memeorandum: Mueller's Focus on Adviser to United Arab Emirates Indicates Widening of Inquiry (New York Times)

9:25 AM ET, March 4, 2018

Top Items:

CNN:

Trump on China's Xi consolidating power: 'Maybe we'll give that a shot some day' — (CNN)President Donald Trump bemoaned a decision not to investigate Hillary Clinton after the 2016 presidential election, decrying a “rigged system” that still doesn't have the “right people” in place to fix it …

Discussion: Raw Story, Outside the Beltway, The Guardian, Washington Monthly, The Daily Beast, twitchy.com, RedState, Washington Press and Mediaite

Gillian Wong / Associated Press:

China's Xi poised to make historic grab at indefinite rule — BEIJING (AP) — President Xi Jinping is poised to make a historic power grab as China's legislators gather beginning Monday to approve changes that will let him rule indefinitely and undo decades of efforts to prevent a return to crushing dictatorship.

New York Times:

Mueller's Focus on Adviser to United Arab Emirates Indicates Widening of Inquiry — WASHINGTON — George Nader, a Lebanese-American businessman, has hovered on the fringes of international diplomacy for three decades. He was a back-channel negotiator with Syria during the Clinton administration …

Discussion: Axios, KTLA and The Gateway Pundit

Washington Post:

‘Pure madness’: Dark days inside the White House as Trump shocks and rages … Inside the White House, aides over the past week have described an air of anxiety and volatility — with an uncontrollable commander in chief at its center. — These are the darkest days in at least half a year …

Discussion: Washington Monthly, Shareblue Media, ABC News, Raw Story, Mother Jones, Daily Kos, Washington Press, skippy the bush kangaroo, Mediaite, IJR and Politico

Julie Hirschfeld Davis / New York Times: Live From the West Wing, Trump Pulls Back the Curtain

Matt Wilstein / The Daily Beast:

Trump Jokes Melania Might Leave Him at Gridiron Dinner … Just a few hours after he suggested that perhaps America should follow China's lead with the whole “president for life” thing, President Donald Trump took the stage to tell some jokes at the annual Gridiron Club Dinner …

Discussion: CNN, Outside the Beltway and Washington Post

Brent D. Griffiths / Politico:

Trump pokes fun — and makes North Korea news — at Gridiron — During a lighthearted address to journalists, the president suggests he's been in contact with North Korean officials, saying ‘we will be meeting.’ — President Donald Trump said late Saturday that “we will be meeting” …

Discussion: Fox News, Political Wire and Althouse

Emily Heil / Washington Post: At a white-tie Gridiron dinner, President Trump tries joking: ‘I like chaos’

New York Times:

Hand Grenades and Gang Violence Rattle Sweden's Middle Class — STOCKHOLM — In the Stockholm suburb of Varby Gard, it was not unusual to see the figure of a 63-year-old man pedaling a bicycle home after the end of his shift as an aide for disabled adults, hunched against the icy wind of a Swedish winter.

Joy-Ann Reid / The Daily Beast:

The Right Can't Fight the Future … It seems axiomatic that the past and the future cannot exist at the same time. Thanks to the space-time continuum, people from different centuries cannot live simultaneously. The same goes for a nation, which cannot survive pulling toward the future and toward the past at once.

Paul Krugman / New York Times:

Trade War, What Is It Good For? Absolutely Nothing — We've known all along that Donald Trump is belligerently ignorant about economics (and many other things). But up to this point that hasn't mattered much. He took office amid a sustained recovery that began under his predecessor …

Discussion: The Mahablog

Peter Wehner / New York Times: Trump's White House Is a Black Hole

EW.com:

M*A*S*H actor David Ogden Stiers dies at 75 — M*A*S*H actor David Ogden Stiers died of cancer on Saturday, his agent confirmed. He was 75. — “I am very sad to report that David died this morning March 3, 2018 peacefully at his home in Newport, Oregon after a courageous battle with bladder cancer …

Discussion: Outside the Beltway and ABC News

Caroline Orr / Shareblue Media:

36 women flood Texas races to flip male-dominated House seats blue — “We have a reached a tipping point.” — Fueled by anti-Trump backlash, a surge of women are putting their names on the ballot and running for office in Texas, with potentially momentous implications for the balance of power in the deep red state.

Paul Kane / Washington Post:
It's a gusher of candidates due to Trump resistance and frustration with Congress

Discussion: Axios

Ginia Bellafante / New York Times:

When Should Cultural Institutions Say No to Tainted Funding? — On Monday afternoon, Jerry Saltz, the longtime art critic at New York Magazine, went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where he has gone nearly once a week for three decades. After two hours of taking in “Golden Kingdoms …

Tampa Bay Times:

Florida Senate briefly approves AR-15 ban, then rejects it — Surprise action in extraordinary all-day Saturday session on gun measures — TALLAHASSEE — On a day filled with emotion, the Florida Senate Saturday debated measures in response to the Parkland tragedy to spend millions …

Discussion: ThinkProgress and Washington Press

Teri Webster / TheBlaze:
Parkland student brags he hung up on Trump White House call, while classmate drops F-bomb on TV

Discussion: The Gateway Pundit

Damian Paletta / Washington Post:

Trump escalates trade war, threatens European carmakers with stiff tariffs … President Trump on Saturday threatened to hammer European automotive companies with steep tariffs as his global trade war snowballed into a third day. — Trump, in a series of Twitter posts while at his Mar …

Discussion: RedState, Breitbart, The Guardian, New York Magazine, CNBC, Politico, Raw Story, Talking Points Memo, Little Green Footballs, New York Times, Associated Press, Mother Jones, IJR and AOL

Doug Stanglin / USA Today:
Trump vows to tax European cars if the EU fights back with tariff on U.S. goods

Discussion: RealityChek, Reuters, Shareblue Media, New York Times and Wall Street Journal

Daniel J. Roth / Jerusalem Post:

WOMEN'S MARCH LEADERS REFUSE TO CONDEMN FARRAKHAN AFTER ANTISEMITIC SPEECH — In recent years, Farrakhan has embarked on a wide-ranging, anti-Jewish campaign, which has featured some of the most hateful speeches of his career. — NEW YORK - High-profile leaders of the popular Women's March movement …

Virginia Heffernan / Los Angeles Times:

Ivanka Trump: Born to legitimize corruption and make the shoddy look cute — On July 27, 2017, near the end of the one of the most compelling hearings yet on the Trump-Russia affair, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) offered an extraordinary insight. It shot through the proceedings like a comet.

Discussion: Washington Press and Raw Story

Charlie Savage / New York Times:

What if Republicans Win the Midterms? — WASHINGTON — A sizable portion of the American population has been convulsing with outrage at President Trump for more than a year. Millions of people who previously took only mild interest in politics have participated in protests …