Some points are so obvious they escape attention or so obvious as not to seem worth noting. Yet they are worth noting. Can anyone think of a country, out of the globe’s almost 200 sovereign states, where President Trump has called for a crackdown on corruption other than Ukraine?
I genuinely do not think there is a single example. There’s Baltimore and Puerto Rico but of course those are not countries.
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Will the impeachment inquiry be able to keep up with an ongoing series of high crimes and misdemeanors?
Good TPM Readers, I was in the midst of writing out a post explaining how there was a lot of circumstantial evidence that that packet of pro-Trump conspiracy theories the State Department Inspector General brought up to the Hill was actually Rudy Giuliani’s work product: the packet of information he’d assembled in his trips abroad. Rudy likely piped it into the State Department. It got circulated through the Department by State appointees (this part we know). The IG had had it since May. But when he heard the events of the last week, especially Pompeo going on the warpath, the IG decided he wanted to get it out of his hands and into the hands of Congress as soon as possible.
Well, I’m robbed of my genius reconstruction of the evidence! Because now Rudy has admitted that, yeah, it’s his stuff.
Before Trump’s attempts to smear Joe Biden and undermine the Russia probe took center stage, I was captivated by the NRA’s current inner turmoil. I can’t get enough of the lawsuits, petty infighting and coup attempts. Josh Kovensky, who’s on our NRA drama beat, wrote a really insightful post about this one NRA donor who seems to be rankling the gun group’s leadership. Basically, this one man has tried to start a small insurrection of sorts among some of his fellow donors, but it’s been hard to calculate just how big this movement is. Yet, Josh explained in a Prime post why he thinks this small rebellion is actually starting to get to the NRA.
This is the kind of nuanced piece that Prime allows us to publish. Our reporters are able to connect dots for our readers and explain on a minute level the big stories we’re following.
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Monmouth has just released a poll that sounds the public on impeachment. It is similar to the others we’ve seen over recent days, though a bit more favorable to the President. On supporting an impeachment inquiry, 49% say it’s a good idea while 43% say it’s a bad idea. On removal from office, 44% say yes, 52% say no. Notably, Monmouth doesn’t appear to have given the “too soon to tell” option that shifted the numbers somewhat for CBS/YouGov and Quinnipiac.
Returning to an earlier post and point. We will not understand any of this until we properly understand the difference between ‘investigate’ and ‘fabricate’. Again, even if you basically understand what’s happening here, the misuse of the words will warp your thinking.