Good morning.
Sunday in Whitewater will be occasionally foggy with a high of thirty-nine. Sunrise is 7:18 AM and sunset 4:54 PM, for 9h 36m 13s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 17.6% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}four hundred thirty-seventh day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}
On this day in 1976, the British-French Concorde supersonic passenger jet begins regular service. On this day in 1935, five Janesville, Wisconsin juveniles are arrested “for a string of burglaries, including the thefts of cigarettes, whisky and blankets. While in the police station, one of the boys tried to crack the safe in the chief’s office.”
Recommended for reading in full —
➤ Craig Timberg, Rosalind S. Helderman, Andrew Roth and Carol D. Leonnig report In the crowd at Trump’s inauguration, members of Russia’s elite anticipated a thaw between Moscow and Washington:
In the days before Donald Trump’s inauguration, a wealthy Russian pharmaceutical executive named Alexey Repik arrived in Washington, expressing excitement about the new administration.
He posted a photo on Facebook of a clutch of inauguration credentials arranged next to a white “Make America Great Again” hat, writing in Russian: “I believe that President Donald Trump will open a new page in American history.”
Throughout his trip, Repik had prime access. He wrote on Facebook that he got close enough to the president-elect at a pre-inaugural event to “check the handshake strength of Donald Trump.” He and his wife, Polina Repik, witnessed Trump’s swearing-in from ticketed seats in front of the U.S. Capitol. And he posed for a photo shoulder-to-shoulder with Mike Pompeo, the president’s nominee to head the CIA, although Repik later said he was not aware of Pompeo’s intended role at the time.
The attendance of members of Russia’s elite at Trump’s inauguration was evidence of the high anticipation in Moscow for a thaw in U.S.-Russia relations following a campaign in which Trump stunned U.S. foreign-policy experts by repeatedly praising Russian President Vladimir Putin.
➤ Jennifer Rubin, looking at Russian influence over Trump, notes Russians under every rock:
There are the Kremlin-connected campaign aides — Carter Page, Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn and George Papadopoulos. On a single campaign. There are the Trump team members who repeatedly failed to “recall” Russia contacts — Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Jared Kushner. There is the money trail that ran through and around Trump properties, described in testimony before the House Intelligence Committee by Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson; the trail tangles up the Bayrock Group (with which the mysterious Felix Sater was associated) and the Russian oligarchs who purchased Trump properties (pp. 36-41).
What Simpson calls “a well-established pattern of surreptitious contacts that occurred [in 2016] that supports the broad allegation of some sort of an undisclosed political or financial relationship between The Trump Organization and people in Russia” (p. 54) is what, in part, special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and his top-flight team of financial-crime attorneys are investigating. Mueller is trying to determine whether these were all random, innocent and coincidental (though the only campaign in history we know to have had any) or whether they establish a cooperative relationship between the official Trump campaign and the “active measures” campaign in Russia to help elect Trump (as the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting — attended by Natalia Veselnitskaya, Kaveladze and Rinat Akhmetshin, among others — to relay “dirt” on Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton would suggest).
The nagging question remains, however, why Trump would so vehemently deny any business dealings with Russia and why so many people would go to such lengths to disguise their assorted Russian contacts. What was it they were trying so hard to keep hidden?
➤ Katie Rogers and Kenneth P. Vogel report Congressman Combating Harassment Settled His Own Misconduct Case:
WASHINGTON — Representative Patrick Meehan, a Pennsylvania Republican who has taken a leading role in fighting sexual harassment in Congress, used thousands of dollars in taxpayer money to settle his own misconduct complaint after a former aide accused him last year of making unwanted romantic overtures to her, according to several people familiar with the settlement.
A married father of three, Mr. Meehan, 62, had long expressed interest in the personal life of the aide, who was decades younger and had regarded the congressman as a father figure, according to three people who worked with the office and four others with whom she discussed her tenure there.
But after the woman became involved in a serious relationship with someone outside the office last year, Mr. Meehan professed his romantic desires for her — first in person, and then in a handwritten letter — and he grew hostile when she did not reciprocate, the people familiar with her time in the office said.
Life in the office became untenable, so she initiated the complaint process, started working from home and ultimately left the job. She later reached a confidential agreement with Mr. Meehan’s office that included a settlement for an undisclosed amount to be paid from Mr. Meehan’s congressional office fund.
(The alleged conduct would be wrong, and the undisputed use of Congressional funds to settle the matter is wrong.)
➤ From August, Tara Isabella Burton interviews Former 700 Club producer: “I knew where the line was. But that didn’t stop us.”:
In the 1980s, TV producer Terry Heaton was at the helm of one of the most influential media properties of the decade. As executive producer for the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN)’s Pat Robertson — one of the world’s most famous televangelists — Heaton spent the 1980s and early ’90s transforming the network’s flagship show, The 700 Club, into a pioneer of conservative opinion journalism.
But decades after The 700 Club’s massive success paved the way for an alliance between the Christian right and GOP party politics, Heaton has more mixed feelings about his role in the “culture wars.” In his new book The Gospel of the Self: How Jesus Joined the GOP, Heaton reflects on his years working alongside Robertson, and how the advertising strategies he brought to CBN helped transform and politicize a generation of Christians. Heaton presents Robertson and his team as well-meaning idealists whose desire to use the power of the media to bring people to Jesus morphed into a need to hold on to power for its own sake.
…
“First of all, regarding Pat and his relationship with Donald Trump — I think that’s very, very scary. As smart as Pat Robertson is, and as good as he is at marketing, he is also highly susceptible to his own hype. In that way, Trump plays him like a piano. If you watch his most recent interview, some of the things that Trump says to Pat are really way out there in terms of manipulating Pat. He builds him up like a salesman would, and Pat is susceptible to that, I think. But he wouldn’t be susceptible if Trump didn’t speak the language that Pat wants.
There is such fear on the right about the Supreme Court. I remember one show that we were taping in which Pat prayed that God would kill the Supreme Court justices. We had to stop the tape and advise him that he couldn’t say that on TV. But that’s the way he felt. Trump really sings Pat’s tune when it comes to the Supreme Court, also on the issue of religious liberty. When Trump starts talking about how Christianity is going to be “great again,” people like Pat sit up at listen. And they’ll support him whenever necessary — even if it means blowing up North Korea!
We’re a divided people. That’s why I wonder if it’s a good thing that Donald Trump’s president — at least we’re getting it all out on the table. In my mind, that’s the only righteous reason to put a guy like Trump in the White House. We’ll go through some stuff — but I hope on the other side, it’ll be better than it is today.
(One needn’t believe that it’s a good thing Trump’s president, but yet believe getting it all out on the table is necessary. In any event, Robertson represents only a part of a much larger religious community.)
➤ It’s The Most Shocking Animal in the Kingdom:
It’s a remote control. It’s a tracking device. It can deliver shocks of up to 600 volts. You think the electric eel is shocking? You haven’t seen anything yet.
In this episode of Animalism hosted by The Atlantic science writer Ed Yong, we investigate the subtle and sinister ways of the electric eel.