Section: TPM (USA)
Bannon’s 2016: ‘Rootless White Males,’ ‘Pure Evil’ And A ‘F*cking Hammerhead’
Donald Trump’s decision to bring on former Breitbart News chair Steve Bannon as chief executive of his campaign in August 2016 seemed like a last-ditch tactic for a foundering presidential bid. Bannon was known to most people at the time as a conservative bomb-thrower in charge of a news site that served as refuge for those who found even...
Bad Oppo, Secret Service Fail: Defenses Of Don Jr. Meeting Don’t Square
A White House not exactly known for its message discipline is fumbling its response to Donald Trump, Jr.’s meeting with a Kremlin-linked lawyer during the 2016 campaign, with new explanations that arise on a near-daily basis become increasingly harder to square with each other. While maintaining its original defense, that the President...
Russia Warns Of Consequences If US Doesn’t Reopen Two Russian Recreational Estates
MOSCOW (AP) — Russia’s Foreign Ministry said on Friday that it would have to expel U.S. diplomats and shut down some U.S. compounds in Russia if the United States does not reopen two Russian recreational estates in the U.S. that were shut down last year. In response to reports of Russian meddling in the presidential election, the outgoing...
Efforts To Lift Russia’s Ban On Adoptions By Americans May Be Hindered With Trump Jr. Scandal
NEW YORK (AP) — More than four years after it was imposed, Russia’s ban on adoptions by Americans is back in the news, rekindling frustration and sadness among some of those affected by it. Chuck Johnson, CEO of the National Council for Adoption, worries that any efforts by President Donald Trump’s administration to get the ban lifted...
GOP Rep. Agrees With POTUS That It’s Not Clear Putin Favored Trump In 2016
Rep. Chris Stewart (R-UT) on Thursday morning argued that President Donald Trump is right to question the intelligence community’s assessment that the Russian government tried to help Trump win the 2016 election. During an appearance on CNN, host Alisyn Camerota asked Stewart to react to Trump’s argument in a Christian Broadcasting...
White House: The Only Collusion In 2016 Was Between DNC, Ukrainian Gov’t
Deputy White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Wednesday deflected questions about any potential Trump campaign collusion in the 2016 election by accusing the Democratic National Committee of colluding with the Ukrainian government, though the situations have marked differences. “If there’s been any evidence of collusion in...
Trump’s Lawyer Won’t Say If Don Jr. Meeting Was Inappropriate
Jay Sekulow, a member of President Donald Trump’s outside legal team, on Wednesday morning would not say whether Trump believes it was inappropriate for his son to meet with a Kremlin-linked lawyer in the hopes of getting dirt on Hillary Clinton. “It’s not illegal,” Sekulow said on ABC’s “Good Morning America” when asked if...
No One Investigating Trump-Russia Was Looking for Don Jr.
With a cast of characters like Michael Flynn, Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort and Carter Page, it seemed like only a matter of time before at least one of them had to explain a paper trail describing suspicious contact—whether through naïveté or malice—with Russian agents trying to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. It just didn’t...
US, Russia To Resume High-Level Talks Initially Scrapped After Trump Admin’s New Sanctions
WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States and Russia are set to resume a series of high-level talks that Moscow scrapped after the Trump administration announced new sanctions. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert says that Undersecretary of State Tom Shannon and Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov will meet on Monday in Washington....
White House Trots Out Gorka To Defend Trump Jr. By Claiming DNC Collusion
After weeks out of the spotlight, White House aide Sebastian Gorka was trotted out on Tuesday to defend Donald Trump, Jr. amid reports that he tried to obtain damaging information about Hillary Clinton that he had been told was part of a Russian government effort to help his father’s presidential campaign. He repeatedly alleged that the...
