BY PRIYANKA ARIBINDI, BRIAN BEUTLER,
& CROOKED MEDIA

Friday, July 13, 2018

—Roger Stone attempting to distance Donald Trump from the campaign of Donald Trump

PUTIN THE PIECES TOGETHER

Special Counsel Robert Mueller has indicted a dozen Russian intelligence officers for stealing and leaking Democratic emails during the 2016 election to help Donald Trump win the presidency. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein acknowledged briefing Trump about the indictments days ago, yet Trump has spent the week calling the investigation a witch hunt, trying to discredit Mueller, and disparaging America’s democratic allies in Europe.

The indictments confirm that:

• The Russian government was behind the attack on the 2016 election, despite Russian President Vladimir Putin’s consistent denials.
• The online pseudonyms Guccifer 2.0 and DCLeaks, which disseminated the emails, were created by these Russian hackers.
• A “person who was in regular contact with senior members of the presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump” communicated with Guccifer 2.0. This person is widely believed to be longtime Trump political adviser Roger Stone.

The indictments reveal that:

• One unnamed candidate for Congress requested and received his or her opponent’s stolen documents from Guccifer 2.0—a potential crime. Fun mystery unless it’s you.
• Late on July 27, 2016 the Russian conspirators attempted “for the first time” to hack Hillary Clinton’s personal email—the same day that Trump infamously looked into TV cameras and said, “Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 [Clinton] emails that are missing.” I guess it wasn’t a joke, huh?
• The hackers accessed the registration information of 500,000 voters and DNC analytics—analytics that would have given the Trump campaign a big leg-up in the election, though the indictment does not say what the hackers did with them.

From Brian: It’s important that Mueller got to the bottom of this criminal conspiracy, which played out publicly, in time to disrupt Trump’s looming summit with Putin. But the fact that Trump (and thus likely House Republicans) have known for days that this was coming places the week’s news in an infuriating context. Knowing that the Mueller was about to indict Russian spies for attacking the U.S., Trump—and through him the House GOP—stepped up their efforts to discredit the investigation. They are actively trying to help the Russians get away with their crimes.

Read →

After President Trump trashed British Prime Minister Theresa May in a British tabloid yesterday, 250,000 people gathered in London to protest his visit to the U.K., and placed a blimp depicting him as a diaper-clad infant on display outside of Parliament. He and May spoke privately and held a news conference, during which Trump said immigration is bad for Europe because it’s “changing the culture,” which is the precise language white nationalists use.

Trump met with Queen Elizabeth, and managed to royally [get it?] fuck up protocol by basically pretending she was invisible, before she reportedly rushed him out. We don’t blame her.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin says trade negotiations with China have “broken down,” and that it’s China’s job to come to the table with concessions. For what? To what end? The Trump administration never says. China, on the other hand, says the U.S. is acting “erratically” (not wrong!) and has “insisted on fighting a trade war.” (Also not wrong!)

A Missouri jury ordered Johnson & Johnson to pay $4.69 billion to 22 women and their families who claim asbestos in the company’s baby powder products caused ovarian cancer.

Scarlett Johansson has “respectfully withdrawn” from accepting a role as a trans man in an upcoming film after everyone in the world had to explain to her why the role should go to an actual trans man.

Netflix’s Queer Eye is getting a third season!!! Tears and transformations will be coming soon to Kansas City.

On Lovett or Leave It: Things get spicy at the Improv with Professor Melina Abdullah and comedians Megan Gailey and Kate Willett, who join Jon Lovett to talk about Peter Strzok, SCOTUS, NATO, and Lovett’s favorite Starbucks hack.

Listen →

Today marks the fifth anniversary of the Black Lives Matter movement, founded after the acquittal of Trayvon Martin’s killer, George Zimmerman in Florida in 2013. Five years later, its mission is as important as ever.

Forty-six percent of black Americans report being discriminated against in the past month. In a new study about how white middle-class parents discuss racism, only five percent of respondents reported speaking to their children about things like power and privilege that come with whiteness in this country. Thirty percent of them reported speaking about racism in a “neutral or defensive color-blind” way, and a staggering 65 percent say they don’t discuss racism with their children at all.

In an interview with GQ Australia, the actor Henry Cavill said the #MeToo movement makes it “very difficult” to date, which was maybe the most efficient possible way for Henry Cavill to both underscore the need for the movement and make himself permanently undateable. Tarana Burke, the founder of the #MeToo movement, used this nonsense to highlight a broader problem with the way we discuss the men whose misconduct has been exposed.

Using words and phrases like #MeToo “snared,” “brought down,” or “singled out” men runs counter to reality: “The fact is these people brought THEMSELVES down with their own behavior. The movement is about people owning their truth and releasing the shame associated with sexual violence,” Burke tweeted. How we see and hear stories being told shapes how we think about them.

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