FBI Director Comey’s interference and Russia’s both mattered a lot. Both are going to be reexamined.
Anne Applebaum/WaPo:
Both of these reports are in the news because they contain “secrets.” But they add very little to what we already know about Trump’s strange relationship with Russia. The MI6 dossier is tantalizing but cannot be proven; the DNI report is banal. Instead of wasting more time on these documents, maybe we ought instead to abandon our obsession with “secrets” and “spies” and look at what is sitting in front of us. Here, for the record, once again, are things we already know about Trump and Russia, and they aren’t remotely secret:
●Last summer, Trump operatives at the convention changed the Republican Party platform to soften the language on Ukraine. There was no explanation for this change, one of the few substantive changes made to the entire party platform. Was this a signal, from Manafort or Trump, that the candidate was on Vladimir Putin’s side?
●Throughout the campaign, Trump repeated slogans and conspiracy theories — “Obama invented ISIS,” “Hillary will start World War III” — lifted from Sputnik, the Russian propaganda website. Was this just Trump campaign chief Stephen K. Bannon borrowing ideas, or Manafort using tactics he perfected in Ukraine? Or was there deliberate linkage?
●Finally, and most important: Trump is willing to risk serious conflict with China, to destroy U.S. relations with Mexico, to dismiss America’s closest allies in Europe and to downgrade NATO, our most important military alliance.
There are other thing to be upset about as well.
Libby Nelson/Vox:
The House Republican with power to investigate Trump is threatening Trump’s critics instead
Rep. Jason Chaffetz, the chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, hasn’t offered even mild criticism of President-elect Donald Trump’s many conflicts of interest. But he’s plenty upset with the federal government’s top ethics watchdog, who called out Trump in an unusually public and critical speech on Wednesday.
Chaffetz has summoned Walter Shaub, the director of the Office of Government Ethics, to the Hill for a closed-door interview, and he’s reminded Shaub that his committee has the power to pull the plug on his agency.
“Your agency’s mission is to provide clear ethics guidance, not engage in public relations,” Chaffetz wrote in a letter to Shaub.
Since Election Day, the OGE has struggled to work with the Trump administration to make sure it’s following ethics rules. Shaub’s growing frustration has spilled out publicly in tweets, in emails released under the Freedom of Information Act, and at a forum on Wednesday, when Shaub called Trump’s plan to step back from his businesses day to day “meaningless from a conflict of interest perspective.”
Chaffetz does have a point that Shaub has been unusually public and vocal about the new administration. But Chaffetz’s main job isn’t to defend the administration from attacks. He’s supposed to serve as a check on the executive branch, particularly holding the presidency accountable — and instead he’s going after a relatively powerless member of the executive branch who is critical of Trump.
Brian Beutler/New Republic:
Who’s the Illegitimate President Now, Mr. Birtherism?
Trump spent five years trying to delegitimize Obama. Now he's taking office under a cloud of suspicion, and only has himself to blame.
Birtherism was a huge plot line of his presidency, one generally pushed by elements of the conservative fringe. Though these conspiracy theorists were egged on by Republicans, birtherism never became a mainstream Republican rallying cry because it is racist and fabricated. But the propulsive force behind birtherism, if not the theory itself, was a widely shared right-wing desire to void Obama’s presidency. Racism led elements of the far right to adopt birtherism specifically, but their quest was for any revelation that could prevent Obama from running the country. Only a few criteria govern who can become president; one of them is that the president must be a natural-born citizen; birtherism thus emerges from circular reasoning and wishful thinking. It is a tool that allows political nemeses to trump all politics, which is why white candidates like John McCain and Ted Cruz have also found themselves at the center of less obviously racist birther inquests.
But if it’s ironic that Trump rose to the pinnacle of global power on the strength of a failed campaign to delegitimize Obama, it’s also fitting that his own presidency will begin under a mix of suspicions and legitimacy questions that are very real and that Trump brought upon himself.
Pew looks at Obama’s America:
Trump defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton in November’s bitterly contested election, becoming the first person ever to win the White House with no prior political or military experience. But the divisions that emerged during the campaign and in its aftermath had been building long before Trump announced his candidacy, and despite Obama’s stated aim of reducing partisanship.
Partisan divisions in assessments of presidential performance, for example, are wider now than at any point going back more than six decades, and this growing gap is largely the result of increasing disapproval of the chief executive from the opposition party. An average of just 14% of Republicans have approved of Obama over the course of his presidency, compared with an average of 81% of Democrats.
New York Magazine:
The letter James Comey sent to Congress on October 28 informing members of new Clinton emails found on Anthony Weiner’s laptop has been blamed, in part, for Clinton’s loss. It resulted in a torrent of bad headlines, reigniting the email “scandal.” A second letter, released two days before the election, said the new emails were insignificant, but Clinton claims it did even more damage than the first letter. Just two days before polls opened, Trump’s complaints of a “rigged system” were given new life.
In addition to the timing of Comey’s letters, Horowitz will investigate whether members of the FBI and DOJ improperly leaked information about the investigation and whether certain officials should have recused themselves from the probe.
The Hill:
Comey, described by lawmakers in the room as unflinching and defiant, retorted that the FBI had properly notified DNC officials of the hacking.
"You let us down!" one Democrat yelled to Comey during the tense exchange, according to one attendee.
Another Democrat described the scene: "Essentially Debbie asked, how was it that the FBI knew that the DNC was being hacked and they didn’t tell her? He gave some bulls--t explanation, ‘That’s our standard, we called this one, we called that one’ — [she said] ‘Well, why didn’t you call me?’ ”
The contentious meeting left many Democrats accusing Comey of applying a double standard in the agency's approach to several investigations involving President-elect
Donald Trump and
Hillary Clinton, the former Democratic nominee.
Guardian:
What we know – and what's true – about the Trump-Russia dossier
The dossier includes lurid details from Trump’s 2013 visit to Moscow and claims an ‘extensive conspiracy’ between his team and the Kremlin – is it true?
Margot Sanger-Katz/NY Times:
Premiums for health insurance plans in the United States are high. And increasing deductibles can make needed coverage a financial stretch even for the insured. Recent polling from the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation suggests that the public agrees with Mr. Trump’s assessment: High out-of-pocket spending on health care is Americans’ No. 1 health care concern. (Mr. Trump has promised that he will not make major changes to Medicare, the program for Americans 65 and older.)
But solving those problems is not as easy as identifying them. The real reason health care premiums and deductibles are so high is that medical care is very expensive in the United States — far more costly than it is anywhere else in the world. The United States pays very high prices to doctors and hospitals and drug and device makers, and Americans use a lot of that expensive medical care. That means that the country spent far more on health care than its peers even when tens of millions of Americans lacked health coverage.
Obamacare has been successful in getting health insurance to people who lacked it before. About 20 million more Americans had insurance last year than before the law passed, according to an Obama administration estimate. But the health law, largely focused on health insurance regulation, did not drive down the cost of medical treatments. Health care, and health insurance, continues to be expensive.
That means that a Republican health reform plan that is both cheaper and better than Obamacare will be hard to deliver.
Kaiser Health News:
Trump’s HHS Nominee Tom Price Got a Sweetheart Deal on Health Stock
Tom Price and another influential GOP congressman got a discounted deal on stock from an Australian firm seeking FDA approval for its new drug.