Bridget Kelly, former deputy chief of staff to Gov. Chris Christie now on trial for her role in Bridgegate, says yes Christie knew all about the scheme.
Remember, Christie got the State of New Jersey to spend millions of dollars on an investigation, run by his own lawyer, which exonerated him.
Yesterday I was looking back through the progression of events with the at-first-suspected and now confirmed (according to the US government, at least) Russian meddling in the 2016 US election. It starts in June with a report that a private security firm (Crowdstrike) had concluded that a hack of the Democratic National Committee’s email servers had emerged out of Russia. (Go back and you’ll see an early theory was that they were stealing anti-Trump oppo with the intention of giving it to Trump.) It escalated in July with the first Wikileaks release of hacked DNC emails. And it’s gone on from there, with more releases of emails, an increasingly Trump-aligned Wikileaks and less and less active denials from Russia that its security services are behind the leaks.
There’s a story flying around the web claiming that either one of the main reasons or the main reason for sharply lower NFL ratings this year is because of opposition to protests by Colin Kaepernick and others. The numbers go back to a Yahoo/YouGov poll which found that 29% of self-identified NFL fans were watching few games this year. The reasons they gave were 1) time watching the election (17%), lost interest (28%), lack of opportunity (31%), Kaepernick protest (40%).
Great piece oh how Trump’s final meltdown may foil the GOP’s efforts to get out of decades old restrictions tied to attempts to intimidate and suppression African-American voting over 30 years ago. Check it out.
A lot of Democrats would prefer someone younger and a bit more progressive than Judge Merrick Garland on the Supreme Court. If Hillary Clinton is elected President and she has a Senate majority, I suspect they’ll get that. Now Sen. Jeff Flake says he’s encouraging his colleagues to confirm Garland in the lame duck session of Congress if Clinton is elected. That could set up a very paradoxical situation in which Senate Republicans are suddenly Garland’s gung-ho-est supporters.
It’s amazing to see a whole new generation learning about the opportunistic bs of Betsy McCaughey. Folks in this cycle know her as the one who says you can’t oppose sexual assault if you like Beyoncé. But Betsy’s been around forever as a person who uses dubious professional credentials to get behind all manner of straight up lies.
Charlotte Fryar, author of a TPM longform piece about Frank Porter Graham and the political climate of N.C. (a crucial swing state), is joining Prime members in the Hive on 10/25 to discuss Graham, N.C. politics, and her views on how the election will go in the Tar Heel State. This conversation will be moderated by TPM — get in your questions here before 1 p.m. next Tuesday.
It’s October 20 and the PollTracker Average stands at Clinton 47.1 percent, Trump 43.1 percent, a four percentage-point spread
The TPM Electoral Scoreboard stands at Clinton 323, Trump 161. Evan McMullin is leading in Utah, worth six electoral votes. Alaska, Arizona, Ohio and Georgia are in the Toss Up category.