I can’t help wondering if the Trump Administration’s “negotiations” with the Speaker of the House are real and good-faith, or whether they’re some kind of theater and posturing.
The thing is — Kevin McCarthy can’t negotiate on behalf of the House, and everyone knows it. In this regard, the situation is exactly analogous with 2011, when John Boehner was negotiating with the White House, made a deal, but then couldn’t get the rest of the House to support it (IIRC he got shivved by his deputy, Eric Cantor, who then hilariously lost a primary challenge a year or two later). In 2011 a lot of people didn’t understand the dynamic, but in 2023 I’m pretty sure everyone does.
We established long ago that my, shall we say imperfect, political instincts are high on the list of reasons why a career in politics was never in the cards for me. Nevertheless I’m not always wrong (e.g., broken clock / twice a day).
You also know that I’ve been a supporter of Joe Biden since the 2020 Dem primaries, and remain a supporter today. No one’s right all the time (though some insist, absurdly and laughably, that they are), but Biden has been doing a pretty good job of getting the job done despite the fact that he doesn’t seem to get much love (or, more importantly, political credit) from voters for it. If he’s calling it a “negotiation”, then so it is, as you pointed out this morning, while noting that in a negotiation you give something in the expectation of getting something. I believe that Joe Biden understands the MAGA House GOP and the weakness of the Speaker perfectly, and has zero illusions about the House GOP’s intention (not willingness: intention) to cause chaos (Trumpism 101: If you can create chaos, create chaos: it drives your enemies crazy, and while they’re busy trying to fix what you just broke, you’re working on the next phase of your treason).
I don’t think elected Democrats, especially tenured ones, realize how fucking disheartening it is to voters that they never fight especially over the debt limit which everyone knew was going to be a problem and once again our only strategy is to concede.
This probably doesn’t require much saying. But I think we need to say it anyway in the context of the low-energy but still petulant “Durham Report.” Trump diehards like Durham and most Republicans have now spent years claiming that the Trump/Russia investigation was some kind of Deep State plot or “collusion” between the FBI, the Clinton campaign and the Obama administration. The kinder, gentler version of this attack is that the FBI, whatever its motives, never should have opened an investigation in the first place.
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.
Bill Barr’s Trusty Stooge
Special Counsel John Durham got spun so many different ways by Bill Barr that by the time he released his 300-plus-page final report yesterday – after a four-year investigation that stretched longer than the Mueller investigation he was investigating – his reputation, dignity, and sense of proportion had all disappeared.
The problem with trying to hold Durham to account on the facts now is that it requires extensive knowledge of events that are now creeping from current affairs into the historical past: the run-up to the 2016 election, Russia’s meddling in the election, Trump’s many misdeeds in this arena before and after his inauguration, the Mueller investigation, the origins of the Durham probe, the many bogus conspiracy theories that gave rise to the Durham probe and that it unselfconsciously helped to reinforce.
It’s a lot.
I’ve followed it all closely for years, but I can’t keep it all in my head. You probably can’t either. Neither can most journalists or policymakers. And therein lies much of the disadvantage that misinformation thrives on. It was easy for bad-faith, conspiracy-minded MAGA supporters to hold up Durham’s tome yesterday and declare that it showed exactly what they said all along, even though it didn’t.
But let me zero in on what I think is the most glaring example of Durham’s bad faith, Bill Barr’s ratfuckery, and the politicization of the Justice Department under Trump.
The Big Missing Piece
Back in January, the New York Times did a commendable, ground-breaking bit of reporting on the Durham probe. Times reporter Charlie Savage more than any other mainstream report has had a very clear-eyed view of Durham and his mess of an investigation. One of the bombshells from that report was that Durham’s remit had secretly expanded to include an allegation of wrongdoing against Trump:
Mr. Barr and Mr. Durham never disclosed that their inquiry expanded in the fall of 2019, based on a tip from Italian officials, to include a criminal investigation into suspicious financial dealings related to Mr. Trump. The specifics of the tip and how they handled the investigation remain unclear, but Mr. Durham brought no charges over it.
The guy investigating the investigators it turns out was also investigating the target of the original investigators. Big news!
But what does Durham’s final report, which under the rules and regs is supposed to explain his decisions to prosecute and to decline to prosecute, say about the Italian tip about Trump financial dealings, about his actions or decisions in that matter, about the ultimate conclusions he reached?
… Italian officials unexpectedly gave Mr. Barr and Mr. Durham a tip about suspected financial crimes linked to Mr. Trump. While the tip was unrelated to the Russia investigation, Mr. Barr had Mr. Durham investigate the matter rather than referring it to another prosecutor. Mr. Durham brought no charges.
Mr. Durham’s report did not mention any of those matters.
It looks all the world like Bill Barr used John Durham to bury an allegation of wrongdoing against then-President Trump. And it worked.
Wanna Go Deeper On Durham?
Marcy Wheeler is the encyclopedia of all things John Durham.
TPM’s Hunter Walker was on MSNBC last night talking about his big scoop:
RIP Public Higher Ed In Florida
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signs into law new bans on DEI in public universities and on curricula that includes, how to put it, any critical analysis of U.S. history.
DeSantis Kowtows To the Big Lie
When you want to take on Trump, but you can’t confront the Big Lie:
REPORTER: Do you acknowledge that Trump lost and there wasn't all this fraud he talks about?
Seven weeks after the Covenant School shooting in Nashville, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee (R) signed a bill expanding the civil immunity enjoyed by the dealers, manufacturers and sellers of guns and ammunition.
Virginia Man Charged In Attack On Connolly’s District Office
A Virginia man whose father says he suffers from schizophrenia allegedly attacked two staffers in the district office of Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA) with a metal baseball bat. Xuan Kha Tran Pham, 49, was charged with one count of aggravated malicious wounding and one count of malicious wounding in the suburban DC attack. There doesn’t appear to be any particular political motivation for the attack. “I think we are talking about real mental illness,” Connolly said.
Premature Interjection
Atlanta DA Fani Willis is asking a court to dismiss former President Donald Trump’s pre-indictment nonsense as premature and legally insufficient.
As the President and congressional leaders convene this afternoon at the White House, the state of play in the debt-ceiling hostage-taking is still pretty muddled:
Punchbowl: “This comes after a week of talks involving top Hill aides and White House officials. While both sides said the staff-level discussions were productive, they only served to reinforce the main problem in the stalemate so far — the principals haven’t given any ground yet because they haven’t been involved in the talks.”
Politico: “The emerging outline of a debt limit deal between Biden and House Republicans has fed growing dismay among progressive Democrats over the White House’s negotiating strategy — and raised fears that a president who once dared Republicans to test his resolve is preparing to give on a host of GOP demands to make the issue go away.”
For what it’s worth, nothing that’s been reported so far looks like the actual contours of a deal that will win agreement from both sides. Stay tuned.
It’s too early to say definitely. But initial indications suggest the assailant in the bat attack on Rep. Gerry Connolly’s (D-VA) office staff is a person who suffers from schizophrenia and who stopped taking his medication months ago and has been in a downward spiral since. Two staffers were hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries after being struck with a metal bat.
Connolly suggested mental illness was at the root of the attack rather than a specific grievance or political motivation. CNN interviewed accused assailant Xuan Kha Tran Pham’s father whose account mirrored Connolly’s. “He is in a really bad condition,” said the father. “All day and all night, he mumbles … he talks and looks like he talks with someone in his brain, and suddenly, he is shouting angrily.”
John Durham, the special counsel who has spent five years on a bogus search for wrongdoing in the Trump-Russia investigation, released his report this afternoon.
As we watch the unfolding fiasco of the debt ceiling standoff, now, in fact, a negotiation and a source of gnashing of teeth down through the ages, there’s an additional point and question I wanted to address. Over recent days I’ve had a large volume of emails asking pretty close to the same question: “Josh, can you remind me why the Democrats made the decision not to raise the debt ceiling at the end of the last Congress? I can’t understand why they decided not to do it when they had the chance.”
First, the tl;dr version: That’s not what happened.
Let me preface all this by saying I take a backseat to no one in opposition to the whole clearly anachronistic and unconstitutional debt limit regime. I was banging the drums about the absolute need for the Democrats to do just this — raise the debt limit during the lame duck session last fall and winter — at the time. In fact, there’s a video I’m about to link where I talked to a couple true experts about this last fall.
Two staff members at Rep. Gerry Connolly’s (D-VA) district office in Fairfax were attacked by a person armed with a baseball bat on Monday, according to a statement released by the congressman.
