A lot of folks out there who don't like Trump are yearning for the political figure who can fight just as dirty as he can, including all the personal insults and nastiness. Matthew Yglesias is toying with the idea that that person could be Stormy Daniels' lawyer Michael Avenatti. And yeah, it's a remote notion but so was Donald Trump in the White House.
The Republican-controlled Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has agreed unanimously that the government of Russia meddled in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election to help elect Donald Trump. The response from Trump supporters ranges from "No, no matter what anyone finds, there is no evidence to indicate that" to "So what if they did?" and in a few cases to "Well, if that's true, let's tell them not to do that again." Heather Digby Parton has more.
Meanwhile back in North Korea, Trump's squad is demanding that the government there give up its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile program but doesn't seem to be offering any reason why it should. One wonders if this kind of "negotiation" ever worked for Trump when it was just about condominiums and not the entire future of a nation. Read Daniel Larison about this.
And read him here about how Trump had to be talked out of his idea that we should go to war with Venezuela. How close did this great land of ours come to doing that?
Ezra Klein on Donald Trump's poll numbers. They're not as bad as some think nor as good as others insist.
And lastly for now: Donald Trump believes 100% in Jim Jordan's innocence against the charges that Jordan ignored or looked the other way in a massive string of sexual crimes. Well, of course. Donald Trump believes 100% in anyone who believes 100% in Donald Trump and he believes 0% in anyone's claims of having been molested by anyone who isn't an enemy of Donald Trump. And as Ed Kilgore notes, that's just how it works with Donald.