Grover Norquist and his friends at the Journal Oped page starting push this a few weeks ago: huge new tax cuts overwhelmingly for the wealthiest Americans by Presidential order. No Congress required. Can he do it? Who’s going to stop him?
Here’s a Getty Images/AFP photo of journalists and others waiting to enter the Albert V. Bryan US Courthouse in Alexandria, Virginia for the beginning of the Paul Manafort trial today. Jury selection starts today. And there’s TPM’s Tierney Sneed, our DC Investigations Desk Reporter who’s been following the ins and outs of the Manafort case since the beginning!
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As we’ve seen today, Rudy Giuliani, like his boss, says a lot of dumb or unguarded things when he speaks off the cuff. Back on July 28th of 2016 had this to say on The Mike Gallagher Show.
Remarking that if the Russian government “could get into the DNC server and be in there for one year, which they were, the DNC server is a more modern server, much better protected than the old equipment that Hillary had hanging around in the garage at home.”
…“If they could get into that DNC server, they owned her server in Poughkeepsie,” Giuliani said, although the Clinton server was located in Chappaqua, New York. “And not only did they own it, you know, but so did the Russians, possibly the Israelis, maybe a couple of our other allies. And we do the same thing, so don’t get all upset.”
We have a jury seated in the first trial of the Mueller Russia probe.
I wanted to share one more observation about Facebook and particularly how it compares to that other online behemoth, Google. As we’ve discussed, both these companies exercise various kinds of monopolistic power and anti-competitive behavior. But there’s one very big difference that is important to keep in mind as we assess their role in the 21st century cultural, informational and economic infrastructure.
Facebook has literally billions of users. Never in the history of the world has one thing had so many members or users or whatever else you want to call it. But if you set aside whatever loss would be suffered by people who want to use Facebook, Facebook could disappear tomorrow and it would have pretty little effect on the Internet as a whole. As I said, you might be bummed you can’t log on to see what your friends are doing. There would be a lot of broken “like” and “share” buttons around the web. Certain businesses, though many fewer than before, might tank because their business model was just an outgrowth of Facebook. But big picture, the Internet as we know it would be pretty much what it is today. Read More
An interesting moment in the prosecution’s opening statement in the trial of Paul Manafort: The judge in the case interrupted the prosecutor, who was going on about Manafort’s lavish lifestyle, to note that it’s not a crime to be rich and implore him to focus on the alleged crimes. Our full report from Caitlin MacNeal.
TPM is hiring a reporter to join our investigations desk. Full listing after the jump. Read More
To have have any chance of acquittal, Paul Manafort is going to have to shred the credibility of Rick Gates, his former protege and the key prosecution witness against him, and his defense team lost no time in doing so in today’s opening statement to the jury.
People frequently mock President Trump’s press strategies, or rather lack of strategies. They mock Rudy Giuliani’s floundering press appearances. Let’s put a finer point on this: I mock all of them! A lot. But recent days have seen a series of revelations that paradoxically show how relatively successful the President and his toadies have been in warning observers off more or less obvious conclusions about the President’s actions.
Consider the recent claims from Michael Cohen that President Trump knew about the Trump Tower collusion meeting in advance. Some pointed out that we shouldn’t take Michael Cohen’s apparent claims at face value. He lacks credibility. This is a massive understatement. Few people have more checks against his credibility than Cohen. Only President Trump is a more notorious liar. But an eagerness to believe the worst about President Trump isn’t the main reason many were and are inclined to believe this claim. Why would they? Because it’s really obvious that it is almost certainly true. Of course the President knew in advance. Read More
It’s always a bit hard to know what to make of polls of such wild questions. But Yahoo Finance used SurveyMonkey to poll all voters and particularly Republicans about whether or not they think it’s okay for Russia to help the Republican party in US elections. Trumpers have long been edging their way toward a “collusion is awesome” defense for some time. They’re in luck. Republicans are basically already there. Here are the numbers.
Looking toward the 2018 midterm, 11% of Republicans say it’s “appropriate” for Russia to help the GOP maintain control of Congress. Another 29% say it’s “not appropriate but wouldn’t be a big deal.” So fully 40% of Republicans, according to this poll, either think Russian election is assistance is actually great or at least aren’t going to lose any sleep over it. Read More