Here’s what we’re hearing from inside the Senate Democrats meeting on the Hill.
We are on genuinely untrodden territory with a faction of House Republicans working to discredit federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies because they are investigating the President and finding damning information about him and his 2016 campaign. As you’ve likely heard, Rep. Devin Nunes, Chairman of the House intel committee had his staff write this “memo” which allegedly presents evidence of intelligence and law enforcement wrongdoing during the 2016 presidential campaign – basically “deep state” plotting against candidate Donald Trump. Read More
It’s amazing how quickly conventional wisdom can congeal. It’s even more amazing when it plays to Democrats’ habit of garment-rending and self-flagellation. This morning I read this in the lede of The Washington Post‘s Daily 202.
Seven takeaways from the failed Democratic government shutdown: The Resistance will struggle when it tries to replicate the tactics of the tea party movement. The left learned with its failed shutdown gambit that it cannot beat President Trump by copying the same playbook that the right used against Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.
Meet Brandon Griesemer, the 19 year old Michigan man who I referred to in the post below. He lives in suburban Detroit and made a series of calls to CNN headquarters in Atlanta threatening mass murder as payback for “fake news.” “Fake news. I’m coming to gun you all down. Fuck you, fuckin’ ni****rs.”
Here are the key passages from the FBI affidavit tied to his arrest. Read More
As I argued below, being in the minority is difficult. You have no power. Fights take a long time. The worst thing Democrats can do is fall into the old pattern of garment-rending and self-flagellation. But let’s look at a poll result just released about who gets the blame. It’s highly revealing on a number of levels. Read More
I have a quick favor to ask. It will take a minute or two tops. It’s very important for the site. For the next twenty-four hours we’re running our annual reader survey. If you could take a moment to fill it out I would appreciate it greatly. Again, it’s just a couple minutes and the information we get – all of which remains private and only collected in the aggregate – is key to keeping TPM thriving and moving forward. Just click here to start.
Over the course of today there was a rush of nugget-sized revelations about the Trump/Russia investigation. Overnight there was news that FBI Director Christopher Wray had threatened to resign. Then we learned that Jeff Sessions had sat for an extended interview with Robert Mueller’s investigators. A bit later we learned that James Comey was interviewed last year. None of these revelations was that big in itself. But there were enough of them (including others not mentioned here) that we put together a round up of these little pops of information just to help keep track. By the end of the day though the different nuggets began to fit together, not as a scattershot of discrete revelations but several parts of a unified whole. Read More
From Alice Ollstein’s feature this morning, this little nugget. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) defended his support for Alex Azar to head up HHS (his Senate confirmation is expected today) in light of Azar’s comments on reproductive rights issues: “Trust me, I have enough faith that the good women who work at HHS can bring some common sense to him in his thought process.” [emphasis mine]
I’ve been watching rightwing media since the late 80s. I’ve been doing it professionally for two decades. Very little surprises me. But last night on a tip I checked out a series of segments on Fox claiming new evidence of a anti-Trump “secret society” at the FBI plotting to overthrow the Trump administration. Read More