“I basically think people who are 80 and above really should not be running the world or running the country.”

— Mitt Romney, in an interview with the Deseret News.

Alex Wagner: “Platner, accused by multiple women of violent and aggressive behavior so extreme that one of his exes characterized it as rape, never mentioned any of them, never addressed their myriad allegations, but instead bundled their accounts into a fantastical deep state plot on the part of the political establishment to keep Platner from claiming his rightful seat in the Senate…”

“It’s hard for me to believe that this is the posture of anyone other than a sociopath. Call me naive, but if most dudes were accused of rape, they would spend at least one minute out of twelve addressing those concerns—or at least the women who had expressed them.”

The Financial Times estimates that the total cost of President Trump’s vanity projects is likely to exceed $1 billion. 

Charlie Sykes breaks it down:

• East Wing ballroom, $400 million
• Ballroom bunker/security center, $400 million
• Kennedy Center, $250,000,000
• City fountains, $58 million
• National Garden of American Heroes, $40 million
• Lafayette Park, $17 million
• Reflecting Pool, $16 million
• Gilding statues, $5.1 million
• Rose Garden, $2 million

Ed Kilgore: “The lesson of the very limited history of Senate replacement candidates is that they aren’t especially handicapped if they are running in the right place at the right time. Despite Susan Collins’s strength, Maine hasn’t gone Republican in a presidential race since 1988, and the Platner substitute will have more than three months — a bit longer than replacement candidate Kamala Harris had two years ago — to establish a clear identity and make sure Platner’s excited backers are in the fold.”

“If Collins ultimately wins, Democrats will have nobody to blame but themselves. They had one shot and now another.”

New York Times: Maine Democrats hope to replace Platner as Senate nominee. Has that ever worked?

Punchbowl News: “Senate GOP leaders are about to launch into a four-week summer rush to confirm Trump’s nominees in what could finally be a productive stretch for Senate Majority Leader John Thune.”

“Next week alone, there are multiple Senate confirmation hearings for major executive branch roles, including three potential new members of Trump’s Cabinet. Their prospects for confirmation are good, despite the fact that some were at the center of recent controversies that roiled Senate Republicans.”

“Thune also plans to tee up a package of nominations and confirm them before the August recess, ensuring there’s no backlog at the start of the summer break. Thune isn’t ruling out keeping senators in town longer if there are judicial nominees in the queue.”

President Trump’s recent stock-trading frenzy was triggered by a court’s reversal of New York Attorney General Letitia James’s $500 million judgment against him, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Off the hook for that penalty, Trump quickly began investing the $175 million he had sitting in a Schwab account as collateral.

Within days, he was buying and selling dozens of stocks as an automated trading strategy put the cash to work.