As stupid as it is, looking directly into the sun, despite endless warnings, pretty much sums up the Trump presidency.
One of the oddities of the last week-plus is that it has created what seems like a crisis for the White House which is new and perhaps a turning point. Yet the most daunting challenge facing the White House – or the two most daunting challenges – aren’t on people’s radar at all. Or, rather they are entirely unconnected to the chain of events stemming from the incidents last weekend in Charlottesville. And the events in Charlottesville have largely pushed them off the front pages. Read More
I got an email about my post on Trump from an old friend Fred Block, a professor of sociology at UC Davis, and the author of pathbreaking books on the relationship between government and the economy. Here is what Fred wrote:
What a week. Who would imagine that Bannon would do the political equivalent of “suicide by cop” by calling Bob Kuttner? But I wanted to respond to your second childhood post about Trump.
Here’s one thing to consider as Steve Bannon leaves the White House. There’s hardly anyone in the close Trump orbit who hasn’t been tripped up in some way by the Russia investigation. There’s one big exception: Steve Bannon. Read More
Jessica Huseman is a reporter at ProPublica covering national politics and civil rights. Prior to joining ProPublica, she was an education reporter at The Teacher Project and Slate. Her stories have been published in The Atlantic, the Dallas Morning News, and NPR.
Jessica will be in The Hive on Wednesday, August 23rd for a 30-minute chat about voting rights and Trump’s shady “voter fraud” panel. Submit your questions at any time or join us on Wednesday! If you’d like to participate but don’t have TPM Prime, sign up here.
If you don’t have the twitter or breaking news wires spiked directly into your veins, for the last 10 or 20 minutes there have been a series of reports that Steve Bannon is out at the White House. First the news came from Drudge (who, whatever you think about him, is well-sourced on this front). The Times has now confirmed the story – but with a major caveat. Read More
Every president has these industry councils like the ones we’ve been talking about in recent days. They range from meaningless to not terribly important. They’re mainly symbolic. With everything that’s happened in recent days, I don’t want to make it out like the decisions of a small number of CEOs is the biggest news. Still, we should recognize that it is entirely unprecedented to have a sitting president become so toxic that corporate America feels unable to publicly associate with him. That is totally, totally new territory. Read More
Roy Moore–yes, THAT Roy Moore–has a plausible path to the U.S. Senate. Not a lock, but probably a lot more plausible than you realize. It’s going to be a barnburner in Alabama over the next six weeks, and Cam Joseph is on the case.
In response to Alice Ollstein’s piece last week on the Trump administration abandoning Obamacare outreach to Latinos, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus is demanding a meeting with HHS Secretary Tom Price and urging HHS to make enrolling Latinos a priority.