Here’s one of the weirder dimensions of late 2018 Trumpism. For reasons that are not entirely clear to me the word has apparently come down from the White House that the wall, as in the wall to be built along the southern border, must now be called “wall”. In other words, no definite article, no “the”. President Trump now does this. It was part of a DHS press release a week ago. And today in a congressional hearing, DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen told Rep. Tom Marino: “From Congress I would ask for wall. We need wall.”
"I would ask for wall. We need wall." pic.twitter.com/mkgHZWFgyI
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) December 20, 2018
TPM’s Tierney Sneed obtained a copy of the lengthy Mueller-bashing memo that Attorney General nominee William Barr sent to the justice department earlier this year.
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This is down deep in the NYT story just out on the open and public battle between the White House and the Pentagon over whether to withdraw immediately all U.S. troops from Syria:
If you’ve been in the news business long enough, either as a producer or a consumer, you know that it doesn’t always – maybe doesn’t mainly – work in logical or linear ways. Last night CNN’s Chris Cuomo went live with a copy of the letter of intent President Trump signed to build a Trump Moscow development project in October 2015. Read More
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For all the fireworks and all the details about the Turkish lobbying, the big issue here remains why Flynn was lying in the first place. He lied for a reason. It went to the heart of the pay offs to Russia after the election and indeed backchannel communications prior to the election.
We still don’t know what the sentence is. But Judge Emmet Sullivan is positively roasting General Flynn in court right now, all but calling him a traitor and goading prosecutors to say Flynn should lose credit for cooperation for trying to evade responsibility for his crimes in his sentencing memo. This raises a basic question. Why did Flynn try to claim he was set up by the FBI in his sentencing memo? Flynn himself could be naive or impulsive. But Flynn has top flight legal representation. Why would they do that? Read More
White House suggesting Trump may be going low energy on his Wall government shutdown threat.
The Flynn sentencing hearing is underway. TPM’s Tierney Sneed is in the courtroom. We’ll bring you the details as they develop.
Late Update: 11:40 PM: Judge Sullivan was not impressed by Flynn’s sentencing memo, made him question whether he was actually accepting responsibility or indeed thought he was guilty. The Judge put the question to him and he said that he knew he couldn’t lie and was in fact guilty.