THIS WEEK IN POLITICAL NEWS -- 10/27/17

A Lot of Russia Edition

Ed. Note: On the surface, I have nearly unlimited time these days to read and digest political news. After all, I’m home from work taking care of a tiny human who sleeps 85% of the day. There is no conceivable reason I should be too busy to get out TWIPN. And yet, somehow, we got to Thursday this week and I had not even begun. Do not ask me what I have been doing, but somehow most days it is all I can do to brush my teeth (showering is definitely not happening with regularity). All of which is to say that this newsletter may be getting slightly less regular in its production. We’ll just have to see. (And I have no earthly idea how I will put this together once I’m back at work, but we have a couple more months to figure that out.) So be warned!

RIGHT-WING COUNTER NARRATIVE ON RUSSIA: For those of you who occasionally check in to Fox News or see right-wing commentary on Twitter, you will have seen that this week, the Right decided that The Real Russia Scandal actually involved Hillary and the Democrats and that they are the ones who colluded with Russia. They are going all in on this story, stirring up enough frenzy to convince multiple GOP-led House committees to start new investigations of Hillary, because 2016 will never, ever end, and in Fox News Land, Hillary is president (go to minute 5:55 of that link). So I thought it would be helpful to explain just what fever dreams the Right is swimming in now, so that you can brace yourself for the ensuing months of chatter about The Real Scandal. (Note that this explainer relies extensively on Jonathan Chait’s extensive run-down of this whole thing.)

So there are two main stories the Right is muddying. First, we have “Uranium One,” a story about a 2010 acquisition of a Canadian energy company with lots of uranium interests by a Russian firm, which was approved by the Obama administration. The Right already tried to make hay of this story during the 2016 campaign, claiming that Clinton’s State Department only approved the acquisition because the Russian firm had donated to the Clinton Foundation. But the State Department was one of nine agencies that had to approve the deal, including the independent Nuclear Regulatory Commission. There’s no there there. But Fox just keeps saying “Clinton” and “Uranium” in the same sentence, with a lot of hand-waving. (Much, much more on this at Lawfare, if you’re interested)

The second story, which the Right is really running with, involves the so-called Russian dossier. This was a compilation of research into Trump and his company’s shady ties to Russia, put together by an independent investigator named Christopher Steele during the 2016 election. The dossier contains lots of salacious rumors and allegations (ie, the pee tape), along with other facts about connections between Trump and Russia that have been proven accurate. Some of this research came from Kremlin-connected sources (ie, people who knew about the Kremlin’s ties to Trump allies and businesses, and told Steele about them). Steele’s research was not released before the election (to the disappointment of the Clinton camp) and the existence of the dossier became known only when Buzzfeed published it in January. While it was known from the beginning that Democrats had paid for this research during the election, it came out only this week that the Clinton campaign and the DNC paid Fusion GPS, the firm that employed Steele, to research Trump and his company. After Buzzfeed’s publication, the FBI began its own investigation into the allegations, given the serious corruption alleged involving the president-elect.

So what is the Real Scandal? Chait explains:

Their version of the story uses Steele’s research in Russia as evidence that Steele is a tool of the Russian government. Steele’s report, charges the The Wall Street Journal editorial page, is “based largely on anonymous, Kremlin-connected sources.” Ergo, “Strip out the middlemen, and it appears that Democrats paid for Russians to compile wild allegations about a U.S. presidential candidate. Did someone say ‘collusion’?”

The next, essential step in this theory says that, since the FBI investigated Steel’s findings, which were planted by Putin, then we must conclude that the FBI is itself a tool of the Russian conspiracy -- rendering James Comey a criminal and Mueller’s entire investigation suspect. Pretty impressive, huh?!

The logical flaws with this “theory” are legion, not least of which is that Trump’s apparent collusion was rooted in a crime -- the illegal hacking and dissemination of private emails -- that both Trump and Russia spent months vociferously boosting to the American public. What’s more, we already know that Trump’s closest campaign advisors -- including his son, his campaign chairman, and his son-in-law -- met with a Kremlin agent with the express purpose of learning Kremlin-funded dirt on Clinton. And let’s not forget that Trump himself asked Russia to hack Hillary’s emails.

Just today we learned two new pieces of information: The Russian lawyer who promised Don Jr. to provide info on Clinton coordinated with a top Russian official: “[T]he memo she brought with her closely followed a document that Mr. Chaika’s office had given to an American congressman two months earlier, incorporating some paragraphs verbatim.” In addition, the Wall Street Journal reports that a data analysis firm working for Trump had reached out to Julian Assange in the summer of 2016 with an offer to organize, index, and better disseminate the DNC emails that had been illegally stolen by Russian operatives. (And let’s not forget the truly insane fact that Trump has “blown past an October 1 deadline to implement [Congressionally-mandated] sanctions [against Russia]. Lawmakers are now searching for answers as to whether the president is even planning to follow the law that they passed and he signed.”)

We cannot forget, in all of this insanity, the undisputed conclusion of America’s intelligence agencies that the Russian government sought to interfere in the 2016 election, through a variety of means that included spreading fake news and hacking into voter databases, and that they intend to do so again in 2018. (Importantly, the Steele dossier “played absolutely no role” in this intelligence assessment.)

And yet the Republicans are so intent on protecting Trump that they have refused to actually acknowledge this fact and, you know, do something about it. Thus the truly astonishing and terrifying moment last week when our chief law enforcement officer, Jeff Sessions, told Congress that the DOJ has done nothing -- nothing -- to prepare for and work to styme Russian interference in 2018 and beyond. The fact is that the Right welcomes this interference. And the rest of us are forced to watch, slack-jawed, as our democracy is sacrificed to GOP electioneering.

(After writing all of this, I just saw that Vox did an explainer on this.)

THIS IS WILD: The Daily Beast reports: “House Republican leaders have taken the extraordinary step of curtailing Rep. Dana Rohrabacher’s (R-CA) ability to conduct official business out of fear that he is too compromised by his ties to Russia. . . . [T]he House Committee on Foreign Affairs has placed heightened restrictions on the trips abroad that he can take with committee money as well as the hearings he can hold through the subcommittee on Europe that he chairs.” Why would they take such an extraordinary step? Because Rohrabacher truly does seem to be a Russian agent of some kind: “Last summer, Rohrabacher planned to use his subcommittee to hold what critics saw as a show trial of Bill Browder, an American-born Putin critic who was the driving force behind a U.S. law, the Magnitsky Act, sanctioning Russian officials for human rights violations. Rohrabacher had planned to confront the former businessman with a feature-length pro-Kremlin propaganda movie that sets out to destroy his reputation. Rohrabacher had been given the propaganda film by one of Putin’s top officials at a secret meeting in Russia.” No wonder Paul Ryan “joked” that Rohrabacher was on Putin’s payroll.

TALK IS GREAT, BUT ACTION IS WHAT COUNTS: I have exhausted myself with this Russian stuff, so I’m not going to summarize the pretty remarkable speech by Jeff Flake from earlier this week, coming on the heels of Bob Corker’s comments that Trump is unqualified to be president. I welcome these Republicans’ acknowledgment of what is plainly true and obvious to anyone with eyes and ears. Flake’s speech was truly incredible in many ways, not least of which was his acknowledgment that his entire party was “complicit” in Trump’s egregiousness. But, while I don’t expect these senators to start voting like Democrats, there are concrete, tangible actions they can and must take to actually address the profound dangers of Trump that they have correctly identified. It is on the basis of those actions (or their refusal to take those actions) that we should judge Flake and Corker (and all Republicans), not their speeches. Yglesias has a great article about how Flake, Corker, and McCain can use their leverage to take actual concrete action to hem in Trump -- which is their actual job as legislators. Greg Sargent lays out five questions for Flake and Corker, including whether they agree that Trump and the GOP must stop denouncing and degrading the investigation into Russian interference in our elections and whether the GOP should insist that Trump release his tax returns. Brian Beutler urges them to use their power to take Russian meddling -- and Trump’s numerous lies about the investigation -- seriously. “If they are sincerely fed to the teeth with Trump ‘calling fake things true and true things fake,’ then this instance, in which Trump’s dishonesty serves the interests of a hostile power, seems like as good a place as any to draw a line.” Republican Never-Trumper argues that Flake and Corker should stay and fight rather than resign. “The dwindling number of anti-Trump Republican elected leaders now nears an empty set, risking a future in which the war against Trumpism is fought entirely along Democratic vs. Trumpist lines.”

Endorsements:

• I got too tired to cover the tax cut fight (short story is that the Republicans have paved the way to pass a massive, $1.5-trillion-deficit-adding tax cut with only 51 Senate votes, but still have not released an actual set of real, concrete proposals, even as they want final passage by Thanksgiving), but I HIGHLY recommend this Josh Barro piece about one central GOP proposal to slash taxes on pass-through income. He shows how the whole idea is basically entirely unworkable in the real world. These problems are yet another flaw in the GOP’s effort to keep its plans secret (slash, not actually have concrete plans) and then try to pass something as quickly as possible without time for analysis and problem-solving. Did they learn nothing from the Obamacare fight?
• Andrew Sullivan’s lead essay this week is basically a recounting of how everything is terrible. It's grim but comprehensive.
• Matt Yglesias provides the highlights of a truly depressing (but morbidly hilarious) interview of Trump by Fox’s Lou Dobbs. If you forget that this man controls the nuclear codes and also defeated the most qualified presidential candidate in history, Trump’s ignorance and inability to form complete sentences is really quite funny.
• These are sentences the president actually spoke out loud to the young children of the White House Press Corps on a Halloween visit.
• As someone who went to school in Connecticut, I endorse this Alexandra Petri piece.
• This heart-warming video of a kid who knows a lot -- a lot -- about airplanes.
• This came out when I was on break, but if you have not yet read Rachel Aviv’s truly heartbreaking New Yorker article about schemes to defraud seniors, READ IT NOW.

THIS WEEK IN POLITICAL NEWS -- 10/19/17

First-Time Mom Edition

FIRST, A GIANT THANK-YOU: Let’s pause to give a huge round of grateful applause to Substitute Extraordinaire Roger Low, who so ably (and thoroughly!) filled in for me these last three weeks. I loved reading his take on the news, told with his biting sarcasm and wit -- and written in shockingly error-free prose! Aside from annoyingly showing how easy it is to not fill these things with typos, Roger’s missives were incredibly smart, incisive, and funny. We are all lucky to have gotten to enjoy his writing! Hopefully, Roger will be gracing us with his humor and intellect in some guests posts in the future!

POTENTIAL HEALTH CARE COMPROMISE?: This week, Democratic Senator Patty Murray and Republican Senator Lamar Alexander announced a bipartisan compromise bill that would shore up the Obamacare marketplaces and, most likely, put the Repeal and Replace shit to bed once and for all. The proposal is billed as a short-term stop-gap measure to fund the cost-sharing reduction (CSR) payments, which “reimburse insurance companies for lowering deductibles, co-payments and other out-of-pocket costs for low-income customers.” (Trump announced he would end those payments last week.) The bill would also give some increased flexibility to the states to allow crappier insurance plans (low-premium, high-deductible “Bronze Plans”), but (according to Andy Slavitt at least) it explicitly protects those with pre-existing conditions, continues Obamacare’s essential health benefit requirements, and does not touch Medicaid -- all incredibly positive developments from the GOP’s previous repeal efforts. Please read this short and very clear Sarah Kliff piece that explains how, by refusing to pay the CSRs, Trump is ensuring that the government has to spend more money to insure fewer people and result in higher premiums for higher-income enrollees.

In all, this seems like a real, bona fide compromise and an actual good bill that we should support. Of course, whether this can pass is an open question at this point. Today, Murray and Alexander announced 12 Democratic and 12 Republican co-sponsors, meaning that if every Democrat supported it (which is likely), there would be over 60 votes for its passage and the GOP would not be able to filibuster (assuming, of course, that McConnell allows it to get to the floor for a vote, which is something we should probably not assume). But the House seems opposed to the compromise effort; Paul Ryan let it be known yesterday that he would not let the House take up the compromise. And characteristically, Trump has been all over the place. On Tuesday, he sounded supportive of the compromise. But by Wednesday, it sounded like he had turned against it. Today, he offered this utterly incoherent word salad from which it is nearly impossible to divine a position. But for now he has settled on the line that he does not want to “bail out” insurance companies who have “made a fortune” off of Obamacare -- a contradictory proposition already. This is nonsense, but it sounds like something and so it may be enough to doom the entire effort. In the end

I CAN’T EVEN: From the Washington Post: “President Trump on Thursday said the federal response to hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico deserves a grade of 10 out of 10 as he met at the White House with Ricardo Rosselló, the governor of the U.S. territory. ‘It would say it’s a 10,’ Trump said, arguing that the destruction wrought by Hurricane Maria ‘was in many ways worse than anything people have ever seen.’ . . .  ‘I think we did a fantastic job, and we’re being given credit,” Trump said. “We have done a really great job.’” Meanwhile, in reality, more than 80% of Puerto Ricans remain without electricity, and about 30% of the island lacks municipal water service. (Adding fuel to my fireball of rage at this story is the way the Post reported it: It quoted Trump, and then said that his comments were “at odds with public polling” showing that most people disapproved of his handling of the crisis -- instead of providing any stats about actual recovery efforts on the ground.) AAAAAAGGGGGHHHHHH SO MUCH RAGE.

IS THE REPUBLICAN TAX CUT EFFORT ALREADY DEAD?: Well, not yet. But passing their giant tax cut is not going to be easy. On Tuesday, the Senate passed a motion to open up a 2018 budget resolution, “a prerequisite for getting tax cuts out of the upper chamber with only 51 votes.” This means that the tax cuts will pass only if both chambers can agree on and pass an actual budget -- an achievement at least slightly in doubt. Rand Paul says he will vote for the budget only if millions of dollars in military spending is removed (something the rest of the party will refuse to go along with). Without Paul, the Senate GOP can lose only two votes, and Thad Cochran (a reliable conservative) is increasingly fragile, senile, and ill. And then there are the larger ideological differences within the party, in both chambers, as Eric Levitz points out: “While everyone wants giant tax cuts, the party’s right-wing wants to partially offset them with reductions to social spending; the mainstream Republicans wants to do so by ending various tax deductions; and a small, but potentially decisive faction, wants to fully offset them with some combination of the two.” And then you have the problem of making the math work out. “The House budget mandates $203 billion in cuts to domestic spending. The Freedom Caucus wanted more than double that; the Senate resolution mandates approximately $0.00.” And the Senate resolution allows for increasing the deficit by only $1.5 trillion, but the tax plan as it exists now is projected to add $2.2 trillion to the deficit, even assuming the plan will generate $1.3 trillion in revenue (an iffy proposition). Levitz traces the various demands coming from different factions of the party -- no increases in middle class taxes; a minimum corporate tax cut to 20%; no increases to the deficit; slashes to food stamps, Medicaid, and other programs for the poor, etc -- to show the nearly impossible minefield the party leadership faces in trying to pass this plan. He concludes:

So: If everything goes according to plan, House and Senate Republicans will soon agree on a budget resolution — and find themselves with a trillion-dollar math problem. Mitch McConnell would then need to devise a means of making the president’s tax plan more than $1 trillion less generous, while losing a maximum of two Republican votes (assuming Democrats don’t break ranks) — or one, should Cochran’s health sideline him again.

All of these maneuverings are going on as Trump continues to engage in bald-faced lies about what his tax plan is. Even though he has been corrected many times, he continues to state that the U.S. is the highest-taxed nation in the world. It is not. This week, reporter Mike Sacks asked him why he kept repeating the lie, and Trump said that he knew it wasn’t true but it was true enough, or it felt true, and other people were agreeing with him, but also it is true if you look only at “developed” countries. This answer is both a word salad and also a lie. “In fact, it’s even more false than the original statement.”

Maybe it’s hard to get this thing passed because it is, you know, terrible policy that is also wildly unpopular. Instead of passing something popular, like a middle class tax cut, the GOP is determined to pass tax cuts for the wealthy -- but equally determined to lie about it. On Wednesday, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin declared that it was mathematically impossible not to skew tax cuts heavily for the wealthy. As Chait puts it, “Apparently not giving rich people a huge tax cut is a technical problem our best minds have yet to crack.” Of course, this is insane. “It is possible to reform the tax code without passing a net tax cut. And it is possible to enact a net tax cut without cutting taxes for the rich.” One place to look is the payroll tax, which is heavily regressive and constitutes the majority of what most Americans pay in taxes. But the GOP barely considers payroll taxes real taxes. Instead, they are laser focused on those scourges of the middle class: the corporate income tax and the estate tax. If you’re intent on slashing those taxes, of course, then it really is quite tricky to do it without slashing taxes for the people who actually pay those taxes -- the wealthy.

GOOD NEWS -- TRAVEL BAN 3.0 BLOCKED BY THE COURTS (AGAIN): “In a 40-page decision granting the state of Hawaii’s request for a temporary restraining order and blocking Trump’s order nationwide, Watson wrote that the latest ban ‘suffers from precisely the same maladies as its predecessor: it lacks sufficient findings that the entry of more than 150 million nationals from six specified countries would be ‘detrimental to the interests of the United States.’” A judge in Maryland came to the same conclusion, writing “that President Trump's own tweets helped convince him that the latest policy is an ‘inextricable re-animation of the twice-enjoined Muslim ban’ that Trump called for on the campaign trail and is therefore likely to be found unconstitutional.”

YET AGAIN, TRUMP DISRESPECTS GOLD STAR FAMILY: Honestly, I have neither the patience nor the stomach to go through this inane, disgusting controversy in detail. But it was a big story this week so it feels like I have to talk about it. Here’s the basic rundown (note that I’m too lazy to look for links to support all of this, but here’s Vox’s explainer on this story). About 4 weeks ago, four US soldiers were killed in murky circumstances in Niger, a country where most of us probably did not even know hosted American soldiers. The White House never said anything about the soldiers or the circumstances of their death. On Monday, during an impromptu press conference, Trump was asked about what happened in Niger and, in characteristic fashion, made the question all about him and his response to their deaths. He defended his silence on their death by falsely claiming that President Obama and other prior presidents never called or wrote to the families of those killed in action. This was a lie, and even Trump seemed to know it; when another reporter asked him where he got that information, he pretty quickly backed down. He then declared that he would be calling the families “at the appropriate time.” Still, he continued to impugn Obama by telling the press that Obama had failed to call Chief of Staff John Kelly when Kelly’s son died in Afghanistan. (In fact, the Obamas invited the Kelly family to the White House for an event honoring Gold Star families, where John Kelly was seated at Michelle Obama’s table. Also, how disgusting for Trump to try to score political points off of the death of the son of his chief of staff.)

On Tuesday afternoon, he called the pregnant wife of La David Johnson, one of the four soldiers who had died. Congresswoman Frederica Wilson (D-FL) was apparently in the car with Johnson’s wife when the call came in, and heard the call. Wilson then told the press that Trump said on the call that Johnson “knew what he signed up for,” but that it was still sad. Wilson said Johnson’s wife was in tears after the call, and said that Trump had referred to her husband only as “your guy,” suggesting he did not know his name. On Wednesday morning, furious at Wilson’s accusations, Trump took to Twitter to declare that Wilson had made it all up and that he had “proof” that she was lying. But then that afternoon, spokeswoman Sarah Sanders all but confirmed that he had said the comments Wilson attributed to him, but said that Johnson’s wife had just interpreted them wrong.

All of this came to a pathetic and disgusting culmination today, when Kelly took to the podium today to express his indignation that a congresswoman “listened in” on the call to Johnson. That’s right: He did not dispute that Trump said the things he is accused of saying (and that Trump falsely denied saying). Instead, he blamed a widow for allowing her congresswoman -- a woman who mentored Johnson and had known him since his childhood -- from listening to the call. What. The. Fuck. Is. Wrong. With. These. People??

(Oh, there’s more to this: The AP and the Washington Post tracked down other families of those killed in action during Trump’s presidency. Half had not heard anything from the White House. One father said that Trump had promised to send him $25,000, but had failed to do so. When reporters asked Sanders about that yesterday, she trotted out the good ol’ White House indignation to decry the press’s audacity in asking about this and making a “political” issue about it. Of course, as a surprise to absolutely no one, Trump had indeed failed to send the check but then apparently sent it yesterday after the press asked about it. Again -- WHAT IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE??)

Sorry, one more thing. Check out this quote from Kelly’s statement today:

You know, when I was a kid growing up, a lot of things were sacred in our country. Women were sacred, looked upon with great honor. That's obviously not the case anymore as we see from recent cases. Life -- the dignity of life -- is sacred. That's gone. Religion, that seems to be gone as well. Gold Star families, I think that left in the convention over the summer.

Who in God’s name does he think he is working for. He believes women are “sacred,” but works for a man who declared he can grab them by the pussy? He insists life and “religion” are sacred, from a man who declared that avoiding STDs was his own personal Vietnam and who is almost cartoonishly immoral and unreligious? Gold Star families are no longer sacred after “the convention” this summer?? You mean, after your boss went on a days-long tirade against a Gold Star family who had the temerity to point out that his proposal to ban Muslims from America was unconstitutional?? SERIOUSLY -- WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE??

Endorsements:

• This Lindy West NYT op-ed about sexual harassment and “witch hunts.” Holy crap this is a good piece. Read it!
• You think you’ve read enough about Weinstein and sexual harassment. You think Lindy said it all. But you’re wrong. You haven’t read enough and not all has been said. Alexandra Petri adds more fire. Really, READ IT.
• Jonathan Chait on John McCain’s final act as Trump’s chief nemesis. He provides some good context on McCain’s career and his positioning (for example, I had forgotten/did not know that McCain voted against both of the Bush tax cuts and sided with Dems on their major Bush-era domestic policy initiatives). You will enjoy reading it. Book recommendation: Little Fires Everywhere, by Celeste Ng, is the best new novel I’ve ready this year. You should read it!
• My husband Drausin, whose birthday is today. He’s great! Lyra and I are big fans!