| | | | The one quote Don Jr. can't possibly spin | | The release of Donald Trump Jr.'s email exchange with music publicist Rob Goldstone on Tuesday morning is an absolutely titanic development in the ongoing investigation into the depth of Russia's meddling in the 2016 election and whether anyone in Trump's campaign orbit colluded with the Russians.
I went through the email exchange between Trump Jr. and Goldstone with a fine-tooth comb earlier today -- and found lots (and lots) of potential pitfalls for the President's eldest son.
But one part of it stuck with me -- because it seemed to me to be fundamentally un-spinnable for the Trump forces. As in, there doesn't seem to me to be any way around how incredibly bad it looks.
Here's the line -- from Goldstone to Trump Jr. regarding the request for a meeting and what might be revealed:
"This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump."
There's literally no way that Trump Jr. could misinterpret the origin of this "high level and sensitive" information. Goldstone says bluntly that the information "is part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump."
Trump Jr. had no issues with where the information was coming from -- agreeing to a call which eventually became a meeting with a conduit of a Russian family with whom he had brief ties thanks to the Miss Universe pageant in 2013 in Russia. In fact, Trump Jr. said he would "love it" and would likely put it to use later in the summer -- when the general election was underway in earnest.
The only possible spin I can conceive of from the Trump team is that Don Jr. thought Goldstone was lying about the source of the information. But, if that was the case, why rapidly agree to a meeting being brokered by Goldstone?
If there is anything that Trump Jr. needs to address, it's this. Why did he agree to a meeting if he knew the information that he would be passed in the meeting was from "Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump?"
There seems to be no explanation that makes things even marginally better for Donald Jr. -- or his dad. | | REMINDER: HEALTH CARE IS STILL IMPORTANT | | Health care is so important that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday delayed the start of the August Senate recess until the third week of August, CNN reported.
"Once the Senate completes its work on health care reform, we will turn to other important issues including the National Defense Authorization Act and the backlog of critical nominations that have been mindlessly stalled by Democrats," McConnell said in a statement.
Remember that at first McConnell wanted to finish this by Fourth of July, so the goalposts continue to move. And move. That's because McConnell still doesn't have the votes. The Senate Majority Leader can only afford to lose two GOP senators' votes. Ten have said they oppose the current bill. It's still hard to see how he gets there from here. | | Also on the Hill...
New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren -- both rumored #2020 Democratic presidential contenders -- teamed up on Tuesday to introduce a bill that seeks to reform how the United States treats incarcerated women.
"There is so much progress to do on a criminal justice system that is in my opinion is very strongly unjust," Booker said in a joint press conference with Warren, streamed on Facebook. "In the larger conversation about the criminal justice system, there is one population that is left out. It's actually the population that's the fastest growing population of prisoners in the United States of America, and that is women who are incarcerated."
California Sen. Kamala Harris -- another potential Democrat to watch for in #2020 -- and Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin co-sponsored the bill. | | THE LATEST "FAULT LINES" COLUMN | | Check out the latest piece from CNN Senior Political Analyst Ronald Brownstein, titled "Why one-party government doesn't last." There have been just 14 years of one-party rule since the 1968 election.
This is the latest edition of his brand new column, which analyzes the changing political landscape. | | CNN's Liz Stark pulled out a few great nuggets from the New York Times' Mark Leibovich cover story about President Trump. - Trump watches prerecorded episodes of "Fox and Friends:" "It was 12:30, but the president was not eating lunch. He was watching a recording of ''Fox and Friends'' from about four hours earlier on a large TV mounted on the wall."
- Trump says tweets are his voice: "But like most reporters, I found his tweets far more illuminating than anything the White House press office could ever disgorge. I urged him to keep it up. Trump assured me that he would keep tweeting. 'It's my voice,' Trump said of Twitter, enumerating how many millions of followers he had. 'They want to take away my voice,' Trump said. 'They're not going to take away my social media.'"
- Sen. McCain used to dislike Sean Spicer; now he just feels sorry for him: "All of this had, perversely, compounded Spicer's 'current status' even more by making him a strange object of fascination in the capital: Washington loves a death watch, and Spicer has been seen as a dead man talking for months -- and yet he kept showing up and taking it. ''You know, at first I really didn't like Spicer,' Senator John McCain told me. 'Now I just feel sorry for the guy.'"
| | Arizona Sen. John McCain on Monday posted his summer reading list on Medium (who knew he was so hip?). Among his "all-time favorite books": - "All Quiet on the Western Front" by Erich Maria Remarque
- "Battle Cry of Freedom" by James McPherson
- "The Best and the Brightest" by David Halberstam
- "For Whom the Bell Tolls" by Ernest Hemingway
- "Good-Bye to All That: An Autobiography" by Robert Graves
| | | Not even a little dancing hot dog can help Snap Inc. recover from its plummeting stock price. As Vanity Fair's Maya Kosff reported Tuesday, "the honeymoon is over for Snap." Snapchat opened on the New York Stock Exchange at $17 a share in March. But now, its stock price has dropped more than 5%, meaning the company has lost about $1 billion from its valuation. Sorry, dancing hot dog, you're still a great, viral filter though. | | | ICYMI: Roll Call published its "dogs of the Senate, Round II" on Monday. SPOILER: The pups are cute. The pics feature dogs from Sens. Thom Tillis, Ron Wyden, David Perdue and Ed Markey's offices. | | | We feel you, Joe. Thanks for reading. As always, remember to tell your friends -- and your enemies -- to subscribe. | | | Get the Nightcap, a comprehensive summary of the most important political news, delivered to your inbox daily. | | | | | |
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