There is a very short Daily Beast article that is making the rounds. The headline reads: “Obama Warns New House Dems That Liberal Policies Like the Green New Deal Are Very Expensive.” A funny thing happens if you read the article instead of just the headline.
The Daily Beast has a good run down of internal angst in the Republican Party over Trump’s decision to push for full repeal of Obamacare. On the face of it, this seems like a self-defeating decision, one made in the face of opposition from members of Trump’s own cabinet. After all, opposition to previous efforts to repeal Obamacare fuelled mass protests that roiled Trump’s presidency and were a major factor in the Democrats retaking the House in the midterms. Read More
Let’s start with some military strategy. In the late 19th and early 20th century, German military strategy, influenced by the work of the historian Hans Delbrück, became obsessed with the distinction between Ermattungsstrategie (exhausting strategy or more loosely attrition strategy) and Niederwerfungsstrategie (knockout strategy). This distinction played itself out in history with the German military repeatedly trying to win knock-out wars (famously in the blitzkriegs of World War II) but finding itself bogged down in wars of attrition (in the trench warfare of the Great War and the slaughter-house of the Eastern Front in World War II). This is far outside my field of expertise but it could be that being so oriented to a knockout war made the Germany army less adept at wars of attrition.
First, I want to thank Jeet Heer for filling in for me while I was away. Thank you as well to our New York and DC teams. I would call out specific highlights. But I made an especial effort to wall myself off from everything tied to my cacophonous news life while I was away. My comments on the Mueller Report were a brief exception given what seemed to me the unique nature of the news.
In any case, it’s clear we are in the midst of a massive bum’s rush spearheaded by what should be the notorious Barr letter. I explained some of what seem to me the details here. Others here at TPM and elsewhere have too. We have a letter written by an AG specifically appointed to clean up if not cover up the Mueller findings. It gives the President a clean bill of health based on a narrow claim that there was insufficient evidence to establish a crime in the Trump campaign’s dealings with Russia. Because of this, per Barr’s argument, the idea that Trump could have obstructed Justice in the course of his cover-up was all but a legal impossibility. Read More
We’ve just received reports that the Mueller Report runs over 300 pages. (Note that this likely does not include underlying evidence produced in the investigation.) A rule of thumb is that a single spaced page includes roughly 500 words; double spaced about 250. Let’s split the different and say 375 words per page and let’s assume it’s only 300 pages. That comes out to 112,500 words, a decent sized non-fiction book. Just now I scanned through the Barr Letter and from what I can tell it includes 65 words from the report. In other words, we have currently seen .057% of the Mueller Report.
Note: There’s a footnote which may include an additional 15 words. This will amount to a game-changing .07% of the report we’ve seen.
Late Update Two: Now CNN reports it’s 300-400 pages “not counting exhibits”. So this thing is frigging long. And all we have is between 65 and 80 words.
A former federal prosecutor has some thoughts on the Barr Gambit …
A few thoughts on the Barr Gambit, which I think will go down as a singular achievement in the annals of intellectual dishonesty and bad faith legal jujitsu:
1. It is undisputed that the Russian government brazenly interfered in the 2016 election to support Donald Trump. In so doing, the Russians and those acting on their behalf committed a variety of federal crimes including computer hacking and conspiracy to defraud the U.S. Those crimes were committed to benefit (a) Vladimir Putin and the interests of the Russian government; and (b) Donald J. Trump. It is also undisputed that Trump and his campaign joyfully used and weaponized the information the Russians stole against Hillary Clinton. Trump personally trumpeted the Wikileaks disclosures 141 times during the campaign, and his surrogates countless more times. While Mueller’s team apparently “did not establish” (i.e., did not find enough evidence to charge criminally) that Trump personally conspired with the Russian government to commit the underlying crimes, there is no question that he was (along with Putin) the single biggest beneficiary of those criminal efforts.
TPM Reader PB flags how back in 2017 Betsy DeVos had a slightly different take on the Special Olympics. “I am proud to stand beside you as a partner in support of Special Olympics and its Unified Champion Schools, an important program that promotes leadership and empowers students to be agents of change.”
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Fascinating little nugget. As we’ve noted at various points, the results of the counter-intelligence part of probe is if anything more important that the criminal part of it. It goes into potential compromise or what influence Russia might have over the President or members of his entourage. Politico reporters went to ask House Republicans today what they expected from that part of the report, which the FBI says it is ready to brief Congress on. Turns out they’re not really interested weirdly enough! Read More
TPM Reader RS called Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner and it looks like Jim’s going a bit wobbly on his resolution vote. RS asked if Sensenbrenner still supported immediately release of the report to Congress.
I called Jim Sensenbrenner’s office. They simply pointed to his statement he made on March 24. The gentleman read me the statement over the phone and I said that doesn’t address the issue or releasing the report and he said “yes it does. He said he looks forward to reading the entire report and that the top line summary is a vindication.”
You can call your Rep too.
Members of the House get creative in these situations. TPM Reader JR called Rep. Rodney Davis’s office to see if he still supported the immediate release of the full Mueller Report. Davis’s office refused to answer whether Davis had changed his position because there’s no second resolution, which of course makes no sense. Read More