, not by the courts. While climate change 'is a fact of life,' Judge Keenan wrote, 'the serious problems caused thereby are not for the judiciary to ameliorate. Global warming and solutions thereto must be addressed by the two other branches of government.'"

Way Beyond the Beltway

Guy Faulconbridge of Reuters: "British police have identified several Russians who they believe were behind the nerve agent attack on former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, the British news agency, Press Association, said on Thursday, citing a source close to the investigation." Officials have not confirmed the report. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

News Lede

New York Times: "At least eight people were killed Thursday night when a tourist boat capsized in a southern Missouri lake as powerful thunderstorms passed through the Midwest, the authorities said. The amphibious boat, or duck boat, overturned in Table Rock Lake near Branson, Mo., around 7 p.m. as winds exceeded 60 m.p.h. Sheriff Doug Rader of Stone County said the duck boat sank to the bottom of the lake, and that seven passengers were taken to a hospital. Two people were in critical condition at Cox Medical Center Branson late Thursday." ...

     ... The story has been updated. At least 11 people died. ...

     ... The story has been updated again. Seventeen people died, including nine in one family.

Comments Off
Wednesday
Jul182018

The Commentariat -- July 19, 2018

Afternoon Update:

Louis Nelson of Politico: "... Donald Trump wrote online Thursday that he is looking forward to a second meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.... 'The Summit with Russia was a great success, except with the real enemy of the people, the Fake News Media. I look forward to our second meeting so that we can start implementing some of the many things discussed, including stopping terrorism, security for Israel, nuclear proliferation, cyber attacks, trade, Ukraine, Middle East peace, North Korea and more,' the president wrote on Twitter. 'There are many answers, some easy and some hard, to these problems...but they can ALL be solved!'"

John Parkinson of ABC News: "Republicans blocked an attempt Thursday morning to subpoena the interpreter who sat in on ... Donald Trump's one-on-one meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, Finland on Monday. Rep. Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, joined with fellow California Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell to make a motion to subpoena Marina Gross, a State Department official."

Look, Joe Biden ran three times. He never got more than 1 percent and President Obama took him out of the garbage heap, and everybody was shocked that he did. I'd love to have it be Biden. -- Donald Trump, on who his 2020 opponent might be

Erica Werner of the Washington Post: "House Republicans on Thursday approved a spending bill that excludes new money for election security grants to states, provoking a furious reaction from Democrats amid a national controversy over Russian election interference. The spending bill passed 217-199. Democrats' bid to add hundreds of millions more in election spending was rejected 182-232 -- as Republicans were unmoved by Democrats floor speeches decrying the funding changes and chanting 'USA! USA!'" This is an update of a story linked below.

Kate Irby of McClatchy News: "Rep. Devin Nunes used political donations to pay for nearly $15,000 in tickets to Boston Celtics basketball games as well as winery tours and lavish trips to Las Vegas, according to reports from the Federal Election Commission and two nonpartisan watchdog groups.... His PAC also spent about $42,741 since 2013 on catering, site rentals, hotels and meals in Las Vegas. The most recent instance was March 9, when the PAC spent $7,229 at seven different restaurants and hotels in Las Vegas.... Leadership PACs such as the one Nunes runs are supposed to be used to allow members of Congress to donate money to other political campaigns, but using them for other expenses in connection with fundraising is common among members of Congress." Mrs. McC: All this should make Nunes a top contender for a key Cabinet appointment.

Guy Faulconbridge of Reuters: "British police have identified several Russians who they believe were behind the nerve agent attack on former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, the British news agency, Press Association, said on Thursday, citing a source close to the investigation." Officials have not confirmed the report.

*****

Oops! He Did It Again. John Wagner & Felicia Sonmez of the Washington Post: "For the third straight day, President Trump cast doubt on whether he views Russia as a threat, despite warnings from his own government that Moscow continues to target the United States with hostile actions. Trump triggered a new uproar Wednesday morning when he appeared to suggest that Russia is no longer seeking to interfere in U.S. elections -- prompting the White House to assert hours later that his words had been misconstrued. At the start of a Cabinet meeting at the White House, a reporter [Cecilia Vega of ABC News] asked Trump, 'Is Russia still targeting the U.S., Mr. President?' 'Thank you very much. No,' Trump responded, shaking his head. 'No? You don't believe that to be the case?' the reporter said. 'No, Trump repeated.... More than two hours later, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders sought to quell the latest controversy, saying Trump was saying 'no' to whether he would take further questions -- not to whether he thinks Russia continues to target the United States." ...

... Dartunorro Clark of NBC News: "And in a contentious exchange with a reporter later in the briefing, Sanders doubled down on her assertion that the president was saying 'no' to reporters asking questions. She also contended that her explanation was not walking back the president's earlier remarks. 'Actually, I'm interpreting what the president said, I'm not reversing it,' Sanders told NBC's Hallie Jackson. 'I was in the room as well and I didn't take it the way you did.'" ...

... Yes, he was looking directly at me when he spoke. Yes, I believe he heard me clearly. He answered two of my questions. -- Cecilia Vega, in a tweet ...

... Video included in Brian Williams' report, embedded below. ...

... Alex Ward of Vox: "It's yet another stunning moment in the president's continuing battle against America's spy agencies, which he once likened to Nazis because he believed they leaked information about him.... What's more troubling is that no matter what they say or do, [DNI Dan] Coats and others can't seem to get Trump to listen to them. But the fact that Putin -- the head of the country responsible for continued attacks on the US -- seems to have Trump's ear is the scariest thing of all."

CBS News: "President Trump again expressed confidence in U.S. intelligence agencies and their assessment of Russian interference Wednesday, but declined to say whether he believes Vladimir Putin was lying when he denied Russia was behind the meddling effort. Mr. Trump made the comments in an interview with 'CBS Evening News' anchor Jeff Glor at the White House. Mr. Trump said he believes it's 'true' Russia meddled in the 2016 election and said he directly warned Putin against interfering in U.S. elections during their one-on-one meeting in Helsinki, Finland, on Monday.... [He said he was] 'Very strong on the fact that we can't have meddling, we can't have any of that ... I let him know that we can't have this, we're not going to have it, and that's the way it's going to be.'... The president said he now has confidence in intelligence agencies, but blasted former leaders like former DNI James Clapper and former CIA Directors John Brennan and Michael Hayden. All three have been vociferous critics of the president.... Mr. Trump called Brennan a 'low-life' in Wednesday's interview...." ...

Glor: But you haven't condemned Putin, specifically. Do you hold him personally responsible?

Trump: Well, I would, because he's in charge of the country. Just like I consider myself to be responsible for things that happen in this country. So certainly as the leader of a country you would have to hold him responsible, yes.

Mrs. McCrabbie: This is classic deflection. First, rather than making an affirmative answer, Trump uses the more nebulous conditional tense: "I would." Second, Trump does not hold Putin directly responsible. Rather, he is responsible, according to Trump only to the extent that a government leader is indirectly responsible for the acts of his ministers & employees even if the leader had no direct knowledge of the ministers' specific decisions. You might not blame Trump for Scott Pruitt's purchase of tactical pants, so Trump may not blame Putin for his cybersecurity staff's hacking the DNC.

... Mark Landler & Eileen Sullivan of the New York Times: "President Trump sowed even more confusion on Wednesday over his recent meeting with President Vladimir V. Putin, insisting after a day of conflicting statements about Russia's interference in the 2016 election that he had actually laid down the law with Mr. Putin.... But that statement was almost completely at odds with how the president has characterized the >meeting with Mr. Putin on Monday in Helsinki, Finland.... Mr. Trump said [Dan] Coats was doing an 'excellent job,' as was the C.I.A. director, Gina Haspel.... That was a shift from Monday, when Mr. Trump, standing next to Mr. Putin, said Mr. Coats had expressed his views about Russia's culpability but Mr. Trump had found the Russian leader's 'extremely strong and powerful' denial more persuasive.... Mr. Trump also came under sharp criticism for discussing an agreement with Mr. Putin under which Russian authorities would be allowed to question several American citizens it claims were involved in illegal dealings with a London-based financier and longtime critic of Mr. Putin, William F. Browder.... Among the names on the list, a Russian official told the Interfax news agency, is that of Michael A. McFaul, who served as American ambassador to Russia under President Barack Obama.... As a legal matter, Mr. Trump has no authority to force Mr. McFaul or any other American to face Russian questioning." ...

... Spencer Ackerman of the Daily Beast: "Current and former American diplomats are expressing disgust and horror over the White House's willingness to entertain permitting Russian officials to question a prominent former U.S. ambassador [Michael McFaul]. One serving diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said he was 'at a fucking loss' over comments that can be expected to chill American diplomacy in hostile or authoritarian countries -- a comment echoed by former State Department officials as well. '... It really puts in jeopardy the professional independence of diplomats anywhere in the world, if the consequence of their actions is going to be potentially being turned over to a foreign government,' the U.S. diplomat told The Daily Beast.... At the White House, however, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders declined to rule out permitting the Russians to question McFaul. Sanders said that there had been 'some conversation' in Helsinki about the issue, though Trump made no 'commitment.'" ...

The administration needs to make it unequivocally clear that in a million years this wouldn't be under consideration, period. Full stop. Not something that should require a half second of consultation. Dangerous. -- Former Secretary of State John Kerry, in a tweet ...

... Kevin Drum cites the Wall Street Journal story on this: "The White House is reviewing a request by Russian President Vladimir Putin to allow Russian investigators to question a number of Americans they say are implicated in criminal activity, including a former U.S. ambassador, a spokeswoman said. The White House decision to weigh the proposal rather than dismiss it outright prompted alarm among former diplomats and on Capitol Hill." (Emphasis Drum's.) Drum: "The fact that President Trump would even think twice about giving his goons access to American citizens is straight up spine-chilling. But Vladimir Putin is obsessed with the Magnitsky Act, and I guess that means Trump is too." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: If you watch MSNBC, you know McFaul regularly criticizes Trump in strong terms. I think what you're seeing here is Trump's willingness to "render" his American opponents to foreign governments for harsh, maybe life-threatening, "interrogations." ...

... Jonathan Chait: "That this is even being debated is yet another surreal moment that, had it been suggested before Trump took office, would have been dismissed as a paranoid fantasy. But Trump’s presidency, and especially his approach to Russia, have routinely made the surreal into reality." ...

... ** Evidence of Collusion. Washington Post Editors: "the White House confirmed Wednesday that [in their secret meetingTrump & Putin] did talk about ... the indictment of 12 Russian military officers on charges of hacking Democrats' computers and using the stolen data to influence the 2016 election. Mr. Putin suggested the investigative team of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III could be invited to witness their questioning by Russian authorities -- provided that similar access was given to Americans 'who have something to do with illegal actions on the territory of Russia.' 'I think that's an incredible offer,' volunteered Mr. Trump.... Mr. Putin was trying to equate the Mueller investigation with a sinister Russian campaign against Bill Browder, an American-born financier who has become a Putin nemesis.... That Mr. Trump would endorse this cynical and preposterous proposal might be chalked up to ignorance or confusion -- except that Mr. Trump knows all about Mr. Putin's false claims against Mr. Browder. The same charges were the subject of the June 9, 2016, Trump Tower meeting.... Mr. Putin's airing of the same allegations about Mr. Browder and [Hillary] Clinton in Helsinki only bolsters the case that [Natalia] Veselnitskaya was acting on the Kremlin's behalf when she visited Trump Tower. In turn, Mr. Trump's rush to embrace Mr. Putin's disingenuous proposal ... is in keeping with his alignment with Mr. Putin against Mr. Mueller and the U.S. justice system. It shows he did not misspeak at that news conference: he was, in fact, championing Mr. Putin's agenda." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: It would not surprise me bigly if Robert Mueller subpoenaed the interpreter's notes & any other documentation of the TrumPutin secret meeting.

History Repeats Itself: Trump Lets Russia Define the TrumPutin Secret Meeting. Karen DeYoung, et al., of the Washington Post: "Two days after President Trump's summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Russian officials offered a string of assertions about what the two leaders had achieved. 'Important verbal agreements' were reached at the Helsinki meeting, Russia's ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Antonov, told reporters in Moscow Wednesday, including preservation of the New Start and INF agreements, major bilateral arms control treaties whose futures have been in question. Antonov also said that Putin had made 'specific and interesting proposals to Washington' on how the two countries could cooperate on Syria. But officials at the most senior levels across the U.S. military, scrambling since Monday to determine what Trump may have agreed to on national security issues in Helsinki, had little to no information Wednesday.... Trump continued to praise his private meeting with Putin and an expanded lunch with aides as a 'tremendous success' and tweeted a promise of 'big results,' but State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said the administration was 'assessing ... three takeaways,' which she characterized as 'modest.'" ...

... John Bennett of Roll Call: "For the second consecutive day since he broke with America's spy agencies over Russia's election meddling..., Donald Trump on Wednesday [did] not get an intelligence briefing.... Trump's public schedule typically begins with a late-morning intelligence briefing in the Oval Office after his 'executive time' in the White House residence, during which he tweets while watching cable news.... The two briefing-free mornings come after Trump on Monday publicly broke with his director of national intelligence, former Indiana GOP Sen. Dan Coats, on foreign soil by siding with Russian President Vladimir Putin's version of events over Coats and other senior intel officials.... James Clapper, a former DNI, warned earlier this week that the Helsinki spectacle could lead intelligence leaders to withhold sensitive information from Trump." ...

... ** David Sanger & Matthew Rosenberg of the New York Times: Since before he took office, "Mr. Trump has tried to cloud the very clear findings that he received [in an intel briefing] on Jan. 6, 2017 ... [--] that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia had personally ordered complex cyberattacks to sway the 2016 American election [--] ... which his own intelligence leaders have unanimously endorsed.... [In the CBS interview Wednesday,] he blamed Mr. Putin personally, but only indirectly, for the election interference by Russia, 'because he's in charge of the country.'... Almost as soon as he took office, Mr. Trump began casting doubts on the intelligence on Russia's election interference.... He dismissed it broadly as a fabrication by Democrats and part of a 'witch hunt' against him. He raised unrelated issues ...to distract attention from the central question of Russia's role...." Read on. The reporters provide many details. ...

     ... Scott Lemieux calls this "the impeachable offense du jour." Former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance said on MSNBC that if the Times reporting holds up, Trump's disinformation campaign "is clear proof that the president was engaged in, at a minimum, a cover-up of Russia's efforts to interfere with our elections. This is a broad mandate for folks on the Hill ... to make a determination whether the president's conduct is something that violates the oath he took to uphold the Constitution." ...

... Frank Rich: "I'd argue that Trump’s motivation for advancing Putin's interests is not just because the Kremlin likely has the goods on him but also because Trump genuinely believes in the Russian Way. The more we've seen of him in office, the more it's apparent that he does have a consistent ideology, after all, albeit one that aligns more with Putin (and at times Kim Jong-un) than America's major political parties. Trump's embrace of nationalist and white-supremacist authoritarianism can be found in his public statements and actions dating back at least as far as the incendiary racist newspaper ads he took out during the 1989 Central Park Five rape case.... Philip Roth's The Plot Against America, much cited as a prescient and chilling prophecy of Trump, may yet be viewed as a rather optimistic fairy tale. Charles Lindbergh's effort to impose America First fascism on World War II-era America, as imagined by Roth, does end with the restoration of democratic order. We cannot vouchsafe that Trump’s unchecked plot against America will have that salutary an ending."

Ken Meyer of Mediaite: "During Trump's interview with [Tucker] Carlson..., the two particularly honed in on NATO Article 5, the alliance provision that asks all member nations to provide mutual defense if any one of them, even a new member like Montenegro, comes under attack. [CNN's Jake Tapper] is now pointing out the ways in which NATO states [and in particular, Montenegro,] contribute to American international interests[.]" See also yesterday's Commentariat on Trump's discomfort with the notion of meeting our obligations under Article 5. ...

... New York Times Editors: "There hardly seemed more damage [Trump] could do after he declared the European Union a 'foe,' insulted Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and Prime Minister Theresa May of Britain, railed at NATO, upstaged Queen Elizabeth II and gave that infamous news conference with President Vladimir Putin of Russia. Yet then, for good measure, came his weird suggestion that Montenegro's 640,000 souls are 'very aggressive' and could drag NATO into World War III.... A larger question [than the settled debate over whether or not NATO is necessary] is whether [Trump] is aware that his friend Mr. Putin strenuously opposed Montenegro's joining NATO, and that Russia is suspected of being behind a failed 2016 plot to overthrow its government and assassinate its prime minister.... Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican, wrote on Twitter, 'By attacking Montenegro & questioning our obligations under NATO, the President is playing right into Putin's hands.'" ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: I have little doubt that Putin brought up the Montenegro "problem" during the secret Helsinki meeting. And that's why Montenegro, of all countries, came into Trump's ignorant head as a good example of a NATO country not worth protecting.

David Remnick of the New Yorker: "Just as the President's comments following the torchlit white-supremacist march last year in Charlottesville made it clear that racism was at the core of his character and his political strategy, the contemptible remarks he delivered alongside Vladimir Putin seemed to mark a turning point, even for some of his most ardent defenders. The President's attempt to reverse the damage -- clearly the result of a panicked White House staff -- only worsened the matter.... Trump's performances in Europe, and now in Washington ... raised dark suspicions and aroused the sickening feeling that we are living in the pages of the most lurid espionage novel ever written." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Burgess Everett & Eliana Johnson of Politico: "The more ... Donald Trump talks about Russia, the more Republicans cringe. The president's effort to clean up his disastrous Monday news conference is falling flat on Capitol Hill -- and White House aides are doing little to assuage an increasingly frustrated GOP.... Some senators are barreling forward with efforts to combat Russian interference in the fall elections. 'I'm not going to try to excuse what the White House is doing. What we need to do is focus action here in Congress," [said] Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.)."


Tom Jackman & Rosalind Helderman of the Washington Post: "The Russian woman arrested on charges of being a foreign agent had ties to Russian intelligence operatives and was in contact with them while in the United States, federal prosecutors said Wednesday. Maria Butina, 29, also had an ongoing relationship with a Republican operative, strictly for business purposes according to prosecutors, and offered another individual 'sex in exchange for a position within a special interest organization.' In a new court filing, prosecutors said Butina, who has connections with wealthy businessmen linked to the Putin administration, appeared to have plans to flee the U.S. Butina was arrested on a criminal complaint Sunday, and federal authorities indicted her Tuesday for conspiracy to act as an agent of a foreign government and failing to register as an agent of a foreign government. She is scheduled for a detention hearing Wednesday afternoon on whether to release her from jail before trial, and prosecutors filed a motion this morning outlining why she should be held without bond." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

     ... Katelyn Polantz of CNN: "The hearing lasted only 13 minutes, and Judge Deborah Robinson of the US District Court for the District of Columbia decided on the spot that Butina should be detained for three days, until at least her next court appearance." ...

... ** Dana Milbank: "How is it possible that Trump can assert that Russia is not targeting the United States -- two days after he suggested it didn't interfere with the 2016 election -- while just a few blocks away, his own administration is prosecuting a Russian [Mariia Butina] for targeting the United States?... [The DOJ prosecutor Erik] Kenerson described her as an extreme flight risk, painting a spy-novel scenario of a Russian diplomatic car driving her to the border. (Butina's lawyer, Robert Driscoll, conceding this theoretical possibility, asked the judge if he could consult with Russian consular officials in the courtroom.)... Kenerson said Butina had told the Russian official [presumed to be oligarch Alexander Torshin] she was 'ready for further orders.'" ...

... Mrs. McCrabbie: If you're wondering not if, but how long, Trump has been colluding with Russia, perhaps this is a clue. Eric Lach of the New Yorker: "In July, 2015, a few weeks after Trump declared his candidacy, he called on [Mariia Butina] -- apparently at random — during an event in Las Vegas. 'Do you want to continue the politics of sanctions that are damaging of both economies?' Butina asked. 'I believe I would get along very nicely with Putin, O.K.?' Trump replied. 'I don't think you'd need the sanctions.' Later, according to Michael Isikoff and David Corn's book, 'Russian Roulette,' the Trump campaign advisers Steve Bannon and Reince Priebus worried about this exchange. 'How was it that this Russian woman happened to be in Las Vegas for that event? And how was it that Trump happened to call on her? And Trump's response?' Isikoff and Corn wrote. 'It was odd, Bannon thought, that Trump had a fully developed answer.'"

Darren Samuelsohn of Politico: "Special counsel Robert Mueller released an itemized list Wednesday night detailing well over 500 pieces of evidence that his prosecutors are considering presenting during their upcoming criminal trial of former Donald Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort."

** The Macedonian Connection. Craig Silverman of BuzzFeed: "A week before Election Day in 2016, BuzzFeed News revealed that young men and teens in Veles were running over a hundred websites that pumped out often false viral stories that supported Donald Trump.... [The effort] was launched by a well-known Macedonian media attorney, Trajche Arsov -- who worked closely with two high-profile American partners for at least six months during a period that overlapped with Election Day. One of those Americans, Paris Wade, is now running for office in Nevada. Arsov also employed other American and British writers, including at least one who currently works for US right-wing conspiracy site Gateway Pundit.... Macedonian security agencies are cooperating with law enforcement in the United States and at least two Western European countries to probe possible links between Russians, US citizens, and the pro-Trump 'fake news' websites, two senior Macedonian officials said.... A senior FBI agent familiar with the Macedonia case confirmed that the bureau is assisting with the investigations. The agent said that information determined to be of interest to Mueller is being shared with his office...." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Jelani Cobb of the New Yorker: "... on Tuesday, when Barack Obama walked onto a stage in Johannesburg to deliver the 2018 Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture..., he offered the sharpest possible contrast between himself and his successor -- between statesman and demagogue -- and, crucially, the distinction between a man who grasps history as the living context of our lives and one unburdened by the knowledge of how we arrived at the present and what that means for the future. President Obama was elegant and effortlessly charismatic in ways that recalled the finer occasions of his political tenure. He spoke fully aware of his status as the most credible living representative of American interests. But that charm and self-assuredness were also discordant amid the political alarms sounding in the background.... Obama's performance highlighted how comforting it is to listen to a leader whose ideas form a coherent world view, even if you don't always agree with it. Trump is governed by some algorithmic factor of ego, fear, impulse, greed, and the suasion of random celebrity petition...." ...

... Here's a lightly-edited transcript of President Obama's July 17 speech in Johannesburg, via the New Yorker.


Trump Loves a Parade -- But Not Actual Military Preparedness. Ryan Browne of CNN: "... Donald Trump's military parade in DC is likely to cost nearly as much as the now canceled military exercise with South Korea that Trump called 'tremendously expensive' and said cost 'a fortune,' three US defense officials tell CNN. The parade, which is now scheduled to take place on November 10, is currently estimated to cost approximately $12 million, the officials said.... 'We save a fortune by not doing war games, as long as we are negotiating in good faith - which both sides are!' Trump tweeted in June following his meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Singapore. North Korea had long sought an end to the exercises, which it says are provocative. US military leaders have said the exercises are necessary to maintain the readiness of US troops in South Korea. Pentagon spokesman Col. Rob Manning told reporters earlier this month that the now-cancelled US-South Korea Freedom Guardian Exercise was estimated to cost approximately $14 million." Mrs. McC: Putin also asked Trump to cancel the U.S-S.K. exercises.

Vivan Wang of the New York Times: "The New York State Department of Taxation and Finance has opened an investigation into whether the Donald J. Trump Foundation violated state tax laws, a move that could lead to a criminal referral for possible prosecution, according to two state officials.... It seemed likely that the inquiry may cover some of the same issues raised by the New York attorney general, Barbara D. Underwood, in a lawsuit filed against the Trump Foundation last month. The attorney general's lawsuit accused the foundation of violating campaign finance laws, self-dealing and illegally coordinating with the Trump presidential campaign."


Brian Stelter of CNN: "The 'daily' White House press briefing is a thing of the past. The White House has only held three on-camera briefings in the past 30 days, according to the administration's own records on WhiteHouse.gov. Press secretary Sarah Sanders' most recent briefing was on July 2, more than two weeks ago. Since that time, EPA administrator Scott Pruitt has resigned; Bill Shine has started working as Trump's new communications chief; Trump has nominated a new Supreme Court justice; he has assailed America's alliances and sidled up to Russian president Vladimir Putin; and the administration has struggled to reunite parents and children who were separated at the southern border." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

     ... Update: Sanders held a press briefing Wednesday. Perhaps not coincidentally, the briefing was not added to the White House schedule till after the publication of Stelter's post.

Trumpie Purges the VA. Lisa Rein of the Washington Post: "Ahead of Robert Wilkie's likely confirmation to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs, Trump loyalists at the agency are taking aggressive steps to purge or reassign staff members perceived to be disloyal to President Trump and his agenda for veterans, according to multiple people familiar with the moves. The transfers include more than a dozen career civil servants who have been moved from the leadership suite at VA headquarters and reassigned to lower-visibility roles. The employees served agency leaders, some dating back more than two decades, in crucial support roles that help a new secretary.... The moves are being carried out by a small cadre of political appointees led by Acting Secretary Peter O'Rourke who have consolidated power in the four months since they helped oust Secretary David Shulkin." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Just a reminder that Turkey's Recep Erdogan started small, too. Then one day he purged 18,000 government employees whom he perceived as 'not loyal" to him. At the recent NATO meeting, Trump -- after criticizing many U.S. allies who lead actual democracies -- reportedly gave Erdogan a fist-bump and said Erdogan "does things the right way." Just saying.

The Most Corrupt Administration Ever, Ctd. Ben Lefebvre of Politico: "The Interior Department's internal watchdog has launched a full investigation into a real estate deal involving a foundation established by Ryan Zinke and developers including Halliburton Chairman David Lesar, which was first reported by Politico last month, according to a letter the office sent to House Democrats on Wednesday. The inspector general's probe will focus on whether Zinke violated conflict of interest laws, the latest official inquiry of Zinke's activities in his 16 months helming the department."

Erica Werner of the Washington Post: "House Republicans plan to vote Thursday on a spending bill that excludes new money for election security grants to states, provoking a furious reaction from Democrats amid a national controversy over Russian election interference. At issue is a grants program overseen by the federal Election Assistance Commission and aimed at helping states administer their elections and improve voting systems; Democrats want to continue grant funding through 2019, while Republicans say the program already has been fully funded. Republicans argued strenuously in floor debate Wednesday that states had plenty of money from prior congressional allocations to spend on election improvements. But Democrats accused the Republicans of abetting President Trump in his refusal to take a hard line against Russian President Vladimir Putin at this week's summit in Helsinki." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: We should be clear about the reason Trump supports Putin over U.S. intelligence & law enforcement agencies & why GOP members of Congress do, too: the party of voter suppression figures -- correctly -- that Russian interference is interference on behalf of Republican candidates. So if Russians hack a few voting machines to turn blue results red, what's the big deal? They're just helping make America great again.

Manu Raju of CNN: "Judge Brett Kavanaugh two years ago expressed his desire to overturn a three-decade-old Supreme Court ruling upholding the constitutionality of an independent counsel, a comment bound to get renewed scrutiny in his confirmation proceedings to sit on the high court. Speaking to a conservative group in 2016, Kavanaugh bluntly said he wanted to "put the final nail' in a 1988 Supreme Court ruling. That decision, known as Morrison v. Olson, upheld the constitutionality of provisions creating an independent counsel under the 1978 Ethics in Government Act -- the same statute under which Ken Starr, for whom Kavanaugh worked, investigated President Bill Clinton. The law expired in 1999, when it was replaced by the more modest Justice Department regulation that governs special counsels like Robert Mueller." ...

... Michael Kranish of the Washington Post: "Senate Democrats have never fully accepted [Brett] Kavanaugh's answers to questions about ... [his involvement Bush II’s torture policy], and now they are prepared to resurrect the issue as Kavanaugh faces a hearing as President Trump's Supreme Court nominee. Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), whose questions in [Kavanaugh's 2006 confirmation hearings] elicited Kavanaugh's denial [of knowledge of or involvement in the internal torture policy debate], said in an interview this week that 'what he told us under oath is not accurate.' Democrats are seeking Bush White House files to pin down specifics..., which could slow [confirmation proceedings]. Kavanaugh was involved in at least one contentious meeting at the Office of White House Counsel in 2002.... Kavanaugh was asked to interpret an important question about how the detainee policy was likely to be viewed in a Supreme Court challenge, specifically by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, for whom he had served as a clerk.... Kavanaugh had already been confirmed for the circuit court when the White House meeting became public in a Post report. Democrats including Durbin have sought ever since to question Kavanaugh about whether he misled the Senate Judiciary Committee." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Yeah, Democrats "have never fully accepted" Kavanaugh's answers because they were lies -- under oath. Hard to believe that genial, fresh-faced carpooling choir boy told an eensy-weensy fib about torture so-help-me-god.

Sheera Frenkel of the New York Times: "Facebook, facing growing criticism for posts that have incited violence in some countries, said Wednesday that it would begin removing misinformation that could lead to people being physically harmed. The policy expands Facebook’s rules about what type of false information it will remove, and is largely a response to episodes in Sri Lanka, Myanmar and India in which rumors that spread on Facebook led to real-world attacks on ethnic minorities."

Beyond the Beltway

Maura Dolan of the Los Angeles Times: "The California Supreme Court decided unanimously Wednesday to remove from the November ballot a measure aimed at dividing California into three states. The decision was a defeat for Tim Draper, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist considered an eccentric entrepreneur who spent $1.2 million on the measure.... In a brief order, the court said it acted 'because significant questions have been raised regarding the proposition's validity and because we conclude that the potential harm in permitting the measure to remain on the ballot outweighs the potential harm in delaying the proposition to a future election.' The court ... also agreed to rule eventually on the measure's constitutionality, a ruling that is likely to go against the initiative. The challenge was filed last week by the Planning and Conservation League, an environmental group."

Vivian Wang of the New York Times: "Dean G. Skelos [R], once one of the most powerful figures in New York State politics, was found guilty of bribery, extortion and conspiracy on Tuesday, the latest in a drumbeat of corruption convictions to roil Albany in a heated election year. The verdict itself was not necessarily a surprise, as a different jury had found Mr. Skelos, the former leader of the State Senate, and his son guilty on the same charges in 2015 before the convictions were overturned. But its timing -- on the heels of three other successful Albany-focused prosecutions this year, including one last week in the courtroom next door -- fed the perception that the culture of ethical neglect in the state capital had reached its nadir." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Comments Off
Tuesday
Jul172018

The Commentariat -- July 18, 2018

Afternoon Update:

David Remnick of the New Yorker: "Just as the President's comments following the torchlit white-supremacist march last year in Charlottesville made it clear that racism was at the core of his character and his political strategy, the contemptible remarks he delivered alongside Vladimir Putin seemed to mark a turning point, even for some of his most ardent defenders. The President's attempt to reverse the damage -- clearly the result of a panicked White House staff -- only worsened the matter.... Trump's performances in Europe, and now in Washington ... raised dark suspicions and aroused the sickening feeling that we are living in the pages of the most lurid espionage novel ever written."

Tom Jackman & Rosalind Helderman of the Washington Post: "The Russian woman arrested on charges of being a foreign agent had ties to Russian intelligence operatives and was in contact with them while in the United States, federal prosecutors said Wednesday. Maria Butina, 29, also had an ongoing relationship with a Republican operative, strictly for business purposes according to prosecutors, and offered another individual 'sex in exchange for a position within a special interest organization.' In a new court filing, prosecutors said Butina, who has connections with wealthy businessmen linked to the Putin administration, appeared to have plans to flee the U.S. Butina was arrested on a criminal complaint Sunday, and federal authorities indicted her Tuesday for conspiracy to act as an agent of a foreign government and failing to register as an agent of a foreign government. She is scheduled for a detention hearing Wednesday afternoon on whether to release her from jail before trial, and prosecutors filed a motion this morning outlining why she should be held without bond."

** The Macedonian Connection. Craig Silverman of BuzzFeed: "A week before Election Day in 2016, BuzzFeed News revealed that young men and teens in Veles were running over a hundred websites that pumped out often false viral stories that supported Donald Trump.... [The effort] was launched by a well-known Macedonian media attorney, Trajche Arsov -- who worked closely with two high-profile American partners for at least six months during a period that overlapped with Election Day. One of those Americans, Paris Wade, is now running for office in Nevada. Arsov also employed other American and British writers, including at least one who currently works for US right-wing conspiracy site Gateway Pundit.... Macedonian security agencies are cooperating with law enforcement in the United States and at least two Western European countries to probe possible links between Russians, US citizens, and the pro-Trump 'fake news' websites, two senior Macedonian officials said.... A senior FBI agent familiar with the Macedonia case confirmed that the bureau is assisting with the investigations. The agent said that information determined to be of interest to Mueller is being shared with his office...."

Brian Stelter of CNN: "The 'daily' White House press briefing is a thing of the past. The White House has only held three on-camera briefings in the past 30 days, according to the administration's own records on WhiteHouse.gov. Press secretary Sarah Sanders' most recent briefing was on July 2, more than two weeks ago. Since that time, EPA administrator Scott Pruitt has resigned; Bill Shine has started working as Trump's new communications chief; Trump has nominated a new Supreme Court justice; he has assailed America's alliances and sidled up to Russian president Vladimir Putin; and the administration has struggled to reunite parents and children who were separated at the southern border."

Manu Raju of CNN: "Judge Brett Kavanaugh two years ago expressed his desire to overturn a three-decade-old Supreme Court ruling upholding the constitutionality of an independent counsel, a comment bound to get renewed scrutiny in his confirmation proceedings to sit on the high court. Speaking to a conservative group in 2016, Kavanaugh bluntly said he wanted to "put the final nail' in a 1988 Supreme Court ruling. That decision, known as Morrison v. Olson, upheld the constitutionality of provisions creating an independent counsel under the 1978 Ethics in Government Act -- the same statute under which Ken Starr, for whom Kavanaugh worked, investigated President Bill Clinton. The law expired in 1999, when it was replaced by the more modest Justice Department regulation that governs special counsels like Robert Mueller."

Vivian Wang of the New York Times: "Dean G. Skelos [R], once one of the most powerful figures in New York State politics, was found guilty of bribery, extortion and conspiracy on Tuesday, the latest in a drumbeat of corruption convictions to roil Albany in a heated election year. The verdict itself was not necessarily a surprise, as a different jury had found Mr. Skelos, the former leader of the State Senate, and his son guilty on the same charges in 2015 before the convictions were overturned. But its timing -- on the heels of three other successful Albany-focused prosecutions this year, including one last week ... -- fed the perception that the culture of ethical neglect in the state capital had reached its nadir."

*****

John Wagner of the Washington Post: "... President Trump offered a fresh defense Wednesday of his summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, firing off morning tweets in which he claimed that his widely panned news conference afterward actually was appreciated.... 'So many people at the higher ends of intelligence loved my press conference performance in Helsinki. Putin and I discussed many important subjects at our earlier meeting. We got along well which truly bothered many haters who wanted to see a boxing match. Big results will come!'" Two more Wednesday a.m. tweets: "While the NATO meeting in Brussels was an acknowledged triumph, with billions of dollars more being put up by member countries at a faster pace, the meeting with Russia may prove to be, in the long run, an even greater success. Many positive things will come out of that meeting." "... Russia has agreed to help with North Korea, where relationships with us are very good and the process is moving along. There is no rush, the sanctions remain! Big benefits and exciting future for North Korea at end of process!" ...

     ... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: "An acknowledged triumph"? Who says that about himself? And who said that about Trump? There's a reason Trump uses the passive voice here. And Trump is not responsible for members' increases in spending. It's a trend set in place in 2014. I wonder what "help" Russia has offered re: North Korea. Putin's last bit of "help" was to tell Trump to cancel U.S.-S.K. military defense exercises. ...

... Oh. There's this:

... Daniel Hurst of the Guardian: "Donald Trump has eased pressure on North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons quickly, conceding there is no deadline for a breakthrough.... The US president said there was 'no rush for speed' because North Korea had not tested any ballistic missiles over the past nine months. 'We have no time limit. We have no speed limit,' Trump said at a meeting with members of Congress on Tuesday. 'We're just going through the process, but the relationships are very good.'" --safari

Sophie Tatum of CNN: "... Donald Trump seemingly questioned the United States' commitment to defending all NATO allies in an interview that aired Tuesday evening.... NATO requires all members to help defend fellow member nations that have been attacked, which Carlson noted to Trump. 'Why should my son go to Montenegro to defend it from attack?' [Fox 'News" host & Trump sycophant Tucker] Carlson inquired. Trump responded: 'I've asked the same question. Montenegro is a tiny country with very strong people. ... They are very strong people. They are very aggressive people, they may get aggressive, and congratulations, you are in World War III.'... While at the NATO summit last week, Trump signed the NATO communique, which explicitly endorsed Article 5. 'Any attack against one Ally will be regarded as an attack against us all, as set out in Article 5 of the Washington Treaty,' the communique reads.... Article 5 has been invoked only once -- by the United States after the 9/11 terrorist attacks." ...

     ... Jonathan Chait: "Here was Trump not only picking fights with allies, as he has been doing for months, but seeming to abandon the promise of collective self-defense that is the heart of the NATO pact. Without that ironclad pledge, the alliance would dissolve, to Russia's delight. Some analysts have tried to explain away these kinds of sentiments as just Trump's relentlessly selfish worldview. And yet in the very same interview with Carlson, Trump expressed a sense of gratitude toward Russia for its sacrifices as an American ally in World War II[.]... There is no remotely consistent thread between abandoning America's current allies and expressing fondness for its old ones."

Who Knew English Could Be So Complicated? Eileen Sullivan & Mark Landler of the New York Times: "President Trump said on Tuesday that he had misspoken a day earlier in Helsinki, Finland, when he appeared to take the word of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia over the conclusion of his own intelligence agencies on Russian election meddling in 2016. On Tuesday, Mr. Trump said he 'accepts' those findings. Mr. Trump said the misunderstanding arose from his use of a 'double negative.' 'The sentence should have been "I don't see any reason why it wouldn't be Russia," sort of a double negative,' he said. 'So you can put that in and I think that probably clarifies things pretty good by itself.'..." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

     ... Mrs. McC: Yeah, he done corrected it pretty good. Holy cow! If you believe that, I have a Trump condo to sell you. The question was, "Who[m] do you believe?" That's an either/or question, & that's how Trump answered it: He contrasted what DNI Dan Coats ("and some others") "think" (just a hunch!) with what Putin declared: "I have President Putin [Putin being the horse's mouth]. He just said it's not Russia. I will say this. I don't see any reason why it would be." That's the either and the or. EITHER it's Coats' non-determinative belief, OR Putin's knowledgable declaration. I choose Putin. ...

... Zack Beauchamp of Vox: "... Donald Trump just issued what was arguably the most bald-faced lie of his entire presidency -- and that's saying something.... Trump is trying to gaslight the entire world, to assert that he said something he clearly didn't by sheer force of confident assertion." --safari ...

... Matthew Yglesias of Vox: "This makes absolutely no sense, but it may give congressional Republicans what they've been looking for ever since Trump left the podium in Helsinki: a way to avoid doing anything about the fact that the president is, for whatever reason, trying to cozy up to Russia and disrupt the traditional American alliance system. It's not exactly plausible deniability, since there's nothing plausible about it. But it is deniability." --safari ...

... Ryan Koronowski of ThinkProgress: "[I]f Trump really misspoke, you'd expect him to correct the record during interviews he did immediately after the news conference. But he didn't do so with [Tucker] Carlson. An interview with Sean Hannity, also taped after the Helsinki press conference, also contained no such correction -- Trump actually accused President Obama of rigging the Russia investigation." --safari ...

... BUT, just to make sure he didn't upset Putin ... Alana Abramson of Time: "Reading from prepared remarks, Trump said ... 'While Russia's actions had no impact at all on the outcome of the election, let me be totally clear in saying -- and I've said this many times -- I accept our intelligence community's conclusion that Russia's meddling in the 2016 election took place. Could be other people also. A lot of people out there.'" Emphasis added. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) Mrs. McC: Although Trump read most of his statement from prepared text, "Could be other people also" appears to have been adlibbed. Obviously, the adlib completely undermines his claim that he accepted U.S. intel assessments. ...

     ... John Wagner & Felicia Sonmez of the Washington Post: "... Trump also floated without evidence the possibility that other actors may have been involved, a conclusion that is not backed up by the findings of U.S. intelligence agencies." ...

... Here's the full transcript (in English) of the TrumPutin press conference, via Vox. Read Trump's "double negative" in context & decide for yourself. The condo is still available. Solid gold taps. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Stephen Colbert fact-checks Trump's fake walk-back:

      ... (Also notice Trump is a terrible reader. As Gloria Borger of CNN & Gene Robinson of the WashPo quipped, Trump looked like the star of a hostage video.)

... Now You See/Hear It; Now You Don't. Uri Friedman of the Atlantic: "It was perhaps the most explosive exchange in an incendiary press conference: ... Vladimir Putin appearing to frankly admit to a motive for, and maybe even to the act of, meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, despite repeatedly denying Russian interference in American politics during the rest of his appearance with Donald Trump in Finland on Monday. But the exchange doesn't appear in full in the White House's live-stream or transcript of the press conference, and it's missing entirely from the Kremlin's transcript of the event. The White House did not immediately provide an explanation for the discrepancy." Emphasis added. Mrs. McC: What cover-up? What collusion? ...

... Dartunorro Clark of NBC News: "Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., accused Trump of trying to 'squirm away' from his comments in Helsinki. 'President Trump tried to squirm away from what he said yesterday. It's 24 hours too late and in the wrong place,' Schumer said. Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said..., 'I don't accept the president's comments today. If he wanted to make those comments, he should have had the strength to make them in front of Vladimir Putin.' He added, 'This has a strange resemblance to the president's comments after he was so offensive after the disturbances in Charlottesville where he equated the neo-Nazis with the protesters. So, I give these comments about 24 hours before he once again slams the investigation, before he once again sides with authoritarians like Vladimir Putin.'" (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Matthew Nussbaum & Nancy Cook of Politico: "The about-face was Trump's latest after a week-long trip to Europe.... After appearing to threaten to pull out of NATO on Thursday, Trump then took the stage to praise the organization and declare it a 'fine-tuned machine.' That night, as Trump enjoyed a formal dinner hosted by Prime Minister Theresa May, the British newspaper The Sun published an interview in which Trump was harshly critical of May's handling of Brexit negotiations and suggested her rival Boris Johnson would do better. The next day, Trump declared that he had not criticized May at all. Even for Trump, who is notoriously prone to switching positions and delivering falsehoods, the series of reversals marked an unusual degree of chaos." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Philip Bump of the Washington Post: "In preparation for a public statement meant to mitigate the damage from Monday's news conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin, President Trump brought four pages of handwritten notes to a meeting with congressional leaders. In his own distinctive scrawl -- using, as always, a black fine-tip marker -- Trump added notes to the prepared comments. And in several instances, he struck out things he planned to skip.... In his prepared remarks, Trump removed a line about bringing election hackers to justice." Mrs. McC: Obviously a line like that also would irritate Putin. ...

     ... safari: On his prepared notes, he also scrawled in black pen "there was no colusion", because he's a low I.Q. moron who can't spell words in English. Our president* can't read OR write. ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: @safari: Yeah but. Apparently we Trump critics are the ones who are "at the lower ends of intelligence." (I realize this is not a logical syllogism, but I'm pretty sure it's what Trump had in mind in his tweet this morning.)

... Gabriel Sherman of Vanity Fair: "While National Security Adviser John Bolton, according to a source, thought Trump's remarks were ill-advised, he believed that walking them back would only add fuel to the outrage pyre and make the president look weak. But Chief of Staff John Kelly was irate. According to a source, he told Trump it would make things worse for him with Robert Mueller. He also exerted pressure to try to get the president to walk back his remarks. According to three sources familiar with the situation, Kelly called around to Republicans on Capitol Hill and gave them the go-ahead to speak out against Trump.... To those who know Trump best, the 24-hour reversal is a sign that he's unnerved by the intensity of the backlash he provoked." ...

... Anderson Cooper of CNN does a number of Trump's phony grammatical defense (ends @ about 8:30 min. in):

... Nicholas Fandos & Sheryl Stolberg of the New York Times: "Top Democrats in the House and the Senate demanded on Tuesday that Republican leaders stifle conservative attacks on the special counsel's Russia investigation and compel President Trump's senior national security advisers to testify to Congress about Monday's extraordinary summit meeting with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. 'Words are not enough,' Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, said in blistering remarks on the Senate floor. 'Our response to the debasement of American interest before an adversary demands a response not just in words but in deeds.'... Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the minority leader in the House, indicated to fellow Democrats that she ... would try to force their hand on the House floor. Ms. Pelosi said that the party would try to force a vote on a resolution condemning Mr. Trump's remarks in Helsinki and affirming the findings of American intelligence agencies.... Democrats would also try to force a vote to increase funding for states to enhance the security of their voting systems, she said.... Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, one of Mr. Trump's leading Republican critics from his perch as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, signaled optimism that the Helsinki meeting might finally push Congress to reassert its authority as a coequal branch of government." ...

... Jennifer Bendery of the Huffington Post: "Nobody knows what ... Donald Trump told Russian President Vladimir Putin in their private, two-hour meeting on Monday.... Well, almost nobody. At least one U.S. interpreter was in the room with the two leaders. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) says she wants to bring in that interpreter to testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on what, exactly, Trump shared with Putin. 'That translator is an official of the U.S. government,' Shaheen told reporters Tuesday. 'It is imperative that the American people and this Congress know precisely what the president shared or promised the Kremlin on our behalf.'... A spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said he supports Shaheen's push for a hearing. Some House Democrats are also floating the idea.... Earlier on Tuesday, Republicans acted as if there was no way to find out what happened in the meeting." ...

... ** You Knew This Would Happen. Nicole Gaouette & Abby Phillip of CNN: "Russia announced it was ready to pursue agreements reached by Presidents Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump 'in the sphere of international security,' though the White House and Pentagon would not confirm any agreements had been made or offer any details.... The National Security Council would not confirm what Trump had agreed to in the one-on-one with Putin. A spokesman for the NSC told CNN on Tuesday that they were still 'reviewing the discussion.'... [In his public comments, Trump] did not mention making any formal agreement with the Russian leader on military cooperation or anything else." ...

... Peter Baker of the New York Times: "As Mr. Trump scrambled to patch any holes on Tuesday by reimagining his extraordinary news conference with Russia's president..., the question was whether he had reached a genuine turning point or simply endured another one of those episodes that seems decisive but ultimately fades into the next one. For the moment, at least, this time did feel different. After seeming to take President Vladimir V. Putin's word over that of America's intelligence agencies on Russian election meddling, Mr. Trump was being accused not only of poor judgment but of treason -- and not just by fringe elements and liberal talk show hosts, but by a former C.I.A. director.... The list of Republicans rebuking the president included not just the usual suspects like [Sen. Bob] Corker [R-Tenn.]..., but friends of the president like the former House speaker Newt Gingrich, who called his performance in Finland 'the most serious mistake of his presidency,' and the conservative editorial page of The Wall Street Journal, which called it a 'national embarrassment.'" ...

... Chris Strohm & Jennifer Jacobs of Bloomberg: "... Donald Trump gave the go-ahead to announce new Russian election-hacking indictments before his meeting with Vladimir Putin rather than after -- in the hopes it would strengthen his hand in the talks, according to accounts from people familiar with the decision. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein went to Trump last week and offered him the choice: before or after the Putin summit on Monday in Helsinki? Trump chose before, ultimately putting the issue into the spotlight just 72 hours before the high-stakes meeting, the people said.... Trump had hoped the indictment of 12 Russians on charges of meddling would give him the upper hand, one of the people said." Mrs. McC: And didn't that work out well? ...

... Trump Returns to De State of De Nile. John Wagner of the Washington Post: "President Trump on Tuesday portrayed his widely panned summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin as a great success.... In a morning tweet, the president blamed the media for negative coverage of a joint news conference Monday with Putin, after which Trump was criticized by members of both parties for siding with the Russian leader over U.S. intelligence officials. 'While I had a great meeting with NATO, raising vast amounts of money, I had an even better meeting with Vladimir Putin of Russia,' Trump wrote, referring to his efforts to increase defense spending by U.S. allies. 'Sadly, it is not being reported that way - the Fake News is going Crazy!'... In a speech on the Senate floor, Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) called on the chamber's Republican leaders to schedule hearings on what occurred in Helsinki. 'Our Republican colleagues cannot just go, "tsk-tsk-tsk,"' Schumer said. 'They need to act.' Schumer said he was particularly concerned about what Trump might have said t Putin during a closed-door, two-hour meeting between the two at which only their interpreters were present." Mrs. McC: Trump, BTW, did not "raise vast amounts of money at NATO; he didn't raise a penny. NATO allies stuck to the agreement that had made when Obama was president. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Kevin Liptak of CNN: "... Donald Trump was upbeat immediately after his news conference with Vladimir Putin in Finland, but by the time he returned stateside on Monday evening, his mood had soured considerably amid sustained fury at his extraordinary embrace of the Russian leader.... The White House said Trump would address the summit to reporters ahead of an otherwise unrelated 2 p.m. ET meeting with lawmakers at the White House." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Jonathan Swan & Mike Allen of Axios: "A former senior White House official, who worked closely with Trump, immediately texted us [after the Helsinki presser]: 'Need a shower.' One of Trump's own former National Security Council officials texted: 'Dude. This is a total [effing] disgrace. The President has lost his mind.' CBS 'Face the Nation' anchor Margaret Brennan, who was in the audience, told AP she was messaging some U.S. officials during the speech who said they were turning off the television.” (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... ** The High Costs of Collusion. Joe Romm of ThinkProgress: "[N]ot only do we now know Russia worked hard to elect climate science denier Donald Trump as president, we also know they have been working since 2004 to sway elections toward pro-Russian populists elsewhere -- and most of those populists are also pro-fossil fuels and anti-clean energy.... Indeed, Russia's economy is unusually dependent on exporting fossil fuels..., a major source of hard currency that Kremlin kleptocrats rely on. Unsurprisingly, Putin put forward in Paris one of the weakest greenhouse gas (GHG) target of any nation.... If the president of the second-largest emitter, the United States, works with the leader of the fifth-largest emitter, Russia, they could deal a fatal blow to the ongoing negotiating process." --safari...

... Huntsman, Come Home. Robert Gerhke of the Salt Lake Tribune: "Ambassador Huntsman, you work for a pawn, not a president. It's time to come home.... It's by resigning immediately [as U.S. ambassador to Russia] and speaking out against a president who attacks our allies, gives comfort to our adversaries and undermines our moral standing, our commitment to democratic ideals and our interest in human rights every time he opens his gaping mouth." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... "Smoke & Mirrors." David Sanger of the New York Times (July 16): "... on Monday, standing next to Mr. Putin, President Trump not only avoided all mention of the Justice Department's indictment of 12 Russian military intelligence officers, but he questioned the very conclusion that Russia was behind the hacking. Instead Mr. Trump raised a series of largely irrelevant conspiracy theories -- none of which were directly related to the evidence of Russian hacking activity. He returned to questions of why the F.B.I. never took custody of a Democratic National Committee computer server. He asked what happened to Imran Awan, a Pakistan-born Capitol Hill aide.... And Mr. Trump demanded to know why thousands of Hillary Clinton's emails had disappeared, a question apparently unrelated to Russia's activities. It was a smoke-and-mirrors effort, several American intelligence officials said later Monday." ...

... Kevin Poulsen of the Daily Beast: "... the world watched as the President of the United States ... launched into a rambling discourse about Hillary Clinton's emails and a supposedly missing DNC server that hides the truth about Putin's innocence.... The 'server' Trump is obsessed with is actually 140 servers, most of them cloud-based, which the DNC was forced to decommission in June of 2016 while trying to rid its network of the Russian GRU officers working to help Trump win the election.... Despite Trump's repeated feverish claims to the contrary, no machines are actually missing.... Trump and his allies are capitalizing on a basic misapprehension of how computer intrusion investigations work.... When cyber investigators respond to an incident, they capture that evidence in a process called 'imaging.' They make an exact byte-for-byte copy of the hard drives.... If the president really wants to know what the DNC server is saying, it's all in the indictment against Putin's hackers." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

You have groups that are wondering why the FBI never took the server.... Why was the FBI told to leave the office of the Democratic National Committee?... I've been asking that for months and months and I've been tweeting it out and calling it out on social media.... I want to know where is the server and what is the server saying?... What happened to the servers of the Pakistani gentleman that worked on the DNC? Where are those servers? They're missing; where are they? -- Donald Trump, part of a rambling non-answer to a question about Putin's culpability for the DNC hack, Helsinki joint presser

The DNC servers were never missing. The DNC provided the FBI with a copy of their server, rather than the original hardware, but Comey testified that the evidence was an appropriate substitute. [Imran] Awan, the 'Pakistani gentleman' in the news, never worked for the DNC. Conservative news outlets suggested he had stolen a House Democratic server, but the U.S. Attorney's Office found no evidence of such theft. -- Politifact (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

John Wagner of the Washington Post: "Former president Barack Obama lamented the rise of 'strongman politics' and 'the utter loss of shame' among political leaders who repeatedly lie during a speech Tuesday in South Africa that was widely seen as aimed in part at his successor. Speaking at an event honoring the late Nelson Mandela ahead of the 100th anniversary of his birth, Obama did not mention President Trump by name and cast his concerns far more broadly, warning against movements toward authoritarianism globally. But Obama made several remarks that came across as thinly veiled criticism of Trump.... The trip is Obama's first to Africa since leaving office in early 2017. He stopped earlier this week in Kenya, where he visited the rural birthplace of his late father." ...

     ... Video of the full speech is here. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

... Jamelle Bouie: "Donald Trump is fulfilling all of those Obama conspiracy theories. The anti-Obama animus had one obvious root: racial resentment. For millions of Americans, a black man in the White House was so upending -- so destabilizing to their expectations of what America was -- that they responded with primal anger, willing to believe anything about the man who sat in the Oval Office. Donald Trump powered his way to the White House on the strength of that anger, running as the savior of America's racial status quo, and a promise to turn back that tide. Many of those Americans surely believed that Obama was a Manchurian candidate of sorts. Now, faced with a president who is eager to please a hostile foreign power, they actively support the effort. If you're white, it seems, you really are all right." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Australia AP in the Guardian: "The Perth parents [Anthony Maslin & Rin Norris] of three children who died when Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 was shot down over Ukraine have condemned the US president Donald Trump for his refusal to hold the Russian president Vladimir Putin to account over the tragedy.... Their children Mo, Evie and Otis and Norris's father died when the plane went down, killing 298 people, including 38 Australians." --safari ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: One of many issues Trump should have raised with Putin. As the bereaved Maslin & Norris surmise, there's no indication he did so.


Ellen Nakashima of the Washington Post: "The head of the nation's largest electronic spy agency and the military's cyberwarfare arm has directed the two organizations to coordinate actions to counter potential Russian interference in the 2018 midterm elections. The move, announced to staff at the National Security Agency last week by NSA Director Paul Nakasone, is an attempt to maximize the efforts of the two groups.... It is the latest initiative by national security agencies to push back against Russian aggression in the absence of direct guidance from the White House on the issue."

Donie O'Sullivan, et al., of CNN: "The now infamous Facebook data set on tens of millions of Americans gathered by a Cambridge University scientist for a firm that went on to work for Donald Trump's 2016 campaign was accessed from Russia, a British member of parliament tells CNN. Damian Collins, the Conservative MP leading a British parliamentary investigation into online disinformation, told CNN that a British investigation found evidence that the data, collected by Professor Aleksandr Kogan on behalf of Cambridge Analytica, had been accessed from Russia and other countries. The discovery was made by the Information Commissioner's Office(ICO), Britain's data protection authority, Collins said."


Rachel Weiner of the Washington Post: "Paul Manafort's upcoming trial on bank and fraud charges will continue in Alexandria, Va., despite his efforts to move the proceedings to Roanoke. The former Trump campaign chairman had argued that the jury pool in Northern Virginia is too liberal and too saturated with coverage of the case to give him a fair trial. Judge T.S. Ellis III ruled Tuesday that Manafort is not entitled to a completely ignorant jury, nor one with as many Republicans as Democrats. Moreover, the nationwide coverage of the case would make any move ineffectual. 'The proximity of defendant's pretrial publicity to the start of his trial will be the same in Alexandria as it would be in Roanoke or Kansas City or Dallas,' the judge wrote." ...

... Dan Mangan & Kevin Breuninger of CNBC: "Special counsel Robert Mueller is asking a judge to grant immunity from prosecution for five potential witnesses whose testimony Mueller wants to compel at the upcoming federal criminal trial of former Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort, according to a court filing Tuesday. If the five unidentified people are not granted immunity -- and compelled to testify against Manafort -- they would either refuse to take the witness stand or refuse to answer questions by citing their Fifth Amendment right against being forced to incriminate themelves, according to Mueller's filing in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va. Mueller has also asked Judge T.S. Ellis to seal from public view the court motions detailing the witnesses' identities.... Mueller is asking Ellis to give the witnesses what is known as 'use immunity,' which would prevent prosecutors from using their testimony as evidence against them in a criminal case, other than one in which they are accused of perjuring themselves in that testimony." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Jackie Kucinich & Spencer Ackerman of the Daily Beast: "'Putin's Favorite Congressman' [Is] Now Engulfed in [the] NRA Spy Case. Pro-Kremlin GOP Congressman Dana Rohrabacher met with a Putin ally in Russia in August 2015, The Daily Beast has confirmed, matching an account in Monday's blockbuster FBI affidavit against accused Russian spy Maria Butina. Butina was part of 'discussions about the RUSSIAN OFFICIAL's plans to meet with a U.S. Congressman during a Congressional Delegation trip to Moscow in August 2015,' FBI agent Kevin Helson's affidavit swears.... The official is widely believed to be Alexander Torshin, an influential former Russian politician from Vladimir Putin's party who established trans-continental ties to the National Rifle Association. The lawmakers on that congressional delegation were Rohrabacher and Democrat Gregory Meeks of New York, the leadership of the House foreign affairs subcommittee on Europe." ...

... Kyle Cheney of Politico: "Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) says he's not sure whether he's the congressman mentioned in Monday's indictment of a Russian gun-rights activist for acting as an unregistered agent of the Kremlin -- but he is sure that the charge against the woman is 'bogus.'... Rohrabacher unloaded on the indictment, which alleged clandestine efforts by [Mariia] Butina to set up a back channel between Russian and American political leaders, using the National Rifle Association as a conduit. 'It's ridiculous. It's stupid,' Rohrabacher said. 'She's the assistant of some guy who is the head of the bank and is a member of their Parliament. That's what we call a spy? That shows you how bogus this whole thing is.'" Mrs. McC: Okay, then: ridiculous, stupid, bogus. I'm convinced.


Jack Ewing of the New York Times: "President Trump is inciting a trade war, undermining NATO and painting Europe as a foe. It's no wonder, then, that the European Union is looking elsewhere for friends. On Tuesday in Tokyo, it signed its largest trade deal ever, a pact with Japan that will slash customs duties on products like European wine and cheese, while gradually reducing tariffs on cars. The agreement will cover a quarter of the global economy -- by some measures the largest free trade area in the world.... The deal with Japan, and the others being negotiated, point to a more assertive Europe, one that is looking past the frosty ties with the United States, and even the upcoming withdrawal of Britain from the bloc." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Alan Pyke of ThinkProgress: "Trump lying about what the [Jerusalem] embassy's physical materials would cost U.S. taxpayers is small potatoes next to the costs he inflicted on regional stability by making the move. But as political observers and voters hope to at least catalog the full litany of this administration's callousness, dishonesty, grifting, and amorality, it's nonetheless worth noting: Donald Trump said the embassy would cost 'about $250,000,' but it actually cost $21.2 million. But it's not a total loss -- at least not for Trump himself. The move convinced officials to put Trump's name on at least two valuable pieces of Israeli real estate: a prominent train station, and a professional soccer team with a notorious track record for anti-Arab racism among its fans." --safari

Making Citizens United Worse. Patricia Cohen, et al., of the New York Times: "The Trump administration will end a longstanding requirement that certain nonprofit organizations disclose the names of large donors to the Internal Revenue Service, a move that will allow some political groups to shield their sources of funding from government scrutiny. The change, which has long been sought by conservatives and Republicans in Congress, will affect thousands of labor unions, social clubs and political groups as varied as arms of the AARP, the United States Chamber of Commerce, the National Rifle Association and Americans for Prosperity, which is funded partly by the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch. Such groups have played an increasingly prominent role in American politics in the wake of the Supreme Court's 2010 ruling in a case brought by the nonprofit group Citizens United, which empowered them to spend unlimited money on campaign ads."

Rosa Furneaux of Mother Jones: "Two immigrant children who were separated from their parents at the southern border have had their constitutional rights violated, a federal judge [Victor Bolden] in Connecticut ruled late last week in yet another blow to the Trump administration's draconian immigration agenda.... Significantly, the ruling shows that 'all parties' agreed that the children's rights had been violated. The government conceded that the children's 'separation from their parents was, and remains, traumatic'.... In addition..., a crucial and unusual component of Bolden's decision was an order for the children to receive treatment for the psychological trauma they have suffered." --safari ...

... Kanyakrit Vongkiatkajorn of Mother Jones: "Earlier this month, as outrage continued over the Trump administration's family separation policies, another immigration agency quietly introduced several changes that could threaten even more immigrants, many of them here legally, with deportation. In a memo made public July 5th, US Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency tasked with handling immigration benefits think work and student visas, green cards, and naturalization ceremonies -- said it would now refer immigrants for deportation in a wider range of cases.... While seemingly small changes, these policies could have widespread implications, potentially sending far more immigrants into removal proceedings and increasing the number of cases in an already backlogged immigration court system.... The changes would affect both undocumented immigrants and those who are already legally in the country." --safari (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Mark Hand of ThinkProgress: "Coal executive Bob Murray on Tuesday railed against 'government interference' in energy markets, calling for an end to tax credits for the wind energy industry.... Murray ... said 'we need to let the markets work.' Murray's criticism of tax credits for wind farms appears to be the height of hypocrisy -- Murray ... has repeatedly urged the Trump administration to bail out the coal industry.... Along with following Murray's advice on a coal bailout, the Trump administration installed a top lobbyist for Murray Energy as acting head of the EPA after Scott Pruitt resignation on July 5. Andrew Wheeler earned more than $3 million lobbying for Murray Energy over an eight-year period before joining the agency earlier this year.... 'Didn't want to lose [Wheeler],' Murray said. 'But the country has him.'" -- safari

Congressional Race. Alexander Burns of the New York Times: "Representative Martha Roby of Alabama prevailed on Tuesday in a Republican primary election that unfolded as a test of fealty to President Trump, defeating a challenger who assailed her for withdrawing her support for Mr. Trump in the last days of the 2016 campaign. Her criticism of Mr. Trump cost Ms. Roby, a mainstream conservative seeking a fifth term, a clear-cut victory in an initial round of voting last month. She fell short of a majority, forcing her to compete in a runoff election against Bobby Bright, a populist former Democrat who served in Congress and as mayor of Montgomery, Alabama's capital.... Though she pronounced Mr. Trump 'unacceptable' after the release of the 'Access Hollywood' recording that showed him bragging about groping women, she has been an unflagging supporter since his inauguration.... So last month Mr. Trump, who easily carried Ms. Roby's predominantly rural district in 2016 and remains popular there, extended to her a kind of political clemency that he rarely grants critics on the right. He endorsed Ms. Roby on Twitter, calling her a 'consistent and reliable vote for our Make America Great Again Agenda.'"

Mark Hand: "Minority homebuyers are systematically steered to neighborhoods with higher concentrations of toxic contamination and pollution than their white counterparts, according to a new study that looks at potential discrimination faced by people of color when working with real estate agents." --safari

Andrew Sorkin & Kate Kelly of the New York Times: "Goldman Sachs on Tuesday named David M. Solomon as its next chief executive officer, putting a veteran investment banker in charge of a Wall Street giant that faces mounting challenges. Mr. Solomon's appointment will end the tenure of Lloyd C. Blankfein, the 63-year-old former gold salesman who has run the firm since 2006 and steered it through the financial crisis. Mr. Blankfein will hand over the chief executive role on Oct. 1 and remain chairman until the end of the year. Mr. Solomon, 56 and currently the bank's president, will add the chairman title at the beginning of 2019." Mrs. McC: Weirdly, a well-shaved head seems to be a prerequisite for a top spot at Goldman. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

** As the World Burns. Jonathan Watts of the Guardian: "At least 11 wildfires are raging inside the Arctic Circle as the hot, dry summer turns an abnormally wide area of Europe into a tinderbox. The worst affected country, Sweden, has called for emergency assistance from its partners in the European Union to help fight the blazes.... There have been huge fires in the past in Sweden, but not over such a wide area. This appears to be a trend as more and bigger blazes are reported in other far northern regions like Greenland, Alaska, Siberia and Canada.... 2017 was the worst fire year in Europe's history." --safari

Adam Satariano of the New York Times: "Google was hit with a $5.1 billion fine by European antitrust officials on Wednesday for abusing its power in the smartphone market, in the region's latest move to rein in the clout of American tech companies. The penalty of 4.34 billion euros was a record, and far larger than the €2.4 billion, or about $2.8 billion, that the European Union levied on Google last year for unfairly favoring its own services in internet search results. The decision on Wednesday highlighted how European authorities are aggressively pushing for stronger regulation of the digital economy on issues including antitrust, privacy, taxes, and the spread of misinformation and hate speech."

Daily Beast: "MGM Resorts International filed a complaint in federal court Monday in a case brought by victims of the Las Vegas massacre, asking a judge to declare the company has 'no liability' for the attack. MGM owns the Mandalay Bay hotel-casino and the venue of the Route 91 Harvest music festival where Stephen Paddock opened fire, killing 58 and injuring more than 850." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

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