Two document dumps on the voting rights front this week. One gives us a window into what was going on at Trump’s voter fraud commission. The other further underscores that the addition of a question about citizenship to the Census didn’t initially have anything to do with DOJ efforts to enforce the Voting Rights Act, despite administration claims to the contrary.
Read about those, and more, in our weekly primer on voting rights and democracy (Prime access) →
Okay, earlier we noted that the shirt those two Trumpers in Ohio were wearing at the rally over the weekend showed up on Russian TV as an example of rising Republican support for Russia and Russia collusion. This was a rabbit hole my colleague Matt Shuham and I couldn’t not go down. So what’s the story? Did they both order it off the same Trumper website? Did the Russians send it to the dudes in Ohio? Or did the Russians see it on social media and whip up their own? Well, I think we’ve solved this mystery. Read More
This is probably nothing. But it got my attention. A few days ago two Trump supporters at the President’s rally in Ohio showed up in T-Shirts that read “I’d Rather Be a Russian Than a Democrat”. A reporter at the event asked them where they got it and one of the men said he’d printed them up himself. Then about a day later what appears to the be the same kind of shirt showed up in the hands of a Russian TV presenter.
TPM Reader RM thinks TPM Reader JB is missing a key point. Here’s RM and then I’ll share a few thoughts at the end …
I think TPM Reader JB misses a key point of the Trump Tower meeting. Specific ‘collusion dirt’ was provided by the Russians in the Trump Tower meeting. The issue was that Junior didn’t like the ‘dirt’ that was offered and implied through his specific criticisms and subdued response that the Russians needed to bring better ‘dirt’, and that the Trump campaign left the door open to further explore matters should such ‘better dirt’ be provided. In addition, the Russians made a big deal of the Magnitsky Act and Bill Browder, indicating that they demanded something in exchange for the ‘dirt’ they were willing to provide to help the Trump campaign. That’s a quid pro quo: ‘we give you dirt, you consider our wish list’. Junior gave every indication of support for that concept in this meeting.
Prosecutorial strategy in a financial crime case is not something I know anything about. What’s more, I haven’t been following the minutiae of the trial as closely as the other members of our team who are devoted to it for the duration (mainly Tierney Sneed, Caitlin MacNeal and David Kurtz, though most of the team is involved at least in a support role). But last week, as there was more and more evidence of high living, I did have a few moments where I wondered: ‘God, I really hope they don’t blow this.’ Subsequent testimony at the end of the week I think clarified the point of that earlier testimony and got on to the more factual part of the case. (To be clear, I think this was probably clear all along to more knowledgable trial watchers.) But it wasn’t until I say this note from TPM Reader JW that I really grasped the high risk nature of Manafort’s defense strategy …
Even at the earliest stages of trial, we are seeing how incredibly risky is for Manafort to blame Gates for criminal wrongdoing. The “blame Gates” strategy means that Manafort is effectively admitting that criminal conduct occurred at his firm and in his own name. Tax evasion? Money laundering? Yes, taxes were evaded and money was laundered, but it was all Gates! Manafort knew nothing! This is a train wreck of an argument.
TPM Reader JB makes a very good point in this email. It’s still generally assumed that even if the Trump Tower meeting shows intense desire to collude, it was a bust. Nothing actually came of it. They tried to collude. But they couldn’t make it happen. Literally everything else that the Trump Team has told us about this meeting – including that it happened – has been a lie. It seems almost absurd to assume this one critical claim is true.
As it becomes more and more obvious that Donald Trump knew about the 2016 meeting between Don, Jr., Kusher, Manafort, and Veselnitskaya, we keep hearing again even in the mainstream media that the meeting was a bust, because Veselnitskaya produced no dirt on Clinton, which somehow figures into the exoneration story. Maybe the Trump team was trying to collude, but they didn’t actually collude.
With a rising challenge from Beto O’Rourke, Ted Cruz is focusing on constituent service and the personal touch to win a second term as Texas Senator.
Holy Crap, This Second Ted Cruz Ad Is Even More Absurd Than the One From this Afternoon. pic.twitter.com/2kBQp5vALD
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) August 4, 2018
The first immunized witness to testify against Paul Manafort has finished her direct examination. They don’t give out immunity for nothing.
Yesterday I got my first look at the new front page publishing system I mentioned in this post over the weekend. It’s an amazing feat of coding skill, both from a technical perspective as well from a journalistic and aesthetic one. That pride and excitement is mainly an internal matter for our team. Most of you are rightly concerned not with the inner workings of the machine but the final product. But what really excites me about bringing this online is that I believe it will greatly enhance our ability to bring you the news, to do what we do. Read More
I struggle with how much we should delve into these rabbit holes. They are to a real extent simply conflagrations whipped up to serve the distraction interests of the White House. But this seems worth listening to and preserving. CNN’s Jim Acosta presses Sarah Sanders to agree that the press is not the “enemy of the people.” She responds with an anti-press tirade.
Video after the jump. Read More