memeorandum: Inside the White House, aides and advisers are despondent over a wasted month (CNN)

3:35 PM ET, January 26, 2019

Top Items:

Trump and His Associates Had More Than 100 Contacts With Russians Before the Inauguration — Among these contacts are more than 100 in-person meetings, phone calls, text messages, emails and private messages on Twitter. Mr. Trump and his campaign repeatedly denied having such contacts with Russians during the 2016 election.

Discussion: The Week, Talking Points Memo, The Root, POLITICUSUSA and Joe.My.God.

Pelosi / Speaker Nancy Pelosi:

Pelosi Statement on Special Counsel Indictment and Arrest of Trump Campaign Advisor Roger Stone — Washington, D.C. - Speaker Nancy Pelosi issued this statement after Special Counsel Mueller released a seven-count indictment of top Trump campaign advisor Roger Stone, for lying to Congress, witness tampering, and obstruction:

Discussion: The Last Refuge, The Guardian, ThinkProgress, Conservative News Today, Mother Jones, The Daily Caller, TheBlaze, The New Civil Rights Movement, Mediaite, The Gateway Pundit and The Stream

Mike Allen / Axios:

Trump's self-inflicted slump — Yesterday was a devastating day for President Trump as he heads into his reelection campaign and an era of divided government. — As Axios' Jonathan Swan puts it: He blinks; he disappoints the people who still love him; he gets no credit for reopening the government …

Andrew C. McCarthy / National Review:

Stone Indictment Underscores That There Was No Trump-Russia Conspiracy — Will the Justice Department ever correct the record? — Roger Stone is the shiny object. The obstruction charges in his long-anticipated indictment, made public on Friday, are not the matter of consequence for the United States.

Discussion: Washington Post, Splinter, The New Neo, The Intercept, Politico, The Guardian and New York Times

CNN: CNN NEWSROOM

Julian Sanchez / New York Times:
Mueller's Real Target in the Roger Stone Indictment

Discussion: Washington Monthly, Los Angeles Times and Just Security

Betsy Woodruff / The Daily Beast:
‘I Will Piss on Your Grave’: Emails Reveal Roger Stone's Abuse of Frenemy Randy Credico

Discussion: BuzzFeed News

Abigail Tracy / Vanity Fair:
“We Can See Collusion”: With the Stone Indictment, Mueller Begins Making His Case

Discussion: TheBlaze, The Guardian and Mediaite

Zachary Basu / Axios:
House Intelligence to hand over transcripts to Mueller investigation

Discussion: ABC News, POLITICUSUSA and Fox News Insider

New York Times:

Trump Meets With Hard-Right Group Led by Ginni Thomas — WASHINGTON — President Trump met last week with a delegation of hard-right activists led by Ginni Thomas, the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas, listening quietly as members of the group denounced transgender people and women serving …

Discussion: Talking Points Memo and Joe.My.God.

CNN:

Inside the White House, aides and advisers are despondent over a wasted month — Washington (CNN)As President Donald Trump announced in the Rose Garden on Friday that his quixotic bid to secure more than $5 billion for a border wall would end with no money, he was met with applause from his Cabinet secretaries and senior aides.

Discussion: New York Times, NPR, Raw Story and Conservative News Today

Peter Baker / New York Times:

For a President Consumed With Winning, a Stinging Defeat — WASHINGTON — President Trump famously declared that in his administration the nation would become tired of all the winning. So on Friday he tried a little losing. — After the longest government shutdown in history …

Discussion: Slate, Mother Jones, New York Daily News, POLITICUSUSA, ThinkProgress, The Resurgent, Al Jazeera and Conservative News Today

Politico:
POLITICO Playbook: What we've learned post-shutdown

Discussion: Wall Street Journal

Washington Post:
‘Prisoner of his own impulse’: Inside Trump's cave to end shutdown without wall

Discussion: Talking Points Memo, The Mahablog, Arkansas Blog, Arkansas Times and The Daily Caller

Gabby Orr / Politico:
‘All for nothing’: Trump's wall retreat bewilders allies

Discussion: Raw Story, ABC News, USA Today, Washington Post and The Daily Beast

Andrew Restuccia / Politico:
‘Complete, total surrender’: Why Trump waved the white flag

Discussion: Washington Post, POLITICUSUSA and Hit & Run

Quint Forgey / Politico:
Trump warns border security compromise ‘will not be easy’

Discussion: Washington Post, CNN, Deadline and Breitbart

New York Times:

A Bruised Trump Faces Uncertain 2020 Prospects. His Team Fears a Primary Fight. — With his approval rating sinking, and foes within the party wooing potential Republican challengers, aides to the president are working to shore up his support. — Mr. Trump, close associates acknowledge …

Discussion: Washington Press, Raw Story, Axios, Talking Points Memo, Outside the Beltway, Joe.My.God. and twitchy.com

Willie Brown / San Francisco Chronicle:

Sure, I dated Kamala Harris. So what? — I've been peppered with calls from the national media about my “relationship” with Kamala Harris, particularly since it became obvious that she was going to run for president. Most of them, I have not returned. — Yes, we dated. It was more than 20 years ago.

Discussion: Political Wire

Telegraph:

Melania Trump - An Apology — Following last Saturday's (Jan 19) Telegraph magazine cover story “The mystery of Melania”, we have been asked to make clear that the article contained a number of false statements which we accept should not have been published.

Discussion: Townhall, Daily Wire, IJR, Conservative News Today, Joe.My.God., RedState, Le·gal In·sur·rec· tion, The Daily Beast, TheBlaze, illegal immigration …, The Gateway Pundit, twitchy.com, The Daily Caller and Mediaite, more at Mediagazer »

Kelly Gilblom / Bloomberg: Telegraph to Pay Melania Trump ‘Substantial’ Damages for Article

Kate Bennett / CNN: Melania Trump gets ‘substantial damages’ and an apology for story in British magazine

Edward-Isaac Dovere / The Atlantic:

Ex-Starbucks CEO Could Get Trump Re-elected — Before there was Jill Stein, there was Ralph Nader. Before there was Nader, there was Ross Perot. — None won. All argued that the Republican Party and the Democratic Party were basically the same, and the only way to make real change was to ditch them both.

Discussion: Talking Points Memo, Mediaite and Hullabaloo

CBS News:
Former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz says Donald Trump is not qualified to be president

Discussion: IJR

Bret Stephens / New York Times:

Yes, Venezuela Is a Socialist Catastrophe — In the age of A.O.C., the lesson must be learned again. — Conspicuous by its relative absence in much of the mainstream news coverage of Venezuela's political crisis is the word “socialism.” Yes, every sensible observer agrees …

Discussion: Washington Free Beacon, Front Page Magazine and Instapundit

David Roth / The Concourse:

You Can't Get There From Here — “It's not going to change a damn thing,” the President of the United States told an assemblage of news anchors at an off-the-record White House meeting some weeks ago. “But I'm still doing it.” To a certain extent, that groaning is just standard Trump shit …

Discussion: Eschaton

Pamela Constable / Washington Post:

U.S.-Taliban talks appear closer to pact after marathon talks in Qatar — KABUL — After six days of intensive negotiations, Taliban insurgents and U.S. officials meeting in Qatar appear closer Saturday to an agreement that could result in the withdrawal of American troops after 17 years of war.

Ayaz Gul / Voice of America: U.S.-Taliban Agree on Troop Withdrawal Plan, Sources Tell VOA

Washington Post:

Donald Trump's demand for a border wall shut down the government. At the same time, his company was firing undocumented workers. — OSSINING, N.Y — They had spent years on the staff of Donald Trump's golf club, winning employee-of-the-month awards and receiving glowing letters of recommendation.

Shane Dixon Kavanaugh / Oregonian:

Saudi students who vanish before trial span states, decades — A university student from Saudi Arabia facing criminal charges in Ohio vanished in 1988, new evidence that the Saudi government intervened decades before it took similar action in several cases The Oregonian/OregonLive recently uncovered in Oregon.

Erin Griffith / New York Times:

Why Are Young People Pretending to Love Work? — I saw the greatest minds of my generation log 18-hour days — and then boast about #hustle on Instagram. When did performative workaholism become a lifestyle? — Never once at the start of my workweek — not in my morning coffee shop line …

Discussion: The Resurgent

Scott Shane / New York Times:

Huge Trove of Leaked Russian Documents Is Published by Transparency Advocates — A group of transparency advocates on Friday posted a mammoth collection of hacked and leaked documents from inside Russia, a release widely viewed as a sort of symbolic counterstrike against Russia's dissemination …

The Hill: Transparency advocate group releases trove of hacked Russian documents

John Bresnahan / Politico:

'She's not one to bluff': How Pelosi won the shutdown battle — Two months ago, Nancy Pelosi was battling an internal Democratic rebellion trying to bar her from the speakership. — Pelosi faced doubts over whether she was the right person to lead the new Democratic majority …

Discussion: Washington Post and Outside the Beltway