What did Donald Trump do today?

He was credibly tied by direct victim testimony to the Epstein sex trafficking ring.

Democrats on the House Judiciary panel today released a horrifying 50-page report unveiling new allegations, supported by witness testimony, that Donald Trump "was an active participant in Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual abuse of young women during the mid-to-late 1990s." The report details evidence that "indicates that Trump abused, assaulted, and even raped numerous women alongside, and in coordination with, the most infamous sex trafficker in history."

The report also claims that the FBI and the DOJ—headed, respectively, by a Trump political loyalist with no other law enforcement qualifications and a series of his former personal defense lawyers—are deliberately hiding evidence of Trump's involvement, in an "abject dereliction of duty" that allows Epstein's other clients and co-conspirators to go free along with Trump.

The main body of the report details the patterns of predatory sexual behavior both men are known to have engaged in, and explains how the deeply exploitative world of modeling and pageants that both were involved in served as a cover for their sexual predation. (Trump owned a modeling agency which two of his three wives have worked for. He also encouraged his daughter Ivanka, about whom he has made public sexual comments, to work as a model.)

Five women are cited in the report as having "directly accused Trump of raping or sexually assaulting them in Epstein’s company or direct physical presence." One, Beatrice Keul, told Congressional staff that Trump forcibly raped while he had control of her passport. She also testified to his attempts to buy her silence after the fact with promises that he could get her into New York University, the exact tactic that Epstein was also known to use. 

Four other women report that Trump raped them, or attempted to force them to commit sexual acts, in Epstein's presence. Some of them were minor children at the time. Three additional women elaborated on Trump's awareness of the Epstein-Maxwell trafficking ring, including two women who were considered sufficiently credible witnesses to be called by the DOJ to testify against Maxwell in her 2022 trial.

The report details innumerable ways that the DOJ, at Trump's direction and under the supervision of people appointed because they were Trump loyalists who had defended him in court before his return to office, has derailed attempts to move forward with the Epstein investigation. These efforts include Attorney General Todd Blanche's extraordinary trip to "interview" Epstein's co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell in prison, and then to reward her with transfer to a resort-style minimum-security facility when she declined to implicate Trump. But it also goes into considerable detail regarding the Trump administration's outright flouting of the law requiring the release of the Epstein files, which Trump fought tooth and nail until it passed with veto-proof majorities.

The report makes clear its conclusion that the DOJ taking as its mission the criminal defense of Trump has not only shielded him, but other suspects who might otherwise be prosecuted:

There is more than enough evidence that many individuals other than Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell may have committed a crime. This includes Donald Trump. To cover up this inconvenient truth, DOJ has actively obstructed the Epstein investigation into any co-conspirators, attempted to prevent the release of the Epstein files, and then released an incomplete and heavily redacted set to the public—all while withholding key information about Trump in the process. As a result, this investigation has given a pass to all the individuals who took part in this decades-long, multibillion-dollar international sex trafficking ring that victimized over 1,000 women and girls. 

Independent of the matters related in the report released today, Trump has been credibly accused of sexual assault, harassment, or rape by at least 28 different women, ranging from underage children who say he peeped on them in the dressing rooms of the pageants he owned, to his own ex-wife, Ivana Trump. One of his victims, E. Jean Carroll, succeeded in winning a civil judgment against him for rape.

Trump has also made headlines in recent weeks by taking a sympathetic stand with other accused rapists and against their victims, although this is hardly new behavior for him. Earlier this month, he ran political interference for the members of a Cornell fraternity accused of a horrifying gang rape by attacking the prosecutor. And last week, he cheered on a political attack ad against Ohio Democratic candidate for governor that used her mother—who stood by as Acton's stepfather raped her as a young child and subsequently fled prosecution with him—to call her a "liar." 

Why does this matter?

• Rape is a horrifying crime, and the rape and trafficking of children even more so, and nobody—including Donald Trump—should get to walk away from their involvement in it. 

• There is a reason Trump is engaging in the most obvious cover-up and obstruction campaign ever seen, and it is not because he has nothing to fear from the truth.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He took exactly the position on the rape and sexual abuse of a child you'd expect him to.

In an essay-long post to his social media, Trump endorsed a notorious ad run by Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy. In the ad, Donna Arthur—the mother of Ramaswamy's Democratic opponent, Amy Acton—accuses her daughter of being a liar.

What Ramaswamy's ad doesn't mention is that Acton was raped by her stepfather as a young child, after which her mother lost custody of her. The two have been estranged Acton was 12. The stepfather, Cledith Arthur, was indicted in 1978 for rape but fled the state with Acton's mother, who was also charged. He had also been indicted for incest for sexual assaults against a daughter from a previous marriage. Cledith and Donna Arthur eluded warrants and remained married until his death in 2005.

In addition to court records and a long history of public comments about her upbringing supporting Acton's claims, her brother has also corroborated her account of sexual abuse and mistreatment by their mother:

It’s not surprising that Vivek Ramaswamy has stooped to such a despicable low as to attempt to turn the sexual abuse Amy endured at twelve years old from our birth mother’s husband into a political talking point. After he was arrested and Amy and I were removed from their custody, our birth mother stayed married to Amy’s rapist until he died. This desperate, disgusting attack reveals exactly who Vivek Ramaswamy is at his core—a pathetic excuse for a man who is willing to hurt anyone as long as it gets him what he wants.

Prominent Ohio Republicans have reacted with disgust and horror over Ramaswamy's decision to run the ad. Gov. Mike DeWine called it "deeply, deeply troubling" and "wrong." Senate candidate Jon Husted distanced himself as well. The archconservative National Review was one of the first outlets to confirm Acton's account and followed it with a blistering editorial calling the ad a "revolting" and "staggering act of bad taste" and Ramaswamy "an insincere and unlikable weasel."

In a shocking reversal, the conservative Columbus Dispatch editorial board pulled their endorsement of Ramaswamy over the ad and endorsed Acton instead.

Most revolting and unsettling is a new “October surprise” ad created by Ramaswamy's campaign and posted on social media. In it, Acton’s estranged mother calls her claims of childhood poverty and sex abuse lies. It should go without saying that sexual violence against children should not be politicized or taken as lightly as Ramaswamy appears to take it. 

It's possible Trump genuinely believes that Ramaswamy's ad will be effective in painting Acton—and not the mother who stayed with her 12-year-old daughter's rapist and lost custody as a result—as a liar.

But Trump also has good reasons to want people to dismiss the testimony of sexually abused children in general. More than once, in front of witnesses, he has made "jokes" about young children that he'd be "dating" when they got older. He's been accused by underage girls who were contestants in his Miss Teen USA beauty pageant of peeping on them in dressing rooms, using his status as the pageant owner as an excuse. (Trump has admitted to doing just that when it was adult contestants.) He's indulged in sexual banter about his own daughter with radio shock jock Howard Stern, one of many times he's made sexually objectifying comments about Ivanka Trump's body.

And while he hasn't been conclusively tied to the child sex trafficking ring run by his longtime friend Jeffrey Epstein, he has made a point of bribing Epstein's co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell with relatively luxurious "Club Fed" prison accommodations. Trump famously wrote Epstein a poem about "certain things" they had "in common" that "never age," set inside the silhouette of a pubescent girl.

 

 

Why does this matter?

• It matters that there is absolutely nothing surprising at all about Donald Trump attacking a woman for being the victim of child sexual abuse.

What did Donald Trump do today?

We don't really know.

As is typical for a weekend day (and not uncommon for weekdays), Trump went to one of his luxury golf resorts today. The pool reporter was prevented from directly observing him, but there is at least some indirect "proof of life" because he reportedly attended a dinner for his political action committee. 

The Trump administration made no policy announcements today. There were no major developments in court cases involving Trump. If Trump signed any bills or orders, the White House hasn't told anyone about them yet.

To be clear, it was anything but a slow news day where the consequences of Trump's actions were concerned. Among other things, news broke that Trump had illegally destroyed cherry trees given as a diplomatic gift by Japan to renovate a golf course. Reports also surfaced that his supposed "deal" to give control of Venezuela's oil reserves to American companies he favored was likely to face legal and constitutional objections from, in effect, the entire political apparatus of the country. And there was more analysis of the lucrative stock trades Trump made in the oil and gas sector that just so happened to come directly before his public statements about the Iran war caused prices to change.

But in terms of events that could be directly attributed to Trump himself, the only evidence came from his social media feed—and that is no longer a reliable indicator. There were 20 posts to his microblogging website account today, including while he was supposedly golfing. But most of these were image posts—memes or the AI slop that is typical of most Trump administration comms these days. For example, there was an AI slop video of "Donald ducks"—ducks with Trump's hairpiece—carrying assault rifles to defend Lake Ontario. 

As a practical matter, it's long been clear that Trump is not personally posting most of what goes on his social media account. For one thing, it's extremely unlikely that Trump is capable of using a phone or laptop well enough to upload video or images. But recent revelations about the extent of his relationship with the aide who does much of his posting for him, Natalie Harp, strongly suggest Trump may not be aware from day to day what "he" is saying, and not just in the AI slop and memes. The emotionally raw letters that Harp sent Trump use the same idiosyncratic capitalization that appear in Trump's posts.

Harp isn't the first young junior aide that Trump has developed an emotionally intense relationship with that alarmed others close to him. Hope Hicks played a similar role during Trump's first term, as did his daughter Ivanka, both of whom were called on to help manage his outbursts of temper.

Why does this matter?

• It's bad if it's not clear who is actually exercising the powers of the presidency.

EARLY VOTING IS NOW UNDERWAY IN THE FOLLOWING STATES: Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Vermont, Virginia, and Wyoming

What did Donald Trump do today? 

He tried to defuse the tax story without saying anything.

Trump made two public appearances today: once at a swing-state factory making electric trucks, and once at a coronavirus briefing. At the first, he reflexively began to answer when a reporter shouted a question, but turned and abruptly left after it became clear she was asking about the shocking revelations about his tax returns.

Q: Mr. President, are you looking forward to the debate?

TRUMP:  Yeah, I am.  I do.  I’m really —

Q: Mr. President, you tweeted about releasing a financial statement.  When will you release that?

TRUMP:  — I am looking — I am looking very forward to the debate.  Thank you, everybody.

 

At the second, he simply stalked away from the podium as reporters shouted questions.

Trump's strategy yesterday was to insist that, somehow, the 18 years of tax returns obtained by the New York Times were "fake news." He also insisted that unofficial financial disclosure forms would be a much better way to learn about his finances.

Today, in a tweet, he backtracked from even that, saying that he "may" release a self-reported financial statement. This hypothetical future statement—Trump didn't say when he might release it—would supposedly show that Trump had a healthy debt-to-cash ratio, and that it would be "IMPRESSIVE."

Of course, even without releasing his own copies of tax returns, Trump could easily disprove any false statements in the NYT article. He could also simply say who some of the unknown parties or countries are who own his debt, which may total $1.1 billion or more. Because the use of financial leverage is a common way of recruiting spies, far less debt than the NYT story uncovered would permanently disqualify Trump from getting even a basic security clearance, if he weren't president. 

He could also, if possible, explain why so much of what is revealed in the NYT returns looks so much like common (and illegal) tax evasion schemes. For example, Trump paid his daughter Ivanka, an employee of the Trump Organization, a separate fee as a "consultant." This allowed him to write off the amount as a business expense, but it's illegal to pay sham fees to avoid income or gift taxes.

Who cares?

• The only reason to keep something like this secret is that the truth is even more damning than keeping silent.

• It shouldn't be possible for anyone to have this much leverage over the President of the United States—much less any number of anonymous entities whose identity is protected by the president himself.

• Running away from reporters doesn't make questions go away.

EARLY VOTING IS NOW UNDERWAY IN THE FOLLOWING STATES: Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Vermont, Virginia, and Wyoming

What did Donald Trump do today?

He tried his best to fend off the inevitable catastrophe of his tax returns finally seeing the light of day.

Late this afternoon, the New York Times published a 30,000-word article that can be summarized this way: the paper has acquired Trump's tax returns for the last 18 years, and in most of them, he paid virtually no income taxes. 

Trump has tried desperately to prevent this information from coming out—although every other presidential candidate since Richard Nixon has released them—and it's now clear why. He paid either zero dollars in income taxes, or a token $750 amount (apparently so that he could say he was paying taxes at all), in 13 of the last 18 years.

The story (which the NYT summarizes in a separate article) makes the following revelations.

• Trump is personally in debt to the tune of $421 million, and those loans are coming due during what he hopes will be his next term in office. This means that the people holding those notes—in many cases, foreign interests—have and have always had enormous direct leverage over Trump.

• His business empire was in shambles for much of that time. Ironically, the only reliable source of income was his personal "brand"—which centered on the idea that he was a savvy and successful businessman.
  
  
• Trump's tax avoidance was astonishing even by the standards of the 0.001%—the group his supposed net worth puts him in. He paid $400 million less in taxes than the average member of that group.
  
  
• Among the "business expenses" used to zero out his tax bill were $70,000 in haircuts.

• He is fighting with the IRS—which reports to him—over an apparently invalid $72.9 million refund.

• The famous NYC Trump Tower, one of his few profitable real estate holdings, has a mortgage bill of over $100 million coming due in 2022, and he has made no payments on it.

Trump held a press conference today, supposedly to continue his remarks on the Supreme Court nomination he made yesterday, and gave this response when asked about it:

Q: [T]here’s a New York Times story that came out about an hour ago that says that, when you came to the White House, you were paying about $750 a year in federal income tax.

They are not releasing what — they’re not publishing the tax returns. They’re not showing that out there. They’re saying — to protect their sources. In your tax returns, sir, does that sound right, that you were paying a couple hundred dollars a year in federal income taxes?

TRUMP: No. No. It’s fake news. It’s totally fake news. Made up. Fake. We went through the same stories. You could have asked me the same questions four years ago. I had to litigate this and talk about it. Totally fake news. No.

Actually, I paid tax, but — and you’ll see that as soon as my tax returns — it’s under audit. They’ve been under audit for a long time. The IRS does not treat me well. They treat me like the Tea Party — like they treated the Tea Party. And they don’t treat me well. They treat me very badly.

You have people in the IRS — they’re very — they treat me very, very badly. But they’re under audit. And when they’re not, I would be proud to show you. But that’s just fake news. The New York Times tried it — the same thing. They want to create a little bit of a story, a little bit of — they’re doing anything they can.

Not only — that’s the least of it. I mean, the stories that I read are so fake. They’re so phony.

Q: Did they tell you this was going to come out today?

TRUMP: No, I didn’t know anything about it. I don’t know anything about it. I think somebody said they were going to do a negative — they always do — they only do negative stories.

It's a minor point, but Trump is definitely lying about knowing that the story was coming out. In fact, the press conference was clearly scheduled just so that Trump would be able to give an instant reaction. The White House was contacted for comment immediately before the story broke, and the press conference was only announced at 1:39 P.M. today, while Trump was still at the golf course.

The fact that Trump is under audit—as every president is, by law—has no bearing on his years-long attempts to keep the returns secret. He was always free to release them.

The larger problem for Trump, though, is that the NYT story cannot be "fake news," unless they literally manufactured 18 years of fictitious tax returns—which Trump could easily prove even without releasing his own copies.

So what?

• Voters may think that someone who constantly brags about his wealth should pay more in taxes than a part-time worker earning minimum wage.

• Nobody with financial problems this complicated has the time or energy to be president.

• It's bad if the president keeps secret all the different people who can threaten him with financial ruin.

• It's wrong to lie to the American people, even if the truth is humiliating.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He worried about TV ratings.

Because of the COVID-19 epidemic that is affecting the United States far more drastically than any other first-world country, both parties held "conventions" this year that were four-day-long prime-time TV specials. 

Nobody disputes that the two parties were trying to accomplish different goals. Democrats were seeking to expand Joe Biden's advantage with independent voters and anti-Trump Republicans. Moderates and high-profile Republicans like Ohio Gov. John Kasich were front and center, to the annoyance of some in the party's left wing. Trump, by contrast, was trying to hold on to his base of support, and it showed in the lineup: the biggest headliners, besides Mike Pence, were all either named Trump or dating someone who was.

The only real way to measure whether either party accomplished its goal is in the polls, which showed essentially no "convention bump" for either. Biden led Trump by an average of 8.4 points on August 17, the day the DNC opened, and leads by 9.1% today.

Source: fivethirtyeight.com

But Trump spent much of today reacting badly to the measure he really cares about—TV ratings, with which he is famously obsessed, even as president. The DNC beat the RNC three out of four nights, and Biden's acceptance speech was seen by just under a million more Americans than Trump's.

To be clear, TV ratings don't actually matter here. Very few voters are undecided at this point, and very few of those watched both conventions—because of the unusual situation, far fewer voters tuned in than in 2016, for example, when far more people watched Trump accept the nomination than watched Hillary Clinton. 

But Trump was unable to accept this, claiming against all evidence that he had, in fact, had more viewers. He lashed out repeatedly today at the numbers released by TV ratings firm Nielsen, insisting that they were "FAKE NEWS" and that his own self-reported streaming numbers proved he was, in fact, getting more attention than Joe Biden.

The RNC online streaming numbers, which can't be verified, were not released until after Trump started complaining about losing in meaningless TV ratings to the Democrats.

Why should I care about this?

• It's bad if being president and having tens of millions of people paying attention to you still isn't enough attention.

• Claiming you are popular doesn't make you popular.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He tapped Senior Advisor to the President Ivanka Trump to announce a "skills-based hiring" program.

Today, Trump signed an executive order directing certain technical changes to how the federal government assesses potential employees. The press release for it called this a shift to "skills-based hiring."

The order was publicly announced by his daughter, Ivanka Trump, Senior Advisor to the President.

Today, President @realDonaldTrump will sign an executive order to transform the federal hiring process—and replace one-size-fits-all, degree-based hiring with skills-based hiring.

More from @IvankaTrump: pic.twitter.com/W8xhiyCRBy

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) June 26, 2020

Ivanka Trump had no public policy experience and no relevant skills before taking her senior leadership position in her father's administration. In fact, other than a brief stint as a model, she had no work experience whatsoever unrelated to her father's businesses or money. (In fairness, except for the modeling part, the same was true of Donald Trump himself for most of his life.) She was unable to get a security clearance, an absolutely essential "skill" for a senior White House advisor, until Trump rewrote the rules to give her one.

By all accounts, Ivanka Trump's real function in the White House, to the extent that she plays one, is as a sort of amateur therapist. She's one of the few people—including other Trump family members—who is usually exempt from his temper tantrums, and she's said to be a calming influence on him.

Who cares?

• Nepotism is the exact opposite of "skills-based hiring."

What did Donald Trump do today?

He held a meeting with his sixth pandemic task force, or at least the members he remembered to tell were on it.

Today, Trump held a phone meeting with members of what he is calling the "Great American Economic Revival Industry Groups." This is (at least) the sixth task force that Trump has inherited or convened to deal with pandemics. In chronological order, the first six were:

1. the Obama-era intergovernmental working group Trump disbanded in 2018
2. the initial ad hoc group of government scientists and public health experts who assembled themselves to deliver urgent warnings to Trump, which he largely ignored
3. the first "task force" assembled by Trump, which has changed leadership three times
4. the "shadow task force" assembled by Trump's son-in-law, the real estate heir Jared Kushner, and
5. the "reopening task force" that Trump teased last week, featuring mostly his own relatives and cabinet secretaries, only to abandon it later.

The latest "group" is made up of more than 100 business and finance executives, along with Trump donors and "thought leaders." But in his haste to look busy assembling another committee, Trump forgot to tell some of its members they were on it. And those that knew, didn't know what they were signing up for. As one unwilling "member" put it,

We got a note about a conference call, like you’d get an invite to a Zoom thing, a few lines in an email, and that was it. Then our CEO heard his name in the Rose Garden. What the [expletive]? My company is furious. How do you go from "Join us on a call" to, "Well, you’re on the team?"

Invitees to a seventh task force, this one for members of Congress, were also surprised today to learn they were part of any such group.

Trump did a similar thing last month, announcing that Google would be building a massive nationwide website to help track the spread of COVID-19. He even specified the number of Google employees—1,700—who were supposedly working on it. (Google didn't know what he was talking about, and said so.) He also promised nationwide testing in the parking lots of supermarkets and department stores. (Eight total were opened over the entire country, and testing remains almost impossible to get in a timely fashion—unless you are likely to be sharing a room with self-described "germophobe" Trump.)

Why is this a bad thing?

• Doing something about a crisis that is wrecking the economy and killing thousands of Americans every day is more important than looking like you're doing something.

• Assembling a "task force" without telling its members they're on it probably means you're not going to listen to them anyway.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He admitted to illegal acts in court and then denied them on Twitter.

Today, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Saliann Scarpulla ordered Trump to pay $2,000,000 out of his own pocket as part of a settlement over crimes committed by his fraudulent charity. The State of New York had sued Trump for, among other things, spending the "charity's" money on his own business expenses, and illegally using it as a source of campaign funds. 

In her order, Scarpulla effectively barred Trump (and his three eldest children) from ever serving on the board of a charity again. Any charity he tried to join would have to hire a watchdog lawyer and undergo extra audits. According to legal experts, this is an unusually strict kind of order in such a case, reflecting the seriousness of Trump's misdeeds.

Virtually none of the money that the Trump Foundation controlled was donated by Trump family members. Trump also has a very, very long history of publicly promising charitable donations and then never actually making them.

Among other things, as part of the settlement, Trump admitted:

• that he personally misused the charity's funds
• that he ran the charity without an actual board of directors, which is illegal
• that he failed to establish legally required rules and policies for it
• that his negligence led to the charity becoming involved in further crimes (like allowing itself to be used as a personal piggy bank or campaign slush fund)
• that he intentionally used it as an arm of his presidential campaign, which is illegal
• that he used it to pay his private companies' legal bills
• that he used its funds to buy a $10,000 portrait of himself, which he hung in his private Florida resort
• that he used its funds to buy a $11,525 autographed football helmet for himself

It's important to note that Trump wasn't forced to make these stipulations. He could have allowed the case to go to trial, in which case the damages (and public embarrassment) would likely have been much higher. 

Instead, Trump seems to think that it's politically and legally safer to tell the truth to a judge and then lie to the American public about having done so. He tweeted a statement today essentially denying everything, claiming that the judge who ordered him to pay an extra $2,000,000 was taking his side, and insisting he was the real victim.

Why should I care?

• It's wrong to steal charity money.

• It's bad if the president has to admit to repeatedly breaking the law.

• It's extremely bad that Trump may genuinely think he is the victim here.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He asked China if it was listening.

Trump has spent much of the last week alternately denying that he pressured Ukraine to "investigate" his political rival Joe Biden, and confirming it, and refusing to answer altogether. He is facing an impeachment inquiry as a result of this attempt to have a foreign country interfere in another election.

Today, speaking to reporters on the White House lawn, he confirmed it, and then immediately invited China to do the same.

TRUMP: I have a lot of options on China. But if they don’t do what we want, we have tremendous — tremendous power. 

Q: Mr. President, what exactly did you hope [Ukrainian president] Zelensky would do about the Bidens after your phone call? Exactly. 

TRUMP: Well, I would think that, if they were honest about it, they’d start a major investigation into the Bidens. It’s a very simple answer. 

They should investigate the Bidens, because how does a company that’s newly formed — and all these companies, if you look at — 

And, by the way, likewise, China should start an investigation into the Bidens, because what happened in China is just about as bad as what happened with — with Ukraine.

Trump subsequently claimed he hasn't yet discussed the matter with China's president Xi Jinping, although that also appears to be a lie. 

Hunter Biden has invested in China, but it's hard to tell what Trump is talking about, or whether he actually believes it himself. Trump frequently accuses people he feels threatened by of doing what he himself has done—or in this case, what his daughter Ivanka and his son-in-law Jared Kushner have done. (For example, a few hours after calling on China to interfere in the election, Trump angrily tweeted "ELECTION INTERFERENCE!")

China makes at least the sixth foreign country that Trump is known to have sought help from in order to influence a presidential election. The others are Russia, the United Kingdom, Italy, Australia, and Ukraine.

Why does this matter?

• American voters, not foreign governments, should decide American elections.

• If this isn't abuse of office, nothing is.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He tried really, really hard to keep a whistleblower from telling Congress about something he did that his own appointee called a "credible and urgent" matter.

Over the last few days, the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community has been attempting to inform the House Intelligence Committee about a whistleblower report that he deemed "credible and urgent." Reporting on the matter has suggested that the "urgent" concern has to do with a conversation Trump had with a foreign leader—possibly the president of Ukraine—and a "disturbing" promise that Trump extended.

As his lawyer Rudy Giuliani spectacularly demonstrated on CNN tonight, Trump has been pressuring the Ukrainian government to launch two "investigations." One was to be aimed at rehabilitating the image of his now-incarcerated campaign manager Paul Manafort, and one was intended to discredit Hunter Biden, son of Democratic candidate and former vice-president Joe Biden. Recently, and without explanation, Trump ended months of foot-dragging over a $250 million military aid package for Ukraine.

Although it is required by law, Trump's Director of National Intelligence has refused to allow the Inspector General to report to Congress about the matter.

Today, Trump weighed in on the matter via Twitter.

In other words, Trump is saying he knows better than to say inappropriate things when he's aware other people are listening in. That would, at least, explain why Trump has frequently sought out one-on-one meetings, particularly with hostile, authoritarian leaders like Putin and North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un where he might want to say "inappropriate" things.

For example, he met privately with Putin at the 2018 G20 summit, where only Putin's translator—and no American staff whatsoever—were present. At a different meeting with Putin, he confiscated his translator's notes and refused to tell his own advisors what the conversation had been about. When he met with Kim at their first summit, he demanded a block of time alone with Kim, with no American advisors accompanying him, something that horrified national security experts. (The immediate effect of that was that China found out before the United States military about Trump's agreement to unilaterally cancel joint military exercises with South Korea.)

In fact, even during the post-election transition phase, Trump was trying to establish secret backchannels to hostile foreign governments that American intelligence agencies couldn't intercept. His son-in-law and advisor, Jared Kushner, asked Russian officials to let him use Russian communications lines—which are hardened against eavesdropping by American intelligence—so that Trump's team and Putin's could talk directly. Trump also enlisted Erik Prince, the CEO of the mercenary firm known as Blackwater, to set up a secret backchannel with the Putin regime during the transition.

That said, Trump frequently gets confused about what he is and isn't supposed to say out loud. Just yesterday, at his border fence photo op, he began speaking about sensitive details of the surveillance network built into the fence, and had to be gently pushed off the topic by a military official. Whether accidentally or on purpose, he's revealed classified information a number of times. Earlier this month, he tweeted a cell phone picture of a classified briefing on Iran that revealed technical details about U.S. surveillance capacities. He burned an Israeli intelligence asset by speaking carelessly about information shared by Israel to visiting Russian officials, and then made things worse by publicly confirming that Israel was indeed the source. He's revealed the location of American submarines—the whole purpose of which is to have their locations unknown. He let top-secret information about a terrorist attack in Britain leak while the hunt for the attacker was still underway, infuriating British officials.

Arguably, though, Trump has done more espionage damage to the United States by the things he's done intentionally. In an attempt to interfere with the Russia investigation, he ordered the partial declassification of a FISA warrant that revealed U.S. intelligence sources and methods. He tried to circumvent the usual vetting procedures to get his daughter and son-in-law security clearances they couldn't otherwise get because of lies they'd told while applying. And he kept Michael Flynn, now a convicted felon, as his intelligence chief in spite of knowing about Flynn's undisclosed ties to foreign governments including Russia.

The Inspector General who found the whistleblower's complaint "credible and urgent" is a Trump appointee. This may be significant, given the importance Trump has placed on surrounding himself with law enforcement officials who are willing to give him their personal loyalty—like Attorney General William Barr, whose Justice Department is reportedly leading efforts to protect Trump from Congress learning what the whistleblower has to say.

Trump's comments came on the same day that he filed a lawsuit against New York prosecutors, arguing that it is illegal to even investigate a sitting president, even for matters that have nothing to do with his conduct in office.

So?

• It's wrong for a president to use the power of his office to pressure other countries into doing his political dirty work.

• Administrations that haven't done anything wrong don't try to silence whistleblowers.

• The president is not above the law.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He woke up angry and confused again, this time about the media.

This past Sunday, Washington Post reporters Philip Rucker and Ashley Parker wrote a piece headlined "Trump’s lost summer: Aides claim victory, but others see incompetence and intolerance." It detailed the frustration that Trump staffers felt over Trump's increasingly erratic behavior and "self-sabotage" of his own agenda. The piece cited White House staff, and a number of named prominent Republicans. It joins a number of recent articles featuring Trump's own employees as sources that call his stability into question.

This morning, apparently, Trump got around to reading it. His response was to demand that Rucker and Parker be barred from the White House.

Trump's anger at the press is sometimes feigned, and even when genuine—he doesn't take it well when he thinks the media isn't fawning over him enough—it usually loses out to his desire to be in the spotlight. (He's given interviews to the Post, the New York Times, and other media outlets he supposedly hates.) In any event, his half-hearted attempts to ban reporters from doing their jobs have run into legal problems.

But the particular insult he hurled at Rucker is interesting. It appears to be a reference to a rumor that Rucker "burned" Trump's former personal assistant, Madeline Westerhout, who was fired last week for comments she made about Trump's daughters Ivanka and Tiffany. According to that rumor, Rucker incorrectly revealed Westerhout as the "off the record" source of those comments. (Rucker hasn't commented on the rumor, because to do so would be to confirm or deny that Westerhout was a source, which he couldn't do without her permission.)

In other words, Trump is angry at Rucker for "FAKE" sources—and also for supposedly revealing his sources, who are real enough for Trump to fire.

Donald Trump wasn't the only Trump to get confused about how journalism works this week. His son Eric was widely mocked after he angrily called out another Washington Post journalist for offering to let Trump Organization employees speak "on background." Eric Trump seemed to think that Pulitzer prize winning reporter David Farenthold was doing something wrong by letting Trump Organization employees know that they could speak to Post reporters without being quoted by name. In fact, it is normal and ethical for reporters to cultivate sources.

Why should I care about this?

• Presidents don't get to tell the free press what they're allowed to say.

• Freedom of the press is more important than Donald Trump's feelings.

• It's bad if the president's own staff and advisers think he's bad at his job and mentally unsound.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He insisted that he really, truly does have an "absolute right" to force American companies out of China.

Trump spent much of yesterday enduring mockery over his proclamation that he was "hereby order[ing]" American companies to divest from China. The bad press was magnified by the fact that his staff, caught off guard by the tweets, had no idea what he was talking about. By the time he was en route to France, Trump had finally found a justification for his "order" that American companies abandon hundred of billions of dollars of investment in China.

There is such a law. But it does not give Trump the "absolute right" he claimed yesterday to force American companies out of China, or even to start planning to do so. It really, really, really doesn't, as experts on law and trade were quick to point out. 

Even if he could, of course, it would be a disaster for American businesses, which have vastly more money invested in China than Chinese businesses do in the United States.

Trump frequently uses the phrase "absolute right" to describe things he's completely powerless in legal or practical terms to do, like fire Robert Mueller, or completely close the Mexico border to legal traffic, or give himself a pardon for federal crimes he's committed.

All that having been said, there are a few businesses Trump really does have an absolute right to pull out of China—or at least to ask his daughter and son-in-law to. No Trump family-owned businesses have announced any plans to follow Trump's "order."

Who cares?

• It's bad if the president thinks he can do whatever he wants.

• It's very bad if the president thinks he has the authority to do things that would be incredibly stupid even if legal.

• People who voted for Trump thinking he would be pro-business may be upset to learn he's more like a communist when it suits him.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He got mad about law enforcement enforcing laws.

Trump took 27 minutes out of his mid-day "executive time" today to tweet one thread in particular, on the subject of investigations into his now-defunct fake charity. It read:

It is very hard and expensive to live in New York. Governor Andrew Cuomo uses his Attorney General as a bludgeoning tool for his own purposes. They sue on everything, always in search of a crime. I even got sued on a Foundation which took Zero rent & expenses & gave away.......more money than it had. Going on for years, originally brought by Crooked Hillary’s Campaign Chair, A.G. Eric Schneiderman, until forced to resign for abuse against women. They never even looked at the disgusting Clinton Foundation. Now Cuomo’s A.G. is harassing all of my........New York businesses in search of anything at all they can find to make me look as bad as possible. So, on top of ridiculously high taxes, my children and companies are spending a fortune on lawyers. No wonder people and businesses are fleeing New York in record numbers! That’s right, The Trump Foundation gave away 100% plus, with Zero rent or expenses charged, and has been being sued by Cuomo and New York State for years - another part of the political Witch Hunt. Just in case anyone is interested - Clinton Foundation never even looked at!

It's safe to say that Trump is a little confused.

Barbara Underwood, not Eric Schneiderman, was the New York Attorney General who forced Trump to dissolve his "charity." Schneiderman was never part of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. "Campaign Chair" was the title held by Paul Manafort in Trump's 2016 campaign. (Manafort is now in prison.) Clinton's campaign chair was John Podesta, whose emails were hacked and then released by Russia as part of their efforts to elect Trump.

However, Trump is correct that Schneiderman resigned after four women accused him of physical or sexual violence against them. Trump, who bragged on tape that women had to let him "grab them by the pussy" because of his fame, has been accused of sexual assault ranging from unwanted groping to rape by at least fifteen women.

It's true that the Trump Foundation eventually "gave away" all the money it had. (Every nonprofit organization eventually does, by definition.) The reason that the Trump Foundation "gave away" its remaining assets recently is that it was forced to dissolve under court supervision. As part of the settlement, the Trump Foundation admitted to a number of criminal acts, most of them having to do with illegally acting to benefit Trump himself politically or financially.

It is very likely true that Trump's children, who were officers of the Trump Foundation, are spending money on lawyers. People likely to be sued or indicted generally do, if they can afford to. Trump's son Eric may be spending more than Ivanka and Donald Jr., since the separate Eric Trump Foundation has also been caught breaking the law and being used to make money for the Trump family directly.

It's also true that neither New York nor any other jurisdiction has ever "looked at" the Clinton Foundation for criminal activities, because it has never been accused of any wrongdoing, except by Trump himself. During the campaign, Trump floated a rumor that the Clinton Foundation had somehow laundered Saudi money for Clinton's benefit. (Trump himself is deeply financially entangled with the Saudi royal family.)

Why does this matter?

• Presidents aren't above the law.

• Fake charities are bad, and it's right to punish people who abuse charity laws for their own benefit.

• Accusing other people of bad things you have done is called projection, and it's not a sign of good mental health.

What did Donald Trump do today?

When Trump took office, he retained complete ownership of and investment in his businesses, although he at least pretended to be handing off day-to-day management to his elder sons. This was a lie, as story after story about Trump's business-motivated behavior after taking office showed, but not one that was widely believed in the first place. Concerns about Trump being influenced by foreign governments buying his favor through patronage of his business have mostly been eclipsed by fears that Trump was bought long before taking office.

Today, Trump retweeted a Trump Organization ad for a Trump-branded golf course in Scotland, adding the comment that his private ownership of this course furthered his relationship with the United Kingdom.

In other words, Trump as president explicitly tied the country's relationship with one of its closest allies to his ability to make money in that country. The golf resort Trump mentioned is facing local political opposition as it seeks to expand.

Trump is not the first member of his family to do this. China has awarded a number of lucrative copyrights to Trump's daughter Ivanka, far more quickly than is typical, likely as a tactic in their ongoing trade dispute with her father's administration. The family of Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner was caught effectively selling his influence over Trump to Chinese investors anxious to make sure their visa applications were approved.

The Constitution forbids any member of the U.S. government, including the president, from seeking or accepting any kind of gift or favor from a foreign government. Bribery is one of the few specific "high crimes" mentioned as meriting impeachment.

Why does this matter?

• It's wrong to solicit graft.

• The duty of the president is to serve the American people, not to pad his private bank accounts.

• The United States' relationship with its allies is infinitely more important than Trump's golf resorts' balance sheets.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He took credit (again) for an economic indicator he didn't have much to do with.

As evidence that he is "winning" the trade war he started with China last year, Trump cited new GDP numbers from China. Their growth rate slowed in 2018 to 6.6%. (By comparison, the U.S. rate was 3.4%, and the world average was 3.7%.)

Trump said that the slowing of China's economy was "due to U.S. trade tensions and new policies." That's not completely ridiculous—China, like the United States, is feeling the effect of increased taxes on its imports, because there are never any "winners" in trade wars. But China's economy has been steadily contracting for many years now, as it completes its transition to a modern industrialized nation. 

Source: International Monetary Fund

As a general rule, only very underdeveloped economies can grow at rates much higher than 6%. China's slowing growth is a reflection of the fact that its economy is now too big to grow exponentially.

Trump has a long history of taking credit for decades-long economic trends he inherited, and in some cases may even believe that he deserves it. 

Also today, Ivanka Trump's private company, which she continues to profit from while she holds a job in her father's administration, received five more lucrative trademarks from the Chinese government.

Why should I care about this?

• It's wrong to take credit for things you didn't do.

• Basic economic literacy is a requirement for the job of president.

• Presidents aren't supposed to allow even the appearance that their families might be profiting from their actions, much less allow it to happen in reality.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He stopped pretending to run a charity.

Trump and his three eldest children are being sued by the State of New York for their illegal use of the Trump Foundation, a nonprofit organization, for personal and political gain. As part of that suit, Trump agreed today to shut down the foundation and let a judge decide how to distribute its assets among legitimate charities.

Trump's history with "charities" is rich enough that it's been the subject of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalism. Some of the anecdotes are humorous, like when Trump used Trump Foundation funds to pay his youngest son's $7 Boy Scouts registration fee. Others are less funny, like his habit of making splashy public pledges for popular causes, and then simply moving on without paying.

The state's case against Trump describes a "shocking pattern of illegality" in which the charity's money—virtually none of which was donated by Trump family members—was spent at Trump Organization businesses, or on vanity items like portraits of Trump himself, or on illegal promotion of Trump's presidential campaign. The suit alleges that the Foundation was little more than a slush fund for Trump's personal ambitions, so shoddily run that the man listed on its charter as its Treasurer didn't even know he had the job.

The suit also notes that, because so much of the Trump Foundation's real purpose was to funnel money back into Trump-owned businesses, it became a convenient vehicle for bribery once Trump's political career took off. On the campaign trail, Trump routinely accused Hillary Clinton's foundation of doing exactly this.

Why does this matter?

• It's wrong to accuse others of crimes you yourself are in the process of committing.

• The President of the United States should be above running a fake charity scam.

• More money would have gone to legitimate charities if the Trump Foundation had never existed.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He lied through a surrogate about his connections to his own inaugural committee.

Yesterday, news broke that federal prosecutors are investigating the vast amounts of money funneled through Trump's inaugural committee. The huge amounts of money that the committee took in—more than twice any previous committee's budget, for a comparatively cheap inauguration—has long been the subject of scrutiny in the press. It now appears likely that the committee, as well as a pro-Trump super PAC run, accepted illegal contributions from foreign governments. 

In an apparent attempt to insulate Trump from what increasingly looks like influence-peddling if not outright bribery, spokesman Hogan Gidley insisted this morning that Trump had nothing to do with his own inauguration, telling reporters:

[T]he president of the United States has one job at the inauguration. It's to show up, to thank everyone for the service to get him elected, and then also dance with the first lady. He did all of those things. This charge [of financial impropriety] has nothing to do with the president of the United States and it has nothing to do with this administration.

That appears to be a lie. Whether or not Trump's time or influence was bought and sold through the committee, Trump's hotel rooms were—at a substantial profit to Trump. 

A ProPublica/WNYC report released today shows that Ivanka Trump, acting on behalf of the Trump Organization that her father refused to sever his financial links to, sought to charge the committee vastly inflated rates. At least one committee member became alarmed, and begged the Trump Organization to remember that there would eventually be an audit of the charges.

In other words, Ivanka Trump was trying to convert money that was legally restricted to valid inauguration events into profits for her father's business by forcing her father's inauguration committee to pay well above market rates. This would not only be flagrantly unethical, but since the inaugural committee is a non-profit organization, it would be a serious violation of tax laws, something the Trump family knows a lot about.

Why does this matter?

• It should not be possible to bribe the President of the United States.

• It's wrong to funnel money for a non-profit organization to your for-profit business.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He was publicly rejected by his first choice for chief of staff.

Trump announced yesterday that his long-suffering chief of staff, John Kelly, would finally be leaving his post at the end of the year. Trump immediately offered Nick Ayers, currently serving in a similar role for Vice-President Mike Pence, to become his third chief of staff in less than two years.

Ayers's status as the heir apparent was confirmed by the Associated Press yesterday, in reporting based on "nearly a dozen" sources that the White House was satisfied to let stand unchallenged. "Give Nick a call," Trump reportedly said.

Today, Ayers—who, at 36, was being offered the most powerful job in the executive branch after the presidency—publicly took himself out of the running and announced his plans to leave the administration entirely. 

Resistance from Trump's immediate family, who often dictate (or become) his staffing choices, may have worked against Ayers, but Trump has had difficulty finding qualified people willing to sign on with his administration right from the start. This trend seems to be getting worse as his administration begins to face existential threats from real Congressional oversight and the Russia investigation.

Why does this matter?

• A president who doesn't have the confidence of people qualified to serve the country shouldn't be in charge of it.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He went on the defensive after admitting he'd lied to voters about his Russia ties.

Reeling after a terrible news day in which he was forced to admit he lied to Republican primary voters about his ongoing business ties to Russia, Trump tried to mitigate the damage on Twitter. Addressing his now-unveiled 2016 plans to build Trump Tower Moscow, Trump characterized it this way:

Oh, I get it! I am a very good developer, happily living my life, when I see our Country going in the wrong direction (to put it mildly). Against all odds, I decide to run for President & continue to run my business-very legal & very cool, talked about it on the campaign trail... ....Lightly looked at doing a building somewhere in Russia. Put up zero money, zero guarantees and didn’t do the project. Witch Hunt!

Some of this is at least technically true. It was not illegal for Trump to seek out business in Putin's Russia, or even to repeatedly lie about whether he was doing that while running for president. (It probably would have been illegal if his proposed $50 million bribe of Vladimir Putin had happened—U.S. citizens aren't allowed to pay or even offer bribes to foreign governments—but prosecution seems unlikely on that point.)

And Trump's claim that he put up "zero money" is also true, at least as far as we know at the moment. The financing for what would have been a billion-dollar project was slated to come not from Trump (who was effectively blackballed from legitimate banks anyway), but from a Russian state-owned institution, VTB Bank.

VTB Bank was (and remains) under sanction by the United States, which would have put Trump's investment on legally shaky ground. But that didn't dissuade Trump from signing a letter of intent just two weeks after Putin's government guaranteed Trump's financing. Trump signed the letter the same day that he participated in the third Republican primary debate.

Whether pursuing the project for a full year after starting his presidential run, lining up financing from a U.S.-sanctioned bank, involving his adult children and a Trump Organization vice-president, and obtaining permission from Putin himself counts as "lightly looking" is a matter of opinion.

Why does this matter?

• It's wrong for a presidential candidate to lie to voters about who is or isn't influencing them.

• It's incredibly stupid and dangerous for a presidential candidate to give a hostile foreign country leverage over him—even if it might be good for the candidate's private business.