So Trump's saying now that he never recorded James Comey. I was pretty sure that despite his tweet, he hadn't and I told you so here. But this is the kind of thing Donald Trump has done to us: Now that he's denying he did, I'm kind of half-wondering if maybe he did.
You could make the case. I mean, he posted that Comey had better hope that there were no tapes of their conversation. Who might have taped them besides Trump? Was he trying to hint that maybe Obama was "still" spying on him — inside the White House now? So the theory would be that Trump did tape Comey and then when he had aides check those tapes, those aides reported back that they confirmed — not disproved — what Comey said was said, so now Trump had destroyed them and is denying they ever existed.
I don't believe that but it's at least as sound as any proof ever offered that Obama was not born in Hawaii…and that was a charge that had to be investigated eighty-seven different ways and left as a very real possibility. The Mysterious James Comey Tapes deserve nothing less. And now, this…
- Sarah Kliff explains the "Better Care Plan" and why it sucks in some detail.
- If that gets too deep into the weeds for you, you can read Ezra Klein and his simpler explanation: "Poor people pay more for worse insurance." And somewhere, there's a Republican saying, "Hey, they should feel lucky we let them have health insurance at all!"
- Trump explains why his cabinet is full of rich people. It's because they'll give him better advice. Leaving aside the question of whether he'll follow it, that almost makes sense on certain issues. The question though is whether those rich people advising him will then only give him advice on what's good for rich people. I mean, no matter what you do, wealthy folks are going to run the government to a very large extent. The question is whether they'll be wealthy folks who give a damn about non-wealthy folks (i.e., those who need that kind of help).
- Ronald A. Klain says Trump will never accomplish all or most of the items on his stated agenda because he's lazy and indecisive. I don't think I buy this but it is a nice thought.
At this very moment, someone at Saturday Night Live is writing a sketch in which Sean Spicer, as played by Melissa McCarthy, is in some other job trying to employ the same evasive hostility as he displayed as press secretary…like he's working in a market and every time someone asks him where to find the peanut butter, he lectures them on bias, claims it's a stupid question that he already answered, and then calls on someone who'll ask him a question he prefers to answer.