Greg Sargent says it’s not just that Trump admitted collusion in That Tweet, and not just that in the process he also admitted the statement he composed about That Meeting was a lie – it’s also that he revealed why.

But what’s also notable is why Trump tweeted this. He was responding to a report in The Post that said this:

Trump has confided to friends and advisers that he is worried the Mueller probe could destroy the lives of what he calls “innocent and decent people” — namely Trump Jr. … As one adviser described the president’s thinking, he does not believe his son purposefully broke the law, but is fearful nonetheless that Trump Jr. inadvertently may have

The state of this.

Tom Watson has vowed to face down an online campaign to oust him as Labour’s deputy leader after he criticised the party leadership’s handling of the antisemitism row.

Critics of Watson caused the hashtag #ResignWatson to trend on Twitter, after an Observer interview in which he said Labour faced a “vortex of eternal shame” unless it tackled the issue head-on.

The deputy leader called for the party to end disciplinary action against the MPs Ian Austin and Margaret Hodge, who criticised Jeremy Corbyn’s response to the row, and also said Labour should fully adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism and all its examples.

On Monday, the party suspended George McManus,

Adam Davidson at the New Yorker notes that 44 years ago today Nixon released the “smoking gun tape” after the Supreme Court ruled that he had to; three days later he resigned.

On August 5, 2018, precisely forty-four years after the collapse of the Nixon Presidency, another President, Donald Trump, made his own public admission. In one of a series of early-morning tweets, Trump addressed a meeting that his son Donald, Jr., held with a Russian lawyer affiliated with the Russian government. “This was a meeting to get information on an opponent, totally legal and done all the time in politics – and it went nowhere,” he wrote. “I did not know about it!”

The tweet contains several crucial pieces

My goodness, woke activism gets more surprising every day. Here’s @transphilosophr, who describes herself thus:

Writer. Ex-academic philosopher. @RebelMouse | Forthcoming book “Transgressive: A Trans Woman on Gender, Feminism and Politics” with @JKPBooks #WomenInTech

And here’s how she talks about “TERFs” – i.e. women she doesn’t like.

I've figured it out! TERFs smell so bad because they live on a steady diet of red herring. Red herrings for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Red herring body wash. Red herring shampoo. Red herring supplements. If it smells like rotten fish, TERFs probably love it.

— @rachelwilliams@hachyderm.io (@rach_a_williams) August 4, 2018

Women smell like fish, haw haw haw.

That’s a misogynist “joke” that goes back as far as jokes, but she’s insisting that … Read the rest

Bad:

It just will not end. We may be witnessing the complete collapse of the ecosystem. Much of [southwest Florida] now enveloped in the smell of death.

This is just one canal. People are reporting the smell up to 15 miles inland.

Sad times. Still no Mainstream Media Coverage. Please share.

From the Times on July 30:

Florida has an algae problem, and it’s big. This year, an overgrowth in the waters off the state’s southwestern coast is killing wildlife and making some beaches noxious.

The toxic algal bloom, known as a red tide, is not unusual. Red tides appear off the state’s coast almost every year. But this one, still going strong after roughly nine months, is

Fake News reporting, a complete fabrication, that I am concerned about the meeting my wonderful son, Donald, had in Trump Tower. This was a meeting to get information on an opponent, totally legal and done all the time in politics – and it went nowhere. I did not know about it!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 5, 2018

It was totally legal, it’s done all the time – plus, also, he knew nothing about it! Just in case it turns out it wasn’t totally legal, or in fact legal at all, even slightly. Belt and braces, people, belt and braces.

I’m old enough to remember when this meeting was about adoptions. https://t.co/SZ2FDwsNzO

— Julia Ioffe (@juliaioffe) August 5, 2018

Sweden’s Foreign Minister Margot Wallström points out that “it’s our/their culture” is not a blank check to violate women’s rights.

I want to reflect on the word “culture”, and the way that it is used to justify the oppression of women. I believe firmly that culture should never be accepted as an excuse for the oppression of women.

“Culture” is typically defined by sociologists as a set of values, norms and beliefs among a group.  It may refer to the traditional culture in Afghanistan, of football fans in Argentina, or of university students in Sweden. Let me clarify what I mean by the “oppression” of women. I use the term to mean all instances when a woman is restricted

The Post has another long story on how much more wack Trump is this week than he was last week. I just want to point to the final item in the story.

Trump made a surprise call into Rush Limbaugh’s radio talk show Wednesday to congratulate the conservative icon on his 30th anniversary on the air. Trump mused aloud with Limbaugh about whether it would be more politically advantageous for him to shut down the government over border wall funding before or after the November elections.

“I’ve heard a lot of people saying, ‘Oh, don’t do it before the election. We’ll upset the applecart,’ ” Trump said. But, he added, “I actually think it’s a great campaign issue. I think

This is one of those times when the kind and courteous agreement to call men who have transitioned to being trans women “women” with no further qualification is not a good plan. People who go into convenience stores to swing axes at random shoppers are rarely female.

The headline: Sydney axe attack: Woman guilty of trying to kill strangers

The text:

A woman who attacked two people with an axe in an Australian convenience store has been convicted of attempted murder.

Evie Amati, 26, carried out the unprovoked attack in Sydney last year.

After entering the 7-Eleven store, Amati used the axe to strike a man in the face and a woman in the back of the head. Both victims

Well at least this mess is good for business at Trump’s hotel in Manhattan.

The general manager of the Trump International Hotel in Manhattan had a rare bit of good news to report to investors this spring: After two years of decline, revenue from room rentals went up 13 percent in the first three months of 2018.

What caused the uptick at President Trump’s flagship hotel in New York? One major factor: “a last-minute visit to New York by the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia,” wrote general manager Prince A. Sanders in a May 15 letter, which was obtained by The Washington Post.

The royals didn’t stay at Trump’s hotel because well, frankly, it’s crap, isn’t it, but they … Read the rest

On the one hand CNN and the Post and the Times are The Enemy, and on the other hand…

Thank you to Chairman Kim Jong Un for keeping your word & starting the process of sending home the remains of our great and beloved missing fallen! I am not at all surprised that you took this kind action. Also, thank you for your nice letter – l look forward to seeing you soon!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 2, 2018

… Read the rest

Meanwhile Trump attacked the press again at his rally last night.

President Donald Trump is renewing his campaign against the media, claiming at a Pennsylvania rally that the media is the “fake, fake disgusting news” and casting journalists as his true political opponent.

Is he enough of a Hitler-clone yet?

Trump barnstormed Thursday night in a state that he swiped from the Democrats in 2016 and that is home to a Senate seat he is trying to place in the Republicans’ column this fall. But the race between GOP U.S. Rep. Lou Barletta and two-term incumbent Democratic Sen. Bob Casey took a back seat to Trump’s invectives against the media, which came amid a backdrop of antagonism to journalists

The UN comments on Trump’s rhetoric attacking the press:

UN and Inter-American experts on freedom of expression have condemned U.S. President Donald Trump’s repeated attacks on the free press and urged him and his administration to cease efforts to undermine the media’s role of holding government accountable, honest and transparent.

“His attacks are strategic, designed to undermine confidence in reporting and raise doubts about verifiable facts,” said David Kaye and Edison Lanza, the Special Rapporteurs on freedom of expression for the United Nations and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, respectively.

The President has labelled the media as being the “enemy of the American people” “very dishonest” or “fake news,” and accused the press of “distorting democracy” or spreading

Another nice little angle for Trump, it appears – selling tours of Air Force One. Nothing at all tacky about that, no indeed.

Four Democratic senators are calling for an investigation into who has received Air Force One tours under the Trump administration, following reporting by BuzzFeed News that found that some members of the president’s private Florida clubs appeared to have received those tours.

In a letter to the inspectors general of the Air Force and Department of Defense, Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Tom Carper of Delaware, Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island cite the BuzzFeed News report as “particularly troubling.”

“If true, these reports could mean that the President or his family