Cohen says Trump knew.

On Thursday night, both NBC and CNN reported that Cohen, per a source close to him, was prepared to tell investigators that he was present when Trump Jr. told his father about the possibility of meeting with the Russian lawyer to get dirt on Hillary Clinton.

The publicist offered Junior dirt on Clinton, Junior said he loved it and needed to talk to the publicist’s client Agalarov.

Three days later, Trump Jr. and Agalarov spoke (a call Trump Jr. claimed not to remember but that Agalarov did). Call logs suggest that Agalarov called Trump Jr. at 4:04 p.m. on June 6 and that they spoke for a minute or two. About 20 minutes later,

How do you negotiate with Trump, they wonder. How do you break it down into small enough bits that he’ll be able to understand? How do you get him to focus?

Maybe brightly colored cards will help?

Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, came to Washington to try to persuade President Trump to stop his trade war with the European Union. Juncker’s approach, reports The Wall Street Journal, involved dumbing the material down just short of the point of using finger puppets to explain what “trade” means:

Backing up his points, Mr. Juncker flipped through more than a dozen colorful cue cards with simplified explainers, the senior EU official said. Each card had at most three figures about

Rebecca Morin at Politico on Trump’s grotesque “Russia is helping the Democrats!” tweet:

“I’m very concerned that Russia will be fighting very hard to have an impact on the upcoming Election. Based on the fact that no President has been tougher on Russia than me, they will be pushing very hard for the Democrats. They definitely don’t want Trump!” the president tweeted.

The tweet follows a week of backlash from Republicans and Democrats alike from the president’s summit with Vladimir Putin, in which he appeared to side with the Russian president over his own intelligence officers on whether Moscow interfered in the 2016 election.

During that same news conference, Putin explicitly stated that he did want Trump to win, which

Trolling.

I’m very concerned that Russia will be fighting very hard to have an impact on the upcoming Election. Based on the fact that no President has been tougher on Russia than me, they will be pushing very hard for the Democrats. They definitely don’t want Trump!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 24, 2018

… Read the rest

Jennifer Rubin points out that what Trump is doing is an attack on the First Amendment (you know, the first amendment to that thing he swore an oath to protect and defend against all enemies foreign and domestic).

the attempt to squelch criticism of the administration based on the content of these ex-officials’ speech is a blatant violation of the First Amendment. “Despite the great latitude given the president in national security matters, and particularly on clearances, this is a new low,” says former White House counsel Norman Eisen. “It is so transparently based upon personal and political retaliation.” He continues, “It brings to mind other Trump classifications found unconstitutional by courts, including on First Amendment grounds, like the first

This one, in particular.

A Rocket has not been launched by North Korea in 9 months. Likewise, no Nuclear Tests. Japan is happy, all of Asia is happy. But the Fake News is saying, without ever asking me (always anonymous sources), that I am angry because it is not going fast enough. Wrong, very happy!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 23, 2018

That sub-literate phrasing – “A Rocket has not been launched by North Korea in 9 months” when he means “No rocket has been launched by NK” or “NK has launched no rocket”…he can’t even get something that basic right.

But then of course the substance is just fatuous. The fact that they’re not currently launching rockets doesn’t … Read the rest

More extreme crazy.

To Iranian President Rouhani: NEVER, EVER THREATEN THE UNITED STATES AGAIN OR YOU WILL SUFFER CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED BEFORE. WE ARE NO LONGER A COUNTRY THAT WILL STAND FOR YOUR DEMENTED WORDS OF VIOLENCE & DEATH. BE CAUTIOUS!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 23, 2018

We’ll just ignore for now the absurdity of Trump yelling at someone else for “demented words of violence and death” and go directly to wtf.

The Times:

Mr. Trump’s message was apparently in response to a speech on Sunday by Mr. Rouhani, who warned the United States that any conflict with Iran would be the “mother of all wars.”

Mr. Rouhani

News world is abuzz over the release of documents related to the surveillance of Carter Page, with Trump screeching that it all shows how right he is about everything and rational people saying no it doesn’t.

President Trump claimed without evidence on Sunday that his administration’s release of top-secret documents related to the surveillance of a former campaign aide had confirmed that the Justice Department and the F.B.I. had “misled the courts” in the early stages of the Russia investigation.

“Looking more & more like the Trump Campaign for President was illegally being spied upon (surveillance) for the political gain of Crooked Hillary Clinton and the DNC,” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter.

In a series of early-morning tweets,

Today Trump is combining noisy vituperation aimed at the government he supposedly leads and passionate glorification of violence. That’s a good look.

The Rigged Witch Hunt, headed by the 13 Angry Democrats (and now 4 more have been added, one who worked directly for Obama W.H.), seems intent on damaging the Republican Party’s chances in the November Election. This Democrat excuse for losing the ‘16 Election never ends!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 21, 2018

No Collusion, No Obstruction – but that doesn’t matter because the 13 Angry Democrats, who are only after Republicans and totally protecting Democrats, want this Witch Hunt to drag out to the November Election. Republicans better get smart fast and expose what they are

Oh my what a surprise, North Korea is being difficult.

U.S. negotiators have faced stiff resistance from a North Korean team practiced in the art of delay and obfuscation.

Diplomats say the North Koreans have canceled follow-up meetings, demanded more money and failed to maintain basic communications, even as the once-isolated regime’s engagements with China and South Korea flourish.

Meanwhile, a missile-engine testing facility that Trump said would be destroyed remains intact, and U.S. intelligence officials say Pyongyang is working to conceal key aspects of its nuclear program.

Other than that everything’s marvelous.

The lack of immediate progress, though predicted by many analysts, has frustrated the president, who has fumed at his aides in private even as he publicly

One ray of light in the stinking murk:

President Trump’s longtime lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, secretly recorded a conversation with Mr. Trump two months before the presidential election in which they discussed payments to a former Playboy model who said she had an affair with Mr. Trump, according to lawyers and others familiar with the recording.

The F.B.I. seized the recording this year during a raid on Mr. Cohen’s office. The Justice Department is investigating Mr. Cohen’s involvement in paying women to tamp down embarrassing news stories about Mr. Trump ahead of the 2016 election. Prosecutors want to know whether that violated federal campaign finance laws, and any conversation with Mr. Trump about those payments would be of keen

It’s like the scene at the end of The Miracle Worker when Helen Keller suddenly at last understands what language is, except stupid.

For 14 seasons, Donald Trump hosted The Apprentice, the reality show that gave millions of Americans the false impression that he is a business genius. But it was only today, July 19, 2018, that he realized what the title of the show meant.

Speaking to a crowd at a White House event called Pledge to America’s Workers, Trump came across a line in the prepared text that included the word apprenticeships. Then he went off script: “That’s an interesting word for me to be saying, right? The Apprentice. I never actually put that

There was a huddle. They had a huddle to try to fix it. Even John Bolton was in the huddle.

Top national security officials had huddled in the White House Situation Room on Tuesday to develop a response to the fallout. The meeting resulted in a determination that Trump would need to clarify his remarks. Top officials, including national security adviser John Bolton, were involved in crafting the statement that Trump delivered from the Cabinet Room.

The President made some of his own additions to what his aides prepared; he scrawled in black marker that “THERE WAS NO COLLUSION” on one page.

And “GUY IN BASEMUNT” on another.

Earlier Tuesday, the President had offered a defiant rebuke of his

Dan Balz at the Washington Post points out that Trump is not universally popular with women. Who knew?

Trump is doing nothing to mitigate the problem. Just the opposite. A man accused by multiple women of sexual misbehavior, he seems to take special delight in denigrating women, especially House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and his 2016 rival, Hillary Clinton. In one comment at a rally in Montana last Thursday, he mocked Warren and the #MeToo movement, and he also went after Waters.

And then there was the time he threw candy at Angela Merkel.

The latest Washington Post-Schar School poll, released Friday, highlights the differences in the way women and