Here’s a morsel of news that shows you how far we’ve come over the last eight years. Donald Trump made a heavy play for the crypto world in the last campaign, promising to be a “crypto president” and courting donors in that space. He’s now in talks to buy (through the parent company of Truth Social) the crypto trading firm Bakkt. This comes after he already founded his own new crypto venture, World Liberty Financial. Bakkt was formerly led by former appointed Sen. Kelly Loeffler, who was later defeated by Sen. Raphael Warnock. This was when Loeffler was an executive at Atlanta-based Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), the parent company of The New York Stock Exchange. Loeffler’s husband Jeff Sprecher is ICE’s CEO. Both Loeffler and Sprecher remain major backers and financial supporters of Donald Trump.
No Podcast Today (11/20)
Due to scheduling conflicts, the newest episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast will be released Thursday. We’ll be back to our regular schedule next week just in time for Thanksgiving!
Looks More And More Like Trump Will Fire FBI Director He Appointed In 2017
As my colleague David Kurtz explained in Monday’s Morning Memo, it would be a massive break from precedent for Donald Trump to come into office with plans to replace the FBI director, a position that’s given a 10-year term specifically to inoculate against partisan politics seeping into the bureau’s operations.
But it is increasingly looking like Trump will do just that.
Continue reading “Looks More And More Like Trump Will Fire FBI Director He Appointed In 2017”Bragg Signals He Wants To Keep Hush Money Case Alive Until Trump Leaves Office
Prosecutors with the Manhattan DA’s office made clear in a Tuesday letter: they want to see Donald Trump sentenced over the hush money scheme, even if means waiting until he leaves the White House.
Continue reading “Bragg Signals He Wants To Keep Hush Money Case Alive Until Trump Leaves Office”Kari Lake Quietly Settles Defamation Lawsuit And Accepts Defeat In Wake Of Trump Win
Kari Lake, who has been one of the most prominent faces of the “Stop the Steal” movement the last four years, has been uncharacteristically quiet about her recent Senate race loss.
Continue reading “Kari Lake Quietly Settles Defamation Lawsuit And Accepts Defeat In Wake Of Trump Win”Miscellaneous Thoughts on a Democratic Path Forward
Because these thoughts are provisional and in process, I’ve decided to package them seriatim, as a list of ideas, possibilities, counters and so forth.
- One of the shortfalls of the recriminationfests that come after a big political defeat is that the people getting the most attention are usually those shouting loudest and making the most totalizing claims. But there are important caveats and qualifiers to keep in mind. One is that anything obvious, sure-fire and without real costs would have been tried already. There’s no silver-bullet solution. This is just common sense, perhaps even conventional wisdom. At worst, it can be used to stifle new thinking or taking new chances. That’s another important pitfall. But it’s still true.
No GOP Senators Have Been Bold Enough To Outright Oppose Gaetz For AG
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
Trump’s Win-Win On Gaetz
The way Donald Trump sees it, his demand that Senate Republicans either humiliate themselves by confirming his abominable choice of Matt Gaetz for attorney general or walk the plank in rejecting the nomination is a win-win either way.
Trump has been telling confidants that he thinks Gaetz’s prospects of Senate confirmation are less than 50-50, the NYT reports, but he’s pushing ahead with the nomination anyway for strategic reasons: “He is making calls on Mr. Gaetz’s behalf, and he remains confident that even if Mr. Gaetz does not make it, the standard for an acceptable candidate will have shifted so much that the Senate may simply approve his other nominees who have appalled much of Washington.”
While some GOP senators are privately urging Trump to ditch Gaetz, many of them continue to demur on the nomination in public, with none of them being bold enough to publicly oppose it outright yet. Many Senate Republicans are taking the posture of a supplicant toward Trump: Please don’t do this to us.
“Numerous GOP members have indicated to Trump and his team that they believe Gaetz has little chance of being confirmed, according to multiple Senate Republican and Trump world sources,” Playbook reported. “And they’re privately hoping Trump doesn’t make them walk the plank.”
The unreleased House Ethics Committee report on Gaetz allegedly having sex with a minor and using illicit drugs remains the wild card that could tip the nomination.
The Gory Details
Joel Leppard, a lawyer representing two women who told the House Ethics Committee that then-Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) paid them for sex, made the media rounds yesterday:
- “A woman testified to the House Ethics Committee that former congressman Matt Gaetz paid her for sex and that she witnessed President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for attorney general having sex with a 17-year-old at a party, her lawyer said over the weekend.”–WaPo
- “Two women testified to the House Ethics Committee that they were paid for “sexual favors” by former Rep. Matt Gaetz, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for attorney general, a lawyer for the two women told CNN’s Erin Burnett on Monday.”–CNN
- “Donald Trump’s nominee for attorney general, former Rep. Matt Gaetz, allegedly paid for two women in 2019 to travel to New York to have sex, watch his appearance on Fox News, and attend the Broadway show ‘Pretty Woman,’ an attorney for the women told ABC News.” –ABC News
Trump Is Receiving Intel Briefings Again
“President-elect Donald Trump, the only former president to have been charged with mishandling classified information, has begun receiving intelligence briefings, U.S. officials said.”–WaPo
Trump Re-Ups Threat To Use Military Domestically
- “President-elect Donald J. Trump confirmed on Monday that he intended to declare a national emergency and use the U.S. military in some form to assist in his plans for mass deportations of undocumented immigrants.”–NYT
- “Using the military domestically — absent any crisis remotely needed to prompt or justify such a move — would break with centuries of practice in the United States, giving a President who has promised to deploy troops against the ‘enemy from within’ the most powerful, and potentially unconstrained, tool in the federal arsenal.”–TPM’s Josh Kovensky
- “Such a sprawling campaign – and the use of military personnel to carry it out – is almost certain to draw legal challenges and pushback from Democratic leaders, some of whom have already said they would refuse to cooperate with Trump’s deportation agenda.”–The Guardian
The Trump II Clown Show
- FBI: If Trump corruptly fires FBI Director Chris Wray, the leading contenders for the post are MAGA minion Kash Patel and former Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI).
- DNI: How Tulsi Gabbard Became a Favorite of Russia’s State Media–NYT
- DOT: Trump picks realty TV star turned congressman turned Fox Business host Sean Duffy for Transportation secretary.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“To be as clear as I can be, the second Trump administration with Elon Musk embedded within it represents the most direct and sustained threat to the First Amendment and the freedom of the press any of us will ever experience.”–Nilay Patel, editor-in-chief of The Verge
The Grift
- WaPo: Trump tried to limit financial conflicts in 2017. This time could be different.
- WSJ: Donald Trump Jr. Goes All-In on the Anti-Woke Economy
For Your Radar …
- New York: “Manhattan prosecutors face a Tuesday deadline to tell a judge how they want to proceed with Donald Trump’s 34-felony convictions hush money case now that he is the president-elect.”–WaPo
- Texas: “Education officials are expected to vote this week on whether to approve a new elementary-school curriculum that infuses teachings on the Bible into reading and language arts lessons.”–NYT
- DC: “House Ethics Committee members are set to meet privately Wednesday as debate rages over whether the panel should release its report on its investigation into former Rep. Matt Gaetz.”–Politico
PA-Sen: Court Ruling Hobbles Casey’s Already-Slim Chances
“The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled Monday that election officials must abide by an earlier decision and stop counting mail-in ballots that were invalidated because of an incorrect date on the outer envelope — a major victory for Republican Senate candidate David McCormick, who holds a narrow lead over Democratic Sen. Bob Casey ahead of a statewide recount.”–WaPo
An Abortion Rights Win In Wyoming
“A state judge on Monday struck down Wyoming’s overall ban on abortion and its first-in-the-nation explicit prohibition on the use of medication to end pregnancy.”–CNN
Just Mean
With Rep.-elect Sarah McBride (D-DE) set to become the first openly transgender member of Congress, Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) plans to introduce a resolution banning transgender women from women’s bathrooms in the Capitol. “Asked if she planned to talk to McBride, Mace said: ‘No, Sarah McBride doesn’t get a say,'” Politico reported.
DOJ To Strike At Core Of Google Monopoly
“Top Justice Department antitrust officials have decided to ask a judge to force Alphabet Inc.’s Google to sell off its Chrome browser in what would be a historic crackdown on one of the world’s biggest tech companies.”–Bloomberg
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Prep Work Begins To Take From The Poor, Give To The Rich
As the Trump II administration has taken shape over the past two weeks — in the form of haphazard nominations via Truth Social posts — and as policy proposals once cloaked in the shadows of Project 2025 make their way into the sunlight, we’re starting to get a picture of which vulnerable segments of the population will suffer first.
Immigrants will, unsurprisingly, be an early target of a second Trump administration and their congressional allies. Lower-income people, we’re learning, will be as well.
Continue reading “Prep Work Begins To Take From The Poor, Give To The Rich”Were The American Rescue Plan and the IRA Political Failures?
I’ve written in general against post-election recriminations since November 5th. This post may seem like one such recrimination on the surface. But I think if you bear with me, you’ll see that it’s really not. I should be clear, too, that being anti-recriminations, whatever that might mean, doesn’t or shouldn’t mean people shouldn’t try to figure out what was done right or wrong, criticize whoever needs to be criticized. Of course they should. What it means to me at least is that in the desolation of a really, really hard defeat, a very consequential one, people shouldn’t rush in to take shots at the folks they’ve always had it in for, using the devastation less as a wound to overcome than an opportunity for the old score-settling.
So here’s the issue I want to discuss.
Until his campaign began to come undone this last summer, it was widely understood and accepted among Democrats that Joe Biden, to the surprise of many, was the most progressive Democratic president, with the most consequential progressive legislative agenda, in at least half a century. This was widely believed because it was unquestionably true. Because of a series of decisions by both Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders, Biden ended up governing with a trimmed down version of the legislative agenda of the progressive left. What counts here as “trimmed down” is obviously a pretty critical question. There was no Medicare for All. But on lots of policy and regulatory positions, the left’s agenda was Biden’s. This isn’t just me saying this. Ask Bernie Sanders, or at least ask him until a week ago. The point I’m making here really isn’t open to much debate.
Continue reading “Were The American Rescue Plan and the IRA Political Failures?”Trump Reminds Everyone: He Wants US Soldiers in US Streets
At 4:03 a.m. ET, the President-elect was online. He was thinking about “military assets” and mass deportations.
Continue reading “Trump Reminds Everyone: He Wants US Soldiers in US Streets”