In cas you missed it over the weekend, I discussed those two new Trump/Russia stories and why they’re so scared about Mike Flynn.
In the last week of France’s presidential election, posters sprung up picturing Marine Le Pen with Donald Trump’s hairdo. The message was clear. Saying “yes” to Le Pen was saying “yes” to Trump. Ads also ran advising voters “ne vous Trumpez pas,” a pun on the verb “tromper” meaning “do not deceive yourself.” My suspicion is that Trump’s election did hurt Le Pen. I haven’t found any evidence from polling, but there is a telling succession of events that suggests a negative Trump effect.
Now, this is quite interesting. In many respects, it simply confirms what Donald Trump Jr. told a group of real estate investors at a conference in 2008: that a ton of the money funding the Trump Organization came from Russia. Here it’s Eric Trump explaining back in 2014 that it didn’t matter that American banks wouldn’t loan Trump money. They had all the money they needed from Russia. Read More
Yesterday stories appeared from The Washington Post and The Associated Press each describing new revelations about disgraced former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. The two stories have slightly different emphases and appear to rely on slightly different sourcing. But the gist of the story is the same: During the Trump transition and indeed even before Flynn’s late December calls with Russian Ambassador Kislyak which led to his forced resignation, Trump Transition officials were concerned about the extent of Flynn’s contacts with Russian officials. Read More
Richard Rubin is the U.S. tax policy reporter for The Wall Street Journal in Washington, focusing on the intersection of taxes, politics and economics. Richard will be in The Hive Friday June 9th at 1 PM EST for a chat about taxes and Trump’s proposed budget plan. Submit your questions at any time or feel free to join us on Friday, June 9th! If you’d like to participate but don’t have TPM Prime, sign up here.
In Ivanka Trump’s new book, Women Who Work she uses a Toni Morrison quote about overcoming the psychic toll of slavery to illustrate a point about time management. Really. “Are you a slave to your time or the master of it?” Read More
I wanted to thank everyone who wrote in about my piece on the future of digital publishing, subscriptions and TPM. Obviously, we love it when people subscribe. If you haven’t, please sign up right now! But in addition to subscribing, it’s a great boon to me and our whole organization to hear from you about these issues that are so central to what we do, the kind of ever-evolving organization we’re trying to build. Read More
It was a big day yesterday. Against the expectations of many, House Republicans were able to come back from a demoralizing defeat in March and pass a slightly revised version of their “American Health Care Act.” That is to say, repeal Obamcare and replace it with Trumpcare. After passing it with 217 votes, they partied, bigly. Here’s a collection of photographs of the good times, annotated with the number of people who will lose their health care coverage in each representative’s district.
Click the “read more” link to see the full story where the photos are large enough to easily read the annotations.
Democrats on the House floor signing "Na-na-na, na-na-na, hey, hey, goodbye."
— Matt Fuller (@MEPFuller) May 4, 2017
This is both an homage and a literal repetition of what Republicans did when the Clinton tax bill passed in the House in 1993. Same singing, same song. The bill paved the way for budget balancing over the course of the decade and (more arguably) played a role in creating the prosperity of that decade. It also came little more than a year before Democratic majorities in both Houses were annihilated in the 1994 midterm.