The Blue Wave Rises, Con't

Another Republican goes down in flames, this time New York Congressman Chris Collins was picked up by the FBI for insider trading and fraud leaving the door wide open for his Democratic challenger, Nate McMurray.

Rep. Chris Collins, R-New York, was arrested Wednesday and charged with insider trading relating to an Australian biotechnology company, according to federal prosecutors.

The Buffalo-area congressman, who also served on the board of directors of the company Innate Immunotherapeutics and was the first member of Congress to endorse President Donald Trump's White House bid in 2016, is charged with passing nonpublic information about a multiple sclerosis drug to his son, Cameron, who shared it with his future father-in-law.

While the drug failed testing tanked the company's share price by 92 percent, Collins' tip allowed all three men to avoid nearly $800,000 in losses, according to the indictment.

Attorneys for Collins said they would "mount a vigorous defense to clear his good name."

"We are confident he will be completely vindicated and exonerated," they said in a statement.

The House Ethics Committee had been investigating the allegations against Collins since August of 2017. The Office of Congressional Ethics, in its report to the Ethics Committee found "substantial reason to believe" that Collins "shared material nonpublic information in purchasing stock" of Innate Immunotherapeutics, in violation of House rules, standards and federal law.

Collins, a vocal Trump ally, worked closely with the administration during the presidential transition, serving as the point of contact between lawmakers and the Trump transition team.

Needless to say, Collins's opponent, Nate McMurray, just had Christmas arrive in August.  Both had an easy time of winning their respective primaries five weeks ago as they were unopposed, so McMurray has been going after Trump's tight relationship with Trump for some time now. 

Still, this seat was entirely off the radar for the Dems, Cook Political Report has the district (which consists of the Niagara/Genesee farmland between Buffalo and Rochester) weighted as R+11 and even then Collins won in 2016 by almost 35 points, his support for Trump certainly didn't hurt him then.

Being in prison on the other hand might.

We'll see.

(Red) Meat The Press

We're not too far now from where a majority of Trump's fascist supporters will be comfortable with calling for the regime to take CNN, MSNBC, and other Trump critics off the air, as a new Ipsos poll for the Daily Beast finds 43% of Republicans want Trump to have final authority over which news outlets are allowed to operate in the US.

Freedom of the press may be guaranteed in the Constitution. But a plurality of Republicans want to give President Trump the authority to close down certain news outlets, according to a new public opinion survey conducted by Ipsos and provided exclusively to The Daily Beast.

The findings present a sobering picture for the fourth estate, with respondents showing diminished trust in the media and increased support for punitive measures against its members. They also illustrate the extent to which Trump’s anti-press drumbeat has shaped public opinion about the role the media plays in covering his administration.

All told, 43 percent of self-identified Republicans said that they believed “the president should have the authority to close news outlets engaged in bad behavior.” Only 36 percent disagreed with that statement. When asked if Trump should close down specific outlets, including CNN, The Washington Post, and The New York Times, nearly a quarter of Republicans (23 percent) agreed and 49 percent disagreed.

Republicans were far more likely to take a negative view of the media. Forty-eight percent of them said they believed “the news media is the enemy of the American people” (just 28 percent disagreed) while nearly four out of every five (79 percent) said that they believed “the mainstream media treats President Trump unfairly.”

But of course, it's not just Republicans.

But swaths of self-identified Democrats and Independents supported anti-press positions as well. According to the survey, 12 percent of Democrats and 21 percent of Independents agreed that “the president should have the authority to close news outlets engaged in bad behavior” (74 percent and 55 percent, respectively, disagreed). Additionally, 12 percent of Democrats and 26 percent of Independents agreed that “the news media is the enemy of the American people” (74 percent and 50 percent, respectively, disagreed)

The concept of an enemy press corps has become a staple of Trump’s tweets and public utterances in recent months. Much of it appears prompted by stories about internal frictions within the White House and a growing fear over the state of the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 campaign.

Members of the press, as well as top officials at some of the nation’s leading publications, have objected to the phrase, arguing that it is both wildly inaccurate and deeply dangerous. They have pointed to mob-like treatment of the media by Trump supporters at various rallies as evidence for their fears. Offered the opportunity, Trump’s spokesperson, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, declined to denounce the phrase. Other Trump supports have insisted that he was merely referring to those outlets that spread false information.

It's depressing, really.  Still, 85% of people in the survey agreed that freedom of the press is "essential for American democracy".  That's something, but we're not far off from when that freedom is sharply curtailed, both by corporate pressure and by Trump.

StupidiNews!

• Tuesday's House special election in OH-12 is too close to call this morning and looks to be headed for a state-mandated recount in a district that has been reliably red for decades.
• California says it will keep strict Obama-era auto emissions limits despite Trump regime plans to strip states of the power to set auto pollution standards.
• Iran says that the Trump regime will not stop the country's oil exports despite threats of US action against countries that buy Iranian oil as Washington resumed sanctions against Tehran this week.
• Tesla founder Elon Musk tweeted yesterday that he could choose to take the electric car company private by buying out $82 billion in stock using his own money.
• FCC Chairman Ajit Pai admitted Monday that the agency lied about a denial-of-service attack taking down public comments on net neutrality, but is blaming the Obama administration anyway.

Last Call For Immigration Nation, Con't

I've been saying for months now that the Trump regime's true goal on immigration was never to stop at "build the wall", but to reverse more than 50 years of immigration and citizenship in the country and to reduce the number of citizens -- and eligible voters -- in the US by tens of millions by building a demographic rampart to white nationalism.  

It's a three-part plan: end undocumented immigration and refugees, end legal immigration and citizenship, and mass deportation of immigrants.  The third part is coming, but right now we have to worry about the other two parts of the plan, especially the second part where legal immigrants start losing all paths to citizenship.

The Trump administration is expected to issue a proposal in coming weeks that would make it harder for legal immigrants to become citizens or get green cards if they have ever used a range of popular public welfare programs, including Obamacare, four sources with knowledge of the plan told NBC News.

The move, which would not need congressional approval, is part of White House senior adviser Stephen Miller's plan to limit the number of migrants who obtain legal status in the U.S. each year.

Details of the rulemaking proposal are still being finalized, but based on a recent draft seen last week and described to NBC News, immigrants living legally in the U.S. who have ever used or whose household members have ever used Obamacare, children's health insurance, food stamps and other benefits could be hindered from obtaining legal status in the U.S.

Immigration lawyers and advocates and public health researchers say it would be the biggest change to the legal immigration system in decades and estimate that more than 20 million immigrants could be affected. They say it would fall particularly hard on immigrants working jobs that don't pay enough to support their families.

Many are like Louis Charles, a Haitian green-card holder seeking citizenship who, despite working up to 80 hours a week as a nursing assistant, has had to use public programs to support his disabled adult daughter.

Using some public benefits like Social Security Insurance has already hindered immigrants from obtaining legal status in the past, but the programs included in the recent draft plan could mean that immigrant households earning as much as 250 percent of the poverty level could be rejected.

A version of the plan has been sent to the White House Office of Management and Budget, the sources said, the final step before publishing a rule in the federal register. Reuters first reported that the White House was considering such a plan in February.

And if they can never become citizens, they become much easier to deport when we get to stage three, right?

In all serious, all this along with gutting civil rights, voting rights, and "reinterpreting" the Fourteenth Amendment is the path we're heading down, and the right to vote will be massively restricted in the years to come unless we stop the GOP here in 2018.

If we don't, it may be too late.

A Supreme Scandal In West Virginia

I haven't been following the story of West Virginia's state Supreme Court about to be impeached, and yes, I mean the entire court over a spending scandal, but it seems like it has just become a very important national story.  One of the five justices has retired, one is facing a number of federal charges, and the other three are are also in trouble after investigation by the state House of Delegates.

The articles of impeachment were introduced against the remaining four justices this morning.

The West Virginia House of Delegates Judiciary Committee has drafted 14 articles of impeachment against the four sitting justices on the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals.

The articles were presented to the committee at about 9:25 a.m. Tuesday morning with mention of all four justices – Margaret Workman, Robin Jean Davis, Allen Loughry and Beth Walker.

Justice Loughry faces six charges, and Chief Justice Margaret Workman faces five charges.

Justices Robin Jean Davis and Beth Walker each face six charges.

Some of the articles charge more than one justice at a time with a given impeachable offense.

Each justice is charged with “unnecessary and lavish” spending of state dollars to renovate their offices in the East Wing of the Capitol.

Loughry faces additional charges related to his use of state vehicles for personal travel, having state furniture and computers in his home, and for handing down an administrative order authorizing payments of senior status judges in excess of what is allowable in state law.

Davis and Workman are charged with actually signing documents authorizing that senior status judges be paid in excess of what’s allowable in state law.

Additionally, Beth Walker is charged with unnecessarily allowing the state to pay $10,000 to a contractor to write an opinion in a case in 2017. Current Supreme Court Interim Administrator Barbara Allen, who was not an employee of the court at the time, authored the opinion.

Workman also is charged with facilitating the employment of an unnecessary employee to do I.T. work for the court in 2014. That employee worked on Workman’s campaign prior to working for the court.

The committee met in executive session for about five hours Monday night, when the articles were drafted.

Members of the committee are considering each article one-by-one.

If the committee approves any or all of the articles, the articles will be presented to the full House of Delegates.

A simple majority, or 51 members, of the House will have to approve the articles for them to advance to the Senate.

In the Senate, two-thirds of the elected members, or 23 senators, will have to approve the articles. If they approve the articles, the Senate will be responsible for facilitating an impeachment trial.

Anyone found "guilty" of committing an impeachable offense by the Senate will be removed from office and permanently banned from seeking public office in the state.

Basically this has never been attempted before in West Virginia for one justice, let alone all five.  It's widely unprecedented, and both parties seem to be working together on getting this done.  I'm not sure if there's a larger game here afoot or what, but I do know that impeachment and removal of a state's highest court isn't something that should ever be considered lightly.

I'll definitely keep an eye on this.

ZVTS Turns Ten

I can't believe I made it this far, but here we are.  After a decade, I'm still a dirty hippie lefty blogger, and believe it or not people are still paying attention to what I say.

There are a lot of people I'd like to thank for the last ten years in no particular order:

Bon Tindle:  A dear friend and activist who I've known for over a decade now, and was here to help me get started.  It's always a pleasure to have her grace my place with her presence, and I learn so much from her even today.  She's still fighting the good fight in Springfield, Missouri and still kicking ass.

Martin Longman:  I got my start blogging over at BooMan Tribune, and enough people liked my work there on the 2007-2008 financial crisis that I decided to get my own place about ten years ago.  Martin's community is still going strong, and you can find him writing for several places.

Imani Gandy:  The world-famous Angry Black Lady herself, Imani is senior legal analyst over at ReWire News these days, fighting for repro rights and blocking fools on social media.  I went from a scrub nobody to my D-List status today because of her help, she's still an awesome friend and I've met so many other great people because of her.

John Cole:  The old man at Balloon Juice, where I got my big break as a contributor all those many years ago.  I haven't written for the Juice in a while, they still have a strong staff and several of you are avid readers over there.  I did write for them for years frankly, and should again.  John is a reformed wingnut who always reminds me people can change for the better (even if they hate all life on earth.)

Elon James White:  The force behind This Week In Blackness, the man turned a website into a podcast empire and then TV,  major news sites, and has a wonderful wife and daughter to boot.  He too gave me a shot, one I should have taken more advantage of, but he proved to me that being black on the internet is a good thing.

Steve M:  The man behind the legendary blog No More Mister Nice Blog, it was Steve who saw in my somebody who wasn't terrible at this gig, and gave me the opportunity to guest write for his place on a number of occasions.

Betty Cracker:  The anti-Florida Man herself, I've known Betty since her jolly days at Rumproast and now Balloon Juice, and she's always been outstanding to read, sticking it to Florida politics the way I do with Ohio and Kentucky.

Ian Boudreau: My favorite misanthropic freelance games writer, Ian is a die-hard Crusader Kings II fan, cat owner, former ground pounder and reminds me most of the time not to be too much of an ass on Twitter.  He's a good guy overall, even if that really is his haircut.

There are a lot of other people I know and want to thank too: the delightfully foul-mouthed Minna Hong, librarian goddess Emily Hauser, Chicago sports master Dave von Ebers, the best bloggers in Michigan, Chris Savage and LOLGOP, giant art and science nerd and author Tom Levenson, MRE-fan Soonergrunt, and most of all?

You, the readers of ZVTS and sticking with me for ten years.

Thanks for that.  Seriously.  I never thought I'd be writing this piece.  Or at all.

From the bottom of my heart, I want you all to know how much I appreciate all of you.

Last Call For It's Mueller Time, Con't

The Paul Manafort trial officially got to the good part today, where two career criminals turn on each other like pit bulls when it became clear that the tax evasion and bank fraud is the chump change compared to the whole "party to treason against the United States" thing.

Rick Gates, a longtime business associate of U.S. President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, on Monday testified at trial that he helped Manafort file false tax returns and did not disclose foreign bank accounts.

Gates was expected to be a star witness in the government’s case against Manafort having pleaded guilty in February and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors under a deal that could lead to a reduced sentence.

“We did not submit the required form designating he had control over an offshore account,” Gates told the jury in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, on the fifth day of the trial. 

When prosecutor Greg Andres asked why, Gates replied: “At Mr. Manafort’s direction.” 

Gates also testified he and Manafort knew it was a crime because they had been notified by Manafort’s accountants in emails.

Manafort’s attorneys have signaled they will seek to blame Gates and have accused him of embezzling millions of dollars from Manafort. Gates and Manafort have known each other for two decades and ran a multimillion-dollar political consulting business. Gates also worked for the Trump election campaign. 

Manafort has pleaded not guilty to 18 counts of bank and tax fraud and failing to disclose foreign bank accounts. The charges largely predate his five months on the Trump campaign but were the first to go to trial arising from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election.

There is no chance that Manafort gets acquitted.  The only question now is how much he tells Mueller about Trump.  But the clock on that offer only will last as long as Manafort's next trial date.

To understand how far Manafort is willing to go for Trump, look at the far more interesting court activity happening across the Potomac. In Washington, D.C., Manafort stands accused of conspiring to defraud the U.S. government, of failure to register as a foreign lobbyist, and of obstruction of justice, among other charges — and that alongside a mysterious co-defendant, Konstantin Kilimnik. Earlier this year, Mueller disclosed in court documents that this wingman possessed “ties to Russian intelligence service,” which persisted during the presidential campaign. That case is still on schedule to go to trial in September, despite Manafort’s best efforts to delay it.

But there’s more. Just as jury selection was underway in Alexandria on Tuesday, the chief judge of the federal courthouse in Washington issued a 92-page ruling ordering an aide for Roger Stone, the irreverent Trump confidant and longtime Manafort pal, to testify before a grand jury. The decision was categorical, the third affirming the authority and legality of the special counsel investigation. But this one came with a bit of extra oomph. U.S. Chief Judge Beryl Howell, its author, may also be overseeing the secret grand-jury proceedings unfolding in the nation’s capital — a task that would place her at the center of nearly every pre-prosecution aspect of every public case so far initiated by the special counsel. More than anyone, she’d know that the Mueller probe is no hoax.

“The scope of the Special Counsel’s power falls well within the boundaries the Constitution permits, as the Special Counsel is supervised by an official who is himself accountable to the elected President,” wrote Howell. She also gave Mueller a boost last year in a similar, pre-indictment dispute with a Manafort lawyer who was wanted for testimony before the grand jury.

This is all tough news for Manafort. For months now, he has mounted similar Hail Marys attempting to delegitimize the Mueller probe. Both Ellis and U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson have rejected separate motions to dismiss the two active cases against him. So far, all Manafort’s efforts have been for naught, as has his bid to stand trial at liberty rather than behind bars. On Tuesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals District of Columbia Circuit affirmed Jackson’s order to revoke Manafort’s home detention over allegations that he was tampering with witnesses — a new crime that, if proved, would only add to his legal woes. So there’s little doubt he’ll sit in jail through the duration of both trials.

We’re not done. Jackson this week sided with a special counsel request to not allow Manafort’s lawyers to game the clock on the Washington trial involving Kilimnik, which for months has been set for September. All along, Mueller’s team has been doing its due diligence — turning over certain pretrial materials to the defense in good faith, hoping the other side will do the same as the two adversaries prepare their cases-in-chief. But Manafort’s side hasn’t turned over anything. “The defense has made no showing whatsoever for its requested four-week extension, and to grant it would unfairly prejudice the government,” Mueller’s lawyers charged in a court filing that accused Manafort’s legal team of “gamesmanship.” Jackson ruled later that same day that she’s “opposed” to any attempts to delay the Washington trial.

That’s where the real action will be, and where talk of election interference and Russian conspiracy may be inevitable. With Manafort hanging on by the skin of his teeth, and Mueller refusing to make it any easier for him, patience through all these trials and tribulations may just be the price he has to pay as he hopes that maybe, just maybe, President Trump will throw him a lifeline.

But Trump pardoning Manafort comes with a clock of its own, and that one goes off the first week of November.

The War On Fake News

Finally, the major social media tech players have taken conspiracy theorist and lunatic asshole Alex Jones off the air for good, and are permanently banning him from their platforms after all.

YouTube has removed Alex Jones' page, following bans earlier Monday from Apple and Facebook. 

The Alex Jones Channel, which counts 2.4 million subscribers, still appeared in YouTube search results by midday Monday, but presented only a take-down notice when users clicked in. 

"This account has been terminated for violating YouTube's Community Guidelines," the notice says. 

Google had previously declined to comment on the InfoWars host's standing, but said in a statement to CNBC in response to the removal of the page: "All users agree to comply with our Terms of Service and Community Guidelines when they sign up to use YouTube. When users violate these policies repeatedly, like our policies against hate speech and harassment or our terms prohibiting circumvention of our enforcement measures, we terminate their accounts." 

YouTube counts "strikes" against pages for posts that violate the company's policies. Jones received a strike in July when he posted four videos that violated YouTube policies against child endangerment and hate speech, the company said in a statement to CNBC.
A page with one strike against it is suspended from live streaming for 90 days, YouTube said, but Jones attempted to circumvent the suspension by live streaming on other channels. As a result, his page was terminated, the company said. 

The InfoWars YouTube page, which has significantly fewer subscribers, was still live as of noon ET. 

Jones and his controversial radio show have for several weeks been at the center of a debate around fake news and misinformation on digital platforms. Facebook and CEO Mark Zuckerberg drew criticism last month for declining to remove the InfoWars page.
Music streaming service Spotify removed InfoWars podcasts last week, and Apple and Facebook each cited violations of company policies regarding hate speech in banning Jones on Monday.

And it's that 2.4 million subscribers figure that YouTube and Twitter and Facebook didn't want to antagonize.  Like it or no, that is a big chunk of ad revenue to lose, not to mention the backlash from Jones's followers.

But Jones was the guy yelling fire in a crowded theater every day.  He is one of the major reasons why Russian attacks on democracy in 2016 worked, because of the pervasive rot that Jones brought to our democracy.  He is the fake news we need to get rid of.

And it looks like he's taken a major hit.  It's something that should have happened years ago, frankly.  Looking the other way on their own terms of service violations is what tech companies specialize in when you get enough followers.

See ya, Alex.

The Blue Wave Rises, Con't

The final special House election before the 2018 midterms is upon us in OH-12 as Democratic candidate Danny O'Connor takes on Republican Troy Balderson for GOP Rep. Pat Tiberi's old seat.  

This has long been Columbus's reddest suburban area, after 17 years, Tiberi left Congress in January to cash in the GOP tax bill he helped write, and it was John Kasich's House seat for another 18 years before that.  In fact, outside Bob Shamansky's two years in the Reagan era (he got gerrymandered out in '82) this seat has been blood red since FDR.

That could come to an end tomorrow as panicking Republicans now face a dead heat race in an R+7 district.

The entire Republican Party machinery has converged on this suburban Columbus district for a furious eleventh-hour campaign aimed at saving a conservative House seat and averting another special election disaster.

But in the final days ahead of Tuesday's election, signs were everywhere that Democrats are surging — from recent polling to the private and public statements of many Republicans, including the GOP candidate himself. The district has been reliably red for more than three decades, but the sheer size of the Republican cavalry made clear how worried the party is about losing it.

At a Saturday evening rally, President Donald Trump tried to juice conservative excitement for mild-mannered Republican candidate Troy Balderson while foisting a Trumpian nickname upon 31-year-old Democratic hopeful Danny O’Connor: “Danny boy.” Earlier in the week, Vice President Mike Pence made the trek, while Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. recorded a robocall, and Gov. John Kasich endorsed Balderson in a TV ad.

The Republican National Committee has opened two offices in the district, launched a $500,000-plus get-out-the-vote effort, and dispatched one of its top officials, Bob Paduchik, who ran Trump’s 2016 Ohio campaign. And outside conservative groups, led by a super PAC aligned with House Speaker Paul Ryan, have dumped more than $3.5 million onto the TV airwaves, far outpacing Democrats.

The all-out push underscores the GOP’s trepidation about the final special election before the midterms. A loss, following startling Republican defeats in Pennsylvania and Alabama, would offer more evidence that a blue wave is on the horizon. And it would further fuel fears of what’s becoming evident: that Democrats are simply more amped up, even in areas that have long been safely Republican.

As he addressed volunteers gathered in a campaign office on Friday afternoon, Balderson, a 56-year-old state legislator, hinted at the enthusiasm deficit that was plaguing his party. A Monmouth University poll last week had him ahead of O'Connor by a single percentage point, 44 to 43.

“You all know, it’s a tight race. And everybody wants to know, why is it tight? Why is it tight?” he said. “Because this race is all about turnout.”

He's not wrong, but the fact that the entire Trump regime machine is coming to Balderson's defense is very telling.  Republicans know they are in dire trouble.  They know the clock is ticking on the midterms and the reckoning for Trump's collusion, which he all but admitted to yesterday. 

We'll see what happens tomorrow, but my gut tells me O'Connor wins by 3 or 4.  If you're a ZVTS reader in OH-12, let's make that happen.

StupidiNews!

• More than 90 are reported dead in a 6.9 magnitude earthquake in Bali, Indonesia, as officials say many more casualties are expected, it's the second magnitude 6-plus tremor in a week here.
• Four demonstrators in Portland were arrested Saturday as police separated right-wing white nationalists from anti-fascist counter-protesters, police fired tear gas and rubber bullets.
• New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern has returned to Parliament after maternity leave for the birth of her daughter Neve, Ardern is only the second elected world leader to give birth in office.
• Saudi Arabia has suspended diplomatic ties with Canada after Ottawa's Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland criticized the arrest of a Canadian women's rights activist by Riyadh last week.
• For the first time in almost eight years, NASA has announced new all-American spaceflight crews as the agency prepares for SpaceX Dragon and Boeing Starliner flights in 2019.

Last Call For 44 Years Later, it's 45

With the twin clocks of the 2018 midterm elections and the Mueller probe into Donald Trump's obstruction of justice ticking, the regime has now shifted from mass denial and "fake news" conspiracies to full Nixonian "If the President does it, it can't be illegal" mode.

President Trump said on Sunday that a Trump Tower meeting between top campaign aides and a Kremlin-connected lawyer was designed to “get information on an opponent” — the starkest acknowledgment yet that a statement he dictated about the encounter last year was misleading. 

Mr. Trump made the comment in a tweet on Sunday morning that was intended to be a defense of the June 2016 meeting and his son Donald Trump Jr.’s role in hosting it. The president claimed that it was “totally legal” and of the sort “done all the time in politics.” 

But the tweet also served as an admission that the Trump team had not been forthright when Donald Trump Jr. issued a statement in July 2017 saying that the meeting had been primarily about the adoption of Russian children. Donald Trump Jr. made the statement after The New York Times revealed the existence of the meeting. 

A few days later, Mr. Trump posted a tweet similar to the one he wrote on Sunday morning: “Most politicians would have gone to a meeting like the one Don jr attended in order to get info on an opponent. That’s politics!” But his administration at the time was sticking to the adoption story line, with his press secretary, Sean Spicer, saying later that day there was no evidence that anything but that topic had been discussed during the meeting.

Although the president tried again on Sunday to portray the meeting as routine, it is a key focus of the investigation by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III. Mr. Mueller is looking into whether the president’s campaign worked with Russians to interfere in the 2016 presidential election and whether Mr. Trump or his associates obstructed justice by lying about their activities. 

It is illegal for a campaign to accept help from a foreign individual or government. 

Mr. Trump’s tweet on Sunday was one in a series in which he renewed his attacks on Mr. Mueller, saying his inquiry was riddled with “lies and corruption.

The president denied a report in The Washington Post that he was worried about the legal exposure for Donald Jr., who had been promised damaging information about Hillary Clinton before agreeing to hold the meeting with the Russian lawyer. While he said that the meeting was legal, he also distanced himself from it, repeating his assertion that he knew nothing about it at the time. 

At some point, somebody must have told Trump to stop talking and to get off Twitter, but as any good prosecutor will tell you, letting the suspect talk himself into a conviction because they lack basic self-control is tried and true.

So now, with Trump's public admission that he has committed both obstruction of justice and campaign law contributions, we arrive at the inevitable test of the durability of the Republic. 

It was always going to reach this point, I have been saying this for 18 months now.  But today is the day we turn the corner from midgame to endgame, and we finally see if anyone is willing to stand up to Trump. We've been down this road as a country before, and I don't use the term Nixonian lightly.

August 5, 1974, was the day the Nixon Presidency ended. On that day, Nixon heeded a Supreme Court ruling and released the so-called smoking-gun tape, a recording of a meeting, held two years earlier, with his chief of staff, H. R. Haldeman. Many of Nixon’s most damaging statements came in the form of short, monosyllabic answers and near-grunts—“um huh,” the official transcript reads, at one point—as he responds to Haldeman’s idea of asking the C.I.A. to tell the F.B.I. to “stay the hell out of” the Watergate investigation. The coverup is clearly of Haldeman’s design. Nixon’s words are simple: “All right. Fine.” Then, “Right, fine.” 

Haldeman’s idea seemed clever. He believed the F.B.I. was close to concluding that the break-in at the Democratic National Committee offices at the Watergate hotel was the work of a C.I.A.-led operation, which had something to do with Cuba and the Bay of Pigs. Nobody would have to actually lie, he seems to suggest—it wasn’t “unusual” for the C.I.A. to warn the F.B.I. to drop an investigation that could harm national security. “And that will fit rather well because the F.B.I. agents who are working the case, at this point, feel that’s what it is. This is C.I.A.”

Nixon’s strongest statement to Haldeman is, surprisingly, a word of caution. “Don’t lie to them to the extent to say there is no involvement, but just say this is sort of a comedy of errors, bizarre, without getting into it,” he says. “Say that we wish, for the country, don’t go any further into this case, period!” When Nixon released the tape, he acknowledged that it would lead to his impeachment. Three days later, he resigned the Presidency.

The fact that there's only a 0.0001% chance that Trump resigns after this admission makes me have my extreme doubts.  But we will see if we survive this or not.

Open Mic Night, Only With Moonshine

If it's the first August Saturday in Kentucky, it's time for Fancy Farm, the Bluegrass State's annual "pretend we're normal people" political speechifying event/open mic night.  It's something that every political hopeful here attends, and this year was no different as human-terrapin hybrid Mitch McConnell announced his intent to run for Senate again in 2020.

Saying it was never too soon to start, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell formally announced his 2020 re-election bid in his home state Saturday and tapped the young leader of the state’s House Republicans as his campaign chairman. 

The 76-year-old McConnell has said for months that he intends to run for re-election in 2020. But he left little room for doubt while speaking at a GOP breakfast in far western Kentucky, the precursor to the Fancy Farm picnic that serves as the traditional starting point for the state’s fall campaign season. 

“I have some news to make this morning. I’m going to be running for re-election in 2020,” McConnell told the crowd at Graves County Middle School, adding: “I don’t like starting late.” 

McConnell chose Jonathan Shell, the 30-year-old majority leader of the Kentucky House of Representatives, as chairman of his campaign. Shell made national news in May when he was ousted in a Republican primary by a high school math teacher who had never run for office before. The election was seen by many as result of massive protests across the country by teachers and public workers upset with education funding, retirement benefits and low pay. 

Hundreds of teachers mustered at the Fancy Farm picnic Saturday. The 138-year-old tradition in western Kentucky is known for pitting politicians of both parties onstage before a crowd of raucous hecklers who do their best to fluster those brave enough to stand at the microphone. Raising the stakes, the speeches are broadcast live on statewide television. 

As McConnell spoke Saturday, hundreds of teachers in matching red T-shirts stood and turned their backs on him as they chanted, “Vote him out!” 

But McConnell was steady, seeming amused by some of the reactions. Near the end of his speech, McConnell addressed the Republican side of the crowd by turning to the Democrats and saying: “Don’t be afraid of these people. Stand up for America and help us make America great again.”

I will admit, anyone who thought Mitch would be bothered by the political pressure he's under never put up with Fancy Farm crowds in a sweltering Kentucky August. Especially in the Trump era of "civility" heckling everyone on stage is free game and absolutely expected, and you're supposed to give as good as you get but you'd better keep it clean.  After all,  this is a church picnic, folks.

But you know who wasn't here?

GOP Gov. Matt Bevin.

Couldn't stand the heat, I guess.  Next year should be real interesting.

Sunday Long Read: An Eye For The Trump Era

Author Laurie Penny brings us this week's Sunday Long Read at the Baffler, an in-depth look at why Netflix's reboot of Queer Eye For The Straight Guy may arguably be the most timely and important social commentary on the Trump era so far, why late-state capitalism is an impressive failure, why toxic masculinity is destroying the country, and why we're packaging it all as feel-good reality TV.

SOME THINGS ARE JUST TOO PURE for this weird and wicked world. That video of the golden retriever failing an agility test. Golden retrievers in general. Political science majors who truly believe they can change the system from within. And Queer Eye.

Queer Eye is a cultural intervention masquerading as a Netflix series. It has rapidly become essential to the well-being of a great many good and decent human beings who had otherwise stopped turning on the television for fear of the horror leaking out of it. I’m only slightly exaggerating: you’ve got to wonder what will become, for example, of the Guardian’s Hadley Freeman—who has now written a heart-wrenching daisy-chain of Queer Eye columns—if the show’s producers don’t make a third season. Which they will. I promise. Nobody panic.

Queer Eye is wonderful and terrible and probably the last significant statement to be made in reality television. The show, a Netflix-produced reboot of the original, squealsome mid-aughts judge-your-jeans extravaganza, instantly launched a thousand memes when it premiered in February, and the new second season has been a huger hit than anyone expected. In a culture awash in both mawkish reality vehicles dripping with kitsch and nostalgic reboots of shows from a softer world, Queer Eye is both. It manages to exceed the sum of its parts by not actually being about what we’re told it’s about. It’s not about queerness at all. It’s actually about the disaster of heterosexuality—and what, if anything, can be salvaged from its ruins.

On the surface of things, it’s a straightforward quest for “acceptance,” supposedly of homosexuality, dramatized via the no-longer-so-outlandish vehicle of sending five gay men on an outreach mission to small-town Georgia with a vast interior design budget and a vanload of affirmations. What it turns out to be, though, is a forensic study of the rampaging crisis of American masculinity. In each new installment of the reboot, queerness is gently suggested as an antidote to the hot mess of toxic masculinity under late-stage capitalism. I am absolutely here for it, as long as we all get paid.

The basic formula has barely changed: five gay men in an SUV descend on one hapless, shlubby, usually straight guy and sort his life out. In seven days, Jonathan Van Ness, Bobby Berk, Tan France, Karamo Brown, and Antoni Porowski give him a whole new look, redesign his home and wardrobe, teach him some basic kitchen skills, and provide scripted space to talk about his feelings with the cameras rolling.

In its aughts heyday, the original Queer Eye was catty and consumerist, with a side-order of snide eye-rolling and dreadful puns. The gimmick, the selling point, was that gay men are actually fun and fabulous and it’s safe to let them in your homes, because they might redecorate. The reboot follows the same beats with a more compassionate melody, and this time the gimmick is different. The gimmick is that heterosexuality is a disaster, toxic masculinity is killing the world, and there are ways out of it aside from fascism or festering away in a lonely bedroom until you are eaten by your starving pitbull or your own insecurities. The men typically featured as the show’s reclamation projects remind me of some of the men who I see on Tinder, sitting on that touring reproduction of the Iron Throne, staring into the middle distance, while in their real lives, and certainly on Queer Eye, they sit on ugly, painful furniture, faux-leather recliners that damage their backs, couches soaked in cat urine.

People on this show are extremely sweet to one another. That is rare enough within the reality TV genre, where “reality” is usually flattened into an exaggerated Hobbesian melee of shark-eyed competition and high-stakes back-stabbing. Most reality shows replicate the ruthless dogma of the age whereby life is made up of winners and losers and the trick is to hammer the other guy into the ground before he can do the same to you. On this show, men do not compete with each other. They touch each other, a lot, and seeing that brings home just how horrifyingly rare that is in untelevised reality. They cry and admit to one other how much it hurts to be alive while a handsome stranger teaches them how to make guacamole. There are no winners on Queer Eye—just better losers.

Fixing a few of these losers is the best we can hope for, I guess.  Fixing the system that created these losers, well, that's the reality show we're all living in today.

The Erdogan Model Comes To Caracas

Brutally cracking down after "rebel action" is a tried and true autocrat maneuver straight from the dictatorship playbook, and Venezuela is no different as an "assassination attempt" on President Nicolas Maduro over the weekend will certainly lead to a massive military purge of his enemies.

Explosions caused pandemonium at a military ceremony where President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela was speaking on Saturday, making the first lady flinch and sending National Guard troops scurrying in what administration officials called an assassination attempt using drones.

The president, who was unharmed, later told the nation, “To all of our friends in the world, I am fine, I am alive.” He blamed right-wing elements and said, “The Bolivarian revolution keeps its path.”

Mr. Maduro has presided over a spectacular economic collapse in Venezuela, where inflation is expected to reach one million percent this year despite the country’s large oil reserves. Economists blame decades of mismanagement under Mr. Maduro and his predecessor, Hugo Chávez.

The drone attack was the latest in a string of attempts in recent years to end the tenure of Mr. Maduro, who was declared the victor of an election in May that carries his term until 2025. No previous assaults have been as bold, though, and this appeared to have been the first assassination attempt on a head of state using drones.

It was an attack that seemed scripted for Hollywood: Off-camera explosions. Low-flying drones exploding midair. The president and first lady ducking for cover. Thousands of soldiers in a military parade suddenly fleeing in a stampede that was broadcast to the country, live.

Jorge Rodríguez, the communications minister, said the attackers had used “several flying devices” that were detonated near where the president was standing.

The attack came shortly after 5:30 p.m. during an event the government said was meant to celebrate the 81st anniversary of the country’s National Guard.

During the president’s speech, which was broadcast live on state television, the camera began to shake. Mr. Maduro then looked into the air as his wife, Cilia Flores, flinched and reached for another official to brace herself.

The video feed was interrupted, but Mr. Maduro could be heard continuing to talk as voices in the background yelled for people to flee.

The video feed then showed figures dressed in black breaking through a barrier from the sidelines of a wide street where hundreds of uniformed guardsmen were arrayed in formation. The figures in black ran toward the guardsmen, who abruptly fled in panic.

Maduro is already blaming Colombia and President Juan Manuel Santos for the incident, as well as ex-pat "financiers" in Florida.  Authorities have of course immediately picked up suspects.

Information Minister Jorge Rodriguez said the incident took place shortly after 5:30 p.m. as Maduro was celebrating the National Guard’s 81st anniversary. The visibly shaken head of state said he saw a “flying device” that exploded before his eyes. He thought it might be a pyrotechnics display in honor of the event.

Within seconds, Maduro said he heard a second explosion and pandemonium ensued. Bodyguards escorted Maduro out of the event and television footage showed uniformed soldiers standing in formation quickly scattering from the scene.

He said the “far right” working in coordination with detractors in Bogota and Miami, including Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, were responsible. Some of the “material authors” of the apparent attack have been detained.

“The investigation will get to the bottom of this,” he said. “No matter who falls.”

Venezuela’s government routinely accuses opposition activists of plotting to attack and overthrow Maduro, a deeply unpopular leader who was recently elected to a new term in office in a vote decried by dozens of nations. Maduro has steadily moved to concentrate power as the nation reels from a crippling economic crisis.

Mismanagement and corruption has caused one million percent inflation in the country, and Maduro is hated.  But now, this "assassination attempt" by Colombia allows Maduro to consolidate power and rally it against an external enemy.  It's a move as old as civilization itself.

Just like Turkey and the Philippines, expect bloodshed and purge.

Last Call For The (Archie) Bunker Mentality

We're starting to freely get Trump regime "bunker mode" stories again, which is a fair indication that the people behind the scenes with Trump realize that when the hurricane hits, every one of them will be tossed in the path of the storm by Trump in order for him to survive.

In private, President Trump spent much of the past week brooding, as he often does. He has been anxious about the Russia ­investigation’s widening fallout, with his former campaign chairman standing trial. And he has fretted that he is failing to accrue enough political credit for what he claims as triumphs.

At rare moments of introspection for the famously self-centered president, Trump has also expressed to confidants lingering unease about how some in his orbit — including his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr. — are ensnared in the Russia probe, in his assessment simply because of their ­connection to him.

Yet in public, Trump is a man roaring. The president, more than ever, is channeling his internal frustration and fear into a ravenous maw of grievance and invective. He is churning out false statements with greater frequency and attacking his perceived enemies with intensifying fury. A fresh broadside came on Twitter at 11:37 p.m. Friday, mocking basketball superstar LeBron James and calling CNN’s Don Lemon “the dumbest man on television.”

This is the new, uneasy reality for Trump at an especially precarious moment of his presidency, with the Republican Party struggling to keep control of Congress, where a Democratic takeover brings with it the specter of ­impeachment, and special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s grip seeming to tighten on the president and his circle.

Trump, who has decamped to his New Jersey golf estate for an 11-day working vacation, is at a critical juncture in the Russia investigation as he decides in coming days whether to sit for an interview with Mueller or defy investigators and risk being issued a subpoena.

“He’s more definitive than ever: This investigation should end now, and Mueller should put out what he has,” said Rudolph W. Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney. “He doesn’t think they have anything, and he wants the country to move on.”

This portrait of Trump behind the scenes is based on interviews with 14 administration officials, presidential friends and outside advisers to the White House, many of whom spoke only on the condition of anonymity to share candid assessments.

Trump appeared to stand in conflict with his own government when he blasted the “Russian hoax” just hours after his national security team gathered at the White House on Thursday in a rare show of force to warn that Russia is yet again trying to interfere in U.S. elections. But a White House spokesman said Trump instructed them to hold the news conference and was adamant that they explain what the administration is doing to safeguard the ­midterm elections.

The frequency of the president’s mistruths has picked up, as well. The Washington Post Fact Checker found last week that Trump has now made 4,229 false or misleading claims so far in his presidency — an average of nearly 7.6 such claims per day, and an increase of 978 in just two months.

They still refuse to use the word "lie" and "liar" for Trump and what he does, but this is the closest they've come yet to fully describing the trainwreck stage that this is rapidly becoming.  The post-Helsinki distancing of Trump's national security team from Trump's own actions would have been unthinkable even thirty days ago, but the twin pressures of Mueller and the midterms are serving as hammer-and-anvil to the GOP and they know it.

Trump could care less about Manafort, really.  But Don Junior, well, that's a different story.

President Donald Trump is concerned about whether his son Donald Trump Jr. might have exposure in the special counsel's Russia investigation, leading to his increasingly frenzied public agitation over Robert Mueller, sources close to the White House tell CNN. 

Trump has been concerned for months now that the Mueller probe could reach his family, and potentially his son-in-law Jared Kushner, but his focus has turned to his namesake in recent weeks, one person who speaks with Trump frequently tells CNN. This is one of several reasons Trump has upped his public attacks on Mueller, because he doesn't want him touching his family, the person adds. 

Trump Jr. and his attorney have insisted he has always told the truth. But his claims publicly and to the Senate Judiciary Committee that he never told his father about the 2016 Trump Tower meeting with a Russian attorney promising dirt on Hillary Clinton have been contradicted by others in Trump's orbit. Michael Cohen, Trump's longtime attorney and former fixer, is said to be prepared to testify that the President knew about the Trump Tower meeting ahead of time sources with knowledge of the matter told CNN. Trump has denied knowing about the meeting before it happened. 

Others who have been close to the President -- including his former White House communications director, Anthony Scaramucci, and former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon — have suggested the President at the very least knew shortly after the fact. 

Asked about CNN's latest reporting on the President's mindset, a source close to Trump Jr. said he's not concerned and maintains he did nothing wrong. 

Earlier this week, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Republican Chuck Grassley of Iowa, told CNN, "If he misled the committee, he's lying to Congress. That's a crime. And that'd be up to the prosecutors, not me." 

 We'll see what happens.  As I said earlier today, the hammer of justice is coming.

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