memeorandum: Saudi Arabia's bold move has nothing to do with Canada (Globe and Mail)

12:00 AM ET, August 7, 2018

Top Items:

Dana Bash / CNN:

President urged to stop tweeting on Trump Tower meeting — Did Trump Tower meeting violate this law? — (CNN)President Donald Trump has been urged to stop tweeting about the 2016 Trump Tower meeting between Trump's top advisers and several Russians, a source familiar with discussions tells CNN.

Discussion: TIME, Washington Examiner, New Republic, Raw Story, Sputnik International, New York Times, Weekly Standard, HuffPost, Common Dreams, Hullabaloo, POLITICUSUSA, Hill Reporter, Shareblue Media, AOL, Law & Crime, Mediaite and Political Wire

Robert Costa / Washington Post:

Giuliani preparing letter to Mueller expressing ‘real reluctance’ over obstruction questions — Rudolph W. Giuliani, President Trump's lead attorney for the ongoing special counsel investigation, said Monday that Trump's legal team is planning to send a letter to special counsel Robert S. Mueller III …

Aidan McLaughlin / Mediaite:

LISTEN: Don Jr.'s Line Drops After Ingraham Asks About Conflicting Statements on Trump Tower Meeting — President Donald Trump's wonderful son Don Jr. called into Laura Ingraham's radio show on Monday, and had some well-timed technical difficulties. — Ingraham questioned Don Jr …

Discussion: Washington Post, Washington Monthly and MSNBC

Rick Wilson / Rolling Stone:

Trump's Tweets May Actually Be His Undoing — The impulsive president has backed himself into a corner, and Robert Mueller knows it — President Trump's manic Twitter dysentery over the weekend contained more than a few nuggets that would have shamed, embarrassed or mortified normal presidents in a normal era.

Discussion: Vox, The Capitolist and Axios

Laurie Kellman / Associated Press:

AP Explains: Why the 2016 Trump Tower meeting matters — WASHINGTON (AP) — Adoptions of Russian children? Opposition research on Hillary Clinton? — President Donald Trump has for the first time acknowledged that a June 9, 2016 meeting at Trump Tower was the latter.

Bob Bauer / Lawfare:
How the Latest Trump Tower Tweet Damages the President's Legal Defense

Discussion: ThinkProgress, The Gateway Pundit and Raw Story

Charlie Savage / New York Times:
Donald Trump Jr.'s Potential Legal Troubles, Explained

Discussion: MSNBC, Washington Post and WBUR

David A. Graham / The Atlantic:
The Double Damage of the President's Trump Tower Admission

Discussion: FOX News Radio, DownWithTyranny! and The Daily Caller

New York Times:

Rick Gates Testifies He Committed Crimes With Paul Manafort — ALEXANDRIA, VA. — Rick Gates, Paul Manafort's right-hand man for years, began testifying against his former boss on Monday in federal court in Alexandria, Va. He is considered the most important witness in Mr. Manafort's trial on tax and bank fraud charges.

Discussion: CNBC and ThinkProgress

Cristian Farias / New York Magazine:

Paul Manafort's First Trial Is a Sideshow. The Next One Won't Be. — Back in May, T.S. Ellis, the veteran federal judge who is overseeing Paul Manafort's first trial in Virginia, whipped the Fox News set into a frenzy when he seemed to berate prosecutors working for special counsel Robert Mueller.

Fox News:

Manafort prosecutors, Judge Ellis engage in 10-minute courtroom spat — Manafort trial judge says conspiracy can't be proved without testimony from Gates. Peter Doocy reports. — ALEXANDRIA, Va. - After jurors were dismissed Monday in the Paul Manafort trial Monday …

Discussion: The Daily Caller

Josh Gerstein / Politico:
Manafort prosecution's frustration with judge leads to fiery clashes

Discussion: The Daily Beast

Washington Post:
Rick Gates says he lied for years at Manafort's request and stole from him in the process

Discussion: Lawyers, Guns & Money

Talking Points Memo: Rick Gates: I Committed Crimes With Paul Manafort

Reuters:
Star witness Gates testifies he committed crimes with Manafort

Discussion: Shareblue Media and The Atlantic

Andrew Kaczynski / CNN:

Mike Pence's moral case for removing a president from office — (CNN)Vice President Mike Pence once argued the president of the United States should be held to the highest moral standards to determine whether he should resign or be removed from office. — Pence made the argument in two columns …

Discussion: Raw Story and Political Wire

Michael Hiltzik / Los Angeles Times:

In a strikingly ignorant tweet, Trump gets almost everything about California wildfires wrong — No one would mistake President Trump for an expert on climate change or water policy, but a tweet he issued late Sunday about California's wildfires deserves some sort of award for most glaring misstatements …

Discussion: The Daily Caller, Raw Story, San Francisco Chronicle, HuffPost, ABC News, Mother Jones, CNN, Axios, Hullabaloo and Townhall

Lisa Friedman / New York Times:

Trump Inaccurately Claims California Is Wasting Water as Fires Burn — In his first remarks on the vast California wildfires that have killed at least seven people and forced thousands to flee, President Trump blamed the blazes on the state's environmental policies and inaccurately claimed …

Discussion: Vox, Fox News, Politico, National Review, ThinkProgress, CBS Chicago, Shareblue Media, Washington Post, Pacific Standard and New Republic

Globe and Mail:

Saudi Arabia's bold move has nothing to do with Canada — Bessma Momani is Professor at the University of Waterloo and Balsillie School of International Affairs. She's a senior fellow at Centre for International Governance and Innovation and non-resident fellow at the Stimson Center in Washington.

Discussion: Financial Times, Washington Post, NPR and ThinkProgress

BBC:
Saudi Arabia suspends Toronto flights in row with Canada

Discussion: Washington Post, Splinter, The Atlantic, CNN and Vox

Steven Perlberg / BuzzFeed News:

Jared Kushner Used To Personally Order The Deletion Of Stories At His Newspaper — Jared Kushner personally ordered a software developer at his newspaper to remove stories critical of his friends and real estate peers. — Now a senior White House adviser and son-in-law to President Trump …

Discussion: Deadspin, Mediaite and Political Wire, more at Mediagazer »

Ryan Broderick / BuzzFeed News:

It's Looking Extremely Likely That QAnon Is A Leftist Prank On Trump Supporters — There's a growing group of Trump supporters who are convinced that the president is secretly trying to save the world from a global pedophilia ring. — They call the conspiracy “QAnon” and last week its believers ended up on national television.

Discussion: ThinkProgress, Washington Post, No More Mister Nice Blog, Raw Story and Lawyers, Guns & Money

Brett Samuels / The Hill:
Anonymous vows to take down, expose QAnon

Discussion: Hill Reporter and YouTube

CBS Sacramento:

Sikh Man Attacked, Told To ‘Go Back To Your Country’ In Stanislaus County — KEYES (CBS13) - A well-known member of the Stanislaus County community was brutally beaten while placing campaign signs, and police are investigating it as a hate crime. — It was Tuesday night in Keyes …

Discussion: The Hill, TheBlaze, The Gateway Pundit, CBS San Francisco, The Daily Caller, Splinter and Talking Points Memo

Hamilton Nolan / Splinter:

Someone Is Going to Get Killed — Before too long, a reporter will become a direct casualty of the Trump era. — With the ever-present caveat that predictions are worthless: an American journalist is going to get murdered as a direct result of our current political climate.

Kate Wagner / Vox:

Betsy DeVos's summer home deserves a special place in McMansion Hell — Kate Wagner dissects the shingle-style Michigan summer home of the education secretary. — Two weeks ago, somebody untied Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos's $40 million yacht from its mooring.

Ron Nixon / New York Times:

Trump's Border Wall Could Waste Billions of Dollars, Report Says — WASHINGTON — The Trump administration could potentially waste billions of dollars on a border wall because it failed to fully account for factors like varying terrain and land ownership along the Southwest border, according to a new report.

Discussion: ThinkProgress and Splinter

Catie Edmondson / New York Times: An Airline Scans Your Face. You Take Off. But Few Rules Govern Where Your Data Goes.

Matt Wilstein / The Daily Beast:

Joe Arpaio on Sacha Baron Cohen: I ‘Never Agreed’ to Blow Job From Trump … Former sheriff and current GOP Senate candidate Joe Arpaio apparently has no idea that he accepted the hypothetical offer of an “amazing blow job” from President Donald Trump on the latest episode of Sacha Baron Cohen's Who Is America?

Discussion: Phoenix New Times, Arizona Republic, One America News Network and IJR

Henry Olsen / New York Times:

Why the Midterms Won't Be Won by Playing to the Base — Some people changed which party's nominee they voted for from 2012 to 2016. They are key to who wins the House and Senate. — Mr. Olsen, the editor of the “Flyover Country” section at UnHerd.com, is the director and a co-founder of the Voter Study Group.

Discussion: Democracy Fund Voter …, POLITICUSUSA and The Guardian

Manu Raju / CNN:

Trump Supreme Court pick: Presidents can ignore laws they think are unconstitutional — Kavanaugh reveals views on Mueller probe — (CNN)Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh in 2013 asserted that it's a “traditional exercise” of presidential power to ignore laws the White House views as unconstitutional …

Discussion: Talking Points Memo, twitchy.com and Political Wire

Amber Athey / The Daily Caller:

NYT Makes Up New Abbreviation For The State Of Maine — The New York Times ran a shoddy graphic on Monday that included two extinct postal abbreviations for Maine and Texas. — “These Women Could Shatter Glass Ceilings in Governor's Races,” a story about women running in governor's races across …

Discussion: New York Times, Observer, Mediaite and Splinter

David Larter / Defense News:

The US Navy's top acquisition priority stumbles out of the gate — The U.S. Navy's $122.3 billion Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine program is off to an inauspicious start after faulty welding was discovered in several missile tubes destined for both the Columbia and Virginia-class programs …

YouTube:

Escape At Dannemora (2018) | Official Trailer | SHOWTIME Series … Based on a prison break in upstate New York that spawned a massive manhunt. Starring Patricia Arquette, Paul Dano and Benicio Del Toro. Escape At Dannemora premieres Sunday, November 18 at 10pm ET/PT. — #EscapeAtDannemora

Grace Schulman / New York Times:

The Nation Magazine Betrays a Poet — and Itself — I was the magazine's poetry editor for 35 years. Never once did we apologize for publishing a poem. — Ms. Schulman was poetry editor at The Nation from 1971 to 2006. — During the 35 years that I edited poetry for The Nation magazine …

Discussion: The Atlantic

Amanda L Gordon / Bloomberg:

Gary Cohn Is Happy in the Hamptons, Golfing and Crypto Investing — Trump's former economic adviser also looking at medical tech — Working on his short game and a memoir of time in Washington — Gary Cohn may be the most famous unemployed person in the Hamptons thanks to his wife, Lisa Pevaroff-Cohn.

Discussion: Axios and Breitbart

Media Matters for America:

After Infowars is removed from various platforms, Alex Jones begs Donald Trump for help — Alex Jones: Trump must make “censorship” the top issue in the midterm elections or else he will be impeached — Loading the player reg... ALEX JONES (HOST): Now, if you want to get into the real reason all this is happening.

Discussion: HuffPost

Joe DePaolo / Mediaite:

LeBron James to Create Showtime Doc Series Called Shut Up and Dribble — You'll recall, back in February, Laura Ingraham of Fox News calling on LeBron James to “shut up and dribble” — in other words, to stick to basketball and not opine on politics. — The new Los Angeles Lakers star has decided …

CBS New York:

Police: Stranger Jumps Out Of Restaurant Freezer, Attacks Kitchen Staff, Dies At Hospital — NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) - Police say a man jumped out of a popular Upper West Side eatery's walk-in freezer, grabbed a knife and started attacking employees, then died later at a hospital on Sunday morning.

Discussion: KTLA, New York Post and Daily Wire

Victor Davis Hanson / American Greatness:

The Elites' War on the Deplorables — Recently, Politico reporter Marc Caputo was angered at rude hecklers at a Trump rally who booed beleaguered CNN correspondent Jim Acosta. — So Caputo tweeted of them, “If you put everyone's mouths together in this video, you'd get a full set of teeth.”

Anna Schecter / NBC News:

‘Manhattan Madam’ Kristin Davis set to testify before Mueller grand jury this week — Last week an investigator on Mueller's team questioned Kristin Davis, an associate of former Trump adviser Roger Stone, about Russian collusion. — Kristin Davis, the “Manhattan Madam” …

Discussion: POLITICUSUSA

Hunter Walker / Yahoo:

New York race could spark new Trump investigation — WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. — While special counsel Robert Mueller's probe of — Russia's interference in the 2016 election could pose the most immediate threat to Donald Trump's presidency, there's another looming threat on the horizon.

Erik Larson / Bloomberg:

Mueller Secures ‘Firewall’ Counsel Over Evidence in Russia Case — The U.S. judge overseeing Special Counsel Robert Mueller's criminal case against Russians accused of interfering in the 2016 election agreed to appoint an independent lawyer to review pretrial evidence for possible national security issues …

William D. Ruckelshaus / Washington Post:

Only one other president has ever acted this desperate — William D. Ruckelshaus served as acting director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and as deputy attorney general in 1973. He was also administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency from 1970 to 1973 and 1983 to 1985.

Discussion: Spectator USA