Trump Family
May 15, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
In this post, I discussed Donald Trump Jr.’s refusal to appear for second time before the Senate Intelligence Committee. I argued that he should testify. Now, following the issuance of a subpoena, Trump Jr. has agreed to testify. Under a deal reached with the Committee, he will testify for up to four hours and questions will be limited to six broad categories, not ten as the Committee contemplated. It’s a
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December 27, 2017 — Steven Hayward
There is something ironic about the fact that a grand White House Magnolia tree planted during Andrew Jackson’s administration is going to come down during the administration of the most Jacksonian president since Old Hickory. (By the way, if Jackson was “Old Hickory,” maybe we should call Trump “Old Spice”? It fits in some ways, if you think about it. . .) Rim-shot! Anyway, what isn’t ironic at all is
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July 30, 2017 — Steven Hayward
A popular meme that went around immediately after the appointment of Anthony Scaramucci channeled the question from the old Queen hit: Can he do the Fandango? The answer is a plain No: Scaramucci is neither Bohemian nor rhapsodic. Since our new communications director goes by “The Mooch,” perhaps the better pop culture comparison is the classic Cab Calloway tune, “Minnie the Moocher.” So with apologies to Cab Calloway, here’s the
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July 18, 2017 — John Hinderaker
Many Democrats, and even a few Republicans, have claimed that Donald Trump, Jr’s meeting with a Russian lawyer who claimed to have information about Hillary Clinton’s illicit dealings with Russia while she was Secretary of State constitutes the long-sought evidence of “collusion” between the Trump campaign and the Russian government, even though the Russian with whom Trump, Jr. met conveyed no such information. This, I think, overlooks a very basic
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July 14, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
It has been years since my conservative cousin from New York contributed to Power Line. David Brooks’ latest column smoked him out, inspiring this contribution: Donald Trump appears to have caused David Brooks to lose his senses. In today’s New York Times, Brooks imputes the alleged ethical lapses of Donald Trump to the the original sins of his grandfather and father. It seems the bad seed started with grandpa Frederich
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July 14, 2017 — Scott Johnson
I wrote about the New York Times stories here and here reporting on Donald Trump, Jr.’s June 2016 meeting with the Russian lawyer in “The new meaning of collusion.” I focused on the latter story in a post early on Tuesday morning, before Trump Jr. released the email chain that the story described at second hand. Whatever the faults of the story, in retrospect I wrongly made light of it.
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July 13, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
It’s clear that Natalia Veselnitskaya pulled a bait-and-switch on Donald Trump, Jr. She induced him to a meeting with the promise of information that could be used against Hillary Clinton, but delivered no such information. Instead, she used the meeting to lobby the son of the presumptive Republican nominee for president on the supposed evils of the Magnitsky Act. That Act blacklists Russians who were determined to have engaged in
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July 12, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
The mainstream media is in a state of ecstasy over the story of Donald Trump Jr.’s meeting with that Russian lawyer. It’s easy to understand why. After months with nothing to feed on, the media now has a scrap. In this context, the meal feels like a feast. It certainly seems that way to Ruth Marcus. She declares, absurdly, that the Trump Jr. emails “could hardly be more incriminating.” I
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July 11, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
Natalia Veselnitskaya is the Russian lawyer who met with Donald Trump, Jr. at Trump Tower in June 2016. Trump, Jr. met with her because he thought she might have information damaging to Hillary Clinton. Apparently, she had none and wanted to talk instead about the Magnitsky Act, about which more later. These facts are well known to anyone who has been following the news recently. What’s less known is that
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July 11, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
It’s my view that the stories about Donald Trump, Jr. meeting with a Russian lawyer in the hope of obtaining negative information about Hillary Clinton or the Democratic party do not state a case of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians. Nor do they suggest wrongdoing on the part of Trump, Jr. However, the stories do raise concerns of a different type. The first concern arises from Trump,
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July 11, 2017 — John Hinderaker
Earlier this morning, Donald Trump, Jr. released the email threads relating to his meeting with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya in June 2016. The emails support his account of the meeting. Here they are, with the earlier ones first. The early emails are the only significant ones; the later emails relate to scheduling. Click to enlarge: A few points are worth noting. First, the emails support Trump Jr.’s statement that he
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July 11, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
I planned to call my first post of the day “The Shifting Meaning of Collusion.” Then I saw the title of Scott’s post. That’s the disadvantage of waking up at 10:00 in the morning rather than five hours earlier. But I want to amplify Scott’s point. Claims of “collusion” between the Trump campaign and Russia arose in connection with Russian computer hacking. The hacking was the one significant set of
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July 11, 2017 — Scott Johnson
Today the New York Times credits four reporters with the story advancing the latest installment of the “collusion” story involving the Trump campaign and a mysterious Russian lawyer. We are colluding in comedy. In today’s episode the Times reports that before Donald Trump, Jr. arranged a meeting with “a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer he believed would offer him compromising information about Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump Jr. was informed in an email
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July 10, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
I want to add a few thoughts to Scott’s post about the meeting between Donald Trump, Jr. and a Russian lawyer who said she had damaging information about Hillary Clinton. The damaging information reportedly had to do with Russian funding of the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton. The main point I want to make is that there is nothing wrong with such a meeting and such discussions, though in
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July 10, 2017 — Scott Johnson
On Saturday afternoon the New York Times posted the story that Donald Trump, Jr. had met with a Russian lawyer in June 2016 along with Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort. Trump issued a statement that the meeting was “primarily about” issues of adoption. Trump explained: “I was asked to attend the meeting by an acquaintance, but was not told the name of the person I would be meeting with beforehand.”
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June 10, 2017 — Steven Hayward
1. Remember a few weeks ago when the media were breathless with reports that Steve Bannon was on his way out from the White House? Almost completely unremarked upon during Comeypalooza this week is that Bannon appears to be firmly back in the first saddle (if he was ever in jeopardy in the first place), and Jared Kushner is the person in eclipse at the White House. Recall that Bannon
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April 18, 2017 — Steven Hayward
Few of Donald Trump’s campaign promises were as clear and emphatic as his pledge to withdraw the United States from the Paris Climate Accord, which I have often called the Kellogg-Briand Pact of climate diplomacy, arising from—to borrow Churchill’s great phrase about the disarmament fetish of the 1930s—the “prolonged and solemn farce” of the UN climate change circus. But there is widespread reporting that the Trump White House is going
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