Meteor Blades is on vacation (or otherwise engaged).
Greg Sargent/WaPo:
Trump is leading a ‘hate movement’ against the media
Trump’s son, Eric Trump, tweeted out video of the “CNN sucks” chant, with the hashtag #Truth, while directly singling out Acosta. And the president himself retweeted his son. The president’s son is actively encouraging Trump supporters to direct rage and abuse toward working journalists, and the president is joining in, helping to spread the word.
You might think it reeks of “whataboutism” to juxtapose this event with the expulsion of Sarah Huckabee Sanders. On the contrary, I’d like to argue that both these events belong in the same category: They both were the direct result of Trump’s nonstop and very deliberate efforts to provoke as much rage and division as he can, in as many quarters as he can. The profound imbalance and asymmetry revealed by the juxtaposition of the two situations is the real story here.
Josh Kraushaar/National Journal:
Conservative Divisions Threaten GOP’s Senate Majority
Republicans sound confident about holding their base, but they know that any hint of partisan restlessness will have significant reverberations. Leading GOP candidates are running against the clock as much as their Democratic opponents, trying to get Trump to back away from policies that could cost them united GOP support before the midterms.
Right now, Republicans still are favorites to hold the Senate, with the red-state map continuing to be a bulwark against a worsening political environment. But with an unpredictable Trump testing the limits of his support, GOP candidates can’t rest on their laurels. It’s getting harder to see Republicans netting more than one Senate seat, and any last-minute Trump surprises could realistically put the majority at risk.
Philip Bump/WaPo:
Is Bannon right that white, college-educated women have given up on Republicans?
And now to the question at hand.
That’s a remarkable chart. In the most recent Post poll, conducted with the Schar School, the gap was 47 points in favor of the Democrats among white women with college degrees.
Look just at the margin, the support for the Republican minus the support for the Democrat in each poll. Support for the Republicans among white women with a college degree drops off a cliff after 2016.
WaPo:
Believers in “QAnon,” as the conspiracy theory is known, were front and center at the Florida State Fairgrounds Expo Hall, where Trump came to stump for Republican candidates. As the president spoke, a sign rose from the audience. “We are Q,” it read. Another poster displayed text arranged in a “Q” pattern: “Where we go one we go all.”
The symbol appeared on clothing, too. A man and a woman wore matching white T-shirts with the YouTube logo encircled in a blue “Q.” The video-sharing website came under criticism this week for unwittingly becoming a platform for baseless claims, first promoted on Twitter and Reddit by QAnon believers, that certain Hollywood celebrities are pedophiles. A search for the name of one of those celebrities on Monday returned videos purporting to show his victims sharing their stories.
You have to remember that Trump rallies are white supremacist revival meetings, except only the dumbest people allowed in.
Tom Nichols (twitter version here):
Okay, since the post-FISA Russia gaslighting has begun, let's sum up why the Trumper arguments about "no collusion" and "no crime" and all that crap are not only wrong, but morally deficient. Yes, including the Fusion and Steele issue. /1
First, the "dossier." A GOP operative hires a dirt-gathering oppo firm, backs out, and that assignment gets taken over by a firm working for the Dems. They are paying a company whose job it is to get dirt to go get dirt. This firm - duh - has foreign contractors like Steele. /2
Foreign contractor uses his contacts in a world of Very Bad Guys to see what he can turn up, because (a) oppo, and (b) he is, you know, a former spy. He writes a raw file - not a final report - that says: "Here's some hideous dirt, but I can't vouch for all of it."/3
Margaret Sullivan/WaPo:
As the bizarre QAnon group emerges, Trump rallies go from nasty to dangerous
It brings to mind Hunter S. Thompson’s observation: “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.”
Trump ought to be doing everything in his power to calm the waters at his rallies before real violence — perhaps deadly violence — takes over.
Necessary as that is, the chances of his doing that are remarkably low. After all, for him, the reality-based media is the “enemy of the people.”
Will Sommer/Daily Beast:
What Is QAnon? The Craziest Theory of the Trump Era, Explained
Plotters in the deep state tried to shoot down Air Force One and foil President Trump’s North Korea summit. A cabal of global elites, including top figures in Hollywood, the Democratic Party, and the intelligence agencies, are responsible for nearly all the evil in the world. And now Trump is going to fix it all with thousands of sealed indictments, sending the likes of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama straight to Guantanamo Bay.
Or at least that’s how the world is going for the believers of QAnon, the complex pro-Trump conspiracy theory that’s starting to having unpredictable effects in real life. The real news can be bad for Trump, but in QAnon-world, the president and his supporters really are getting sick of winning.
Pro Publica:
Kris Kobach’s Lucrative Trail of Courtroom Defeats
For years, the candidate for Kansas governor has defended towns that passed anti-immigration ordinances. The towns have lost big — but Kobach has fared considerably better.
“Ambulance chasing” is how Grant Young, a former mayor of Valley Park, describes Kobach’s role. Young characterized Kobach’s attitude as, “Let’s find a town that’s got some issues or pretends to have some issues, let’s drum up an immigration problem and maybe I can advance my political position, my political thinking and maybe make some money at the same time.”
Jennifer Rubin/WaPo:
Trump seems determined to show ‘corrupt intent’
“Had Trump directed a recused AG to terminate an investigation into his conduct and the conduct of those around him in private, we would almost surely deem it a criminal act,” says Joyce White Vance, a former federal prosecutor. “He should not get a pass because he has either the brashness or the foolishness to do this in public.”
Laurence H. Tribe, a constitutional scholar and Supreme Court advocate, likewise cautions that “what Trump has said about Sessions isn’t equivalent to telling the attorney general ‘You’re fired unless you direct your deputy discharge Mueller by close of business today.’ ”
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, as is her want, tried to give the president wiggle room to protect him against self-incrimination. She insisted the president’s tweets are an “opinion” — but not an order. Former White House counsel Norman Eisen tells me that while “this is not a formal legal order through official channels, it is much more than a mere opinion. That is because Trump has made sure it will come to the attorney general’s attention, that message comes from the AG’s superior, and it certainly calls on the AG to act.” He adds, “Shockingly, the act called for is an illegal one, since Sessions [is] forbidden under federal ethics law from doing what Trump wants. ”
So Trump’s tweet itself might be just on the safe side of obstruction. But what does it show?