THIS WEEK IN POLITICAL NEWS -- 2/17/17

There’s Too Much Damn News Edition

FLYNN’S OUT: At the end of last week, the Washington Post reported that nine different sources confirmed that Mike Flynn, Trump’s National Security Advisor, had spoken with the Russian ambassador about the Obama-imposed sanctions before Trump took office. This contradicted Mike Pence’s emphatic declaration about 10 days earlier that Flynn had not spoken to the ambassador about sanctions. The Post followed up this story with a bombshell on Monday, reporting that Shero Sally Yates (the acting AG) had warned the White House back in late January that Flynn had lied to them about the conversations, and that this exposed him to blackmail by the Russians. By Monday night, Flynn was fired.

So what happened? Here’s Slate’s Will Saletan with a helpful timeline (with additions from the Post’s timeline): “First, in a Dec. 29 phone call, Flynn secretly hinted to Russia’s ambassador that sanctions imposed by President Obama—to punish Russia for intervening in the presidential election—might be relaxed once Donald Trump took office. [This was first reported by the Post on Jan. 12; on the 13th, the White House denied that Flynn spoke about sanctions.] Later, Flynn told Vice President Mike Pence and others in the administration that in that phone call, he hadn’t discussed sanctions with the ambassador. [On Jan. 15, Pence “confirmed” on Face the Nation that Flynn had not talked about sanctions.] Then, on Jan. 26, Acting Attorney General Sally Yates presented evidence of Flynn’s deception—based on U.S. intelligence transcripts of Flynn’s calls—to Trump’s White House counsel, Don McGahn. Finally, on Thursday, a day after firmly denying he had discussed sanctions with the ambassador, Flynn conceded that he ‘couldn’t be certain.’” The Post published its account -- showing that Flynn (and others in the White House) had been lying the entire time -- on Friday. (Late today, the Post reported that Flynn also lied to the FBI, which had interviewed him just days after the inauguration. This is, of course, a crime.)

What’s so bizarre about this story (or rather, one of the thousand things that are so bizarre) is that we still have no clear account of why Flynn was fired. On Monday, after the Post stories but before the firing, Kellyanne Conway insisted on TV that Flynn had Trump’s full confidence. The next morning, after Flynn was out, Conway said that Flynn had resigned voluntarily and noted that Trump was “very loyal.” Just hours later, though, the story had changed: Sean Spicer declared that the Trump team had been evaluating this carefully for weeks, and that Trump demanded Flynn’s resignation. Slate: “The tale of Trump’s heroism in standing by Flynn had evolved into a tale of Trump’s heroism in investigating Flynn.” By Wednesday, Trump himself was insisting that Flynn’s firing was all the fault of leakers, suggesting he remained confident in Flynn but had somehow been forced by unseen elements to fire him: “Michael Flynn -- General Flynn is a wonderful man. I think he's been treated very, very unfairly by the media, as I call it, the fake media in many cases. And I think it's really a sad thing that he was treated so badly.” And then during his bananas press conference on Thursday, Trump insisted that (i) he did not direct Flynn to talk to the Russian ambassador about sanctions; (ii) but it would have been fine and appropriate for Flynn to do so, and indeed, Trump “would have directed him to do it”; and so (iii) the only reason Trump fired Flynn is because Flynn lied to Pence about having spoken to the ambassador about sanctions. Of course, this explanation fails to account for the two full weeks in between Trump being informed by Yates that Flynn had lied and his decision to fire Flynn. Matt Yglesias: “If, as Trump says, he would have directed Flynn to discuss sanctions with Kislyak, why was it that the administration spent weeks insisting that there had been no such discussion? Trump’s position seems to be that his team believed Flynn had been doing the wrong thing (not talking to Kislyak about sanctions) but then it turned out that in fact Flynn had done the right thing (talking to Kislyak about sanctions), but the revelation that Flynn had done the right thing caused him to be fired because Flynn had falsely told them he’d done the wrong thing. That’s crazy.”

P.S. Politico reports tonight: “The Pentagon has informed lawmakers that there are no records of former national security adviser Michael Flynn’s 2015 trip to Moscow, when he dined with Russian President Vladimir Putin and may have accepted unconstitutional payments from a foreign government for his attendance.”

THE RUSSIA MADNESS: Beyond Flynn, there was more explosive reporting this week about the Trump team’s ties to Russia. The New York Times reported that Trump campaign associates had frequent contacts with Russian intelligence during the campaign. (CNN called the contact “constant.”) Of course, this was during the time Russian intelligence was (almost certainly) hacking the DNC and John Podesta’s emails and slowly leaking out information about the Clinton campaign -- and during the time (including up to the present) in which Trump spoke glowingly about Russia, refusing to condemn Putin’s habit of killing of journalists and insisting that America isn’t “so innocent” in comparison to Russia. (Pence also declined to agree that America’s values were morally superior to Russia’s.) On Thursday, the Wall Street Journal reported that intelligence officials were withholding information from Trump, essentially because they can’t trust him or his close advisors. Despite what appears to be a scandal of massive proportions, Republicans are insisting that everything is just peachy, and there’s no real need to investigate Russian interference in the election or Flynn’s ties to Russia. Although a few GOP congressmen expressed a desire to look into the Flynn stuff, Speaker Ryan and Jason Chaffetz, head of the House Oversight Committee, have signaled no real sense of urgency about this. Ryan “dismissed the need for further investigation”, saying that he didn’t want to “prejudge any of the circumstances surrounding this until we have all of the information” -- information that can only be gathered in a, you know, investigation. Chaffetz declared that the Flynn issue was “taking care of itself” and has asked the DOJ to investigate the leaks to the news media rather than the facts underlying those leaks.

IMPORTANT VICTORY: On Thursday, the DOJ formally informed the 9th Circuit that it would not appeal the court’s ruling barring enforcement of Trump’s immigration ban, writing: “Rather than continuing this litigation, the President intends in the near future to rescind the Order and replace it with a new, substantially revised Executive Order to eliminate what the panel erroneously thought were constitutional concerns.” (Interestingly, during his press conference today, Trump threw his DHS secretary under the bus, saying that Trump had wanted to delay the EO for a month, or at least a week, but that Kelly forced him to make it immediate or else “bad people” would come in. “Now nobody ever reports that. But that’s why we did it quickly.” What an asshole.) This is a big victory, and we should recognize it as such. Because of the massive, spontaneous protests and the court rulings all over the country, we gained almost three weeks of immigrants and refugees being able to come here who would have been blocked otherwise, as well as a few weeks worth of warning for other immigrants and travelers to get their affairs in order. It is likely that the next order will be less susceptible to legal challenge, but that also means it will be narrower and far less draconian. More importantly, the courts made it clear that Trump’s 10 months of calling for a “Muslim ban” were not erased on Inauguration Day, and were in fact highly relevant to legal analyses of his executive action; those repeated statements don’t disappear with a newly drafted (even more limited) order, and they will continue to hurt him and help our legal challenges. And the facts that (i) the administration sat on the 9th circuit’s ruling for SIX DAYS before deciding not to appeal, and that (ii) it STILL has no issued a new order seriously undercut any claims to urgent danger requiring immediate executive action. This EO was evil. It was soul-crushing when it was released. As you all witnessed, I spent that weekend engulfed in flames or rage and despair. But it’s gone now. That EO is dead dead dead. That’s fucking huge.

PRESS CONFERENCE FROM CUCKOO LAND: As I’ve already mentioned, Trump hosted an unexpected hour-plus-long press conference yesterday. On the plus side, he called on lots of reporters, not just the right-wing outlets he had been exclusively calling on over the last week. On the minus side, our president is a psychotic imbecile. In addition to the parts already highlighted above, here are a few highlights. Trump had started the conference by, once again, declaring how massive and unprecedented his electoral college victory had been. When NBC’s Peter Alexander pointed out that his EC margin was actually much smaller than Barack Obama’s and George H.W. Bush’s (it was also smaller than either of Bill Clinton’s victories), Trump simply -- and utterly without shame -- stated, “I was given that information. I don’t know. I was just given it.” What an asshole. [VIDEO here -- go watch!] Trump also shared this insight with the press: “I have been briefed. I and I can tell you, one thing about a briefing that we're allowed to say, because anybody that ever read the most basic book can say it, nuclear holocaust would be like no other.” For the second time in two days, Trump refused to condemn the anti-Semitic violence and threats that have been surging around the country, declaring that he was “the least anti-semitic person that you have ever seen in your entire life,” saying the question was “very insulting,” and telling the Orthodox Jewish reporter to “sit down” and that it was “not a fair question.” (Video here.) Of course, the reporter prefaced his question by saying he was not alleging that Trump himself was anti-Semitic, but instead wanted to ask about these other incidents; Trump cut him off, told him he had “lied” about wanting to ask a simple question, and then said that Netanyahu could vouch for his anti-anti-Semitic bona fides. What an asshole. (This answer was a 1% improvement over his answer to a similar question earlier in the week, during a short press conference with Netanyahu, in which Trump answered a question about anti-Semitism by expounding on -- I shit you not -- the size of his electoral college win.) My favorite moment came at the end -- and by “favorite,” I mean the moment that embodies the entire idea of #headdesk but flavored with more despair -- when April Ryan, a black reporter for American Urban Radio Networks, asked whether Trump would meet with the “CBC,” and he had literally no idea what the CBC was, and when she explained she meant the Congressional Black Caucus, Trump, the president of the United States, asked this black reporter, “Are they friends of yours?” I swear to god this happened; video here. Rep. Elijah Cummings told Chris Hayes last night that he guessed Trump thinks all black people know all other black people. Say it with me, friends: What. An. Asshole.

P.S. Let me say that these stupid reports that GOP staffers are secretly appalled by Trump’s behavior are some bullshit. They need to stop saying what they’re thinking behind the curtain, and come out in front of the damn curtain and put country before party. You get no brownie points for telling a reporter anonymously that you think Trump is a dangerous psychopath. This -- “A Republican senator and Trump critic who watched the President's press conference texted CNN's John King: ‘He should do that with a therapist, not on live television.’” -- is NOT a profile in courage, people. Nor is this crap. Jesus. YOU’RE A GODDAMN SENATOR. SAY IT OUT LOUD YOU COWARD.

QUICK HITS:

1. With Flynn out, Trump offered the NSA job to retired Vice Admiral Robert Harward. Harward turned down the job, seeking to avoid the chaos and dysfunction of the Trump White House and what a job he apparently referred to as a “shit sandwich.” Reports indicate that part of his refusal to join stemmed from Trump’s promise to Flynn’s deputy, Fox News commentator KT McFarland, that she could keep her job.
2. Jared Kushner has held meetings with executives of Time Warner -- which currently has a merger application pending before federal regulators -- to complain about CNN’s coverage of Trump, singling out two nonwhite commentators -- Van Jones and Ana Navarro -- for their criticism. What the fuck is this??
3. With Melania and Barron camped out in New York, Trump jetting to Florida every weekend, the Trump sons flying all over the world to do business that is totally separate from the White House, and preparations being made to make Trump’s New Jersey golf club ready to welcome the White House for 10 weekends a year, the Trump family is costing the American taxpayers a shit ton (scientific term) in security fees. The costs far exceed past First Families, and “could balloon into the hundreds of millions of dollars over the course of a four-year term,” the Washington Post reports. “In New York, the city is paying $500,000 a day to guard Trump Tower, according to police officials’ estimates, an amount that could reach $183 million a year.” And U.S. embassy staffers “paid nearly $100,000 in hotel-room bills to support Eric Trump’s trip to promote a Trump-brand condo tower in Uruguay.” [insert endless screaming]
4. “A top aide to President Trump’s housing secretary nominee, Ben Carson, was fired and led out of the department’s headquarters by security on Wednesday after writings critical of Mr. Trump surfaced in his vetting, according to two people briefed on the matter.”
5. “Employees of the Environmental Protection Agency have been calling their senators to urge them to vote on Friday against the confirmation of Scott Pruitt, President Trump’s contentious nominee to run the agency, a remarkable display of activism and defiance that presages turbulent times ahead for the E.P.A.” Oh! And a judge just ordered that Pruitt’s emails with the fossil fuels industry be released,after criticizing his office (he is currently Oklahoma’s AG) for its “abject failure” to respond to open records requests. So keep your eye on that.

Laugh of the Week: Chris Christie says that Trump ordered for him and forced him to eat meatloaf when he and his wife ate with the Trumps this week. Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. Ha.

Must Read of the Week (and Every Week): Andrew Sullivan has restarted a Friday column at New York Magazine. Last Friday was his first one, and I highly, highly recommend that you read it. Given the timing of these newsletters, a Friday column is not very useful for me, but I encourage you to bookmark the page and make sure to read Sullivan every week. Often, he’s hyperbolic and condescending and prone to hippie-punching, but he is also a beautiful writer who often has brilliant insights and perspective.

Stuff I Ignored: I’ve been wanting to cover the aggressive new FCC chairman for a few weeks now but it keeps getting bumped. So read about that here. I also didn’t say anything about the withdrawal of Labor Secretary and generally awful guy Andy Puzder or the naming of a new Labor nominee. There’s probably a lot of other stuff I ignored this week too. There’s just WAY TOO MUCH NEWS these days. Keeps me in business, I guess!