When it comes to scandals, 2018 was a doozy. Between the expansive Russia probe, the near-constant cabinet secretary snafus, and a wild midterm election, it’s hard to keep track of all the muck.
And so, as we do every year, we’ve rounded up some of the best instances of corruption, stupidity and craziness for the 12th Annual Golden Duke Awards!
TPMers Allegra Kirkland and Josh Kovensky are in the courtroom in downtown Manhattan as we await word of Michael Cohen’s fate – which seems likely to be multiple years in prison. Here’s a primer on what’s coming.
We went all in yesterday on that wild Oval Office meeting with Trump, Pelosi, Schumer and a wax figure version of Vice President Pence installed in the background. Here are the top video moments in case you missed it yesterday. But TPM Reader MRK flagged something I’d missed in all the antic energy of the moment. I don’t get the sense many others caught it either. Trump always shares everything going through his head out loud and in real time. And just before letting the Pelosi/Schumer tag team bait him into saying he was eager to shut down the government and make it his personal shutdown he said out loud what his original plan has been before Pelosi got in his face and slapped him around.
I’ll let MRK explain.
My heart was racing as I watched this insane interaction in the Oval Office today. If the stakes weren’t so high, it might have been enjoyable, although as things stand, I just feel nervous about what’s going to happen once Trump feels completely cornered.
I’m glad this is finally getting some attention and sorry I hadn’t gotten on it earlier. The AP ran a piece yesterday about how Jared and Ivanka stand to profit from a wildly sleazy developer tax credit they pushed in the big tax cut bill last year. They’re called Qualified Opportunity Zones. And they create huge – and I mean huge – potential tax shelters for extremely wealthy people, especially those who play in the real estate game. Read More
It made a big, big stir yesterday when the Manhattan US Attorney’s announced yesterday that the parent company of The National Enquirer, AMI, had entered a non-prosecution agreement with prosecutors. AMI agreed that the Daniels and McDougal payments were meant to protect Trump’s campaign. I’m less impressed than others that this dramatically raises the legal stakes for Trump: AMI and Cohen vs Trump rather than Cohen vs Trump. This will never be a conventional trial, whether it’s in a courtroom or in the court of public opinion. More interesting to me is what else AMI revealed. Read More
In apparent fit over new legal woes, President Trump cancels annual White House holiday party for the press.
Yesterday’s news is a good reminder of a fundamental point drawing together all unfolding scandals: The Trump campaign, like its parent organization the Trump Organization, was fabulously corrupt. That limitless, flagrant and ravenous corruption made it ripe for compromise, subversion and control by foreign actors.
Tierney Sneed spent the morning at the D.C. federal courthouse looking into a sealed case that many reporters covering the Russia probe believe is related to Mueller’s work. She writes about her sleuthing for Prime members.
I didn’t want to write about The Weekly Standard’s closing until it was official. I was hoping that an angel would descend from the heavens, but it seems that the magazine’s owner, who was eager for the subscriber list for a magazine version of the Washington Examiner, did not want to sell. You ask: Why should I – whose disagreements with the Standard’s editorial stances would fill a short book – care? It has to do with the valuable role that opinion magazines like The Weekly Standard have played in American politics.
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