Good morning.
Sunday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of ninety-four. Sunrise is 5:21 AM and sunset 8:22 PM, for 15h 01m 47s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 95.6% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1933, producer Walt Disney and director Burt Gillett release Three Little Pigs. The animated short, part of the Silly Symphony series, won the 1934 Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film.
Recommended for reading in full —
Josh Dawsey and Nick Miroff report The hostile border between Trump and the head of DHS:
Nielsen brings a lawyerly, technocratic approach to an issue that animates the president like no other, with a passion dyed into the blood-red MAGA caps of his supporters.
The night before Trump delivered his first speech to Congress in February 2017, he huddled with senior adviser Jared Kushner and Miller in the Oval Office to talk immigration. The president reluctantly agreed with suggestions that he strike a gentler tone on immigration in the speech.
Trump reminded them the crowds loved his rhetoric on immigrants along the campaign trail. Acting as if he were at a rally, he recited a few made-up Hispanic names and described potential crimes they could have committed, such as rape or murder. Then, he said, the crowds would roar when the criminals were thrown out of the country — as they did when he highlighted crimes by illegal immigrants at his rallies, according to a person present for the exchange and another briefed on it later. Miller and Kushner laughed.
(Nielsen wasn’t drafted; she accepted this role. She’s culpable for membership in this administration, one where Trump spews bigotry while others laugh.)
Michael Isikoff reports ‘Trump’s son should be concerned’: FBI obtained wiretaps of Putin ally who met with Trump Jr.:
The FBI has obtained secret wiretaps collected by Spanish police of conversations involving Alexander Torshin, a deputy governor of Russia’s Central Bank who has forged close ties with U.S. lawmakers and the National Rifle Association, that led to a meeting with Donald Trump Jr. during the gun lobby’s annual convention in Louisville, Ky., in May 2016, a top Spanish prosecutor said Friday.
José Grinda, who has spearheaded investigations into Spanish organized crime, said that bureau officials in recent months requested and were provided transcripts of wiretapped conversations between Torshin and Alexander Romanov, a convicted Russian money launderer. On the wiretaps, Romanov refers to Torshin as “El Padrino,” the godfather.
“Just a few months ago, the wiretaps of these telephone conversations were given to the FBI,” Grinda said in response to a question from Yahoo News during a talk he gave at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington. Asked if he was concerned about Torshin’s meetings with Donald Trump Jr. and other American political figures, Grinda replied: “Mr. Trump’s son should be concerned.”
Jennifer Rubin observes #NeverTrumpers had Trump pegged all along:
President Trump’s apologists can’t say they weren’t warned. Virtually every character flaw and policy debacle was in plain view during the campaign. Republicans then, as Republicans do now, convinced themselves and their fellow Americans that Trump was a business genius (in fact he serially failed and hid his finances to prevent any objective assessment of his success). These Republicans told us he’d find and use top-notch experts (not!), had great negotiating skills (aside from bluff and bluster, he has no finesse in presidential-level consensus-building on either the domestic or foreign policy side).
Trump really did mean all the horrible things he said about immigrants and really does not have a clue how international trade works. His self-absorption and insecurity do pose a danger to the United States when he engages with foreign leaders who know they can play him through flattery.
Yes he does have a problem with women — a dozen or more claimed improper sexual conduct and one consensual sexual partner was hushed up with a $130,000 payment. His denials about having nothing to do with Russia have proven misleading at best, if not outright false. (CNBC has compiled a helpful video examining Trump’s web of Russia connections.)
Here’s that CNBC compilation of The Trump-Russia ties hiding in plain sight: