I’m going to set to the side for the moment the substance of the new story about Roy Moore. It speaks for itself and we have initial reporting on the political impact here. But what also seems clear is that while the GOP can disown him it really can’t replace him. Read More

President Trump’s bodyguard Keith Schiller told Congressional investigators that a Russian did offer to “send five women” to Trump’s hotel room at the Miss Universe Pageant back in 2013. Yes, that’s the event that that notorious part of the dossier is about. Schiller says he told the Russian they weren’t interested.

This is a wild story. Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Elaine Duke is reportedly going to resign after Chief of Staff John Kelly (her former boss as DHS Secretary) called her from Asia to complain that she wasn’t expelling Honduran immigrants quickly enough. Read More

Some background (sub. req.) on today’s must read by Tierney Sneed.

Rep. Peter King (R-NY) laments that the GOP tax bill as currently written is a political disaster and Tuesday’s results prove it: “To me it’s about the most obvious message you can get. I just hope people listen. It’s just common sense. These aren’t [just] tough votes, they’re votes that go right against our constituents.”

Cameron Joseph on why the tax bill is now a heavier lift for vulnerable suburban GOPers.

I think the weirdness over Trump’s interference in the AT&T/Time Warner acquisition is about to blow up. Here’s my backgrounder (sub req).

TPM is currently hiring for four editorial positions, one existing position and three new positions: Senior Editor, Prime Editor, Assistant Editor and a third reporter to join our Investigations Desk team. I’ll be posting job listings for all of these positions shortly. But I wanted to start with the Senior Editor listing, an existing position based out of our New York office.

Listing after the jump. Read More

I’ve previously noted the chatter that AT&T may have or may need to give President Trump assurances that CNN will be reined in before his Justice Department okays its $84.5 billion acquisition of Time Warner. The Financial Times has just reported (sub req) that the DOJ is now telling AT&T that it needs to sell CNN if it wants the acquisition approved. Read More

I noted yesterday (sub req) that I think that even if Trump had or has come to hate Russia and Vladimir Putin he must know he can’t cross them now because of the compromising information they could easily use against him.

Here’s something else that needs to be flagged. Read More

I was quite concerned that Ed Gillespie might win last night. The polls had tightened considerably over the last ten days. Gillespie had also significantly nationalized the race, explicitly getting behind President Trump’s most aggressive racist “nationalist” political symbols and messages. Had he won it would have been a big psychological blow to Democratic enthusiasm, confidence, and momentum. Beyond psychological impact, though gubernatorial races are never perfect proxies for national issues, it would have been a daunting substantive sign: that a conventional Republican candidate, running an aggressively Trumpite campaign, chockfull of racist cultural symbols and messages, could super-charge the GOP base and win, even with what appears to be historic levels of Democratic enthusiasm. I was not terribly worried that that was what a Gillespie win would mean in reality. But the perceived impact would have been immense and taken on a life of its own. Read More