memeorandum: Town Hall Protesters Mock Death of GOP Lawmaker's Special Needs Daughter (Penny Starr/Breitbart)

3:20 AM ET, May 13, 2017

Top Items:

‘Looking Like a Liar or a Fool’: What It Means to Work for Trump — WASHINGTON — President Trump has never shown any reluctance to sacrifice a surrogate to serve a short-term political need, so he apparently did not think twice this week about exposing a series of staff members to ridicule …

Discussion: Washington Post, CNN, Gizmodo, CBS Miami, ThinkProgress, Hot Air and TVNewser, more at Mediagazer »

The Daily Beast:

White House Staff React in Real-Time as Trump Tweets: ‘Jesus’ … It was 7:51 a.m. eastern time on a Friday, and the president was angrily tweetstorming again. — This time, it was about “Fake News,” “the Russians,” China and beef, James Comey and “tapes,” and his sometimes hapless White House staff.

Pierre Thomas / ABC News:

Comey furious at lack of respect White House showed, sources say — Former FBI Director James Comey was furious at the lack of respect the White House showed him in the way he was fired, sources have told ABC News. — Associates say he is simmering at some of the comments directed …

Discussion: Politico, Raw Story, portal.liberalamerica.org, Politicus USA and Associated Press

Megan Cerullo / New York Daily News:

Roger Stone contradicts Trump, says he has spoken to the President ‘very recently’ — The Trump administration can't keep its story straight. — President Trump took to Twitter early Wednesday morning to shoot down reports that his confidant, political strategist Roger Stone …

Discussion: Mother Jones

Austin Wright / Politico:

Comey declines to testify before Senate committee — Ousted FBI Director James Comey will not appear in a closed session before the Senate Intelligence Committee next Tuesday. — Comey had been invited by Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and top Democrat Mark Warner of Virginia.

Discussion: Fox News, Mediaite, Washington Post, The Gateway Pundit, The Talking Dog, Power Line, IJR, Liberal Values, Washington Free Beacon and Political Wire

Pamela Brown / CNN:

Source: Comey is ‘not worried about any tapes’ — Washington (CNN)Former FBI Director James Comey is “not worried about any tapes” of conversations between him and President Donald Trump, a source familiar with the matter told CNN Friday, adding that “if there is a tape, there's nothing he is worried about” that could be on it.

Discussion: HuffPost, Raw Story, Talking Points Memo, CANNONFIRE, Daily Kos, Washington Monthly, Hot Air, The American Conservative, RedState, The Daily Caller, Politicus USA, Media Matters for America, Daily Mail, ThinkProgress, The Rush Limbaugh Show, Political Wire, Axios and NBC News

Justin Miller / The Daily Beast:

Did Donald Trump's Dinner With FBI Boss James Comey Break the Law? … The timing of President Donald Trump's dinner with FBI Director James Comey raises the question of whether the president attempted to—or did in fact—interfere with an ongoing FBI investigation. And that's a federal offense.

Discussion: MSNBC, Washington Post, USA Today, The Mahablog, Mediaite, Mother Jones, The Daily Caller, Talking Points Memo, Common Dreams, Breitbart, Political Insider blog, Politico and Vox

Joe DePaolo / Mediaite:

‘It Took My Breath Away’: Chris Wallace Offers Stunning, Must-Watch Critique of Trump White House — Chris Wallace has spent the better part of the past four decades reporting on Washington for NBC, ABC, and now Fox News. And given his lengthy tenure of Beltway reporting …

Discussion: The Week

Chris Smith / Vanity Fair:

Inside Trump's Coming War with the F.B.I. — “Agents are pissed off at the way he was fired, the total disrespect with which it was handled. It was a slap in the face to the F.B.I., to everybody in the F.B.I.” — James Comey thought he had a year. That's the amount of time it was likely …

Discussion: Washington Post and The Hill

Jonathan Swan / Axios:
Trump's Comey fight spooks Capitol Hill

Discussion: Politico, The Hill, ABC News, Raw Story, Mediaite, No More Mister Nice Blog, Washington Monthly, RedState and Hot Air

Philip Rucker / Washington Post:
Trump threatens to cancel White House briefings because it is ‘not possible’ …

Shannon Vavra / Axios:
Comey turns down Senate invite, won't testify next week

Discussion: Hot Air, Politico, ABC News, The Hill and Political Wire

Wall Street Journal:
Trump Weighs Shake-Up of Press Team

Discussion: Political Wire

Brad Reed / Raw Story:
‘No one can talk sense into him’: CNN guest says even Ivanka seems to have lost control of President Trump

Discussion: AOL

AP News:
The Latest: Senate intel chair sees no evidence of collusion

Discussion: CNN, RedState, Mediaite, Above the Law, Fox News, Hot Air, KRON4.com, Mother Jones, Washington Examiner, IJR, ThinkProgress, Axios, The Hill, Shareblue, Gizmodo and Politico

Ramesh Ponnuru / National Review:
Trump vs. the Russia Investigations

Discussion: Hot Air, Bloomberg and Patterico's Pontifications

Brandon Carter / The Hill:
Trump suggests WH ‘not have press conferences’ unless he does them himself

Discussion: Associated Press, Politico, Hot Air, twitchy.com, Axios, Fox News Insider, TVNewser, Mediaite, Joe.My.God. and Little Green Footballs

Alan Dershowitz / Washington Examiner:
Trump did not obstruct justice in firing James Comey

Discussion: Politico and Conservative News Today

Saba Hamedy / CNN:
Warner: Comey won't testify to intel panel next week

Discussion: The Atlantic, Big League Politics, Joe.My.God., IJR and JONATHAN TURLEY

Fox News Insider:
Judge Jeanine Pirro Interview With President Trump

Kelly Cohen / Washington Examiner:
James Comey rejects invitation to testify before Senate Intelligence Committee

Discussion: Shareblue, HuffPost, New York Times, Washington Post, Real Clear Politics, The Daily Caller, The Atlantic, Outside the Beltway, CNN and Mediaite

Wall Street Journal:

Former Trump Adviser Paul Manafort's Bank Records Sought in Probe — Federal investigators looking into Russian election interference requested information; New York investigators also examining his real-estate transactions — The Justice Department last month requested banking records …

Discussion: The Hill and Political Wire

Adam Davidson / New Yorker:

The Senate Starts to Look at Trump's Businesses — I spoke recently to a longtime business associate of Donald Trump's, and asked his thoughts about the various investigations into collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. He laughed and said that there is no way Trump could have been part of such a conspiracy.

Discussion: Vox and Talking Points Memo

Wall Street Journal:

Financial-Crimes Monitor to Share Records in Trump-Russia Probe — Senate committee requested the data from Treasury's FinCEN — WASHINGTON—A Treasury Department unit that specializes in combating money-laundering will share financial records with an expanding Senate probe …

Discussion: Reuters

GreAt / Securelist:

WannaCry ransomware used in widespread attacks all over the world — Earlier today, our products detected and successfully blocked a large number of ransomware attacks around the world. In these attacks, data is encrypted with the extension “.WCRY” added to the filenames.

Discussion: Ars Technica, New York Times, Snopes.com, Lawfare, WeLiveSecurity, New York Magazine, The Guardian, Gizmodo, The Atlantic, Consumerist and NPR, more at Techmeme »

Selena Larson / CNNMoney:
Massive ransomware attack hits 74 countries

Discussion: RedState, WATE-TV and The Guardian

Chris Baraniuk / BBC:
Ransomware infections reported worldwide

Discussion: The Intercept, Gizmodo and Mashable, more at Techmeme »

New York Times:
Hackers Hit Dozens of Countries Exploiting Stolen N.S.A. Tool

Discussion: BBC, The Guardian, Associated Press, Reuters, ThinkProgress, Common Dreams, New York Magazine, Engadget, The Daily Caller, Politico, Al Jazeera English, France 24, Business Insider, The Verge, Hot Air and Gizmodo, more at Techmeme »

Marc Fisher / Washington Post:

Trump has a long history of secretly recording calls, according to former associates — Throughout Donald Trump's business career, some executives who came to work for him were taken aside by colleagues and warned to assume that their discussions with the boss were being recorded.

Discussion: Salon, Politico, IJR, Vox, RedState, Hot Air, Fox Business, ThinkProgress, KTLA, New York Times, Mediaite, Refinery29 and The Guardian

Philip Bump / Washington Post:
Why it's likely that Trump does have recordings of his Oval Office conversations

Discussion: Salon, CNN, Mediaite, New York Daily News, Power Line, ThinkProgress, Talking Points Memo, Raw Story, The Atlantic, FOX6Now.com and twitchy.com

Charles J. Sykes / New York Times:

If Liberals Hate Him, Then Trump Must Be Doing Something Right — If there was one principle that used to unite conservatives, it was respect for the rule of law. Not long ago, conservatives would have been horrified at wholesale violations of the norms and traditions of our political system …

Discussion: Politicaldog101.Com and John Hawkins' Right Wing News

Hadas Gold / Politico:

New York Times publisher sends personal appeal to those who canceled over Bret Stephens — New York Times publisher Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr. is making a personal appeal to subscribers who canceled because the paper hired Bret Stephens, a conservative columnist who has questioned …

Discussion: Lawyers, Guns & Money

Kenneth Chang / New York Times:

NASA Denies Trump's Request to Send Astronauts Past the Moon on New Rocket — When NASA launches its new big rocket for the first time — more than a year and a half from now, at the earliest — there will be no astronauts along for the ride. — In February, at the request of the Trump administration …

Discussion: The FADER

Julian Sanchez / Just Security:

A Misplaced Focus on “Collusion” — Public discussion of the FBI's ongoing investigation into Russian influence on the 2016 election is dominated by the question of collusion: Were senior members of the Trump campaign knowing collaborators in the Russian government's campaign to undermine Hillary Clinton's candidacy?