People in the room were stunned

Apr 11th, 2018 11:14 am | By

Well this should be interesting. (I suppose Trump will start shelling Syria at 9:55 Eastern on Sunday night.) Stephanopoulos sits down for a heart to heart with Comey. A source who was there says it’s going to shock King Donald.

The source said Comey’s comments, in his first interview since being fired by President Trump last May, will generate headlines and “certainly add more meat to the charges swirling around Trump.”

  • In an ABC promo, Stephanopoulos says Comey compared Trump to a mob boss.

According to the source:

  • The Comey interview left people in the room stunned — he told George things that he’s never said before.
  • Some described the experience as surreal. The question will be how
… Read the rest

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Recused

Apr 11th, 2018 10:38 am | By

Ah, that US Attorney for NY who recused himself is the one Trump weirdly interviewed last fall; I’d forgotten about that.

ABC News reported Tuesday that Geoffrey Berman, the interim US attorney for the Southern District of New York, recused himself from the investigation into Trump’s longtime personal lawyer, Michael Cohen.

Two sources told ABC News that Berman was not involved in the decision to raid Cohen’s office and residences on Monday because of that recusal, which Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein approved.

Other attorneys in the Southern District handled the FBI raid, which a federal judge approved, ABC News said.

It’s unlikely that Trump had such a situation in mind when he made the eyebrow-raising move to interview Berman

… Read the rest

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Tips for writers

Apr 11th, 2018 10:00 am | By

Comic relief.

Also, of course, I write sitting on the floor, using an ancient manual typewriter. Doesn’t everyone?

… Read the rest

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Telegraphing

Apr 11th, 2018 9:15 am | By

The Post performs contortions in the effort to frame Trump’s batshit tweet about Syria and Russia as a normal announcement of plans.

President Trump warned Wednesday that missiles “will be coming” toward Syria in response to a suspected chemical attack, and he taunted Russia for vowing to shoot down any incoming strikes.

That wasn’t a warning, it was a boast, an eruption, a look at me I can bomb things.

“Get ready Russia, because they will be coming, nice and new and ‘smart!’” the president wrote on Twitter, referring to missile strikes that have appeared likely since the weekend deaths of more than 40 Syrian civilians, including children.

As if it were just normal for a president to “write on … Read the rest

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Other than he fights back

Apr 11th, 2018 8:57 am | By

Trump’s morning of crazy:

Updating to add Maggie Haberman’s response to that:

/update

… Read the rest

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Too far

Apr 10th, 2018 4:01 pm | By

Tick tock tick tock tick tock.

NPR reports:

President Trump believes Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller has gone too far in his probe of potential ties between Trump’s campaign and Russian interference in the 2016 election, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said Tuesday.

Her statement to reporters did little to tamp down speculation that Trump may seek to fire Mueller — an authority that Sanders says Trump enjoys.

Well it wouldn’t, would it. Saying Trump thinks Mueller has gone too far would do nothing to tamp down speculation that Trump will try to fire him, because we know Trump is more than stupid enough and way more than criminal enough.

Asked about Trump’s comments, Sanders said at a

… Read the rest

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He sees himself as somehow immune to these impulses

Apr 10th, 2018 3:30 pm | By

Daniel Bastian on the Harris-Klein conversation:

What’s clear from the outset is that Harris’s ego is still perhaps the central problem blinding him to many of his own strong biases. This is literally how he frames the conversation from the get-go:

“I’m not saying that everyone who did the work, who listened to the podcast and read all the articles would take my side of it, but anyone who didn’t do the work thought that I was somehow the aggressor there and somehow, in particular, the fact that I was declining to do a podcast with you was held very much against me. That caused me to change my mind about this whole thing, because I realized this is

… Read the rest

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No one talks about inferiority who’s actually having a dispassionate argument

Apr 10th, 2018 11:52 am | By

Let’s do the Klein-Harris again.

Ezra Klein

I think you’ve had two African Americans as guests. I think you need to explore the experience of race in American more and not just see that as identity politics. See that as information that is important to talking about some of things you want to talk about, but also to hearing from some of the people who you’ve now written out of the conversation to hear.

Sam Harris

So this is the kind of thing that I would be tempted to score as bad faith —

Ezra Klein

I’m shocked!

Sam Harris

In someone else, but actually, I think this is a point of confusion, but it is, nonetheless, confusion here.

Your

… Read the rest

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All we stand for

Apr 10th, 2018 10:51 am | By

Philip Bump at the Post points out that Trump’s “witch hunt” is being carried out by Republicans.

“It’s a disgrace,” Trump said Monday night, talking about the FBI’s searches earlier in the day of the home and office of his longtime attorney Michael Cohen. “It’s, frankly, a real disgrace. It’s an attack on our country, in a true sense. It’s an attack on what we all stand for.” He went on to criticize Attorney General Jeff Sessions and to call Mueller’s investigators “the most biased group of people,” people who “have the biggest conflicts of interest I’ve ever seen.”

The problem, though, is that the people leading the investigation — and the people behind the search of Cohen’s properties

… Read the rest

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A deep and detailed pattern

Apr 10th, 2018 9:49 am | By

In which Trump says one stupid thing after another.

Chuck Schumer responds.

… Read the rest

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Nice little country you got here

Apr 10th, 2018 9:28 am | By

Meanwhile, as the agents sift through all those files from Michael Cohen’s office and house and hotel room, there’s the issue of Trump and The Trump Organization and Panama.

Lawyers representing President Donald Trump’s namesake business appealed directly to Panama’s president for help in a dispute over a luxury Panama City hotel, The Associated Press reported Monday.

The AP said it obtained a letter dated March 22 in which the law firm Britton & Iglesias asked Panamanian President Juan Carlos Varela to intervene in the legal dispute, arguing that the courts denied the Trump Organization due process and violated a bilateral treaty.

The letter also warned that there could be consequences for Panama if he didn’t, the AP

… Read the rest

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Guest post: The assumptions Harris is making

Apr 10th, 2018 9:01 am | By

Originally a comment by Anna Y on A really big blind spot here.

Peak meta indeed, since Harris isn’t even paying much attention to things coming out of his mouth in the course of this discussion itself. I think Klein is (maybe intentionally, to avoid pushing Harris’ buttons) missing a really low hanging fruit in what Harris says to defend his position.

I want to break down his points and emphasize the assumptions he is making, thereby demonstrating precisely what that fruit is:

“Well, what I mean by identity politics is that you are reasoning on the basis of skin color, or religion, or gender, or some particular trait, which you have by accident, which you can’t change — … Read the rest

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An Easter break to spend time with her children

Apr 10th, 2018 8:27 am | By

Is there a free speech right to bully?

Fox’s Laura Ingraham is wrapping herself in the free speech flag.

Fox News host Laura Ingraham returned to her show Monday night following a week vacation in the middle of a mass exodus of the program’s advertisers over controversial remarks she made about a Parkland shooting survivor. Ingraham focused on freedom of speech in her first show back, and attacked the left’s alleged stifling of conservative voices.

Ingraham was returning to her show after announcing on March 30 she would be out the following week for an Easter break to spend time with her children. The announcement came at the end of a week in which more than a dozen sponsors

… Read the rest

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It’s just so unfair

Apr 9th, 2018 5:26 pm | By

Trump’s reasoned response.

H/t Skeletor… Read the rest

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A really big blind spot here

Apr 9th, 2018 5:04 pm | By

More of the Harris-Klein conversation, starting where I paused this morning.

Ezra Klein

At the beginning, when you’re talking about why you chose to have Glenn on the show, you say, “My goal was to find an African American intellectual, who could really get into the details with me, but whom I also trusted to have a truly rationale conversation that wouldn’t be contaminated by identity politics.” To you, engaging in identity politics discredits your ability to participate in a rational conversation, and it’s something, as far as I can tell, that you do not see yourself as doing.

So here’s my question for you: On that specific quote, what does it mean to you, particularly when you’re talking

… Read the rest

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He’s watching

Apr 9th, 2018 3:22 pm | By

More on the news of the hour:

Be afraid.

… Read the rest

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Breaking

Apr 9th, 2018 3:02 pm | By

Whoopsie.

The F.B.I. on Monday raided the office of President Trump’s longtime personal lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, seizing records related to several topics including payments to a pornographic-film actress.

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan obtained the search warrant after receiving a referral from the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, according to Mr. Cohen’s lawyer, who called the search “completely inappropriate and unnecessary.” The search does not appear to be directly related to Mr. Mueller’s investigation, but likely resulted from information he had uncovered and gave to prosecutors in New York.

Bombs on Syria and North Korea before the day is out?

Mr. Cohen plays a role in aspects of the special counsel’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016

… Read the rest

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A truly rational conversation not contaminated by identity politics

Apr 9th, 2018 11:23 am | By

Ezra Klein did the podcast with Sam Harris, and there’s a transcript. It is, naturally, an interesting read. One sample:

Ezra Klein

One of the things I’ve come to think about you that I actually did not come into this believing is, you’re very quick to see a lot of psychological tendencies, cognitive fallacies, etc. in others that you don’t see applying to yourself, or people you’ve written into your tribe. You say words in there like confirmation bias, etc., to me about how we’re looking at Murray. The whole thing I just told you is that Charles Murray is a guy who works at conservative think tanks, whose first book was about why we should get rid of

… Read the rest

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Oh that kind of protection

Apr 9th, 2018 10:41 am | By

It’s interesting how the people Trump hires to run bits of his administration like to give big raises to the people they hire. Scott Pruitt did it, and Mick Mulvaney did it.

Mick Mulvaney, President Donald Trump’s appointee to oversee the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, has given big pay raises to the deputies he has hired to help him run the bureau, according to salary records obtained by The Associated Press.

Mulvaney has hired at least eight political appointees since he took over the bureau in late November. Four of them are making $259,500 a year and one is making $239,595. That is more than the salaries of members of Congress, cabinet secretaries, and nearly all federal judges apart

… Read the rest

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Do it his way

Apr 9th, 2018 9:40 am | By

AP reports a shift in Trump, from however reluctantly taking some guidance from his aides, to getting sick of them and doing whatever he wants. Last week in West Virginia he threw his prepared speech up in the air. BO-RING.

This president has never been one to stick to a script, but that abandoned speech illustrates a new phase in Trump’s presidency. He is increasingly at odds with his staff — and growing wise to their tactics.

One favored staff strategy: Guide the president to the right decision by making the conventional choice seem like the only realistic option. Except now, 14 months into his administration, Trump is on to them, and he’s making clear he won’t be boxed

… Read the rest

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