Trump’s threats to broadcasters’ “licenses” demonstrates the classic Trumpian one-two punch: deeply alarming and deeply ignorant. Tierney Sneed explains what he can and can’t do.
Trump: The stock market went up. That’s like paying off the national debt.
The country, we took it over, the last eight years they borrowed more than it did in the whole history of our country. So they borrowed More than $10 trillion. Right? We picked up $5.2 trillion just in the stock market. Possibly picked up the whole thing in terms of the first nine months. In terms of value. You can say in one sense, we are really increasing values and may be in the sense, we are reducing debt. We are very honored by it and very, very happy by what’s happening in Wall Street.
I want to note something about this open letter from conservative activists asking Mitch McConnell and his leadership team to resign. Clearly, this is getting on a bandwagon of sorts with Trump’s growing war with not just Bob Corker but the Senate GOP generally. It’s similarly jumping on board Steve Bannon’s promised effort recruit primary opponents for a raft of GOP incumbents. One of the two things Bannon’s recruits would have to pledge is to vote against McConnell as Majority Leader. It’s that and get rid of the filibuster.
But look at the signatories. Read More
We’re looking for the third member of our TPM Investigations Desk. That’s where we do our core iterative investigative reporting. 2018 is going to be a big year for this kind of work on many fronts so we’re looking for the right person. Interested? We want to hear from you. See our listing after the jump … Read More
Last night on Chris Hayes’ show, Vanity Fair’s Gabriel Sherman suggested retired Generals Mattis and Kelly were discussing what they would do if President Trump made a “lunge” for the nuclear football. Would they tackle him? Restrain him. Sherman said he’d met with a “very prominent” Republican. Read More
Even a crumb is a gift to the starving. I don’t want to be misinterpreted. But the seeming bipartisan rush to pass a ban on “bump stocks” is a joke. For clarity, “bump stocks” are the aftermarket devices which can be used to change a semi-automatic weapon into the functional equivalent of a machine gun. Read More
Back in December 2012, the day after the Newtown school massacre I got an email from a reader (TPM Reader SS) who talked about the ‘tactical’ turn which had taken place from the gun culture he grew up with in the 1970s and 1980s to the one that started coming into view in the 1990s. It’s shaped a lot of my thinking about the issue. Give it a read.
Here’s the key concluding line from Charlie Cook’s article on the Corker meltdown: “Last week’s news reduced the odds of the GOP retaining its majority from a good bet to even money.”
So Cook, one of the best known election predictors, says it’s 50/50 who controls the Senate after the 2018 midterm. Read More
For the last nine months – in some way for the last 28 months – we’ve been told there was some breaking point coming where President Trump’s hold over the GOP, his supporters or some mix of the two was about to come undone. I flagged a few articles last night that suggested something like that might be coming. I’m not suggesting some major rupture is afoot. But for a few different reasons, I do think this blow up with Bob Corker may be something new and different.
This is for two specific reasons: the 2018 election and tax reform. Read More