Below we discussed the big Washington Post story about President Trump’s role writing what turned out to be a false statement on behalf of his son Don Jr. about that meeting with the Russian lawyer in June 2016. I want to flag a timeline that may be relevant and which may tie together the false Don Jr. statement dictated by the President on Air Force One on July 8th and the conversation Trump had with President Vladimir Putin earlier that evening.

Let’s piece together some published information and dates. 

Straight news reporters have to work within many important conventions. These both limit the scope of their work but are equally critical to doing that work properly and effectively. I was reminded of this when reading last night’s blockbuster report in The Washington Post.

The relationship between Donald Trump and Felix Sater is the kind of sordid connection that would have done in almost any past presidential candidate. But many of the details of their relationship remain elusive. In a series of interviews with TPM’s Sam Thielman in recent days, Sater has opened up about his past and his relationship with the president who now keeps his distance. Must read.

As Vice President of Policy and Research at Demos, Tamara Draut is responsible for developing and advancing the organization’s goals through research, idea generation and policy development. A member of the Demos team since 2001, Tamara developed the organization’s groundbreaking work on household indebtedness, college affordability and the economic challenges facing young people.

Tamara will be in The Hive on Thursday August 3rd at 4:00pm EST for a half-hour chat about the middle class and progressive solutions to economic issues. Submit your questions at any time or join us on Thursday! If you’d like to participate but don’t have TPM Prime, sign up here.

Leslie Nielsen died 6 1/2 years ago at the age of 84, a respectable degree of longevity after a working life as an actor that stretched over 60 years. I started thinking about him today for no particular reason: I was paddling around the Internet, reading one thing and then another and then happened upon Leslie Nielsen. For what it’s worth, my browsing history shows a series of searches and pages tied to the firing of Reince Priebus followed by stuff about Leslie Nielsen. How I got from one to the other I do not know.

It’s been a while since we heard from TPM Reader LC, a cop from the tri-state area who shared various of his views with us when the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri dominated the national news. After President Trump asked cops to rough up arrestees in their custody, he wrote in yesterday …

I’m fucking furious.

This two-bit gangster, would-be dictator just set police-community relations back by a quarter of a century.

I wanted to show you this graphic I put together which shows the timeline of Reince Priebus’s firing. In this case when I say the timeline I mean a short period of roughly 20 minutes when the whole thing unfolded. Why the precise details are notable will become obvious when you see them.

We’re able to do this because we have pool reports with precise times around the time Air Force One landed at Joint Base Andrews as the timestamped tweet the President used to announce the firing. What they show quite clearly is that Air Force One landed. The President waited for Priebus to get off the plane before tweeting that he was fired. He then waited for Priebus to be escorted away before leaving the plane himself. There’s even a Godfather-esque moment in how the SUVs were handled. Check it out.

Okay, a quick note. We are doing great here on every front. But I have a confession. We have just over two weeks to go in our annual membership drive. And we’re behind for our July goal. We are exactly 250 sign ups from our goal for this month. We need one big day to keep it within reach. And it’s important. You know all our reasons: Investigative reporting,  deep and rich coverage of critical policy issues, a crack team keeping you up to date on all the breaking news, and a bunch more, including a bunch of new Prime-only features we have in the works for the second half of the year. If you’re a regular reader, take a moment to join us today. It’s easy. It’s cheap (14 cents a day). It’s important. Take a moment to join us today. Thanks.

Our current feature story on how things came together last night in the Senate chamber is by our reporter Tierney Sneed who’s been on the Obamacare repeal beat for the last nine months and with TPM for just over two years. Next week Tierney hands off the health care beat to Alice Ollstein and joins our new Investigations Desk as the second member of that team. We have so many great people working at TPM right now that I’m always hesitant to call out individuals. But today I just want to highlight how critical a member of our team Tierney has been on this singularly important beat and how important we know she’ll be with this very different assignment starting next week. Keep an eye out for her byline and if you’re on Twitter follow her on Twitter too.

I was up late last night, like many of you, watching the drama unfold in the Senate chamber. Here’s our Tierney Sneed’s look at how it looked actually inside the chamber as it all happened. Let me share a few thoughts on what now certainly seems like a momentous and perhaps concluding moment. 

Please read Tierney Sneed’s account of being in the Senate chamber last night as it became apparent – in slow, excruciating fashion–that John McCain was going to block Obamacare repeal.

Big props to Tierney, Alice Ollstein, Cameron Joseph and the whole TPM team on covering this unprecedented legislative rollercoaster over the last several weeks and months. They work longer and harder and with more good humor than you can possibly know.

Coming off a failure this big, Trump will be looking for people to hurt, things to break. Everybody be safe out there.