In the last week of France’s presidential election, posters sprung up picturing Marine Le Pen with Donald Trump’s hairdo. The message was clear. Saying “yes” to Le Pen was saying “yes” to Trump. Ads also ran advising voters “ne vous Trumpez pas,” a pun on the verb “tromper” meaning “do not deceive yourself.” My suspicion is that Trump’s election did hurt Le Pen. I haven’t found any evidence from polling, but there is a telling succession of events that suggests a negative Trump effect.
In cas you missed it over the weekend, I discussed those two new Trump/Russia stories and why they’re so scared about Mike Flynn.
As you know, we now have a roiling, renewed debate over whether a mix of Russian hacking and James Comey’s final week intervention in the November election shifted the balance in Donald Trump’s favor. Even more, it’s a public debate over whether Hillary Clinton should keep claiming this is so or just, in one side’s view, own up to her failed campaign and stop making excuses. Plenty of others have argued this case on the merits, particularly Nate Silver looking at Comey’s intervention and its effect on polls in the final week of the campaign. Others have delved into psychological analyses.
But I want to make a different point. Read More
You’ve probably heard that the Kushner family was caught over the weekend literally selling visas to immigrate to the United States in exchange for funding a $150 million dollar New Jersey real estate project. The sale itself is actually legal. It’s part of a highly controversial and widely abused program which provides visas to foreign nationals in exchange for $500,000 investments in US projects which by certain standards are judged to create jobs in impoverished or economically distressed parts of the United States. It’s become a widely abused vehicle for real estate developers looking to fund luxury development projects. Read More
The Senate testimony of the former acting attorney general with a key role in unraveling the Michael Flynn affair is about to begin.
We are currently watching the Yates/Clapper Senate hearing. A key question in all these questions is why Flynn remained in office for some three weeks after these notifications from the Department of Justice. That’s a long time, given the centrality of Flynn’s role as National Security Advisor. But eventually it did happen. Read More
Well, that interview went terribly. Tea Party Rep. Rob Blum (R) of Iowa was sitting down for an interview with a local TV station, surrounded by a bunch of grade school children there to serve as props. The interviewer asked him some really not terribly hard or aggressive questions and Blum got up and walked out. It may be overstating it to say he freaked out on the interview. But it wouldn’t be overstating it by much. He really kind of went off. And all in front of these bewildered school kids.
This is highly disturbing.
In his recent testimony about his decision to send the notorious October 2016 letter to Clinton Congress, FBI Director James Comey painted a dramatic picture of the facts of the case and Huma Abedin’s actions. Altogether it was meant to demonstrate that Comey had little choice but to take action and ultimately send his public letter to Congress.
But it turns out what Comey said wasn’t true and the FBI knows it. Read More
Before I say more about Rep. Rod Blum and his performance yesterday when he stormed out of an interview in Dubuque after what were really the mildest questions, I wanted to give you an example of how much we rely on our readers and how simply awesome they are. Read More
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