memeorandum: Let's Bag Plastic Bags (Joseph Curtin/New York Times)

1:55 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, The Daily Beast, The Guardian, RedState, Washington Press, twitchy.com and Mediaite

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

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, CNBC, The Guardian, New York Magazine, Breitbart, Politico, Talking Points Memo, New York Times, Little Green Footballs, Associated Press, Joe.My.God., IJR and AOL

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

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

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

Larry Kudlow / The Hill:
Trump must think twice about tariffs

Discussion: The Last Refuge, Breitbart and Raw Story

Ana Swanson / New York Times:
Trump's Tariffs Prompt Global Threats of Retaliation

Discussion: Mother Jones, IJR and AOL

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

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

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

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: Politico and Washington Post

HuffPost:

Exclusive: Florida Public School Teacher Has A White Nationalist Podcast — Dayanna Volitich suggests Muslims be eradicated from the earth, believes anti-Semitic conspiracy theories ... and teaches middle school social studies. — Dayanna Volitich, a 25-year-old social studies teacher …

Discussion: Washington Press, The Daily Beast, Raw Story, The Daily Caller, WFLA-TV and Splinter

Megan McArdle / Washington Post:

Publicly slighting millions of NRA members isn't good for business - or America — Remember when companies tried to stay out of politics? I'd imagine Delta Air Lines is recalling those days very fondly. The airline bowed to pressure from liberal activists to stop offering a group discount …

Discussion: Lawyers, Guns & Money

P.J. Gladnick / NewsBusters:
Politico Writer Angry at Broward Sheriff for Hurting Liberal Anti-NRA Narrative

Discussion: twitchy.com, Politico and The College Fix

Alex Horton / Washington Post:
Only 13 NRA members used Delta's discount. Ending it cost the airline a $40 million tax break.

Discussion: AOL, Fox News Insider, twitchy.com, Splinter and Business Insider

Dan Merica / CNN:

A presidential milestone: Trump has spent 100 days in office at one of his golf clubs — WASHINGTON (CNN)President Donald Trump reached a presidential milestone at his Palm Beach County, Florida, golf club on Saturday: One hundred days in office at a golf club that bears his name.

Discussion: Political Wire, Washington Press, Refinery29, ThinkProgress and Mother Jones

Gideon Rachman / Financial Times:
Trump confidant Chris Ruddy on the president's ‘inner Democrat’

Discussion: TheBlaze, Mediaite and Politico

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 …

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, Raw Story and The Guardian

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: CBS New York and CBS Pittsburgh

CNNMoney:

Advertisers flee InfoWars founder Alex Jones' YouTube channel — Facebook, YouTube fail to blunt conspiracy theories — Some of the biggest brands in the U.S. had ads running on the YouTube channels for far-right website InfoWars and its founder, notorious conspiracy theorist Alex Jones …

Discussion: Breitbart, Motherboard, Infowars, The Daily Caller and Mediaite, more at Mediagazer »

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.

Joseph Bernstein / BuzzFeed:

How PragerU Is Winning The Right-Wing Culture War Without Donald Trump — A right-wing online “university” is on track for a billion views in 2018, its professors are some of the best-known conservatives in media, and its founder wants to put it in real schools. So how come you've never heard of it?

Joel Gehrke / Washington Examiner:

Eric Holder predicts Robert Mueller charges Trump with obstruction of justice — President Trump will face an obstruction of justice charge from special counsel Robert Mueller, former Attorney General Eric Holder predicted. — “You technically have an obstruction of justice case that already exists …

Discussion: The Daily Caller

Michelle Krupa / CNN:

Philando Castile charity wipes out kids' lunch debt in district where he worked — Teacher: Philando Castile was a role model for kids — (CNN)One by one. — That's how Philando Castile, who was killed by a police officer during a 2016 traffic stop, used to help kids who couldn't afford lunch.

Discussion: Mother Jones

Daniel Ellsberg / CBS News:

Man shoots himself near White House, law enforcement source says — live updates — A man apparently shot himself beyond the north fence line outside the White House Saturday, a law enforcement official told CBS News' Pat Milton. U.S. Secret Service responded to the sound of shots fired.