Let me share a few thoughts on the Comey testimony.
First, for all the build-up, for all the drama, it was perhaps somewhat less earth-shattering than some imagined. I think that was largely because Comey covered most of the key points in his prepared testimony. That storm hit yesterday afternoon, dissipating some of today’s drama.
One of the least remarked upon – but I think most significant – parts of James Comey’s testimony yesterday was about the nature of the assurance he gave President Trump about whether he was the subject of the investigation. I think it sheds some important light on the nature of the investigation and – I suspect – why Comey was reluctant to make it public. Read More
John Judis interviews Dani Rodrik: What’s Wrong with Our System of Global Trade and Finance?
There’s a very interesting article published this morning about Michael Cohen in Buzzfeed. Like many articles on Cohen, Trump, Russia and related matters, it’s a bit of a jigsaw piece. There’s a lot of information the full import of which is hard to make sense of without knowing a lot of other information about broader story.
Let’s review a few points. Read More
I’ve never lived through a political period like this one. Even Richard Nixon’s second term had its intermissions, but the Trump presidency hurtles from one self-inflicted crisis to another. The result is that many pressing issues get overshadowed – from the fate of Obamacare (upon which the health coverage of 20 million or more rest) to continuing instability of the global economy, which suffers from huge trade imbalances and the unregulated flow of finance.
We are finishing up the first week of our annual Prime membership sign up drive. As I’ve told you, it’s a very important part of our future as a publication. Yet the rush of news over the last week has made it actually fairly difficult for me to find moments to hassle you to sign up in the Editors’ Blog. It’s reasonable to say that Donald Trump has taken positive acts to obstruct the progress of our membership drive. With that context, if you haven’t yet subscribed to TPM, I would ask you to do so now. Yes, pulling out your wallet and typing in credit card information is a hassle. I always want to put it off too. But really, think of the context and please take a moment and sign up now.
We got such a good response to the revised Trump Family Coat of Arms we debuted on May 30th that the TPM design team prepared a new Kushner Family Coat of Arms, remaining true to heraldic traditions while also incorporating key aspects of the traditions and history of the Kushner family.
See it after the jump …
In an otherwise off the wall press conference today with the President Iohannis of Romania, President Trump agreed, after more hemming and hawing, to pledge his support for Article #5 of the North Atlantic Treaty – the essential provision which commits each member of NATO to the common defense of all. But there was another part of Trump’s comments which I’ve seen less mention of. Trump said not only that NATO members must get to the 2 percent of GDP expenditure on defense goal, which itself was only recently agreed to. He suggested that countries not spending 2 percent of GDP might have to pay the US back for previous underpayment.
Here’s the key passage … Read More
Back in early March, when Attorney General Jeff Sessions first recused himself from the Russia investigation, I noted that it was an example of something that is peculiar to big political scandals. Certainly at the start, it is all but impossible to judge their full scope and detail. We don’t know enough. But often we can infer the depth and scope of big scandals by the intensity of the gravitation that surrounds them.
That was my first thought when Sessions meetings and recusal hit the news in early March. I have a very low view of Jeff Sessions. But it never occurred to me he was tied up, even in the sense of possibly inconsequential meetings, with the Russia story.
Now we have more. Possibly a lot more. Let’s take a moment to go through it. Read More
We’ve seen a lot of attention today to President Trump’s lawyer declining to rule out the President firing Special Counsel Robert Mueller. The bigger news is the lawyer himself, Jay Sekulow. Read More