WaPo with a big story:
Russian ambassador told Moscow that Kushner wanted secret communications channel with Kremlin
Jared Kushner and Russia’s ambassador to Washington discussed the possibility of setting up a secret and secure communications channel between Trump’s transition team and the Kremlin, using Russian diplomatic facilities in an apparent move to shield their pre-inauguration discussions from monitoring, according to U.S. officials briefed on intelligence reports.
Ambassador Sergei Kislyak reported to his superiors in Moscow that Kushner, then President-elect Trump’s son-in-law and confidant, made the proposal during a meeting on Dec. 1 or 2 at Trump Tower, according to intercepts of Russian communications that were reviewed by U.S. officials. Kislyak said Kushner suggested using Russian diplomatic facilities in the United States for the communications.
By the way, Kushner is neither sophisticated nor experienced in international relations. He’s a small time operator playing on a big stage. And he’s really, really stupid. Let the hammer fall.
Without knowing whether he was a Greedy Gus or just a garden variety traitor, Kushner should be nowhere near the White House. He should have whatever security clearance granted to him pulled. Come to think of it, all of that is true for his father-in-law as well.
Bloomberg on Jared Kushner, failing real estate mogul (pssst… he needed the money):
The Manhattan tower co-owned by the family of Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, has been losing money for three years and faces increasing loan fees in 2017, which may explain why the family has been negotiating with Chinese insurance behemoth Anbang on new financing.
The fees, at 666 Fifth Avenue, kicked in last month and escalate with each payment until the loan is repaid, a 2011 refinancing agreement shows. December brings another hurdle: Interest paid on the bulk of about $1.1 billion of loans jumps to 6.35 percent, more than double what it was after the debt was refinanced in 2011.
And in other “not about Jared is an idiot” news:
WaPo:
The GOP inherits what Trump has wrought
When GOP House candidate Greg Gianforte assaulted a reporter who had attempted to ask him a question Wednesday night in Montana, many saw not an isolated outburst by an individual, but the obvious, violent result of Trump’s charge that journalists are “the enemy of the people.” Nonetheless, Gianforte won Thursday’s special election to fill a safe Republican seat.
“Respectfully, I’d submit that the president has unearthed some demons,” Rep. Mark Sanford (R-S.C.) said. “I’ve talked to a number of people about it back home. They say, ‘Well, look, if the president can say whatever, why can’t I say whatever?’ He’s given them license.”
Trump — and specifically, his character and his conduct — now thoroughly dominate the national political conversation.
Traditional policy arguments over whether entitlement programs should be overhauled, or taxes cut, are regularly upstaged by a new burst of pyrotechnics.
TPM with a John Boehner set of quotes:
“I wake up every day, drink my morning coffee and say hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah,” he said.
“Everything else he’s done [in office] has been a complete disaster,” Boehner said, referring to President Donald Trump. “He’s still learning how to be president.”
Boehner added, referring to Trump entering the presidency, that he “just never envisioned him in that role.” He suggested the President not be allowed to tweet overnight, the publication said.
Vox:
This kind of macho talk isn’t uncommon. But speaking from personal experience, Reason writer Mike Riggs argued on Twitter that this message is bad for men. As he notes in one of his tweets, “That toughness that people seem to admire from a distance makes people fear you up close.”
Here’s the full thread:
Yes, it’s snark.
Max Boot/USA Today:
While berating our NATO allies, Trump had next to nothing to say about the threat from Russia; he argued that NATO must focus on “terrorism and immigration” instead. European Council President Donald Trusk emerged from his meeting with Trump to say there is no “common position” on Russia, because Trump is much softer on Vladimir Putin than Russia’s neighbors would like. Apparently Trump is less offended by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine than by Germany’s sale of luxury cars to Americans.
This is very revealing, and not in a good way. Trump clearly prefers autocrats to democrats. He views the Saudis as truer friends than the Europeans. And he doesn’t see Russia as a threat. In his first foray abroad, Trump displayed a worldview radically at odds with those of his predecessors going back decades.
CNN:
At the end of the day, it might be the case that trying to fit Montana into a national political box is a stretch.
"Montana speaks for itself," Craig Morgan, a Gianforte supporter from Belgrade, Montana, said Thursday night.
But that would spoil all the fun.
NY Times:
Rough Treatment of Journalists in the Trump Era
For those concerned about press freedom, the first months of the Trump administration have been troubling. Journalists have been yelled at, pepper-sprayed, pinned by security and even arrested on the job. Now, one reporter has accused a Republican candidate of assault.
Joel Simon, the executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, said the recent episodes were not enough to make any sweeping statements about the way journalists are being treated since President Trump took office.
“But what’s certainly unprecedented in modern American history is the rhetoric: the way that Trump talks about the media, the constant verbal attacks and the framing of journalists as enemies and purveyors of fake news,” he said.
Mona Charon/NRO
Stop Making Excuses for Greg Gianforte’s Assaulting a Reporter
Laura Ingraham chose to impugn Jacobs’s manhood: “Politicians always need to keep their cool. But what would most Montana men do if ‘body slammed’ for no reason by another man?” She followed up with “Did anyone get his lunch money stolen today and then run to tell the recess monitor?”
Dinesh D’Souza struck the same tone, calling Jacobs a “crybaby,” and also implying that the story was a “scam” perpetrated by Jacobs to swing the election to the Democrat.
None of this is a gray area. You either uphold certain basic standards of decency or you don’t. Some who call themselves conservatives have shown that they are nothing of the kind. To be conservative is to be honorable. These are contemptible, partisan hacks. Let’s close with another Ingraham tweet whose cynicism passeth all understanding: “Loyalty…courage…valor…honor…truth…at risk of becoming lost virtues in Washington, DC.”
Greg Sargent/WaPo:
Trump’s latest tantrum will hurt hundreds of thousands of people. Here’s how.
In an interview with me this morning, Brad Wilson, the president and chief executive of Blue Cross Blue Shield North Carolina, said flat-out that the failure of the Trump administration and Congress to guarantee that these subsidies will continue is why rates are going to soar for hundreds of thousands of people in his state.
“The failure of the administration and the House to bring certainty and clarity by funding CSRs has caused our company to file a 22.9 percent premium increase, rather than one that is materially lower,” Wilson told me. “That will impact hundreds of thousands of North Carolinians.” The company says it has approximately half a million customers getting individual insurance via Obamacare.
“We filed a 22.9 rate increase for 2018 based on the assumption that the CSRs will not be in place,” Wilson also said. “The rate increase would be 8.8 percent if the CSRs were guaranteed for 2018. Because they are not, the rate is 22.9 percent.”
Robert Schlesinger/US News:
The Presidency Is a Cancer on the GOP
Listen to conservative warnings about Trump, Gianforte and Seth Rich conspiracy theories.
It has been a clarifying few days in terms of understanding the state of the Republican Party. While the destructive president has been out of the country and, for him, fairly buttoned down, a pair of events at home have brought into sharp relief the deteriorating state of the rest of the GOP, and it's not a pretty sight.
Both Rep.-elect Greg Gianforte's alleged assault upon reporter Ben Jacobs and the ceaseless promotion of the conspiracy theories around the death of former Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich provide bright-line tests of the decency and sanity of the GOP and the right; a startling number of people failed them.
And while President Donald Trump took his weird and depressing act to the Middle East and Europe, it's hard not to see a corrosive connection between his reign atop the Grand Old Party and its decline into moral and intellectual depravity.
The presidency is a cancer on the GOP, to paraphrase John Dean's famous warning.
James Hohmann/WaPo:
-- “The darker forces that propelled President Trump’s rise are beginning to frame and define the rest of the Republican Party,” Karen Tumulty and Robert Costa explain. “When Gianforte assaulted a reporter … many saw not an isolated outburst by an individual, but the obvious, violent result of Trump’s charge that journalists are ‘the enemy of the people.’ … Trump — and specifically, his character and his conduct — now thoroughly dominate the national political conversation. Traditional policy arguments over whether entitlement programs should be overhauled, or taxes cut, are regularly upstaged by a new burst of pyrotechnics. … Trump’s barrage of news-making and controversy drives the GOP even at its lowest levels, with his raucous populism and blustering behavior reshaping its identity. Candidates often are either adopting aspects of his persona or finding themselves having to fitfully explain why they back him despite them.”
These APRs are long because there is just so much out there.