FREE WHITEWATER

Trump

Immoral (and Unnecessary) Compromises

There’s a certain kind of Republican who rationalizes Trump’s many vices because, well, Trump has nominated some conservative judges. (Hugh Hewitt, who’ll rationalize anything to keep a job on the Salem talk radio network comes to mind. See It’s the Supreme Court, stupid.) If there’s an equivalent of this, it’s a certain kind of Democrat…

About Those Bone Spurs…

Steve Eder asks Did a Queens Podiatrist Help Donald Trump Avoid Vietnam?: In the fall of 1968, Donald J. Trump received a timely diagnosis of bone spurs in his heels that led to his medical exemption from the military during Vietnam. For 50 years, the details of how the exemption came about, and who made the…

Campaign of Fraud

NBC reports on a deal between prosecutors in the federal Southern District of New York and AMI, the publisher of the pro-Trump National Enquirer: AMI, National Enquirer’s parent company, admitted it made $150,000 Cohen payment “in concert” with “a candidate’s presidential campaign” in order to “ensure that the woman did not publicize damaging allegations about…

It’s On Him

“I am proud to shut down the government for border security … I will take the mantle. I will be the one to shut it down. I’m not going to blame you for it,” President Trump tells Senate Minority Leader Schumer in the Oval Office. Via NBC News.

On Trump-Russia, Right from the Very Beginning

Embed from Getty Images Virginia Heffernan reports Early on, Trump-Russia obsessives were marginalized; they’re prophets now: “I felt like the guy in ‘Rear Window,’ ” David Corn, the coauthor of “Russian Roulette,” told me this week. Corn was referring to his affinity for James Stewart’s character, L.B. “Jeff” Jefferies, in Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece film. Jeff witnesses…

Tillerson Describes Trump as Though Trump Were a Functionally Illiterate Criminal

Aaron Blake reports Rex Tillerson on Trump: ‘Undisciplined, doesn’t like to read’ and tries to do illegal things: Tillerson said Trump is “pretty undisciplined, doesn’t like to read,” and repeatedly attempted to do illegal things. He didn’t call Trump a “moron,” but he didn’t exactly suggest Trump was a scholar — or even just a steady…

Pro-Trump Areas Worse Off Than Ever

Economics professor Anthony W. Orlando writes Is Trump country really better off under Trump? No. It’s falling further behind: Two years have passed since Donald Trump made his famous campaign promise in disaffected regions across the country: “We are going to start winning again!” For many voters who felt that they had lost ground in recent decades, the…

Entire Trump tweet on immigrant aid is wrong

The Associated Press reports an [e]ntire Trump tweet on immigrant aid is wrong: TRUMP’s retweet: “Illegals can get up to $3,874 a month under Federal Assistance program. Our social security checks are on average $1200 a month. RT (retweet) if you agree: If you weren’t born in the United States, you should receive $0 assistance.” THE FACTS:…

Lifting Russian sanctions key to Trump deal exposed by Cohen

Rachel Maddow shows how the Trump Organization’s continued pursuit of a Trump Tower Moscow deal into the 2016 campaign, exposed by Michael Cohen this week, explains Donald Trump’s soft stance on sanctioning Russian entities, including the bank that would finance the Trump Tower deal. Trump has survived dozens of political or financial acts that would…

Dairy Farmers’ Struggles

The AP reports Farm bankruptcies on the rise in Upper Midwest: The number of farms filing for bankruptcy is increasing across the Upper Midwest, following low prices for corn, soybeans, milk and beef, according to a new analysis from the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. The analysis found that 84 farms filed for bankruptcy in Wisconsin,…

Gains in a Long Conflict

Stanley Greenberg observes Trump Is Beginning to Lose His Grip.  There’s much work yet to go, and sure to be painful setbacks ahead, but those of us who are Never Trump (mostly libertarians & conservatives) and so many others (Democrats, independents, former Republicans) have taken back a branch of the government with investigatory authority from a…

Operation InfeKtion: The Worldwide War on Truth (Part 3 of 3)

?? Russia’s meddling in the United States’ elections is not a hoax. It’s the culmination of Moscow’s decades-long campaign to tear the West apart. “Operation InfeKtion” reveals the ways in which one of the Soviets’ central tactics — the promulgation of lies about America — continues today, from Pizzagate to George Soros conspiracies. Meet the KGB…

Operation InfeKtion: The Seven Commandments of Fake News (Part 2 of 3)

Russia’s meddling in the United States’ elections is not a hoax. It’s the culmination of Moscow’s decades-long campaign to tear the West apart. “Operation InfeKtion” reveals the ways in which one of the Soviets’ central tactics — the promulgation of lies about America — continues today, from Pizzagate to George Soros conspiracies. Meet the KGB spies…