Yahoo News: “The Russians who worked for a notorious St. Petersburg ‘troll factory’ that was part of Vladimir Putin’s campaign to influence the 2016 presidential election were required to watch the House of Cards television series to help them craft messages to ‘set up the Americans against their own government,’ according to an interview broadcast Sunday (in Russian) with a former member of the troll factory’s elite English language department.”
Trump Looms Large In Virginia
New York Times: “Ed Gillespie, the Republican nominee for Virginia governor, deployed just about every tactical evasion he had learned from a lifetime in politics as he dodged questions about President Trump. Then he finally flashed irritation.”
Said Gillespie: “I don’t know the president.”
Trump Regularly Mocks Pence
New Yorker: “A staff member from Trump’s campaign recalls him mocking Pence’s religiosity. He said that, when people met with Trump after stopping by Pence’s office, Trump would ask them, ‘Did Mike make you pray?’ Two sources also recalled Trump needling Pence about his views on abortion and homosexuality.”
“During a meeting with a legal scholar, Trump belittled Pence’s determination to overturn Roe v. Wade. The legal scholar had said that, if the Supreme Court did so, many states would likely legalize abortion on their own. ‘You see?’ Trump asked Pence. ‘You’ve wasted all this time and energy on it, and it’s not going to end abortion anyway.’ When the conversation turned to gay rights, Trump motioned toward Pence and joked, ‘Don’t ask that guy—he wants to hang them all!’”
Will McDonnell Ruling Save Menendez?
“The bribery trial of Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) has reached a critical moment, with the judge overseeing the case deciding whether to dismiss a big chunk of the corruption allegations facing the New Jersey Democrat,” Politico reports.
“U.S. District Judge William Walls stunned federal prosecutors last week when he expressed doubts over whether the Justice Department’s bribery charges against Menendez should move forward in light of the Supreme Court’s 2016 decision throwing out the conviction of former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell. That ruling impacted the legal definition of bribery, including the ‘string of benefits’ theory used by prosecutors to charge Menendez.”
“Walls’ bombshell left open the possibility that Menendez could escape the most serious allegations against him, possibly even allowing him to remain in office.”
Kelly Tries to Get Empty Jobs Filled Fast
“White House chief of staff John Kelly is giving Cabinet secretaries more autonomy to pick top political appointees, reversing efforts under his predecessor Reince Priebus to run most appointments through the West Wing,” Politico reports.
“Kelly’s goal, according to 10 interviews with White House officials and advisers close to the administration, is to do a better job of finding candidates for the hundreds of jobs throughout the administration that remain vacant almost nine months into President Trump’s first term.”
Florida Senate Race Shaping Up as Epic Battle
Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) went to Democratic leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) this summer with an urgent plea, Politico reports.
“Florida’s Democratic Party was in disarray after the 2016 presidential debacle, the senator said, and he needed help from D.C. to prepare for a likely challenge next year by GOP Gov. Rick Scott, who’s spent at least $86 million of his own fortune on his two gubernatorial campaigns.”
“Nelson told the group that Democrats desperately needed to catch up on field staff in Florida, especially in the wake of the presidential and Senate race results last year that saw Republican-leaning voters flood the polls and took even plugged-in Democrats by surprise.”
Health Care Back on the Congressional Agenda
“The Senate this week will grapple with President Trump’s decision to stop making subsidy payments to health insurers, with lawmakers seeking a deal that would keep the money flowing while Republicans try to fold in conservative-oriented health-care priorities,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“It remains unclear whether a package could emerge that attracts support from a critical mass of senators and also from House Republicans. That could be put to the test quickly, as Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and Patty Murray (D-WA.) are expected to introduce a plan within days and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) unveils his own, more-conservative-leaning version.”
Playbook: “Republicans at the White House and in Hill leadership stopped the bipartisan process last time around, hoping that Congress would fully repeal the health care law. Now that full repeal is all but dead, will leaders give the bipartisan approach the green light?”
North Korea Is a Cyberpower Too
New York Times: “Their track record is mixed, but North Korea’s army of more than 6,000 hackers is undeniably persistent, and undeniably improving, according to American and British security officials who have traced these attacks and others back to the North. Amid all the attention on Pyongyang’s progress in developing a nuclear weapon capable of striking the continental United States, the North Koreans have also quietly developed a cyberprogram that is stealing hundreds of millions of dollars and proving capable of unleashing global havoc.”
“Unlike its weapons tests, which have led to international sanctions, the North’s cyberstrikes have faced almost no pushback or punishment, even as the regime is already using its hacking capabilities for actual attacks against its adversaries in the West. And just as Western analysts once scoffed at the potential of the North’s nuclear program, so did experts dismiss its cyberpotential — only to now acknowledge that hacking is an almost perfect weapon for a Pyongyang that is isolated and has little to lose.”
Subpoena Orders Trump To Turn Over Documents
A high-stakes legal showdown is brewing for President Trump, as a woman who said he groped her has subpoenaed all documents from his campaign pertaining to “any woman alleging that Donald J. Trump touched her inappropriately,” BuzzFeed News reports.
“Summer Zervos, a former contestant on the Trump’s reality TV show ‘The Apprentice’, accused Trump of kissing and grabbing her when she went to his bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel in 2007 to discuss a possible job at the Trump Organization. After Zervos made the accusation last October, just weeks before the election, Trump denied her accusation and called it a lie.”
“She responded by suing him for defamation. As part of that suit, her lawyers served a subpoena on his campaign, asking that it preserve all documents it had about her.”
Sessions Defies Image by Aiding Transgender Case
“The Justice Department has dispatched an experienced federal hate crimes lawyer to Iowa to help prosecute a man charged with murdering a transgender high school student last year, a highly unusual move that officials said was personally initiated by Attorney General Jeff Sessions,” the New York Times reports.
“In taking the step, Mr. Sessions, a staunch conservative, is sending a signal that he has made a priority of fighting violence against transgender people individually, even as he has rolled back legal protections for them collectively.”
Graham Says ‘We’re Dead’ If Tax Reform Fails
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told CBS News that if the Republican party cannot enact tax reform, just one item on the congressional agenda, “we’re dead.”
Said Graham: “If we don’t cut taxes and we don’t eventually repeal and replace Obamacare, then we’re going to lose across the board in the House in 2018. And all of my colleagues running in primaries in 2018 will probably get beat.”
He added: “It will be the end of Mitch McConnell as we know it.”
Bonus Quote of the Day
“If they’re so turned off by my opinion on healthcare and gun violence then, I don’t know, I probably wouldn’t want to have a conversation with them anyway. Not good riddance, but riddance.”
— Jimmy Kimmel, quoted by the Washington Examiner, on losing Republican viewers of his late night comedy show.
Tillerson Still Won’t Deny Calling Trump a ‘Moron’
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson refused to tell CNN whether he called President Trump a “moron.”
Said Tillerson: “I’m not going to deal with that kind of petty stuff. This is a town that seems to relish gossip, rumor, innuendo—and they feed on it. They feed on one another in a very destructive way. I don’t work that way. I don’t deal that way. And I’m just not going to dignify the question.”
Austria Elects 31-Year Old Leader
“Sebastian Kurz, a 31-year-old conservative, is set to become the next chancellor of Austria and Europe’s youngest leader, though he will likely need to form a coalition to rule, early results from Sunday’s election show,” CNN reports.
BBC: “Immigration was the dominant issue in the run-up to the vote, and Mr Kurz moved his party to the right in the wake of Europe’s 2015 refugee crisis.”
“He appealed to conservative and right-wing voters with pledges to shut down migrant routes to Europe, cap benefit payments to refugees, and bar immigrants from receiving benefits until they have lived in Austria for five years.”
$10 Million for Trump’s Impeachment
Larry Flynt took out an advertisement in the Washington Post offering $10 million for information leading to “the impeachment and removal from office of Donald J. Trump.”
How Congress Derailed the DEA’s War on Opiods
Washington Post: “In April 2016, at the height of the deadliest drug epidemic in U.S. history, Congress effectively stripped the Drug Enforcement Administration of its most potent weapon against large drug companies suspected of spilling prescription narcotics onto the nation’s streets.”
“By then, the opioid war had claimed 200,000 lives, more than three times the number of U.S. military deaths in the Vietnam War. Overdose deaths continue to rise. There is no end in sight.”
“A handful of members of Congress, allied with the nation’s major drug distributors, prevailed upon the DEA and the Justice Department to agree to a more industry-friendly law, undermining efforts to stanch the flow of pain pills, according to an investigation by the Washington Post and 60 Minutes. The DEA had opposed the effort for years.”
Trump Seeks Truce with McConnell
Mike Allen: “We’ve learned that after months of frosty distance, President Trump picked up the phone yesterday and called Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell — ahead of a week when they absolutely have to work together on a budget, or risk losing tax reform.”
“Well-wired Republicans privately think chances for tax cuts are still pretty bleak. If Trump and McConnell are able to patch things up even temporarily, Republicans have a better chance at avoiding an embarrassing legislative shutout that could imperil their majorities.”
“They need to get a budget done in the Senate this week. No budget, no tax reform. It’s that simple.”
Five Days In North Korea
Nicholas Kristof just returned from North Korea:
On just the first day of a war between the United States and North Korea, according to a Stanford University assessment, one million people could be killed.
Yet after my five-day visit to North Korea with three New York Times colleagues, such a nuclear war seems terrifyingly imaginable. In the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, it was clear that President Trump’s threat to ‘totally destroy’ North Korea had backfired and is being exploited by Kim Jong-un for his own propaganda and military mobilization.
The country has seized on Trump’s words to reinforce its official narrative that its nuclear arsenal is defensive, meant to protect Koreans from bullying American imperialists. And North Korean officials use Trump’s bombast as an excuse for their own.
