Watching Republicans try to spin the Russia story is both bizarre and hilarious. Here’s Steve Scalise, third-ranking Republican in the House, explaining to Wolf Blitzer that we shouldn’t just be focused on Russian election interference but also people who had their credit cards and personal information hacked.
Transcript after the jump …
A new Kaiser Family Foundation study says that 52 million Americans have conditions insurers use to deny coverage. Most of those are able to get insurance because they are part of group plans. But many do not and those people are about to become uninsurable again when the GOP Congress repeals Obamacare. They’re claiming they’ll replace it and that no one will lose what they currently have. But that’s certainly not true because they’re cutting the funding for Obamacare. Republicans are not going to pass a tax increase to fund whatever GOP replacement they finally come up with for Obamacare. So the human costs are quite here. Here’s the story.
A year as unprecedented, jaw-droppingly ridiculous and frequently horrifying as 2016 has only one proper close: TPM’s 10th annual Golden Duke Awards.
As you know, each year TPM’s toasts outlandish behavior, great feats in public corruption and abuses of the public trust and other outstanding representatives of The Crazy by awarding The Dukes, named in honor of Congressman-turned-convicted felon and inmate Randy “Duke” Cunningham. We’re seeking for your input for Dukes nominations: of all the corrupt, absurd, twisted happenings this year, what stood out to you, bigly?
Dreamers advised by immigration advocacy groups not to be traveling abroad when Trump is sworn in.
This is long ago history for a lot of people. But as long as Trump is raising the issue, let’s revisit it. Donald Trump says the US Intelligence Community got it wrong about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction. So, he reasons, it’s probably getting it wrong now about Russia tampering in the US election. This is not what happened fifteen years ago. What did happen is actually highly instructive of what we should be wary of after January 20th.
Tyler Anbinder is a specialist in nineteenth-century American politics and the history of immigration and ethnicity in American life and a professor at George Washington University. He has written books on the political crisis that led to the Civil War and the history of nineteenth-century America’s most infamous immigrant slum in Lower Manhattan, and he’ll be dropping by the Hive to talk about immigration and ethnicity in American life and politics.
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This afternoon on Fox News, in an interview with Eric Shawn, John Bolton, the expected incoming Deputy Secretary of State suggested that reports of Russia hacking intervention in the 2016 election may actually be a false flag operation. On first read it certainly appears that he is saying such an operation may have been hatched by the current administration. He does not quite say that in so many words. And I have spoken to others that suggest Bolton is speaking of another country mounting such an operation. I’m printing the transcript of the exchange in full for people to make their own judgment.
Incoming presidents usually have outsized approval ratings due to some softening of partisan division and some hope for a successful presidency. Pew just published approval ratings for the last five presidents during their transition periods, with approval a) for explaining their policies and plans and b) for their cabinet choices. They are Bush 65/59, Clinton 62/64, Bush 50/58, Obama 72/71. For Trump they are 41/40.
Trump’s administration ends up being made up of plutocrats, right wing extremists and generals. Basically, exactly what you should have expected, unless you were stupid.
You’ve probably seen this evening’s Washington Post story which reports that a secret CIA assessment, presented to a bipartisan group of Senators last week, concludes that Russia intervened in the 2016 election for the purpose of helping Donald Trump win the presidency. Let me take a slightly contrarian position on this revelation. With the obvious caveat that intelligence assessments can be wrong, this is a huge, huge deal. But it’s not a new huge deal.