BY PRIYANKA ARIBINDI, BRIAN BEUTLER

& CROOKED MEDIA

Thursday, November 15, 2018

—DJT talking shit about Sean Hannity’s softball questions. Tough break, Sean.

TRUMP'S MOLE

In the past 24 hours President Trump accidentally confessed that he installed acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker to interfere in the Russia investigation, and suggested Whitaker may already be giving him wildly improper visibility into Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe.

On Thursday morning, Trump lashed out at Mueller more aggressively than he has in many weeks, claiming specific knowledge about the investigation’s “inner workings”—a level of insight he has never claimed to have before.

Trump could be bullshitting, or basing his claim on what he’s heard from witnesses. But it comes a week after he gave Whitaker the job. And we can now confirm the obvious: that giving Whitaker that job was all about wresting control of the Mueller investigation.

On Wednesday, Trump gave an interview to the Daily Caller, a loyal, pro-Trump propaganda shop, where he fielded several softball questions, including one about who the next Senate-confirmed attorney general might be. “Could you tell us where your thinking is currently on the attorney general position? I know you’re happy with Matthew Whitaker, do you have any names?”

Note, this question has nothing to do with Mueller, and yet Trump, unprompted, responded by revealing that the Whitaker selection had everything to do with Mueller. “I knew [Whitaker] only as he pertained, you know, as he was with Jeff Sessions,” Trump said. “And, you know, look, as far as I’m concerned this is an investigation that should have never been brought. It should have never been had. It’s something that should have never been brought. It’s an illegal investigation.”

It’s like the time he blurted out to Lester Holt that he fired FBI Director James Comey because of the Russia investigation! Only worse!

From Brian: The backdrop for these outbursts—and Trump’s escalating efforts to obstruct justice—is that Trump has spent the past several days working with his lawyers to answer written questions from Mueller’s investigators about his campaign’s ties to Russia. That process, according to Maggie Haberman of the New York Times, is one of the main contributors to Trump’s post-election meltdown. We are once again on the cusp of a confrontation between Trump and Mueller that could throw the country into a constitutional crisis.

Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-OH) said she’s said she’s “overwhelmed” by the support of some colleagues who want her to challenge Nancy Pelosi in the caucus election to nominate the next House speaker. A former chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, Fudge says close to 30 Democrats have signaled to her that they are open to opposing Pelosi. Seventeen have done so publicly, signing a letter saying they won’t support her on the House floor.

Yesterday we highlighted the New York Times’s bombshell story about how Facebook recruited a GOP public relations firm, Definers Public Affairs, to downplay the extent to which Russian intelligence used the platform to spread propaganda during the 2016 election, and to attack the company’s critics, including by linking them to George Soros. Crooked Media contributor Tim Miller was one of the Republican operatives who worked with Facebook on that campaign. It was not our intent to conceal Miller’s involvement in our coverage, and the Crooked Media founders have since released a statement on the story.

Since yesterday, Facebook has ended its relationship with Definers Public Affairs, which executives Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg claimed they didn’t know about. They also claimed that it’s “grossly unfair” to suggest executives knew about Russian interference, but tried to downplay and prevent investigations into it. According to Zuckerberg, Facebook will create an independent oversight body that people can appeal to if they have issues with content on the platform. From Brian: That’s good because I have issues with all of it.  

Democrats flipped another House seat in Maine today after a ranked-choice runoff allowed Democrat Jared Golden to unseat incumbent Republican Bruce Poliquin in Maine’s 2nd District. This brings the Democrats’ net gain to 35 House seats. Gonna need a rashguard for this Blue Wave.

Mira Ricardel, the deputy national security adviser whose job became imperiled when First Lady Melania Trump said she should be fired, has left the White House for another role in the Trump administration, which has yet to be determined.

Los Angeles police arrested anti-Trump lawyer Michael Avenatti Wednesday on a felony domestic violence charge. He has since been released on $50,000 bail, and denies any allegation of abuse or violence.

Oxford Dictionary’s Word of the Year is “toxic,” which uh… seems like a weird choice for this year—what could’ve prompted that??  

Beto’s running—from Congress toward the White House. Literally.

The Trump administration hopes to entice Turkey to ratchet down pressure on Saudi Arabia for murdering Jamal Khashoggi, by trying to extradite Turkish cleric Fethullah Gülen, an enemy of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Vile.  

Two cabinet members, including the Brexit secretary, quit over British Prime Minister Theresa May’s draft agreement to withdraw Britain from the European Union, which would pull Britain out of the union by March 29, 2019, but bind the country to E.U. rules and maintain the trading bloc until the end of 2020.

The bad tweet that launched a thousand memes:

There are now MAGA building blocks that let kids “build a wall” for the Mexican border. Is Ron DeSantis getting royalties, or something? Seriously though, it’s a depressing reminder that the poisons Trump has injected into our political system will be with us for generations. Happy Thursday!

BABY GRITTY'S FIRST SNOW!

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