BY PRIYANKA ARIBINDI, BRIAN BEUTLER
& CROOKED MEDIA

Monday, July 16th, 2018

—Vladimir Putin, presidential manipulator and corniest human being alive

SUMMIT OF ALL FEARS

President Trump hosted an astonishing press conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday during which he refused to back his own intelligence team over Putin, blamed the United States for strained relations with Moscow, attacked Hillary Clinton, and smeared the FBI. A stunned Anderson Cooper spoke for all of us immediately afterwards when he called Trump’s performance “one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president at a summit in front of a Russian leader, certainly that I've ever seen."  

The backdrop for the press conference was a U.S.-Russia summit in Helsinki, Finland, where Trump and Putin met privately for two hours, just three days after Special Counsel Robert Mueller indicted 12 Russian intelligence officers for stealing and leaking Democratic Party emails to help Trump win the presidency.

Asked whether he sided with his own government or with Putin, Trump:

• Took Putin’s side over his national security team, calling out Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats by name. “My people came to me, Dan Coats came to me and some others, they said they think it’s Russia. I have President Putin; he just said it’s not Russia. I’ll say this: I don’t see any reason why it would be.” 
• Called Mueller’s investigation a “witch hunt,” and suggested the FBI and intelligence community are conspiring to set him up and let Democrats off the hook. 
• Agreed in principle to a ludicrous Putin proposal, under which Mueller would read Russian officials into his evidence against Russian hackers, and Russia in turn would be allowed to interrogate FBI agents and American spies about alleged violations of Russian law. In other words: to give Putin visibility into a wide range of U.S. intelligence capabilities.

Nearly the entire U.S. political system was aghast. Both House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer suggested Putin might be blackmailing Trump. Anti-Trump Republicans like John McCain condemned his performance in withering terms. Even Trump’s most powerful sycophant, House Speaker Paul Ryan, issued a statement urging Trump to take a different tack. It was weak, but usually Ryan pretends to not see this stuff!

Schumer made four demands of Republican leaders:

1. Stiffen U.S. sanctions on Russia;
2. Demand that the national security team accompanying Trump to Helsinki “immediately” testify before Congress;
3. End their attacks on Mueller and the FBI;
4. Demand that the 12 Russians named in Friday’s indictments be extradited to the U.S. to face trial.

From Brian: Today we saw the makings of a new corrupt bargain between Trump and Putin. Trump signaled his willingness to compromise U.S. intelligence and law enforcement operations at Putin’s request and in exchange will look the other way if and when Putin sabotages future U.S. elections on Trump’s behalf.

Read →

Federal agents have arrested a 29-year-old Russian gun rights advocate, Maria Butina, who attempted to arrange a backchannel meeting between Trump and Putin during the 2016 election. She is charged with "infiltrating organizations having influence in American politics,” as an unregistered foreign agent, “for the purpose of advancing the interests of the Russian Federation.” The organization goes unnamed in the indictment, but reporting and public evidence reveals that it is the NRA.

Asked to name America’s biggest foes globally this weekend, President Trump placed the European Union, which includes some of America’s longest-standing allies, at the top of his list. Take that, 70 years of peace between us.

A federal judge has temporarily halted the deportation of reunited families that the Trump administration had separated in order to ensure that no reunited family is improperly deported.

FCC chairman Ajit Pai is pumping the brakes on Sinclair Broadcast Group’s attempted acquisition of Tribune Media, expressing concern that “certain station divestitures that Sinclair proposed in order to facilitate the deal would still, in practice, allow the company to control the stations, which is against the law. Sinclair, which has quickly become the largest broadcasting group in the U.S., uses its 173 local stations across the country to broadcast pro-Trump propaganda. The development is a surprise coming from Pai, who is a conservative ideologue, closely allied with corporate industries with business before the FCC.

SpaceX and Tesla CEO/Twitter conspiracy theorist Elon Musk has been outed as one of the top donors to the GOP’s Protect the House PAC. Musk has donated to both parties in the past, but this donation is awfully strange for a guy who supposedly cares about climate change.

France won the World Cup yesterday, beating Croatia 4-2. Members of the dissident band Pussy Riot stormed the field during the game because Russians can’t seem to stop themselves from interfering in shit. Just kidding! It was a brave protest against human rights abuses in Russia.

New York announced it will investigate allegations that Kushner Companies, Jared Kushner’s family business, used intrusive construction and steep rent hikes in order to push out tenants and convert a rent-controlled building into a luxury condominium complex.

Amazon’s website went down on the shopping holiday the company invented in order to get people to buy things on its website. Bezos, my dude, you literally had one job.

The first four chapters of Jon Favreau’s new documentary podcast, The Wilderness, are here!

1: "The Democracy"
2: "The Change"
3: "The Nightmare"
4: "The Voters"

Listen →

New reports on Trump’s behind-the-scenes conduct at the contentious NATO summit last week have been made public today following his meeting with Vladimir Putin. After other leaders said they were unable to unilaterally determine their countries’ respective defense budgets without input from their legislatures, Trump reportedly turned to Turkish President Recep Erdogan, said, “he does things the right way,” and gave him a fist bump. Erdogan has subjected Turkey to increasingly authoritarian control, expanding his own powers while limiting freedom of the press and suppressing dissent. This anti-democratic behavior would be bigger news if not for the rest of Trump’s even-more-egregious coddling of a strongman in Helsinki.

President Trump’s corporate tax cuts have been the law of the land for six months, but despite an elaborate propaganda campaign to attribute corporate holiday bonuses to the tax cuts, and endless Republican insistence that the tax cuts are working, wages have actually fallen 1.4 percent in inflation-adjusted terms over the past year.

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