The Commentariat -- July 21, 2018

Afternoon Update:

Katie Rogers of the New York Times: "President Trump lashed out at his longtime lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, on Saturday, suggesting that there could be legal consequences for Mr. Cohen's decision to record a discussion they had two months before the 2016 election about paying a former Playboy model who said she had an affair with Mr. Trump. 'Inconceivable that the government would break into a lawyer's office (early in the morning) -- almost unheard of,' Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter. 'Even more inconceivable that a lawyer would tape a client -- totally unheard of & perhaps illegal. The good news is that your favorite President did nothing wrong!' With his tweet, Mr. Trump signaled open warfare on Mr. Cohen, a longtime fixer he had until now tried to keep by his side as the Justice Department investigates Mr. Cohen's involvement in paying women to quash potentially damaging news coverage about Mr. Trump during the campaign.... New York law allows one party to a conversation to tape it without the other knowing.... Mr. Trump himself also has a history of recording phone calls and conversations.... When The Wall Street Journal reported on A.M.I.'s payments to [model Karen] McDougal days before the election, the Trump campaign denied knowing about them. Hope Hicks, the campaign spokeswoman, said at the time that Ms. McDougal's claim of an affair was 'totally untrue.'" ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Trump's fake outrage might seem a little less fake & outrageous if it hadn't been his own lawyers who likely released news of the tape, no doubt at his own direction in hopes of changing the subject from Helsinki to sex. ...

... West Wing Walk-Back Week. Ashley Parker, et al., of the Washington Post: "For Trump and his White House, the days that followed the Helsinki summit amounted to an unofficial Walk Back Week -- a daily scramble of corrections and clarifications from the West Wing. Each announcement, intended to blunt the global fallout of the president's Russophilic performance in Helsinki, was followed by another mishap that only fueled more consternation." A fun read. ...

... Zeke Miller & Jonathan Lemire of the AP: "Facing condemnation from allies and foes alike on Capitol Hill..., Donald Trump was outnumbered even in the Oval Office. Top aides gathered to convince the president to issue a rare walk-back of the comments he'd made raising doubts about U.S. intelligence conclusions of Russian election interference as he stood alongside Vladimir Putin.... As each White House effort to clean up the situation failed to stem the growing bipartisan backlash, Trump's mood worsened, according to confidants. He groused about his staff for not better managing the fallout. He was angry at the two American reporters, including one from The Associated Press, who asked questions at the Helsinki news conference. And he seethed at the lack of support he believed he received from congressional Republicans. Also a target of the president's ire was Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, who issued a rare statement rebutting the president's Monday comments. But it was Coats' televised interview Thursday at a security conference in Aspen, Colo., that set off the president anew...." ...

... Olivia Nuzzi of New York: "'The White House' being separate from 'the president' in this administration as they've never been separate before, with contradictory statements emerging at a machine-gun pace from these two entities that are supposed to be in sync, if nothing else at least spinning the story (i.e. bullshitting) in the same way.... Over the last five days, the White House has attempted to manufacture a permanent state of uncertainty, in which when Trump says or does anything -- even with the world as witness -- we can be talked into believing the most harmless interpretation of the facts."

... digby: "The Giant Toddler had a tantrum after watching TV and decided to show everybody by inviting the foreign leader who sabotaged Hillary Clinton's election campaign for him to a big summit at the White House.... I have no doubt that he made some deal with or is under the influence of Vladimir Putin. There's just no way to avoid that reality anymore. But he's also a psychologically and intellectually unfit cretin."

Jim Rutenberg & Ben Protess of the New York Times: "Federal authorities examining the work President Trump's former lawyer did to squelch embarrassing stories before the 2016 election have come to believe that an important ally in that effort, the tabloid company American Media Inc., at times acted more as a political supporter than as a news organization, according to people briefed on the investigation. That determination has kept the publisher in the middle of an inquiry that could create legal and political challenges for the president as prosecutors investigate whether the lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, violated campaign finance law. It could also spell trouble for the company, which publishes The National Enquirer, raising thorny questions about when coverage that is favorable to a candidate strays into overt political activity, and when First Amendment protections should apply.... The authorities believe that the company was not always operating in what campaign finance law calls a 'legitimate press function.'... Cameron Stracher, an A.M.I. lawyer, indicated that the company was cooperating with the investigation."

Anne Applebaum of the Washington Post: "Nearly a year ago, I speculated that the Trump campaign might have shared data with the Russian Internet Research Agency, the team that created fake personas and put up fake Facebook pages with the goal of spreading false stories about Hillary Clinton.... The latest indictment produced by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III's investigation, together with President Trump&'s strange performance in Helsinki, suggests a different hypothesis: that Russia shared data with the Trump campaign, and not vice versa." Applebaum goes on to theorize in a way that supports Rachel Maddow's ruminations in the video linked below. ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Appelbaum ends her column with, "Shared data could also explain why Trump appeared to feel so indebted to Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, why he wanted to speak to him with no aides present, why he is so reluctant to acknowledge Russian interference. It could even explain why he talks so obsessively and inaccurately about the size of his great electoral victory: because he himself believes that the Russians helped him win. He fears that this would make his presidency illegitimate. Which it would." This is what I've thought for a long time -- that all of Trump's nutty conspiracy theories (400-pound NJ hacker in basement, busloads of Massachusetts residents voting in New Hampshire [AND Massachusetts]) & denials about the 2016 election are cover-ups for the fact that Trump knowingly & perhaps aggressively colluded with foreign operatives. He knows (or at least knew) what he did & he's dancing as fast as he can to hide it. He'll grasp any straw (and repeat it incessantly) to that end.

Gene Weingarten of the Washington Post: "Most people seem to think that the proprietors of the Red Hen restaurant were wrong last month to refuse to serve dinner to presidential press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders. The question remains: Given their antipathy to the Trump administration, what should they have done? With a little help from my friends, I present some suggestions. Serve Sanders a plate that has only a sprig of parsley, a pea and a chicken beak, and when she complains about the portion size, insist it's the largest amount of food ever served anywhere to anyone." And so on. I laughed out loud. Many thanks to Patrick for the link.

Glenn Greenwald of the Intercept: "Ecuador's President Lenin Moreno traveled to London on Friday for the ostensible purpose of speaking at the 2018 Global Disabilities Summit (Moreno has been confined to a wheelchair since being shot in a 1998 robbery attempt). The concealed, actual purpose of the President's trip is to meet with British officials to finalize an agreement under which Ecuador will withdraw its asylum protection of Julian Assange, in place since 2012, eject him from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, and then hand over the WikiLeaks founder to British authorities. Moreno's itinerary also notably includes a trip to Madrid, where he will meet with Spanish officials still seething over Assange's denunciation of human rights abuses perpetrated by Spain's central government against protesters marching for Catalonia independence. Almost three months ago, Ecuador blocked Assange from accessing the internet, and Assange has not been able to communicate with the outside world ever since. The primary factor in Ecuador's decision to silence him was Spanish anger over Assange's tweets about Catalonia." Mrs. McC: Take everything Greenwald writes with a grain of salt, but I'm going to assume -- he has the basic facts right here.

Florida Is Not a Safe State to Live. Enjoli Francis of ABC News: "A man who was captured on surveillance video fatally shooting another man in Clearwater, Florida, during a parking-spot spat as his young son watched nearby will not be arrested or charged by police, according to Pinellas County Sheriff. 'I don't make the law. I enforce the law,' Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said during a news conference today. 'The law in the state of Florida today is that people have a right to stand their ground and have a right to defend themselves when they believe that they are in harm.' The sheriff announced the case will be sent to the state attorney's office for review."

*****

Corrupt AND Sleazy:

Sex, Lies & Audiotape. 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...." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

     ... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: Back in February, "a White House spokesperson denied Trump had a relationship with McDougal, calling the reporting 'an old story that is just more fake news.'" ...

... 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.'" (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Evan Perez, et al., of CNN: "Another source with knowledge of the tape, however, said the conversation is not as Giuliani described and is not good for the President, though the source would not elaborate.... The source famiiar with the tape said Cohen recommends buying the rights to [Karen McDougal's proposed] story [for the National Enquirer] and Trump asks questions about how they would go about doing that.... The discussion, Giuliani said, involved their intention 'to reimburse AMI for what they laid out and to do it by check, properly recorded.'... A source familiar with the AMI deal with McDougal disputed Giuliani's description of the deal. The source said it was not a nondisclosure agreement [-- as Giuliani claimed --] but a license agreement.... Cohen has other recordings of the President in his records that were seized by the FBI, said both a source with knowledge of Cohen's tapes and Giuliani.... When asked by CNN if first lady Melania Trump had a comment on the news of the recorded conversation, her spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham said in a statement, 'Mrs. Trump remains focused on her role as a mother and as First Lady of the United States. We will have no further comment on the topic.'" ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Apparently Mrs. Trump is not "focused on her role as the wife of the POTUS*." ...

... Elura Nanos of Law & Crime: "Undoubtedly, the Trump team will raise the issue of attorney-client privilege.... But there's big speed bump in Trump's assertion of attorney-client privilege -- known as the 'crime-fraud exception.' When communications between attorneys and their clients further a crime, tort, or fraud, privilege is a no-go.... In this case, the outcome of the privilege argument will depend significantly on the content (as opposed to the circumstances, as is more often the case) of the recorded conversation.... Buying McDougal's silence -- either directly or through AMI as a middleman -- isn't necessarily illegal.... However..., Trump may have committed campaign finance violations for failing to properly disclose payouts...." ...

     ... BUT Emily Fox of Vanity Fair was on Rachel Maddow's show & said that the Trump-Cohen McDougal tape was one of those the special master in the case deemed privileged. It was Trump's attorneys who released the tape to Mueller's investigators (effectively waiving the privilege), according to Fox, & leaked the tape to the NYT, presumably in an effort to give Michael Cohen less leverage to cut a deal. Vanity Fair -- as of 9:45 pm ET Friday -- has not yet published a story on this reporting. ...

... When in Trouble, Pick on Some Black People. Michael Sykes of Axios: "President Trump took to Twitter Friday to call out the NFL on their national anthem policy. 'The NFL National Anthem Debate is alive and well again - can't believe it! Isn't it in contract that players must stand at attention, hand on heart? The $40,000,000 Commissioner must now make a stand. First time kneeling, out for game. Second time kneeling, out for season/no pay!'" Mrs. McC: It's worth noting that the Trump-Cohen McDougal tape is itself a distraction from the much more important Helsinski debacle. ...

... Julian Zelizer of the Atlantic: "The United States is now so fiercely partisan that shocking tape recordings will still have trouble shaking the political landscape. That congressional Republicans continued to stand by Trump despite his scandalous behavior with Russia has made it clear that almost nothing can overwhelm partisan loyalty. Even if there is a damning tape, the president and his Republican allies in the House would attack the material as fake and illegitimate, part of a 'witch hunt.' Unlike Nixon, who fought tooth and nail to prevent the tapes from being released, Trump seems more likely to focus on moving to control the narrative.... Nor did President Nixon have Fox News hosts to explain why the tapes don't prove anything about the president's wrongdoing.... Indeed, news of the Cohen tapes might be perfectly timed for the president, shifting the conversation away from treason and toward Trump's sex life, just as the Access Hollywood tapes in October 2016 drowned out the public warnings by President Obama's intelligence chiefs that Russia was attempting to sway the election results. Of course, Nixon, too, initially thought that he would survive, and that the tapes might even help his case. He was wrong." ...

... Mueller to Question Manhattan Madam. Manual Roig-Franzia of the Washington Post: "Investigators in special counsel Robert S. Mueller III's office have notified an attorney for Kristin Davis, who gained notoriety in the 2000s for running a high-end prostitution ring, that they intend to question her as part of their probe of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, Davis said Friday. Davis, who is known as the 'Manhattan Madam,' said she expects to be asked about her close friend, Roger Stone, a political operative and longtim confidant of President Trump. It comes one week after prosecutors unveiled an indictment of 12 Russian intelligence officers who allegedly conspired to hack Democrats during the campaign. Stone was not named in the indictment, but messages cited by prosecutors match communications that he says he had with the Twitter persona Guccifer 2.0, who had claimed online to be a Romanian hacker."

Jamil Smith of Rolling Stone: "It typically takes a mass shooting to keep the National Rifle Association this quiet. As of this writing, the NRA has issued no public comment about this week's arrest and indictment of Maria Butina, a 29-year-old Russian gun rights activist who had spent years ingratiating herself with the NRA, as well as Republican politicians and conservative notables. Butina is suspected of conspiracy to act as an unauthorized agent of the Russian Federation within the United States.... The NRA contributed $30 million to help elect Donald Trump in 2016. The FBI has been investigating whether some or all of that cash may have been supplied by Russia. Rolling Stone reported in April that the Russian central banker Alexander Torshin, along with Butina, had deeper ties to the NRA than previously known. The NRA even flew a delegation to Moscow in 2015 to meet with Kremlin officials, including one freshly sanctioned by the Obama administration." ...

... Michelle Goldberg of the New York Times: "Perhaps, rather than covering for Trump, some Republicans are covering for themselves.... On Monday, we learned of the arrest of Maria Butina, who is accused of being a Russian agent who infiltrated the National Rifle Association, the most important outside organization in the Republican firmament. Legal filings in the case outline a plan to use the N.R.A. to push the Republican Party in a more pro-Russian direction.... If the N.R.A. as an organization turns out to be compromised, it would shake conservative politics to its foundation.... It is not surprising that Republicans would want to protect the N.R.A. According to an audit obtained by the Center for Responsive Politics, the N.R.A.'s overall spending increased by more than $100 million in 2016.... [Sen. Ron] Wyden [D-Oregon] said Republicans on the Intelligence Committee have thwarted his attempts to look deeply into the Russian money trail.... (... Richard Burr, the North Carolina Republican who heads the Senate Intelligence Committee, is one of Congress's leading recipients of N.R.A. support.) On Monday, a few hours after news broke of Butina's arrest, the Treasury Department announced a new rule sparing some tax-exempt groups, including the N.R.A., from having to report their large donors to the I.R.S.... You might ask who benefits. The answer is: not just Trump."

Craig Timberg & Shane Harris of the Washington Post: "On the eve of one of the newsiest days of the 2016 presidential election season, a group of Russian operatives fired off tweets at a furious pace, about a dozen each minute. By the time they finished, more than 18,000 had been sent through cyberspace toward unwitting American voters, making it the busiest day by far in a disinformation operation whose aftermath is still roiling U.S. politics. The reason for this burst of activity on Oct. 6, 2016, documented in a new trove of 3 million Russian tweets collected by Clemson University researchers, is a mystery that has generated intriguing theories but no definitive explanation.... [The next day,] Wikileaks began releasing embarrassing emails that Russian intelligence operatives had stolen from the campaign chairman for Democrat Hillary Clinton.... The Clemson researchers and others familiar with their findings think there likely is a connection between this looming release and the torrent of tweets, which varied widely in content but included a heavy dose of political commentary." ...

... ** Rachel Maddow has a compelling theory on how Russia helped (or ensured) Trump win the 2016 election:

Tim Egan excoriates Trumpbots: "We should stop thinking that a Fifth Avenue moment -- the shooting that Trump famously said he could commit that wouldn't hurt him -- will change minds. For there are enough Fifth Avenue Republicans, in the apt term of James Hohmann of The Washington Post, to shield this man.... In rooting for Trump to be Putin's poodle, the ex-Klan man [David Duke] is just a goose step ahead of the party that has been remade in Trump's image.... Even though most Americans are appalled, polls taken after the Russia summit show that a majority of Republicans approve of his submission to the former Soviets.... These people disgrace the history that preceded the American moral collapse in Helsinki."

Trump Lets Putin Define U.S. Policy. Karen DeYoung of the Washington Post: "Russia provided additional details Friday of what it said were agreements made at the presidential summit in Helsinki this week, shaping a narrative of the meeting with no confirmation or alternative account from the Trump administration. Not surprisingly, the Russian story line tended to favor the Kremlin's own policy prescriptions, at times contradicting stated administration strategy. Russia already has sent formal proposals to Washington for joint U.S.-Russia efforts to fund reconstruction of war-ravaged Syria and facilitate the return home of millions of Syrians who fled the country, following 'agreements reached' by President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, Col. Gen. Mikhail Mizintsev, the three-star head of the Russian National Defense Management Center, said Friday." ...

... MEANWHILE.... Julian Barnes, et al., of the New York Times: "The Pentagon declared on Friday that it would provide $200 million in assistance to Ukraine to help fight the Russian-controlled separatists in the country's east. 'Russia should suffer consequences for its aggressive, destabilizing behavior and its illegal occupation of Ukraine,' Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said in a statement. And a day earlier, the director of national intelligence, Dan Coats, pledged to offer Mr. Trump a candid assessment of the vast risks of inviting Mr. Putin to the White House.... In administration strategy documents, NATO communiqués and other official orders, Russia is called a growing threat, a potential or actual adversary intent on undermining democratic institutions of the United States and its allies.... The disconnect between the policies aimed at curbing Russia and the president's position has never been wider, a gap that presents serious risks, current and former American officials said." ...

... Ben Mathis-Lilley of Slate: "On Thursday, director of national intelligence Dan Coats more or less said that he didn't support any of Trump's recent decisions regarding Putin; today, Secretary of Defense James Mattis took his turn doing the implicit disavowing in a statement about new military aid to Ukraine: 'Russia should suffer consequences for its aggressive, destabilizing behavior and its illegal occupation of Ukraine. ... The fundamental question we must ask ourselves is do we wish to strengthen our partners in key regions or leave them with no other options than to turn to Russia, thereby undermining a once in a generation opportunity to more closely align nations with the U.S. vision for global security and stability.'"

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.'" (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

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." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

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. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

GOP Leaders Make Sure Donald & Ivanka Keep Their China Deals. Ana Swanson: "Republican lawmakers backed away from a plan to reinstate stiff penalties on Chinese telecom firm ZTE, handing a win to President Trump, who had personally intervened to save the Beijing company. Congressional leaders removed a provision, tucked into a military policy bill, that would have stopped the Trump administration from lifting penalties on ZTE. Rather than prevent the company from buying American technology, the bill will simply limit federal purchases of ZTE products, such as handsets. The move drew swift criticism from lawmakers who had pushed for a tougher approach to ZTE, which was found guilty in 2016 of violating American sanctions on Iran and North Korea.... President Xi Jinping of China appealed personally to Mr. Trump to save the company and Mr. Trump obliged." ...

     ... Snopes (May 16): "Two days before ... Donald Trump took the unusual step on 13 May 2018 of announcing plans to help save jobs in China, reports surfaced that the Chinese government would back a development project in Indonesia featuring Trump-branded properties to the tune of $500 million." ...

     ... New York Times (May 28): "China this month awarded Ivanka Trump seven new trademarks across a broad collection of businesses.... At around the same time, President Trump vowed to find a way to prevent a major Chinese telecommunications company from going bust, even though the company has a history of violating American limits on doing business with countries like Iran and North Korea." ...

... 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." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Alice Ollstein of TPM: "With the deadline for reuniting thousands of separated immigrant families less than a week away, the Trump administration revealed in a federal court filing late Thursday night that it plans to reunite just about 60 percent of the children between ages 5-17 that are in its custody. The rest -- just over 900 -- have been labeled 'ineligible' for reunification.... Just 364 families with children older than 5 years old, out of a total of 2551, have been reunited so far, though 848 parents have been cleared for reunification, and 272 are likely to be cleared after they are interviewed by ICE." --safari

"Clean" Coal. Mark Hand of ThinkProgress: "After reaching a low point in the late 1990s, new studies are showing that black lung disease has made a startling resurgence, especially among coal workers in the central Appalachian region.... The dramatic increase in cases of black lung disease is occurring at the same time that the Trump administration is seeking ways [to]weaken coal dust rules that protect coal miners from the disease -- a move that would reduce costs for coal companies, which have been strong financial backers of Trump." --safari

Casey Quilan of ThinkProgress: "The Office for Civil Rights at the Department of Health and Human Services changed or removed information on its website about sex discrimination, according to a new report from the Sunlight Foundation." --safari

But Jim Jordan Knew Nothing about It! Elise Viebeck & Shawn Boburg of the Washington Post: "More than 100 Ohio State University alumni have given investigators firsthand accounts of sexual misconduct by former athletic doctor Richard Strauss, the school said Friday in an update on the probe. Strauss has been accused of sexually abusing student athletes involved in 14 sports, as well as patients at the campus health center, between 1979 and 1997, according to the school. Controversy over whether OSU athletic coaches knew about Strauss' alleged conduct has ensnared Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), an influential conservative lawmaker who served as an assistant wrestling coach at Ohio State from 1987 to 1995. Jordan has consistently denied that he knew that Strauss was engaging in misconduct toward students."

Meet Your GOP. Andrew Kaczynski of CNN: "Republican Rep. Jason Lewis [Minn.] has a long history of racist rhetoric about African-Americans, pushing claims of a 'racial war' by blacks on whites and arguing that violence regularly occurs at black gatherings. He also frequently claimed that black people have an 'entitlement mentality' and viewed themselves as victims. Lewis made those comments on 'The Jason Lewis Show,' a syndicated radio program Lewis hosted from 2009 until 2014.... CNN's KFile reported on Wednesday that Lewis made a large number of deeply misogynistic comments on the show, including one monologue in which he lamented not being able to call women 'sluts' anymore." --safari

Alexander Kaufman of HuffPost via Mother Jones: "Fossil fuel producers, airlines and electrical utilities outspent environmental groups and the renewable energy industry 10 to 1 on lobbying related to climate change legislation between 2000 and 2016, according to a new analysis released Wednesday.... 'Public opinion is pretty much a minor factor in deciding what Congress is going to do,' said Robert Brulle, the study's author and a sociologist at Drexel University. Money spent on lobbying, he said, is likely a much bigger determinant of whether federal legislation gets off the ground. 'We seem to have a public opinion fetish where if we get public opinion to be supportive of climate change legislation, then it'll happen,' Brulle said. 'My answer to that is, gee, well, we should have gun control legislation then.'" --safari ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Under the current regime, the only times public opinion affects federal policy is when Republican voters unite behind a policy need. Thanks to GOP propaganda, climate change doesn't stand a chance. But the opioid crisis, which surprised Republican "leaders.", has received Congress's attentions.

Election 2018

Thanks, Supremes! Li Zhou of Vox: "States are kicking a growing number of voters off their rolls in the wake of a 2013 Supreme Court decision that invalidated a key part of the Voting Rights Act. The rate of voter purges -- a sometimes faulty process that states use to clean their voter rolls -- is significantly higher than it was a decade ago, according to a new report from NYU's Brennan Center for Justice.... The spike is notable. Between 2006 and 2008, 12 million voters were purged from voter rolls. Between 2014 and 2016, that number rose to 16 million -- a roughly 33 percent increase.... Voter purge rates in preclearance jurisdictions between 2012 to 2016 far outpaced those in jurisdictions that were not previously subject to federal preclearance." --safari ...

... ** GOP Allies. Jen Kirby of Vox: "A Microsoft executive said at the Aspen Security Forum panel ... that the company had detected phishing attacks targeting three US congressional candidates... The cyberattacks weren't successful in hacking the three candidates. Burt didn't identify them by name, but intriguingly described them as 'interesting targets from an espionage standpoint.'... He said, according to the BBC, that Microsoft detected the suspicious activity on web domains that had been linked to a group tied to Russian intelligence that had been active in 2016." --safari ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Hackers, Russian on otherwise, need to flip only a few Congressional elections to affect control of the House (& Senate). If you watch Rachel Maddow's brief segment above, you can see how it works -- and how little in the way of hacking efforts (and expenditures) is necessary to keep Congress in Republican control. For various domestic reasons -- gerrymandering, voter suppression, Constitutional Senate makeup -- Republicans already have a huge electoral advantage over Democrats; a little help from hackers is all that's needed to again put the Congress in control of the party with a minority of voter support. The media have made much of the "blue wave" that put a few Democrats in Congress over the past months, but it's reasonable to assume that Russia put no effort into influencing the outcomes of special elections. The general election is a different story.

Senate Race. Caleb Ecarma of Mediaite: "GOP Senate nominee Corey Stewart claimed New York Times reporter Stephanie Saul broke into one of his staffer's homes for a story; the newspaper of record responded by calling the allegation 'entirely false.' On Wednesday, Stewart accused Saul of breaking into the Woodbridge, Virginia home of campaign aide Brian Landrum, who was recently revealed to have been part of a group chat created to plan a white supremacist rally for the anniversary of last year's deadly Unite the Right event. Landrum claimed the campaign is 'working with police investigators, and look forward to justice being served' for the alleged break in, but according to the Washington Post, no files were charged by Thursday night.... New York Times spokesperson Ari Bevacqua ... [said in a statement,] 'Ms. Saul went to an address for Landrum Associates in Woodbridge looking for Mr. Landrum. She was told by a woman who opened the door that he was not present. She left a note with the woman for Mr. Landrum asking him to call. At no time did she enter the premises.'" ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Just more evidence Stewart is a nutjob. His opponent in the Senate race is Sen. Tom Kaine (D).

2020 Presidential Race. Ed Kilgore: "GOP Awards Its 2020 Convention to the Only City That Sorta Kinda Wanted It [-- Charlotte, North Carolina.... Friday] the Republican National Committee hastily took up Charlotte on its offer before it evaporated. That nearly happened earlier this week, when protestors flooded a meeting of the Charlotte City Council, which subsequently approved a tentative contract to host the convention by a narrow 6-5 vote." Mrs. McC: The last time Charlotte hosted a party convention was 2012, when the nominee was President Barack Obama. What a comedown the 2020 show will be, especially if Donald Trump is the nominee (and I'm not certain that's a given).

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." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

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...." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Way Beyond the Beltway

Saeed Kamali Dehgran of the Guardian: "Alarm bells have been raised about [Iran] edging towards a political, economic and even environmental precipice, and analysts fear that the warnings are bein ignored. Sadegh Zibakalam, a professor of politics at Tehran University, says the situation ha become so bad that 'people see no light at the end of the tunnel.'... Zibakalam adds that Iranian society has turned its back against both conservatives and reformists, as people see no prospect of reconciliation with the US. He believes that if, or rather when, the situation gets worse, hardliners will become strengthened...The post-revolutionary optimism that helped people go through the Iran-Iraq war, he says, has given way to a state of despair as economic, social and political resources have become depleted.'" --safari

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.

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.)