As special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigators continue to bore into President Trump’s inner circle, Republicans have intensified their attempts to discredit the investigators as partisan hacks. As news began to break last weekend that former national security advisor Michael Flynn had struck a deal with Mueller, the president’s supporters latched onto another story: that one of Mueller’s top investigators had been reassigned to a supervisory job after it was discovered he had been critical of Trump in text messages a year before.
President Trump immediately seized on the story, retweeting reports that Peter Strzok had been “busted sending political text messages” and that FBI Director Christopher Wray “needs to clean house.” Read more... |
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Meanwhile, the congressional investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 election have revealed more emails about that June 2016 meeting between Trump campaign officials and Russian nationals at Trump Tower. CNN reports: The emails raise new questions for congressional investigators about what was discussed at Trump Tower. Trump Jr. has for months contended that after being promised he would get dirt on Hillary Clinton, the brief meeting focused almost exclusively on the issue of Russian adoptions, saying there was no discussion with the participants after that session.
The emails from the publicist, Rob Goldstone, were discovered by congressional investigators and raised at Wednesday's classified hearing with Trump Jr., who said he could not recall the interactions, several sources said. None of the newly disclosed emails were sent directly to Trump Jr. They are bound to be a subject during Goldstone's closed-door meetings with the House and Senate intelligence panels, which are expected to take place as early as next week. |
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Franken Fallout—Minnesota senator Al Franken announced on Thursday he plans to resign “in the coming weeks.” At National Review Online, Rich Lowry rightly notesthat Franken’s Senate floor speech announcing his resignation while still claiming innocence from the accusations of sexual misconduct “made no sense.”
“If he is innocent as he claims (he says some of the allegations were untrue and he remembers the rest differently than his accusers) and if he is as confident that the Ethics Committee would vindicate him as he says, he shouldn’t be resigning,” Lowry writes. “Indeed, a duly-elected senator wrongly accused owes it to himself and his constituents to fight on—lies and mis-remembered accounts shouldn’t chase anyone from the Senate.”
My colleague David Byler has a good piece explaining why Democrats remain the favorite to keep Franken’s seat in next year’s special election—even as Minnesota has started to trend slightly in the Republicans direction in recent years. |
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Thursday was the 76th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. At the White House, President Trump signed a proclamation to honor the memory of those who lost their lives in an attack he called “a pretty wild scene.”
“Today, our entire nation pauses to remember Pearl Harbor and the brave warriors who, on that day, stood tall and fought for America,” Trump said.
Trump was joined by six veterans of the attack, whom he praised as heroes and “living witnesses to American history.” Read more... |
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During the White House ceremony, one of the veterans broke into song after an unwitting Trump prompted him. It was touching:
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2018 Watch—Former Tennessee governor Phil Bredesen, a Democrat, makes his entry into that state’s U.S. Senate race official with a new video:
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I regret to inform you that the Millennials are at it again, this time ruining office holiday parties. Thankfully, Matt Labash is covering the story in the new issue of the magazine: The Vox holiday party would still go off at Freehold, the kind of trendy Williamsburg bar (or “gastropub,” as they now say in Brooklyn) where they serve hopelessly hip vittles like harissa buffalo cauliflower while giving their brunch cocktails cloying names like Puttin’ on the Spritz. But Vox management went on to say that even though they recognize “that alcohol isn’t always the reason for unprofessional behavior, creating an environment that encourages overconsumption certainly contributes to it.” Consequently, “each attendee will receive two drink tickets with which they can get alcoholic drinks if they choose. After that only non-alcoholic drinks will be available.” The memo, which was leaked to HuffPost, was signed, “Sincerely, The Experiential Team.”
Two drink tickets, and then you’re cut off, relegated to juice boxes or Diet Coke? Two drink tickets are a school fundraiser or a church auction or maybe a Mennonite wedding. They are not a “party.” You could feel a cold shudder throughout the journalism world. We are writers, for the love of Ezra, or at least “content producers,” in the parlance of modern media companies. As Tom McGuane put it, drinking is the writer’s black lung disease. It comes with the turf. If professional journalists can’t handle their liquor, who can? |
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We’ve All Been There—This performance from Patti LaBelle at the 1996 National Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony, which is making the rounds on the internet, is bad, hilarious, and endearing:
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