In Claire And Present Danger

The Daily Beast is reporting that Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill's office was the first known target in Russia's attempts to hack the 2018 midterms and the senator's staff was hit in August 2017 by Russian GRU phishing attempts.

The Russian intelligence agency behind the 2016 election cyberattacks targeted Sen. Claire McCaskill as she began her 2018 re-election campaign in earnest, a Daily Beast forensic analysis reveals. That makes the Missouri Democrat the first identified target of the Kremlin’s 2018 election interference.

McCaskill, who has been highly critical of Russia over the years, is widely considered to be among the most vulnerable Senate Democrats facing re-election this year as Republicans hope to hold their slim majority in the Senate. In 2016, President Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton by almost 20 points in the senator’s home state of Missouri.

There’s no evidence to suggest that this attempt to lure McCaskill staffers was successful. The precise purpose of the approach was also unclear. Asked about the hack attempt by Russia’s GRU intelligence agency, McCaskill told The Daily Beast on Thursday that she wasn’t yet prepared to discuss it.

“I’m not going to speak of it right now,” she said. “I think we’ll have something on it next week. I’m not going to speak about it right now. I can’t confirm or do anything about it right now.”

The senator later released a statement asserting that the cyberattack was unsuccessful.

“Russia continues to engage in cyber warfare against our democracy. I will continue to speak out and press to hold them accountable,” McCaskill said. “While this attack was not successful, it is outrageous that they think they can get away with this. I will not be intimidated. I’ve said it before and I will say it again, Putin is a thug and a bully.”

In August 2017, around the time of the hack attempt, Trump traveled to Missouri and chided McCaskill, telling the crowd to “vote her out of office.” Just this last week, however, Trump said, on Twitter, that he feared Russians would intervene in the 2018 midterm elections on behalf of Democrats.

McCaskill isn't denying that her office was targeted either, that's the big thing here.  And yes, the Russian "Fancy Bear" GRU hack team pulled a Podesta:

The hackers sent forged notification emails to Senate targets claiming the target's Microsoft Exchange password had expired, and instructing them to change it. If the target clicked on the link, he or she was taken to a convincing replica of the U.S. Senate's Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS) login page, a single sign-on point for e-mail and other services. 

As with the Podesta phishing, each Senate phishing email had a different link coded with the recipient's email address. That allowed the fake password-change webpage to display the user's email address when they arrived, making the site more convincing.

Of course the Russians want to hurt Democrats.  2016 showed them that it only took one successful phish to get to "How the sausage is made" campaign secrets, and then add their own "incriminating" emails to the "document dump".  It helped them put their man in power two years ago, there's nothing but upside for them in the course of trying to hurt Democratic senators in close races to keep their man in power in 2018.

Trump will just yell "fake news!" and press on.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

Trump's been letting Rudy Giuliani handle the whole Michael Cohen situation, and Cohen keeps turning up the temperature to try to get Trump to Do Something before the jaws of the state and federal cases against Cohen snap shut.  Thursday night however, Cohen dropped a thermite grenade in Trump's lap.

Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump's former personal attorney, claims that then-candidate Trump knew in advance about the June 2016 meeting in Trump Tower in which Russians were expected to offer his campaign dirt on Hillary Clinton, sources with knowledge tell CNN. Cohen is willing to make that assertion to special counsel Robert Mueller, the sources said. 

Cohen's claim would contradict repeated denials by Trump, Donald Trump Jr., their lawyers and other administration officials who have said that the President knew nothing about the Trump Tower meeting until he was approached about it by The New York Times in July 2017. 

Cohen alleges that he was present, along with several others, when Trump was informed of the Russians' offer by Trump Jr. By Cohen's account, Trump approved going ahead with the meeting with the Russians, according to sources. 

To be clear, these sources said Cohen does not have evidence, such as audio recordings, to corroborate his claim, but he is willing to attest to his account. 

There's three parts to this too, one, that Cohen is willing to testify against Donald Trump, two, that he's willing to testify as part of Mueller's investigation, not just disappear behind the closed doors of the House Intelligence Committee or something, and three, if true, that means Donald Trump Jr. committed perjury in his sworn testimony on the meeting to Congress.

None of these are exactly good for Trump, but I wonder.  It's possible that somebody in Trumpland leaked this to CNN with Trump's blessing in order to justify Trump going full-bore on Cohen, because Trump really does enjoy being an awful human being to people and getting in fights.

In his two most recent tweets about his former lawyer, Trump has declined to write “Michael” or “Cohen,” as he has in other tweets about him this year. The slight is not by accident, according to multiple people who have known Trump for years. The president, they say, will often stop using people’s names if he’s convinced they’re turncoats, or if he suddenly finds them big enough “losers” not worth the attention.

“They’re dead to each other [now],” said another source close to the president who also knows Cohen.

Trump allies are already gaming out how to, in the words of one outside adviser to the president, “bury” Cohen.

A Cohen ally brushed off the impending attacks, calling Giuliani and his associates “the gang who can’t shoot straight.”

Reached for comment, Cohen referred The Daily Beast to his lawyer Lanny Davis. Davis said Cohen is not concerned about any coming attacks from the president’s allies and surrogates. “When you’ve got truth on your side, you’re not afraid of anything,” he said. “So what are they afraid of?”

“When Michael Cohen came to me, I spent two weeks asking him about what he had done in the past for Mr. Trump and what he wanted to do in the future,” Davis continued. “I decided to represent him after hearing the answers to both of those questions and listening and watching what he was willing to say on TV to George Stephanopoulos. That’s when I made my decision. He has hit the reset button, he’s made a turn—to be on his own, speaking the truth.”

Several of Cohen’s associates have told The Daily Beast that Cohen—who for years publicly branded himself as the ultimate Trump loyalist—chose to publicize elements of his relationship with Trump once he realized that his loyalty would not be reciprocated.

Many were surprised it took him so long to realize this. The president passed over Cohen for a plum administration gig—Cohen had told friends he expected to be tapped as White House chief of staff—and displayed a nasty habit of making Cohen appear like a nuisance among peers.

Two sources with direct knowledge of Trump and Cohen’s relationship over the years tell The Daily Beast that during the 2016 presidential run, Cohen would often wander into rooms in Trump Tower where the GOP frontrunner and his senior advisers were having meetings on political strategy and other campaign-related matters. Cohen, according to these sources, would try to interject, only to have Trump tell him to leave and say they’d talk later. “Get out, Michael,” Trump ordered during one particular moment of annoyance.

Through it all, Cohen remained a committed Trump ally. But in the months after the feds raided his office, he began to feel abandoned by the president. The sense that he could be left as a potential fall-guy ultimately convinced him to go on offense.

Cohen has told associates he believes there is no going back on his latest moves, and that he expects to be finished with the president for the rest of his life.

“He has… made his peace with the loss of his friend,” one friend of Cohen assessed.

So it's possible that Trump wants a fight so he can bury Cohen.  It's much more likely however that Cohen knows he's going to hell, and that he doesn't want to be the only guy in the handbasket.

Stay tuned.

StupidiNews!

• One person is confirmed dead as wildfires rage towards Redding, California, residents were told to evacuate the city last night as the Carr wildfire continues to burn with minimal containment.
• Disneyland in California says it will raise park employees' minimum wage to $15 an hour by January, and slightly higher than that in 2020.
• The Trump regime says about 1,400 of 2,500 children have been reunited with their parents after being separated at the border, but more than 700 were not by yesterday's federal court deadline.
• Donald Trump is predicting US GDP figures out today will show "terrific" 4% quarterly growth ahead of this morning's official Commerce Department release.
• The fight between Charter Spectrum broadband and New York intensified as the state threatened to revoke the cable giant's license to operate over failures to meet merger commitments.

Last Call For The Blue Wave Rises, Con't

Democrats are going for broke to try to retake the Senate, and while it won't be impossible, they will have to run the table on no less than twelve Trump state races.  It's looking better for them in eight of those twelve: Sherrod Brown, Tammy Baldwin, Debbie Stabenow and Bob Casey are all looking like safe bets, and Jon Tester, Heidi Heitkamp, Joe Manchin, and Bill Nelson are in tighter contests but are ahead.

But that leaves four races: defending Claire McCaskill in Missouri and Joe Donnelly in Indiana, and earning the two pickups Dems need to get to 51, Kyrsten Sinema in Arizona and Jackie Rosen in Nevada.

Surprisingly enough though, Dems are betting that Rosen has Republican Dean Heller's seat in a place where she too can win, so Dems are moving on pure offense and are going after Bob Corker's seat in Tennessee with former Democratic Gov. Phil Breseden in a position to pull a Doug Jones.

A heavily funded Democratic group will spend tens of millions of dollars to mobilize voters in the Republican-leaning states where control of the Senate is likely to be decided this November, stepping in to fill a void left by years of decay in Democratic infrastructure at the state and local level. 

Senate Majority PAC, the principal “super PAC” supporting Democratic efforts to capture the chamber, intends to steer at least $20 million into the voter-mobilization campaign ahead of the midterm elections, officials with the group confirmed. The program, which follows a similar — successful — Democratic effort in Alabama last year, underscores the degree to which outside groups that can take massive donations have supplanted the traditional role of political parties. 

The initiative by Senate Majority PAC — which will run through an affiliated nonprofit group, Majority Forward — will span more than a dozen states where Senate seats are at stake. But it is to focus on four states above all: Missouri and Indiana, where endangered Democrats are seeking re-election, and Arizona and Tennessee, where strong Democratic challengers are running for open seats currently held by Republicans. 

Those four races are among the country’s most competitive. And for Democrats to take control of the Senate, they would likely have to win at least three of them, or perhaps all four, depending on the outcome of races in other states.

Republicans currently hold the Senate by a slim majority, with 51 seats, but Democrats are largely on defense this year because so many of their senators in red states are running for new terms. 

Paul Dunn, a strategist for Senate Majority PAC, said that in those four states, Democrats need both to drive up turnout among left-leaning voters and to make inroads in more conservative communities.

“These are states that you need to do everything to win,” Mr. Dunn said. “You have to have close margins in areas that are harder for Democrats, but we also need to increase participation in areas where we are strong.” 

The turnout program, officials said, would mimic a narrower effort mounted by Senate Majority PAC in Alabama last year, during a special election for the seat Jeff Sessions vacated to become attorney general. Senator Doug Jones, a Democrat, won the seat with the help of $6 million from Senate Majority PAC, which funded both heavy advertising and get-out-the-vote operations.

That's right folks, Democrats are actually going to concentrate on turning out black and Hispanic voters as well as reaching out to disaffected Trump voters.

I may have a heart attack.  Somebody actually listened to my advice and realized you can do both without one coming at the expense of the other, especially in states like Arizona and Nevada.

Good on the Dems for remembering who brought them to the dance to begin with.

The White House Press Gets A Shine Job

We live in a country where the leader rails against the press as enemies of the people and reporters are shot and killed on newsroom floors.  This isn't some distant communist regime or fictional banana republic, this is the current reality of America today, and Trump just upped the ante on his way with a free press.

The White House took retaliatory action against Kaitlan Collins, a White House reporter for CNN, after Collins asked President Trump questions at an Oval Office photo op on Wednesday. 

CNN, rival networks, and the White House Correspondents Association all spoke out against the administration's action. 

On Wednesday afternoon Collins was representing all the television networks as the "pool reporter" in the room during a meeting between Trump and Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission. 

As is customary, Collins lobbed a few questions at the president. She asked about Vladimir Putin and Michael Cohen. Trump did not answer the questions. 

Later in the afternoon, the White House surprised the press corps by announcing a press availability with Trump and Juncker in the Rose Garden. It was said to be open to all press, not just the small pool. 

A few minutes later, Collins was asked to come to Bill Shine's office. Shine, a former co-president of Fox News, is the new deputy chief of staff for communications. Shine and press secretary Sarah Sanders met Collins there. 

"They said 'You are dis-invited from the press availability in the Rose Garden today,'" Collins said in an interview. "They said that the questions I asked were inappropriate for that venue. And they said I was shouting." 

A video clip of the exchange shows that Collins was speaking the same way journalists in the press pool usually speak. 

Collins said she reacted by saying, "You're banning me from an event because you didn't like the questions I asked." 

Collins said Shine and Sanders asserted that "we're not banning your network. Your photographers can still come. Your producers can still come. But you are not invited to the Rose Garden today."

This is definitely the work of disgraced former FOX News chief Bill Shine as the White House's new communications head, a move so blatantly obvious and shocking that even White House State Media took notice.

The White House Correspondents’ Association, which represents reporters seeking access to the White House, also issued a statement protesting the action. 

“We strongly condemn the White House’s misguided and inappropriate decision today to bar one of our members from an open press event after she asked questions they did not like,” wrote WHCA president Olivier Knox. “This type of retaliation is wholly inappropriate, wrong-headed, and weak. It cannot stand. Reporters asking questions of powerful government officials, up to and including the President, helps hold those people accountable.” 

Collins, who referred questions to CNN representatives, detailed the episode on CNN, prompting anchor Wolf Blitzer to say the White House should issue a formal apology. “This is outrageous,” said Blitzer, a former White House correspondent. “It doesn’t happen and shouldn’t happen in the United States.” 

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), who was on CNN when the news was announced, said, “This kind of, really, violation of a reporter’s rights is an offense against the First Amendment interests of all of us.”

In response to the incident, Fox News anchor Bret Baier tweeted his support: “As a member of the White House Press pool- @FoxNews stands firmly with @CNN on this issue and the issue of access.”

For the WHCA to actually develop a spinal column and for anyone from FOX News to make a peep over this makes this huge.  Steve M. points out over at his place that Collins was a former Daily Caller reporter before joining CNN, and that's why FOX's Bret Baier is clearly worried.

Still though, keep an eye on Bill Shine, and keep in mind his culture of constant sexual harassment when running FOX News.  It's no wonder then that his first two notable acts upon joining the White House was to punish two conservative media women for not being sufficiently deferential to Trump: to hang Sarah Huckabee Sanders out to dry earlier in the week and to punish Kaitlan Collins yesterday.

Shine is sending out a message to his own staff and now to the WH press corps.  The question now is if anyone will choose to do anything about it.

That Whole Saturday Night Massacre Thing, Con't

Two weeks ago I talked about how House GOP Freedom Caucus leaders Rep. Mark Meadows and Rep. Jim Jordan were considering articles of impeachment against Deputy Attorney General (and Mueller probe boss) Rod Rosenstein, a doomed effort that could nevertheless provide the political cover Trump needed to start mass firings in the DoJ.

Last week I noted that GOP House Speaker Paul Ryan and House GOP Oversight Committee Chair Rep. Trey Gowdy were blocking that effort in the wake of the double-barreled blast of Trump's disastrous trip to Finland to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin, and the indictment of suspected Russian agent and NRA enthusiast Maria Butina.

That brings us to this week, where Trump, battered by economic news by US corporations blaming his trade war for lost profits and former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen unleashing recordings of his conversations with Trump about buying off mistresses, needs something to rally his base, and that something is Meadows and Jordan making their move against Rosenstein official.

A group of Republican lawmakers on Wednesday introduced articles of impeachment to remove Deputy U.S. Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, escalating a fight over Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Representatives Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows, who belong to the conservative House Freedom Caucus, joined nine other House members in accusing Rosenstein of hiding investigative information from Congress, failure to comply with congressional subpoenas and other alleged misconduct.

Rosenstein, the No. 2 official at the Justice Department, has become a frequent punching bag for supporters of President Donald Trump for appointing Mueller to investigate whether Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia in his race against Democrat Hillary Clinton. The president has denied such collusion took place.

“The DOJ is keeping information from Congress,” Jordan said, referring to the Department of Justice. “Enough is enough. It’s time to hold Mr. Rosenstein accountable for blocking Congress’s constitutional oversight role.”

A Justice Department official said the agency had no comment.

So we're in a for a long summer fight, right?

Not really.

Representative Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, said on Twitter the articles of impeachment “were filed in bad faith and show extraordinary lengths to which House Republicans will go to protect Trump.”

The House is scheduled to leave on Thursday on a recess that extends until the first week of September.

A House Republican aide said the two lawmakers were not attempting to force quick action on the articles of impeachment.

Oh yeah, the August recess where lawmakers give themselves a six-week vacation to go campaign.  So no, this isn't going anywhere until after Labor Day.  And even then, it's not going anywhere.

But it sure gives House Republicans something to talk about when they campaign and fundraise for the next month and change back home, huh.  Yes, this is a stupid publicity stunt on the part of the House GOP, only 11 House Republicans signed on and there's no real way Paul Ryan is even going to let this come up for a vote, much less Mitch McConnell holding a trial in the final month or two of the midterm campaign.

Ahhh but what about the fact that House members can force an impeachment vote if they truly want to?

A Meadows spokesman said the North Carolina Republican was leaving open the option of making the resolution privileged to force a vote. But such a move isn't likely to occur until after the House returns in September. 

"Information has been hidden, efforts have been stonewalled," Meadows said during an appearance on Fox News Wednesday night. "I guess for us, it's all about transparency so the American people can judge for themselves. They may be able to ignore Congress but they can't ignore the American people." 

Later in the Fox News interview, Meadows hinted he may try to force a vote on the House floor about the articles of impeachment against Rosenstein as soon as Thursday. Meadows said he doesn't want to bring the motion to the floor without Ryan's permission but that it's possible it can happen. 

"But starting tomorrow, we can bring it up as a privileged motion," he said. 

He added, "It really means it would require a vote on the House floor within two days and that's something that any member of Congress, Jim or I, can do. And quite frankly, it's either we hold him in contempt or we get the documents or we impeach him, and the only thing we have control over is the ability to bring impeachment straight to the floor."

So this is really just a threat they are leaving open for at least six weeks, and probably forever.  Meadows could have made this a privileged motion and to call on a vote, but specifically chose not to do so.  In other words, as I said above, this is a campaign publicity stunt and nothing more, something Jim Jordan desperately needs back home in Ohio as he faces voters on his past assistant coaching role in the Ohio State wrestling abuse scandal.

That doesn't mean however that Trump isn't going to use the impeachment articles as cover to fire Rosenstein outright while Congress is out campaigning.  And Mitch has already said that while the House will be in recess, the Senate has the Kavanaugh confirmation to deal with, not to mention Mitch wanting to keep Senate Democrats in DC and from being able to campaign at all, so Dems will be on hand if it looks like Trump gets an itchy trigger finger.

Anyway, we'll see.  My gut tells me Trump will try to fire some people, he has in the past and was only talked down because WH lawyer Don McGahn threatened to quit if he did.   I think as Mueller keeps making his life worse, Trump will be more and more incensed until he finally loses his temper.

Stay tuned.

StupidiNews!

• Donald Trump and European Commission President Jean-Claude Junker announced agreement to at least pause the current trade war as the EU will buy more US soybeans and natural gas.
• Ford is the latest US manufacturer to sharply cut 2018 profit outlook as tariffs on steel and aluminum have hurt second quarter numbers and are expected to significantly hurt third quarter earnings.
• Facebook stock took a major beating after hours as the company announced that efforts to protect user privacy will hurt corporate profits for "several years ahead".
• China is downplaying a 26-year-old man's attempt to bomb the US Embassy in Beijing as an "isolated incident", the man is being treated in a hospital and no other injuries were reported.
• Data security experts are warning of a nearly decade-old security flaw in Bluetooth pairing technology that could expose data to hackers, tech manufacturers are already releasing patches.

Last Call For The Blue Wave Rises, Con't

Larry Sabato's University of Virginia crew at Sabato's Crystal Ball moves 17 House races towards the Democratic side this week, including two local competitive GOP seats into the Toss-Up column: Steve Chabot in OH-1 (Cincinnati) and Andy Barr in KY-6 (Lexington/Frankfort), and that's enough for predictions that the Democrats will retake the House this fall.

So what’s changed? Why do we now tilt the House to the Democrats? 

Well, part of the reason is simply this: In actuality, not much has changed throughout the cycle. That, in and of itself, is a problem for Republicans. 

Election Day is getting closer, and the president’s approval rating is still largely stuck in the low 40s, a big red warning sign that has bedeviled the party of similarly-situated presidents in past midterms. The Housegeneric ballot, which has generally been at around a Democratic lead of between six to eight points, is at the higher end of that range right now. But more importantly for the House battle, for most of this election cycle the generic ballot has shown a consistent Democratic lead that suggests a very competitive battle for the majority. A high number of open seats — the highest number of any postwar election save 1992 — give Democrats many more targets than the GOP (Republicans are defending 41 seats without an incumbent, while Democrats are defending only 22). 

Special elections at the state and federal level, sometimes a helpful gauge of what is to come in the midterm, have generally shown Democrats improving on Hillary Clinton’s district-level performance, often drastically. Democrats seem very likely to improve on Clinton’s margin once again in a special election in OH-12 on Aug. 7, the last House special before the midterm, although by how much is a question (an update on OH-12, a race we now call a Toss-up, is included at the bottom of this article). 

There are also the specifics of this particular election. The second-quarter (April through June) House fundraising reports came out last week, and the results are alarming for Republicans. It’s not that GOP fundraising, in total, was bad: Many vulnerable incumbents had very solid quarters. Rather, it’s that Democratic fundraising was extraordinary, with dozens of Democratic candidates turning in blockbuster quarters and outraising their GOP opponents. Money isn’t everything, but one expects incumbents to have a clear financial edge on their opponents, and it’s not clear that some current GOP members will have even that with several months of buckraking to go before the Nov. 6 election. 

Put it all together, and the Democrats now look like soft favorites to win a House majority with a little more than 100 days to go. The usual caveats apply: There is time for things to change, and the Democrats capturing the majority is not a slam dunk. We recently were discussing the House map with a source who recited reams of positive indicators and data for Democrats. After hearing those, we suggested that, based on what this person was saying, the Democrats should win the House with seats to spare. The source then said it will come down to just a few seats either way. By the way, such a close outcome — a House where the majority party has 220-225 seats or even less (218 is the number required for a bare majority) — remains a distinct possibility, and the presence of so many competitive House seats in California, where the vote count takes weeks to finalize, could delay the final House outcome.

I could have told this six months ago, but they have a point that nothing has gotten any better for the GOP at all.  Dems looked like better than even odds to retake the House back in January, and they still look like they will now, the issue is we're in late July instead of late January, and the GOP is running out of time.

As far as those local races go, they are solid toss-ups now in places the GOP has to win, and that means they are in real trouble, especially Steve Chabot.

The sheer weight of the Democratic fundraising advantage is a factor in some of these moves. For instance, Reps. Steve Chabot (R, OH-1) and Mike Bishop (R, MI-8) hold districts that Trump won by about a half-dozen points apiece. They have had relatively easy elections over the past couple of cycles (Chabot has been in the House since 1995, with an interruption in service from 2009-2011, while Bishop was first elected in 2014), but they face two seemingly high-quality Democratic challengers, Hamilton County Clerk of Courts Aftab Pureval (D) and Elissa Slotkin (D), an Obama-era Defense Department official. Pureval raised more than double what Chabot raised last quarter and is approaching the long-time incumbent’s cash-on-hand total, while Slotkin has been crushing Bishop in fundraising so badly that she holds a $2.2 million to $1.7 million cash on hand advantage, an unusual edge for a challenger to hold on an incumbent. Both districts have above-average college graduation rates, often a predictor of Trump skepticism that could have down-ballot repercussions.

Andy Barr is also in dire straits.

Two other Toss-ups come in Appalachia. In the Lexington-based district held by Rep. Andy Barr (R, KY-6),[1] former Marine fighter pilot Amy McGrath (D) turned heads by upsetting Lexington Mayor Jim Gray (D) in a May primary. McGrath’s victory prompted us to hesitate moving this historically competitive district to Toss-up — Gray was more of a proven commodity — but Democrats argue McGrath is leading and Republicans concede this will be a hard race. Across the border in West Virginia, state Sen. Richard Ojeda (D) has become something of a folk hero in Coal Country and is locked in a close race with state Del. Carol Miller (R) in an open seat contest for WV-3.

McGrath and Pureval can win, as can several other Dems in November.  Let's keep that in mind and close out the final 100 days strong.

The Pendejo Beanfield War, Con't

As predicted, Trump's trade war with China is already wrecking American farmers to the point where the White House has essentially admitted defeat and is preparing a $12 billion farm subsidy bailout package using Dust Bowl-era programs to get around Congress.

The White House plans to announce it is extending $12 billion in emergency aid to farmers caught in the midst of President Trump’s escalating trade war, two people briefed on the plan said, the latest sign that growing tensions between the United States and other countries will not end soon. 

An announcement could come as soon as Tuesday. 

Farm groups have complained that moves by China and other countries in response to Trump’s protectionist trade stance this year could cost them billions of dollars, spooking Republicans who fear a political and economic blowback to Trump’s approach. 

The White House has searched for months for a way to provide emergency assistance to farmers without backing down on Trump’s trade agenda, and the new program will extend roughly $12 billion through three different mechanisms run by the Department of Agriculture. 

The funds will come through direct assistance, a food purchase and distribution program, and a trade promotion program. 

It will rely in part on a Depression-era program called the Commodity Credit Corporation, which is a division of the Agriculture Department that was created in 1933 to offer a financial backstop for farmers.

Will the rest of America get billions in bailouts after Trump tariffs add 25% inflation to the cost of cars, washing machines, groceries, farm equipment, TVs, and more?  What about coal miners?  What about auto workers?  What about steel foundry workers?  Who else gets a bailout in Trumpland?

We're about to find out.  It took less than six weeks from Trump to go from "Trade wars are easy to win!" to "Here's some money to make you forget about how I destroyed your export industry."

More of these, I suspect, are coming.

Lordy, There Are Tapes, And Transcripts, And Audio

Former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen just ruined Donald Trump's week by releasing audio of one of the taped conversations he had with Trump to his favorite network, CNN.

Presidential candidate Donald Trump is heard on tape discussing with his attorney Michael Cohen how they would buy the rights to a Playboy model's story about an alleged affair Trump had with her years earlier, according to the audio recording of the conversation aired exclusively on CNN's "Cuomo Prime Time." 

The recording offers the public a glimpse at the confidential discussions between Trump and Cohen, and it confirms the man who now occupies the Oval Office had contemporaneous knowledge of a proposal to buy the rights to the story of Karen McDougal, a woman who has alleged she had an extramarital affair with Trump about a decade ago. 

Cohen told Trump about his plans to set up a company and finance the purchase of the rights from American Media, which publishes the National Enquirer. The recording captures what appears to be a routine business conversation of several matters on their agenda. The audio is muddled and the meaning of Trump's use of the word "cash" is disputed by the two sides. 

"I need to open up a company for the transfer of all of that info regarding our friend David," Cohen said in the recording, likely a reference to American Media head David Pecker. 

When financing comes up again later in the conversation, Trump interrupts Cohen asking, "What financing?" according to the recording. When Cohen tells Trump, "We'll have to pay," Trump is heard saying "pay with cash" but the audio is muddled and it's unclear whether he suggests paying with cash or not paying. Cohen says, "no, no" but it is not clear what is said next.

Aaron Blake at the Washington Post has the transcripts of the tape, and they're pretty eye-opening, particularly the passages CNN reference in the above story.

Here’s where Cohen first broaches what appears to be buying the rights to McDougal’s story – though he doesn’t actually mention her, the National Enquirer or its publisher, American Media Inc. A couple observations:

1) He talks about it as if Trump is already at least somewhat familiar with the whole thing – suggesting they had spoken about it before.

2) He speaks in somewhat coded language – about “info” and “our friend, David.”

3) “David” would seem to refer to David Pecker, the chairman and CEO of AMI who had previously purchased the rights to McDougal’s story. McDougal and former AMI employees have accused Pecker of buying the story so he could decline to run it and protect his friend, Trump – a practice known as “catch and kill.”

4) It’s worth asking precisely what Cohen means by “all of that info.” Neither he nor Trump specifically refers to McDougal, so it’s not clear what info is part of the proposed transaction.

5) Cohen talks about opening up a company for the transaction – which tracks with his approach to the Stormy Daniels hush money.

Then Trump utters "[don't] pay with cash" a bit later when Cohen says "Well, we'll have to pay him something".  That "don't" is 100% subjective, because the White House says it's there and the Washington Post says it's not clear.  (If you're still believing the White House at this point, there's nothing I can do for you.) 

This is the key part of the recording. Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani has contended that the tape is “exculpatory” because it features Trump saying the payment should be made by check and not cash – and therefore suggests Trump wasn’t trying to hide anything. (The rights for the story were never ultimately purchased.)

It’s not clear from the tape, though, whether Trump says “Don’t pay with cash” or something besides “don’t.”

Cohen lawyer Lanny Davis suggested on CNN shortly after the tape went public that Trump’s allusion to paying with cash shows his nefarious motives.

“The only people who use cash are drug dealers and mobsters,” Davis said.

A lawyer for the Trump Organization, Alan Futerfas, told The Post that Trump was talking about “cash” not as in untraceable money, but as an alternative to Cohen’s allusion to “financing” – or a loan.

“The notion that they were discussing using a bag of cash or green currency is ridiculous,” Futerfas said.

Yeah, because Cohen had just mentioned 60 seconds earlier about setting up a front company to handle the payment, but it somehow exonerates Trump because he doesn't want to pay with cash.  Trump's state news is too busy attacking Cohen for all this, of course.  The "don't" is meaningless compared to Cohen previously saying he's going to set up a shell corporation to hide the payment, guys.  This is gaslighting 101.

Side note: I still find it hysterical that Cohen's lawyer is Lanny Davis, who is basically the Michael Cohen of the Democratic party set. They truly deserve each other.

But lordy, there are tapes.  Oh, are there ever tapes.  And according to Lanny, more releases are coming.

I'd say this won't end well for Trump, but then again it's not like America gave a damn about his tacit admission to serial and criminal sexual assault on the Access Hollywood tape (that was blasted off the front page in under an hour by our Russian WikiLeaks friends and their DNC email leaks).

We'll see.

StupidiNews!

• Pakistani elections turned violent today as a suicide bomb attack in the city of Quetta has killed at least 31 and injured dozens, ISIS is claiming responsibility.
• Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp has won the GOP gubernatorial primary after Donald Trump's surprise backing last week, the endorsement turned a close race into a 40-point blowout. 
• The European Commission is preparing $20 billion in retaliatory tariffs on the US as EC President Jean-Claude Junker meets with Donald Trump today in Washington for trade talks.
• Ireland says it would "absolutely" support a UK request to stay in the EU after 2019 as the clock is running out on UK PM Theresa May's final Brexit deal.
• A federal appeals court panel has unanimously rejected a Mohawk tribe's claim that tribal sovereign immunity can affect patents, the court ruled in favor of drugmaker Mylan.

Last Call For The Party Is Over

I keep pounding the gavel on this point, but it remains valid: Trump was the inevitable metastasized symptom of a broken, cancerous Republican party that has aided and abetted his perfidy and really has been broken all my life. The Nation's David Klion nails them to the wall for it.

It’s rarely recalled now, but back in May 2017, The Washington Post published the transcript of a conversation from June 2016 among the House Republican leadership, in which House majority leader Kevin McCarthy made clear that he was aware “the Russians hacked the DNC and got the opp research that they had on Trump” and speculated “there’s two people, I think, that Putin pays: [Representative Dana] Rohrabacher and Trump.” Amid laughter, House Speaker Paul Ryan insisted that the conversation remain off the record, adding, “What’s said in the family stays in the family.” Ryan would later claim he and McCarthy were joking.

The point here isn’t necessarily that Rohrabacher, a Republican congressman from California, solicited illegally obtained documents from Russian officials. There are other plausible candidates who might have done that. The point is that Russiagate, which is widely understood to be a scandal surrounding Donald Trump’s close associates like Paul Manafort, may go wider and deeper, and could implicate at least one member of Congress. 

Moreover, it seems that the Republican leadership was at the very least aware of this possibility, amused by it, and did nothing whatsoever to alert the public or any relevant authorities. They were happy to enjoy the benefits of Russian interference and said so openly among themselves. Similarly, as the Post reported, when Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell was informed of Russian interference in September 2016 in a meeting with President Obama and other senior officials, he threatened to cast any public announcement of the threat as partisan politics. It’s not a stretch to say McConnell deliberately undermined national security for partisan advantage, a decision that has paid off with the signing of a massive tax cut for the wealthy and the looming establishment of a durable right-wing majority on the Supreme Court. 

In other words, Russiagate isn’t just the narrow story of a few corrupt officials. It isn’t even the story of a corrupt president. It’s the story of a corrupt political party, the one currently holding all the levers of power in Washington. After Trump groveled before Putin in Helsinki, many Republicans in Washington proclaimed their solemn concern, just as they did when the president expressed his sympathy for the white supremacists in Charlottesville last year. But all of them are fully aware that they are abetting a criminal conspiracy, and probably more than one.

I can't stress this enough.  While it's still reasonable to argue whether or not Trump is a willing Russian ally or compromised asset (or both), there's no question that the rest of the GOP is covering for him out of fear of legal consequences and the toxic base that dredged them all out of the swamp and put them in charge of the country.

Shortly after the Trump-Putin press conference, federal prosecutors announced the indictment of Maria Butina, a Russian national in Washington, DC, who, unlike the 25 Russians the special counsel has so far indicted, was arrested over the weekend. Butina, who in 2016 attempted to arrange a meeting between Trump and Putin, is accused of operating as a foreign agent to gain influence in Republican political circles and advance the interests of the Russian Federation. Working on behalf of Alexander Torshin, the deputy governor of the Russian Central Bank, she appears to have brokered ties with the National Rifle Association and conservative religious organizations, which she herself accurately identified as the financial backbones of the Republican Party in Congress. 

Butina is a colorful example of an increasingly common phenomenon in Washington: foreign nationals, not only from Russia but from dozens of other countries, who blur the line between lobbying and spying until it’s imperceptible. This is what the evisceration of campaign-finance laws has yielded: a capital where American corporations and foreign governments see every official as being for sale. 

Mueller, who knows more than anyone in the media about the extent of the Russiagate scandal and never leaks, isn’t telling us that Trump colluded and obstructed justice—we already know that, because we literally saw Trump request on camera, in the summer of 2016, that Russia hack the Clinton campaign, just as we later saw him bluntly admit to the world that he fired James Comey to end the Russia investigation. 

Instead, we are being told something much more frightening: that Russiagate doesn’t end with Trump and his inner circle, that some members of Congress may be implicated, and that the Republican leadership therefore has a personal stake in preventing anyone beyond Manafort and a few other flunkies from being held accountable. Mueller and the FBI are giving everyone a glimpse at the scale of official corruption in Washington, and they’re warning us that they aren’t going to be able to rein it in all by themselves.

As I've said, there will be no legal solution to Trump.  There may not even be a viable Constitutional solution.  It will be 100% political.  The GOP that created Trump as its avatar has to be shattered and its power along with it, and until that happens, we are all in dire trouble.

A Sudden PR Opening At Mordor, Inc

Now that former disgraced FOX News chief Bill Shine (canned a year ago for aiding and abetting Roger Ailes's culture of sexual harassment at the network) has settled into his new job as Trump Regime Propaganda Head, it seems his first job is to shuffle the deck chairs on the Trumptanic and to let Politico know that current Mouth of Sauron Sarah Huckabee Sanders will soon be departing.

Bill Shine, the newly appointed White House deputy chief of staff for communications, has quietly begun asking friends and associates for their opinions about who could succeed Sanders if she leaves in the coming months, according to two people familiar with those conversations.

Shine, in a brief interview, denied having such conversations. “I have not had a meeting or discussion about this,” he said last week, noting he had been on the job for only a short time. Shine praised Sanders and called her a “total team player."

Although no decisions have been made about successors, an unofficial shortlist is already emerging among Trump White House alumni, former campaign aides and other backers of the president.

At the top of the list is Heather Nauert, the current State Department spokeswoman and former Fox News host. Nauert has impressed White House aides with her steady performances in Foggy Bottom. Multiple people close to the White House pointed out that Nauert remained in Trump’s good graces even when the president soured on former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

Nauert’s Fox News pedigree, paired with her close relationship with Trump and her ability to stay on message and remain calm under pressure, makes her a “no-brainer” for the job, according to one person close to the White House. Nauert, who did not respond to a request for comment, has told associates that she’s unsure whether she would want the job, but people who know her believe she’d take it if asked.

Other possibilities include Bill Hemmer, a Fox News reporter; Kimberly Guilfoyle, a former Fox News host who recently left the network to join a pro-Trump outside group; Treasury Department spokesman Tony Sayegh, who worked closely with the White House on its overhaul of the tax code and used to be a Fox News contributor; and White House deputy press secretary Raj Shah.

Guilfoyle is dating Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr., a fact that could complicate her appointment as press secretary, and several associates of the president said she is unlikely to get the job.

“There will be people who will want the job,” said former George W. Bush chief of staff Andrew Card. “The best way to get the job is not to apply.”

The prospect of losing Sanders, who is widely liked in the White House and is seen by her colleagues as a deft communicator and defender of the president, has some close to Trump in panic mode, worrying that it’ll be difficult to find a suitable replacement who can stand up to withering scrutiny from the public.

“Who would want that job?” one former administration official asked, summing up the feelings of many in Washington, who note that being the public face of Trump’s presidency can be a thankless and frequently impossible task.

Now I'm not sure if Sanders wants out, or if Shine doesn't think she's up to it any more (and both can be true) but to have your new boss come in and then two weeks after he arrives a story pops up in Politico about your eventual replacement, well, you're not long for your current position, sorry.  I won't be sad to see her go, and I don't have any sympathy for her enabling this regime to lie on a daily basis to the American people and the world.

It's clear that Shine was brought in to coordinate the regime's response with the state media officials at his old network as the Mueller probe moves into the endgame stages, and Sanders is not up to that task. Her replacement has to be far more ruthless and sinister instead of the "slightly baffled soccer mom about to call your district manager" routine Sanders brought to the table for the last year or so.

I do know this, whoever does replace Sanders will have to be a better liar than she is, because she's terrible at it.  Her tell that she's lying is "her mouth is open".  And frankly, I'd like her to get a new job at a federal prison as an inmate depending on what she was party to. 

Of course, that goes for a lot of current regime employees.

A Syria's Reflection

Steven A. Cook at Foreign Policy reminds us that the Syrian civil war is all over but the shouting, and while there's an untold number of losers in the seven-year conflict, the winner, by knockout, is Vladimir Putin.

There probably isn’t anyone inside the Beltway who hasn’t been told at some point in their career about the dangers of reasoning by analogy. But that doesn’t mean such lessons have been regularly heeded. The Syrian uprising came at a fantastical time in the Middle East when freedom, it seemed, was breaking out everywhere. The demonstration of people power that began in Daraa—coming so soon after the fall of longtime leaders in Tunisia and Egypt—was moving. It also clouded the judgment of diplomats, policymakers, analysts, and journalists, rendering them unable to discern the differences between the region’s Assads and Ben Alis or between the structure of the Syrian regime and that of the Egyptian one.

And because the policy community did not expect the Syrian leader to last very long, it was caught flat-footed when Assad pursued his most obvious and crudely effective strategy: a militarization of the uprising. In time, Syria’s competing militias, jihadis, and regional powers, compounded by Russia’s intervention, made it hard to identify U.S. interests in the conflict. So, Washington condemned the bloodshed, sent aid to refugees, halfheartedly trained “vetted” rebels, and bombed the Islamic State, but it otherwise stayed out of Syria’s civil conflict. Lest anyone believe that this was a policy particular to U.S. President Barack Obama and his aim to get out of, not into Middle Eastern conflicts, his successor’s policy is not substantially different, with the exception that President Donald Trump is explicit about leaving Syria to Moscow after destroying the Islamic State. While the bodies continued to pile up, all Washington could muster was expressions of concern over another problem from hell. Syria is, of course, different from Rwanda, Darfur, and Srebrenica—to suggest otherwise would be reasoning by analogy—but it is another case of killing on an industrial scale that paralyzed Washington. It seems that even those well versed in history cannot avoid repeating it.

Many of the analysts and policymakers who preferred that the United States stay out or minimize its role in Syria came to that position honestly. They looked at the 2003 invasion of Iraq and decried how it destabilized the region, empowered Iran, damaged relations with Washington’s allies, and fueled extremist violence, undermining the U.S. position in the region. It seems lost on the same group that U.S. inaction in Syria did the same: contributed to regional instability, empowered Iran, spoiled relations with regional friends, and boosted transnational terrorist groups. The decision to stay away may have nonetheless been good politics, but it came at a noticeable cost to Washington’s position in the Middle East.

The waning of U.S. power and influence that Syria has both laid bare and hastened is a development that the policy community has given little thought to, because it was not supposed to happen. By every traditional measure of power, the United States, after all, has no peer. But power is only useful in its application, and Washington has proved either unable or unwilling to shape events in the Middle East as it had in the past—which is to say, it has abdicated its own influence. That may be a positive development. No one wants a repeat of Iraq. In Washington’s place, Moscow has stepped in to offer itself as a better, more competent partner to Middle Eastern countries. There haven’t been many takers yet beyond the Syrians, but there nevertheless seems to be a lot of interest, and the conflict in Syria is the principal reason why.

Contrast the way in which Russian President Vladimir Putin came to the rescue of an ally in crisis—Assad—with the way U.S. allies in the region perceive Obama to have helped push Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak from office after 30 years, much of it spent carrying Washington’s water around in the region. The Egyptians, Saudis, Emiratis, Israelis, and others may not like Assad very much, but Russia’s initial forceful response to prevent the Syrian dictator from falling and then Moscow’s efforts to will Assad to apparent victory have made an impression on them. Syria is now the centerpiece and pivot of Russia’s strategy to reassert itself as a global power, and its renewed influence in the Middle East stretches from Damascus eastward through the Kurdistan Regional Government to Iran and from the Syrian capital south to Egypt before arcing west to Libya. 

This is all Putin's sandlot now, for better or for worse.  We're on our way out, because the new boss controls the old boss as it is.  Sure, the US used to be a lot better at propping up dictators, but that was then.  Now it's Assad and Erdogan, Kim and Durterte, with Eastern Europe looking on and Moscow laughing at all of it.

The Great Realignment is coming, and when the dust settles, we're going to be several chairs down the row in the pecking order.

And Russia will be ahead of us.  That, you can count on.

StupidiNews!

• Officials in Greece say at least 50 people have died due to wildfires as hundreds of residents were forced into the ocean near Athens to escape the flames.
• The Pentagon is welcoming reports and satellite images showing North Korea is keeping its promise to dismantle a propulsion facility used to make ballistic missile engines.
• A dam under construction on the Mekong River collapsed in Laos Monday night after heavy rains, sweeping away hundreds of nearby residents and destroying hundreds of homes.
• Disney is facing backlash from "Guardians of the Galaxy" stars after the company fired franchise writer and director James Gunn over old tweets highlighted by right-wing activists last week.
• The Trump regime is following through on plans to end California's tougher auto emissions standards, freezing the entire country at 2020 federal emissions levels.