Scientists Push Clinton To Ask For Recount In 3 States, Trump Changes Tone On Waterboarding And The Senate’s Bean Soup

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November 23rd, 2016

Top Stories


Computer Scientists Pushing Clinton To Ask For Recount In 3 States

The Gist: A group of computer scientists believe they have evidence that suggests voting machines in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania have been hacked and have been urging the Hillary Clinton campaign to ask for a recount in the three key states, according to a New York Magazine report.

Donald Trump Changes His Tone On Waterboarding

The Gist: During a lengthy interview with the New York Times on Tuesday, Donald Trump suggested that he may change his mind on waterboarding after calling for the United States to employ the torture practice on the campaign trail.

Why Trump Has To Go Further Still To Denounce White Nationalism

The Gist: The video was chilling. Footage from a conference in Washington, D.C. over the weekend of the innocuously named National Policy Institute showed attendees thrusting their arms in the air in a Nazi salute as the man at the front of the room yelled “hail Trump, hail our people, hail victory!” The moment over the weekend at the NPI meeting didn’t happen in a vacuum. There is a reason why white nationalists have rallied around Trump, why they view Trump’s victory through the prism of their own accession.

From The Reporter’s Notebook


President-elect Donald Trump brushed off concerns about his global holdings and business conflicts in a meeting with the New York Times on Tuesday, TPM’s Esme Cribb reported. Trump declared that “the law’s totally on my side, the president can’t have a conflict of interest.” He said that his situation was unique. “In theory I could run my business perfectly and then run the country perfectly. There’s never been a case like this,” he told the Times.

Agree or Disagree?


Josh Marshall: “The personal desires of the President, his mercy, is irrelevant to this kind of decision. Either there is something to investigate or there’s not — and a lengthy investigation that came up with nothing to prosecute suggests there isn’t anything. This isn’t the Colosseum where everyone waits on the Emperor’s thumbs up or down. America is not a place where those who lose elections live freely at the sufferance of the victors. This is certainly better than Trump trying to jail Clinton as he promised, but only so much. What if Hillary Clinton becomes an outspoken critic of President Trump? Does he reconsider? None of this is normal. This is how strongmen talk.”

Say What?!


“I would go ahead and let the President-elect speak for that directly.”

– Transition spokesman Jason Miller avoided questions about Trump’s involvement in his businesses in a Tuesday call, directing reporters straight to the President-elect for answers.

BUZZING: Today in the Hive


From a TPM Prime member: “And yet, even setting aside Trump as not a ‘real’ Republican, all these white rural areas still time and time again send Republicans to congress. There might not be a single ‘rural’ district in this country that sends a Democrat to Congress. And yet they don’t hold their Republican congresspeople accountable for failure to deliver help, they only hold Democrats accountable. Because there are other things that animate these people beyond mere economics, and those are issues that Democrats will never and should never compromise on (i.e. racism, immigration, xenophobia, abortion, LGBTQ rights).”

Related: North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory (R), along with the GOP candidate for state auditor, filed for a statewide recount on Tuesday.

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What We’re Reading


Reince Priebus, normalizer in chief. (The New York Times)

The Senate’s bean soup. (The Hill)


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