Fascinating update on the mystery of just where Jeffrey Epstein got all his money in this new report from the Times. The gist is that the entire fortune, the whole spectacle, may stem from (and perhaps may not go beyond) somehow brainwashing or casting a spell over a single billionaire.
Democrats are wedging open the door on impeachment in legal escalation on grand jury testimony.
On CNN and NBC this morning, Reps. Schiff and Nadler addressed where the Democrats are on impeachment.
This quick exchange with Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) and Chuck Todd on Meet the Press is a good illustration of how the GOP is now a thoroughly Trumpist party.
US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman sat in on Israel’s weekly cabinet meeting today. Completely unprecedented. Not just in Israel. I’m curious whether a foreign ambassador has ever sat in on a cabinet meeting in any country ever.
Chris Wallace stands out like a sore thumb at Fox News simply because he’s a journalist. But he frequently exceeds that lowish bar. Watch this exchange with acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney about the attacks on Rep. Cummings.
"I'm not reading between the lines, I'm reading the lines." pic.twitter.com/mVXsuxw9HO
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) July 28, 2019
According to Axios and The New York Times, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats will be stepping down shortly and he’s likely to be replaced by Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-TX), one of the most aggressive GOP questioners at the Mueller hearing. In advance of last week’s hearings, news reports suggested that Ratcliffe was under consideration for the position. He’s an arch conservative, diehard Trump loyalist and critic of the Mueller probe. He would oversee that entire US Intelligence community. You can see a portion of Ratcliffe’s Q&A with Mueller below.
Sen. Kamala Harris has a revised Medicare for All plan out today. (She describes it in this Medium post.) Depending on your perspective it either tries to split the difference or come up with a creative compromise between the candidates with various “build on Obamacare/public option” type plans and those embracing Medicare for All. Stepping back we can see that this dance – which Harris struggled most to find a position on – stems from the fact that first in 2017 and then again in 2019 most of the top tier presidential candidates were bamboozled into adopting a plan which they were told was widely popular but which in fact clear majorities of the population oppose – and perhaps oppose quite intensely.
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I’d never heard of her before. She’s a business partner of Art Laffer and Stephen Moore and for the last couple decades she’s been an under-the-radar social safety grim reaper hired by one GOP governor after another to tack state budgets hard to the right and cut spending on basically everything while blocking any next taxes. Illinois, Florida, California, New York and now Alaska amidst other states. Meet Donna Arduin.