We begin with Michelle Goldberg’s analysis of Omarosa’s time at the White House:
Omarosa Manigault Newman, the reality show villain who campaigned for Donald Trump and followed him into the White House, is an amoral, dishonest, mercenary grifter. This makes her just like most people in Trump’s orbit. What separates her from them is that she might be capable of a sliver of shame. [...] [S]he chose to speak out against the man who made her a star, and repent for her complicity in electing him. She may be a manipulative narcissist, but she’s behaving more honorably than any other former Trump appointee.
That’s not a high bar, and I wouldn’t take most of the claims of “Unhinged” at face value. But we don’t have to, because Manigault Newman has receipts. [...]
Of course, just because Manigault Newman is telling the truth about some things doesn’t prove that she’s telling the truth about everything, including the alleged existence of outtakes from “The Apprentice” in which Trump uses racial slurs.[...] Still, there’s no question she has useful knowledge of our ruling clique.
Next up, The New York Times editorial board:
On both sides, the spat is vintage Trump: tawdry, cruel, vindictive and highly personal. That said, this is about more than a petty feud with a former aide who famously shares Mr. Trump’s love of chaos, confusion and high drama. It is also a glaring reminder of one of this president’s central failings as a leader: his disastrous judgment when choosing people with whom to surround himself.
And here’s Eugene Robinson’s take:
It’s hard to take Omarosa Manigault Newman’s word for anything. But Lordy, she has tapes, and they offer vivid proof that Donald Trump’s White House is part clown show, part nest of vipers. [...]
She claims to have realized only recently that Trump is a “racist, misogynist and bigot.” Yet she heard his bigoted attacks against Latino immigrants and still went to work for his campaign. She heard his misogynistic rant about how he sexually assaulted women and still took a job in his administration. She heard his many appeals to white racial grievance and still vigorously defended him, even after Charlottesville.
So no, I’m not inclined to believe anything she claims without documentary evidence to back it up. But the tapes and the documents have not been disputed. Omarosa may not have obtained them honorably, but the old saying is true: There is no honor among thieves.
Law professors Nicholas Bagley and Abbe R. Gluck explain how Trump’s sabotage of Obamacare is illegal:
Mr. Trump isn’t a king; he doesn’t have the power to dispense with laws he dislikes. He swore to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. That includes the requirement, set forth in Article II, that the president “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.”
Faithfully executing the laws requires the president to act reasonably and in good faith. It does not countenance the deliberate sabotage of an act of Congress. Put bluntly: Mr. Trump’s assault on Obamacare is illegal. [...] Never in modern American history has a president so transparently aimed to destroy a piece of major legislation. What makes Mr. Trump’s sabotage especially undemocratic is that Congress has repeatedly considered repealing the law — and repeatedly declined to do so. In addition, the Supreme Court has twice sustained the Affordable Care Act in the face of major legal challenges. Mr. Trump’s attempt to destroy the law any way he can is an unconstitutional usurpation of power.
Meanwhile, Ryan Cooper explains why Medicare-for-all makes sense:
If Canada — or Sweden, or Austria, or Denmark, or France, or Australia, or Finland — can cover everyone in a government program for less tax money than America is already paying, then that's a reasonable rough indicator of what we ought to be able to get if we really put our minds to it.
That is doubly true because there is no sign whatsoever that we are actually getting anything good for all that extra spending. On the contrary, American health outcomes are middling-to-poor on most indicators.
On a final note, don’t miss John Legend’s op-ed calling on Louisiana to “strip white supremacy from its constitution”:
Still lingering in the state’s constitution is a 120-year-old measure put in place to suppress the rights of African Americans: non-unanimous juries.
Louisiana is one of only two states — the other is Oregon — in which a person can be convicted of a felony and sent to prison without a unanimous vote of the jury. As a result, Louisiana prosecutors do not truly have the burden of proving their case “beyond a reasonable doubt.” They only need to persuade 10 of 12 jurors to send a defendant to prison, even for life.