According to CNN, the federal probe into Rudy Giuliani includes a counter-intelligence investigation. This news, if borne out, is a very big deal. It is also the least surprising thing in the world. As we noted earlier this week, Rudy has gone into business, literally and figuratively, with associates of the Russian election interference team from 2016. In some cases, they’re not associates but the same actual people. He wants their help to “prove” Russia and Trump were framed.
10:30 PM: Don’t miss our staff debate live blog here.
10:17 PM: I’m confused. Does Harris think she’s making a strong point here vis a vis Warren?
10:03 PM: I think Biden is doing better for himself in this debate than most people probably realize. But again, Warren just has a dynamism and command that isn’t matched by anyone else on the stage.
9:31 PM: A twelve person debate is an incoherent debate.
9:03 PM: I don’t know exactly how it will play politically or whether it will continue her rise in the polls. But Warren is simply operating at two or three times the speed and power of almost everyone else up on the stage. Sanders has receded far to the background of the debate. To a great degree, Biden has too. Biden’s answers have been clearer and crisper than in earlier debates. But he seems peripheral to the debate itself. Warren is setting the pace and everyone is reacting to her.
8:59 PM: Warren’s answer on being punitive or not was very good.
8:48 PM: I’m far from a supporter. But I think this debate could help Steyer. Clear, coherent, just very straightforward.
8:32 PM: Basic point people ignore. When your employer coverage gets replaced by a tax-funded M4A type plan, most employers are going to pocket the savings on premiums. So the idea that it will be a straight swap – premiums for taxes – just ain’t so.
8:29 PM: “Here’s the deal” is canonical dad talk.
8:25 PM: I agree with Buttigieg on M4A, at least on the politics of it. But, man, he really has a hectoring way of explaining his position.
8:12 PM: Check out our staff live blog of the debate here.
8:08 PM: Warren and Sanders decent; Biden a bit low energy; not sure what Booker was talking about.
8:03 PM: All the points Warren and Sanders are making are spot on. But people need to be clear that the key reason why it’s not enough to leave it to the next election is that President Trump is plotting against the election itself. He’s trying to prevent a free and fair election.
We’ll be watching along with you tonight as twelve Democratic presidential contenders take the stage, and TPM’s New York team will be liveblogging our reactions. (Pretty sure the DC office is busy with the Nationals game.)
This morning I helped my older son work on a short school assignment about whether Americans should continue to celebrate Columbus Day or replace it with some holiday celebrating America’s native inhabitants. My own thoughts on this have always been muddled since we shouldn’t be wasting a national day of remembrance on Columbus even if he’d been a great guy. We have many actual Americans who should be put in or put back in the national pantheon.
The actual man Columbus had little conscious understanding of or much to do with the reign of horrors his arrival in the Caribbean rapidly brought in its wake. (The story of European colonization of America and the catastrophic demographic decline and subjugation of its native peoples is fundamentally a story of epidemic disease. Absent disease Europeans would have been equally cruel and rapacious but far less successful in their efforts.) Columbus was personally brutal enough in his treatment of the native inhabitants of Hispaniola to justify his currently awful reputation. And in any case, Columbus the man as opposed to Columbus the impact or the effect hardly matters very much since the entire issue is one of symbols and commemoration, which are matters of the contemporary world, rather than history.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is grilled by the Nashville NBC affiliate about whether he met with Rudy Giuliani when they were both in Warsaw in February. Pompeo wilts, but refuses to answer:
Before we get to the news this morning I want to thank everyone who made our TPM event in New York last night possible. First I want to thank our special guests Aditi Juneja, Waleed Shahid, Leah Greenberg and Lara Putnam. My only regret is that we didn’t videotape Aditi’s presentation and our panel on the Next Democratic Party so we could share it with members around the country who couldn’t attend in person. I felt more like an attendee than a moderator and host since I was so interested in what each had to say.
TPM’s Josh Kovensky was on the story of the money that lead to today’s indictments a month ago. A month ago. See his write up here. This is the kind of dogged, looking-around-the-corner reporting your memberships make possible. Our membership drive is critical. If you’ve been thinking about joining, please make today the day. You membership makes all the difference. Just click here.
Late Update: Our team won’t cut it out with the great pieces. Be sure to see Tierney’s report from the court house, a first look at former Rep. Pete Sessions’s (R-TX) role in the scandal, how today’s news shifts the picture of the larger Ukraine extortion story, while we’re at it who are Rudy’s business partners, and what was the pot racket they had going on the side.
We’re expecting Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman to make their first appearance in court early this afternoon.
Tierney Sneed is at the federal courthouse in Alexandria, Virginia — the same courthouse in which Paul Manafort’s trial took place. She’s not allowed a phone inside but will have updates as soon as possible.