My brain is tired. Between writing the book and trying to keep up with the latest Mueller investigation news, my brain is telling me it wants to spend about three days binge-watching episodes of “Gunsmoke.” I will slog on as best I can. However, I do want to register a complaint that the mess surrounding Trump is making Watergate look simple.

One thing I believe I understand is that the investigation has Trump dead to rights on campaign finance violations. This is from Lawfare:

In short, the Department of Justice, speaking through the acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, is alleging that the president of the United States coordinated and directed a surrogate to commit a campaign finance violation punishable with time in prison. While the filing does not specify that the president “knowingly and willfully” violated the law, as is required by the statute, this is the first time that the government has alleged in its own voice that President Trump is personally involved in what it considers to be federal offenses.

And it does not hold back in describing the magnitude of those offenses. The memo states that Cohen’s actions, “struck a blow to one of the core goals of the federal campaign finance laws: transparency. While many Americans who desired a particular outcome to the election knocked on doors, toiled at phone banks, or found any number of other legal ways to make their voices heard, Cohen sought to influence the election from the shadows.” His sentence “should reflect the seriousness of Cohen’s brazen violations of the election laws and attempt to counter the public cynicism that may arise when individuals like Cohen act as if the political process belongs to the rich and powerful.”

Even David French at National Review admits that it’s unlikely prosecutors would have made such strong statements about the POTUS without corrorating evidence that supports Cohen’s testimony.

We also have more hints at connections between the Trump campaign and Russia, although nothing new that clearly incriminates Trump. Marcy Wheeler explains what Manafort lied about, which is interesting. But there are so many connections between Trump’s associates and Russians, both the Russian government and the Russian mob. And that’s where my brain freezes.

I think financial journalists and fashion writers are the same people. The S&P 500 appear to be tottering on the brink of an abyss, and the financial press is full of stories about “Five Surprising Stocks to Buy Now!” written with the same breathless optimism as articles promoting fashion — “Five Makeup Essentials to Make You Look Ten Years Younger!” “Dress Like a Star With Glitter, Bedsheets and Safety Pins!” Whatever.

The more serious stock market people are alarmed that they are getting mixed messages from the White House. Larry Kudlow says one thing; Peter Navarro, who seems to have ten different jobs, says another.

Kudlow told CNBC on Friday that the trade talks with China are “extremely promising.”

Kudlow, director of Trump’s National Economic Council, said that Trump has indicated he might be willing to extend the 90-day negotiating window if there’s “good, solid movement and good action.”

Navarro, the trade hawk of the White House, struck a different tone on CNN. Asked whether the administration would walk away if issues with China are not resolved within 90 days, Navarro suggested Trump would “simply raise” existing tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods.

If China fails to change its ways on trade, “we have a president that’s going to stand up to that for once,” Navarro said.

Navarro also championed the nearly $12 billion that the United States has raised from tariffs, even though that money is being mostly paid by American consumers and businesses.

Of course, the real problem is that there’s nobody at the helm. Well, there’s Trump, but he has no idea what he’s doing. Paul Krugman writes,

Unfortunately, he really, really doesn’t know what he’s doing. On trade, he’s a rebel without a clue.

Even as he declared himself Tariff Man, Trump revealed that he doesn’t understand how tariffs work. No, they aren’t taxes on foreigners, they’re taxes on our own consumers.

When trying to make deals, he seems to care only about whether he can claim a “win,” not about substance. He has been touting the “U.S. Mexico Canada Trade Agreement” as a repudiation of NAFTA, when it’s actually just a fairly minor modification. (Nancy Pelosi calls it “the trade agreement formerly known as Prince.”)

Most important, his inability to do international diplomacy, which we’ve seen on many fronts, carries over to trade talks. Remember, he claimed to have “solved” the North Korean nuclear crisis, but Kim Jong-un is still expanding his ballistic missile capacity. Well, last weekend he claimed to have reached a major trade understanding with China; but as J.P. Morgan soon reported in a note to its clients, his claims seem if not completely fabricated then grossly exaggerated.”

Markets plunged earlier this week as investors realized that they’d been had.

Of course, allowing oneself to be “had” by the likes of Trump suggests one wasn’t too smart to begin with. Michelle Obama said recently that the Masters of the Universe types really aren’t all that smart, and I believe her.

Elsewhere: Rex Tillerson made some candid remarks about his time in the Trump Administration recently. Naturally The Creature had to weigh in.

Mike Pompeo is doing a great job, I am very proud of him. His predecessor, Rex Tillerson, didn’t have the mental capacity needed. He was dumb as a rock and I couldn’t get rid of him fast enough. He was lazy as hell. Now it is a whole new ballgame, great spirit at State!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 7, 2018

The above is a genuine tweet by the allegedly adult POTUS. I pulled it off his Twitter page personally.

Forbes has an in-depth look at How Donald Trump Shifted $1.1M Of Campaign-Donor Money Into His Business.

The appointee to become U.S. ambassador to the United Nations is a former Fox News reader who not that long ago cited D-Day as a high point in U.S.-German relations.

Update: Neil Irwin of the New York Times notes stock market volatility and wonders why it took so long for the money people to get nervous.

First, why is this happening when the economy is so strong? The November jobs numbers released Friday showed the unemployment rate remains at a rock-bottom 3.7 percent amid healthy job creation, just the latest piece of economic data to come in relatively strong.

Second, what took so long? Why are markets just now recognizing the risks the economy faces in 2019, which have been obvious for months to anyone paying attention?

My answer is that most of these people don’t want to face the obvious. They want to believe everything will be fine.

After the Flynn sentencing memo, it appears that there is no question Mueller has evidence that the Trump campaign was in illegal contact with Russia. See Mueller says Michael Flynn gave ‘first-hand’ details of Trump transition team contacts with Russians. In his court filing, Mueller said that Flynn’s “substantial assistance” earned him a light criminal sentence, which could include no jail time.

And what does Byron York, chief political correspondent for the Washington Examiner, take from this? According to York, the light sentence recommendation is proof that Flynn really wasn’t guilty of all that much. The whole Mueller investigation is “fishy,” says York.

Byron York, who is too stupid to find shit in an outhouse.

But it gets better. The Fox News crew has decided that the court filing reveals Mueller’s got nothin’ on Trump because it doesn’t contain the word collusion. One wonders how these people manage to function without a team of body servants to be sure they are dressed and don’t walk into walls. Gregg Jarrett of Fox News went so far as to declare that Mueller “strikes out trying to nail Trump.”

Gregg Jarrett, who is too stupid to find his own ass, never mind the outhouse.

Back to the court filing — Greg Sargent writes,

The big takeaway from special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s new sentencing memo for Michael Flynn is that it underscores how little we know about what Mueller has learned. It says President Trump’s former national security adviser has provided “substantial assistance” to Mueller, notes that he sat for 19 interviews and says he’s cooperating not just with the Russia probe but also with a separate criminal investigation that is not named.

But, by tantalizingly hinting at just how much help Flynn may have provided — and by sketching out the barest outline of the areas in which he offered this help — the memo also underscores the likelihood that Trump obstructed justice when he leaned on then-FBI Director James B. Comey to drop the investigation into Flynn.

Andrew Prokop writes at Vox that there are four big takeaways — One, Mueller is happy with Flynn’s cooperation. Two, Flynn is cooperating in three separate investigations, and we don’t yet know what those are.

Third, the cooperation Flynn provided to Mueller’s probe specifically appears to break down into two main areas. One focused on contacts between the Trump transition team and Russia, but we don’t know what the other one is yet.

Finally, the many redactions indicate that there’s still a whole lot going on behind the scenes that Mueller doesn’t yet want the public to know about.

In other words, the righties are crowing because they assume that anything Mueller doesn’t explicitly spell out in the court filing doesn’t exist. Did I mention the sentencing memo was heavily redacted?

Quinta Jurecic and Benjamin Wittes at Lawfare provide more details on the takeaways.

It seems that Flynn is cooperating in at least three ongoing investigations: a criminal investigation about which all details are redacted; Mueller’s investigation into “any links or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald J. Trump”; and at least one additional investigation about which all information is redacted.

As BuzzFeed News’s Chris Geidner noted, it appears likely from the length of the redaction bar that the first criminal investigation is not a matter being conducted by the special counsel’s office—though, of course, it’s impossible to know for certain.

We don’t know that any of this will lead to a direct connection between Trump and the Russians, but the obstruction case just got a lot stronger.  Back to Greg Sargent:

Mueller’s memo contains a section claiming Flynn provided “firsthand information” about “interactions” between the Trump “transition team and Russian government officials.” It’s not clear who this refers to other than Flynn, but the memo does say Flynn provided information on his own contacts with Russia, noting, significantly, that Flynn represented the “transition team” at the time. The memo then claims Flynn provided “useful information.” But much of it is redacted, suggesting Flynn has told Mueller a lot about this chain of events.

It seems like ancient history now, but Comey’s claim that Trump pressured him over Flynn is worth revisiting in light of these new revelations.

Before firing Comey, Trump leaned on Comey to drop his investigation into Flynn, you’ll remember.

Trump asked everyone but Comey to leave, and then repeatedly told Comey that Flynn “hadn’t done anything wrong” in his phone call to the Russian ambassador. …

… We have now learned that Flynn provided Mueller a great deal of information about this call and about the events surrounding it. This increases the likelihood that Trump leaned on Comey to drop the investigation into Flynn not because he thought Flynn was a “good guy” but because Trump knew Flynn had a lot to disclose on these matters. Which in turn provides a motive for Trump to try to derail the investigation into him, perhaps with “corrupt intent.”

This is speculation, but at least it’s informed and intelligent speculation.

“This memo suggests Flynn has provided a great deal of information about Russian contacts with members of Trump’s team,” Randall D. Eliason, who teaches white-collar crime at George Washington University Law School, told me. “The more Flynn knew about those contacts, the more motive the president would have had to try to keep that information under wraps by getting the Flynn investigation shut down.”

See also Why the Flynn Sentencing Memo Could Be Bad News for Jared Kushner.

Item One: U.S. stocks are battered in one of their worst days of 2018 as U.S.-China trade deal appears to sputter

The economic agreement President Trump said he reached with Chinese leader Xi Jinping on Saturday showed signs of unraveling Tuesday, with the White House threatening new penalties against Beijing and multiple officials seeking to downplay expectations for an eventual deal.

Investors, who had applauded the deal on Monday, turned sharply negative Tuesday. The Dow Jones industrial average dropped 799 points, or 3.1 percent, to close at 25,027. The Standard and Poor’s 500-stock index fell 3.2 percent, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq gave up 3.8 percent.

Trump, in a series of Twitter posts, threatened to slap a range of import penalties on Chinese products if they did not make major changes in their economic relationship with the United States.

Also, Stock market plunges as Wall Street gives Trump’s China deal another look

Wall Street is sending a clear signal that, upon closer inspection, Trump’s trade war détente with China isn’t looking so hot — especially after a string of tweets from the president this morning indicated he has no problem going back to a trade war if a broader agreement isn’t reached in the next three months.

All together now: “So much winning!”

Item Two: GOP senators come out and say it: The Trump administration is covering up Khashoggi’s killing

Republican senators emerged from a briefing Tuesday about journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s killing and essentially accused the Trump administration of misleading the country about it — and even covering it up for Saudi Arabia.

In remarks after a briefing from CIA Director Gina Haspel, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) and Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) suggested there is no plausible way that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman didn’t order the killing of Khashoggi, a Washington Post contributing columnist, and said that the evidence is overwhelming. …

…”If they were in a Democratic administration,” Graham said of Pompeo and Mattis, “I would be all over them for being in the pocket of Saudi Arabia.”

But of course, since they are in a Republican administration they won’t be punished for giving misleading statements to the Senate last week. I’m betting money that when Trump’s financials are finally made public, we’ll learn he either owes money to the Saudis or has done considerable business with them in the not-too-distant past.

All together now: “So much winning!”

Item Three: Trump’s latest tweets cross clear lines, experts say: Obstruction of justice and witness tampering

Norman Eisen, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said that the most striking thing about Monday was that there were two statements in proximity.

“It comes very close to the statutory definition of witness tampering,” he said. “It’s a mirror image of the first tweet, only he’s praising a witness for not cooperating with the implication of reward,” he said, adding that Trump has pardon power over Stone.

“We’re so used to President Trump transgressing norms in his public declarations,” Eisen said, “but he may have crossed the legal line.”

Here are the tweets in question:

“Michael Cohen asks judge for no Prison Time.” You mean he can do all of the TERRIBLE, unrelated to Trump, things having to do with fraud, big loans, Taxis, etc., and not serve a long prison term? He makes up stories to get a GREAT & ALREADY reduced deal for himself, and get…..

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 3, 2018

….his wife and father-in-law (who has the money?) off Scott Free. He lied for this outcome and should, in my opinion, serve a full and complete sentence.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 3, 2018

“I will never testify against Trump.” This statement was recently made by Roger Stone, essentially stating that he will not be forced by a rogue and out of control prosecutor to make up lies and stories about “President Trump.” Nice to know that some people still have “guts!”

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 3, 2018

All together now: “So much winning!”

David Leonhardt, “American Capitalism Isn’t Working.”

Things began to change in the 1970s. Facing more global competition and higher energy prices, and with Great Depression memories fading, executives became more aggressive. They decided that their sole mission was maximizing shareholder value. They fought for deregulation, reduced taxes, union-free workplaces, lower wages and much, much higher pay for themselves. They justified it all with promises of a wonderful new economic boom. That boom never arrived.

Even when economic growth has been decent, as it is now, most of the bounty has flowed to the top. Median weekly earnings have grown a miserly 0.1 percent a year since 1979. The typical American family today has a lower net worth than the typical family did 20 years ago. Life expectancy, shockingly, has fallen this decade.

Sam Stein, Lachlan Markay, “How No Labels Went From Preaching Unity to Practicing the Dark Arts.” Those third-way, centrist organizations that try to pull the Democrats to the “center” are just stalking horses for the Right.

Greg Sargent, “After the latest Mueller news, these corrupt Trump moves look much worse.”

What we now know is this. During much of that period, the Trump Organization was secretly pursuing a business deal in Russia that required Kremlin approval — even though the most senior members of Trump’s own campaign, and possibly Trump himself, knew at the time that Russia was waging an attack designed to sabotage our democracy on Trump’s behalf, which they eagerly sought to help Russia carry out.

Garrett Graff, “Mueller’s breadcrumbs suggest he has the goods.”

Josh Marshall, “President [GHW] Bush and the Road to Trumpism.”

Bush was an institutionalist, someone fundamentally more interested in governance than politics. He was also very much a patrician, something which is central to many of the current tributes. But you can see at the heights of his political career how that fundamental institutionalism and focus on governance was repeatedly set aside at critical moments for political advantage, political necessity. In that way, while he was not fundamentally a part of it, Bush very much, perhaps in spite of himself, laid the groundwork for the performative politics of rightwing extremism and the valorization of hostility to all compromise which was ushered in with Newt Gingrich, became the center of gravity of GOP politics in the Obama era and came to full bloom under President Trump.

Charles Pierce:

It always was about the money. The president* always defined himself by it. It was the comforting myth of his public existence, the fairytale he told himself so he could sleep at night through all the failure and bankruptcy and the whoring after cash, dirty or laundered, all over the world. Take away the money—or, more accurately, the perception of the money—and there simply is nothing left of the man. Take away the money, and he can’t see himself in the mirror. So he would do anything, including imperil his presidency and, therefore, the country, to save himself from the horrible realization that the money was all there was to him and there wasn’t any money anymore.

It’s obvious from the public record, never mind what might be in his tax returns, that Trump was never a successful businessman. He’s been propped up all his life, first by his father, and then by banks who decided they’d lose more if they him crash than if they kept him propped up. It appears his properties have been used for money laundering by Russians. And then there’s the fact that in 2006 he was suddenly flush with cash, and there’s no accounting for where he got it. His “success” was entirely in his ability to market himself as a success. And when he got the stint on reality television, he literally became an actor playing a successful businessman on the teevee. His supporters still buy the image and don’t see the man.

Greg Sargent spells it out: Trumpism is rotten to its core. And the stench of corruption and failure is everywhere.

A new Post piece offers an arresting summary of Trump’s current travails. Former Trump fixer Michael Cohen has now revealed that Trump’s company pursued a Trump Tower in Moscow through June 2016 — while GOP primary voters were choosing their nominee for president — which Trump concealed.

Meanwhile, the special counsel is scrutinizing phone calls between Trump and longtime adviser Roger Stone to determine whether Stone communicated advance knowledge he allegedly possessed of a WikiLeaks operation carrying out Russia’s sabotage of our election on Trump’s behalf.

The Post weaves these strands together this way: “Investigators have evidence that Trump was in close contact with his lieutenants as they made outreach to both Russia and WikiLeaks — and that they tried to conceal the extent of their activities.”

The precise nature of all these contacts probably won’t, by itself, bring down Trump. But they provide a new glimpse into just how corrupted his ascension to the presidency really was. He repeatedly praised Russian President Vladimir Putin and called for better relations with Russia — positions presented as good-faith proposals in the national interest — while pursuing a lucrative deal that required Kremlin approval.

Trump doesn’t even seem to fully grasp what he did wrong. His rage tweets continue to slam the Mueller probe as “illegal” and a “witch hunt” that has hurt “innocent people.” Like Paul Manafort? And he continues to openly dangle the possibility of a pardon for Manafort. That’s obstruction on its face.

When will this illegal Joseph McCarthy style Witch Hunt, one that has shattered so many innocent lives, ever end-or will it just go on forever? After wasting more than $40,000,000 (is that possible?), it has proven only one thing-there was NO Collusion with Russia. So Ridiculous!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 29, 2018

And instead of denying that he was pursuing a business deal with Vladimir Putin while running for president, he tweeted,

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…

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 30, 2018

The Trump organization planned to sweeten the deal by offering Vladimir Putin a $50 million penthouse in the Moscow Trump Tower.  See also Trump Jr.’s 2017 Testimony Conflicts With Cohen’s Account Of Russian Talks.

Paul Waldman:

The president lies about just about everything, but in particular he has lied on matters related to Russia. The latest exposure of his dishonestly comes out of the plea agreement from his former personal lawyer Michael Cohen, who supplied evidence that the Trump Organization was actively pursuing a deal to build a Trump Tower in Moscow while Trump was running for president. Trump asserted yesterday in response to Cohen’s plea, “I mean, we were very open with it. We were thinking about building a building [in Russia].” In fact, throughout the campaign he claimed again and again that he had no business interests in Russia, saying things like “I don’t know Putin, have no business whatsoever with Russia, have nothing to do with Russia.”

To take just one other example, when it was revealed that Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort, and Jared Kushner held a meeting in 2016 with a group of Russians they believed would supply them with damaging information on Hillary Clinton, President Trump personally dictated a misleading statement intended to deceive the public about what the meeting was actually about. Trump’s representatives, including lawyer Jay Sekulow and spokesperson Sarah Sanders, then issued denials that Trump wrote the statement. They later admitted that these denials were false and Trump had in fact dictated it.

And of course Trump knew about the 2016 meeting before it happened.

At 6:14 p.m. on June 7, 2016, Donald Trump Jr. clicked the send button on an email to confirm a meeting with a woman described as a “Russian government attorney” who would give him “information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia.”

Three hours later, his father, Donald J. Trump, claimed victory in the final primary races propelling him to the Republican presidential nomination and a general election contest against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. In his victory speech, Mr. Trump promised to deliver a major address detailing Mrs. Clinton’s “corrupt dealings” to give “favorable treatment” to foreign governments, including “the Russians.”

We see, over and over again, that Trump is a very limited man with little capacity for much of anything except being an ass. And it’s all closing in on him now.

BTW, wonder why the Moscow deal fell through? Philip Bump writes,

The plea deal indicates that the last known discussion about the deal was “on or about June 14,” 2016, when Cohen told Sater that he was canceling plans to travel to Russia.

Why is that date significant? It happens to be the day The Washington Post broke a big story that Russia had hacked the Democratic National Committee.

Oops.

Manafort lied to the prosecutors. What’s up with that?

Paul Waldman puts recent events together:

First, it’s unlikely that Mueller would be withdrawing Manafort’s plea agreement unless he had specific evidence demonstrating that Manafort lied. He’s going to lay that evidence out for the court as the judge considers what sentence to give Manafort, in what amounts to another indictment.

Second, Trump’s lawyers and Manafort’s lawyers have a joint defense agreement that allows them to share information. And third, Trump recently completed a set of written answers to Mueller’s questions.

Hmmm … so Trump’s answers probably were predicated on what he knew Manfort had told the Mueller team. And only after Trump submitted his answers did Mueller reveal that he knew Manafort had lied. Hmmmm…

Marcy Wheeler:

Mueller’s team appears to have no doubt that Manafort was lying to them. That means they didn’t really need his testimony, at all. It also means they had no need to keep secrets — they could keep giving Manafort the impression that he was pulling a fast one over the prosecutors, all while reporting misleading information to Trump that he could use to fill out his open book test. Which increases the likelihood that Trump just submitted sworn answers to those questions full of lies.

And that “detailed sentencing submission … sett[ing] forth the nature of the defendant’s crimes and lies” that Mueller mentions in the report?

There’s your Mueller report, which will be provided in a form that Matt Whitaker won’t be able to suppress.

Heh. Trump may be the single most thoroughly screwed man on the planet right now. This  may be why he’s throwing nuclear tantrums on the Internets.

Trump definitely is not having a good week. Yesterday GM announced factory closings and layoffs, which of course made Trump look really, really bad. So today he is issuing threats against General Motors, although exactly what he thinks he can do without congressional approval isn’t clear.

There are also reports that Manafort met with Julian Assange several times in the Ecuadorian Embassy. The last meeting was in March 2016, which was about the same time Manafort became Trump’s campaign manager.

Note that Jerome Corsi has bravely rejected a plea deal and says he’d rather rot in jail than take a plea. Works for me.

Because I’m lazy, I’m just going to embed this —

If the link isn’t working, here’s the whole quote:

If I was a thug like Vladimir Putin, and I knew my toady Donald Trump had his hands full with a developing crisis of his own making near San Diego, do you know what I’d do?
.
I’d give the green light to a plan that’s been on the back burner for years: Don’t look now, but Russia just rammed a Ukrainian ship, fired on another, seized some Ukrainian vessels, and the Ukrainian president has summoned his war cabinet.
.
What’s Trump going to do, call out Putin? To whom he owes his presidency? The man who when he walks into a room, Trump lights up like a Christmas tree? After he’s spent two solid years weakening NATO and isolating us from our historic allies, including Canada and the UK? He’s going to drop everything and come to Kiev’s defense?
.
Paraphrasing Tom Hagen to Michael Corleone: Putin played this one beautifully.

See also Ukraine to impose martial law as standoff with Russia in Black Sea intensifies. Trump couldn’t be providing a better distraction for Putin if he tried. Or maybe he is trying? Remember the Armistice observance?

So U.S. Border Patrol Agents fired tear gas across the Mexican border at little children in diapers whom Trump calls “stone cold criminals.” You can see some of the stone-cold criminals in this tweet:

A migrant family, part of a caravan of thousands traveling from Central America en route to the United States, runs away from tear gas in front of the U.S.-Mexico border wall in Tijuana, Mexico.

(📷: Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters) pic.twitter.com/pz7hkxsN9g

— NBC News (@NBCNews) November 25, 2018

There have been waves of migrants at the border before, and somehow previous administrations managed to handle them without creating a scandal. Do read Greg Sargent’s very good commentary on this, Trump is failing miserably on his biggest issue. And he’s covering it up with lies. Nothing Trump has done regarding border security has been either justified or effective. As in all things, he’s failing miserably.

A couple of days ago the White House announced it had a “deal” with Mexico that would in effect pay Mexico to keep the migraints on its side of the border until their asylum cases could be heard. Since then I’ve read several other news stories that say there is no deal; the White House jumped the gun on the announcement. I am inclined to believe the latter.

Kori Schake at The Atlantic:

The Halifax Forum, occurring just after President Donald Trump unleashed yet another petulant tirade against Germany and France that culminated in the unseemly taunt that Parisians were speaking German until the U.S. intervened in World Wars I and II, had a funereal feel this year. Allies are grieving the loss of an America they believed in, as it sinks in that they cannot rely on us any longer. …

…It’s not just that allies don’t believe the reassuring voices in the administration; they are tired of tuning in to the malicious circus of American politics and policies. They’re exhausted with our solipsism and drama, and disappointed with our indifference to anyone else’s problems and politics. They are resigning themselves to a world without American inspiration or partnership, to a post-American international order.

The Americans present at the conference pointed to policy successes, like the establishment of nato’s 30-30-30 rapid-deployment forces, U.S. troops deploying to Poland, reconstituting the Second Fleet to patrol the Atlantic, and integral U.S. participation in nato’s biggest military exercise since the end of the Cold War. But allies are getting tired of hearing it. Not only were those successes overshadowed by Trump’s offensive behavior, the incandescence of his public rage called into question whether the United States would come to the defense of its allies in a crisis.

The decibel level of mean-spiritedness coming from the highest levels of American government is deafening our friends to our better selves. Allies believe they are witnessing something they never expected to behold, and which endangers both their security and our own: the United States putting an end to the American order. Word came through during the Forum that nato will not be holding a 70th-anniversary celebration, because the president of the United States cannot be trusted not to bring the temple down upon all our heads. That was the dirge played in Halifax.

The world might be relieved if a “normal” person is elected in 2020, but after this debacle the U.S. will no longer occupy a unique leadership position. Our political system elected Donald Trump and has allowed him to remain in office for two years. Even if he is removed from office next year, the damage is done.

At least, now that The Creature has turned in his “answers” to Bob Mueller, and Democrats are about to take over the House, maybe finally the abomination that is the Trump Administration will finally break apart. Harry Litman, a former deputy assistant attorney general, teaches constitutional law at UC San Diego and UCLA and writes for the Los Angeles Times:

The actual charges are likely to be one of three criminal conspiracies: violating federal election laws, violating computer laws, or soliciting or receiving something of value from a foreign government. Charges, in other words, that not even the most ardent Trump die-hard could trivialize. They bring with them the possibility that Mueller might opt to name President Trump himself as an unindicted co-conspirator.

In case you missed this:

Look first for an indictment against radio commentator Jerome Corsi, who told the world last week that after several months of his cooperating with the probe, Mueller has informed him that he will be charged with “some form of lying” to the Mueller team.

Corsi, often identified in news reports as an associate of Roger Stone, is supposed to be in plea negotiations now.

Back to Harry Litman — I believe Rachel Maddow and others have pointed this out.

He’s screwed up enough this week already he should be grateful for the four-day weekend. Otherwise who knows how much damage he’d have done by Friday, like lose Nebraska in a poker game.

Let’s review.

Monday a federal judge blocked Trump’s new “asylum” policy and added a rebuke:

“Whatever the scope of the President’s authority, he may not rewrite the immigration laws to impose a condition that Congress has expressly forbidden,” wrote the judge, whom President Barack Obama nominated to the federal bench in 2012. Tigar reasoned that the “failure to comply with entry requirements such as arriving at a designated port of entry should bear little, if any, weight in the asylum process.”

The Trump administration said Tuesday it will continue to press the matter in court.

In Trump’s typical style, he called the 9th Circuit a “disgrace” and the judge an “Obama judge.” Then Chief Justice John Roberts spoke up.

Chief Justice John Roberts is pushing back against President Donald Trump for his description of a judge who ruled against Trump’s migrant asylum policy as an “Obama judge.”

It’s the first time the Republican-appointed leader of the federal judiciary has offered even a hint of criticism of Trump, who has previously blasted federal judges who ruled against him.

Roberts said Wednesday the U.S. doesn’t have “Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges.” He commented in a statement released by the Supreme Court after a query by The Associated Press.

It also strikes me that if Trump wants to further pursue the matter in court,  pissing off the entire federal judiciary isn’t a smooth move.

But there’s more. There’s so much more.

After his cowardly butt kissing of Saudi Arabia yesterday, he did it again today. This is one of his morning tweets:

Oil prices getting lower. Great! Like a big Tax Cut for America and the World. Enjoy! $54, was just $82. Thank you to Saudi Arabia, but let’s go lower!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 21, 2018

Greg Sargent wrote today,

In this case and many others, Trump is not being “frank” about his real priorities, and he is not putting America first. He’s putting his own naked self-interest over what’s good for America, and prioritizing the real-world policy realization of his own prejudices and hatreds over any good-faith, fact-based effort to determine, by any discernible standard, what might actually be in the country’s interests.

At the very least, he probably assumes lower oil prices make him look good. But there must be more. How much money does he owe the Saudis? Where are these transactions hidden? For that matter, what about the Russians? We need some good money-launderings sleuths looking into this.

Wait a minute – House Intelligence Panel Hiring Money-Laundering Sleuths!

The House intelligence committee’s incoming Democratic majority is taking its first steps to follow Donald Trump’s money, The Daily Beast has learned.

The committee is looking to hire money-laundering and forensic accounting experts, three sources familiar with the plans confirm to The Daily Beast. One Democratic committee office said the purpose of the potential new hires is to examine unanswered financial questions about Trump and Russia, but their work could apply broadly across the panel’s intelligence oversight.

Also this week:

President Trump told the White House counsel in the spring that he wanted to order the Justice Department to prosecute two of his political adversaries: his 2016 challenger, Hillary Clinton, and the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey, according to two people familiar with the conversation.

The lawyer, Donald F. McGahn II, rebuffed the president, saying that he had no authority to order a prosecution. Mr. McGahn said that while he could request an investigation, that too could prompt accusations of abuse of power. To underscore his point, Mr. McGahn had White House lawyers write a memo for Mr. Trump warning that if he asked law enforcement to investigate his rivals, he could face a range of consequences, including possible impeachment.

Charles Pierce:

Here’s the thing. If we’re still following the Constitution, as soon as the president* finished asking the question, he was guilty of a high crime and liable to impeachment and removal from office. It doesn’t matter that it never happened, or that McGahn talked him out of it. Given his position, the very suggestion by the president* that the Justice Department behave as his personal Praetorian Guard is an obstruction of justice and an abuse of power. McGahn should’ve walked that conversation over to Robert Mueller’s place as soon as he left the Oval Office. However, he didn’t, and the Times leaves us with this little land mine deep in the story.

It is unclear whether Mr. Trump read Mr. McGahn’s memo or whether he pursued the prosecutions further.

It is? We’re “unclear” whether the president* actually acted on this notion, compounding his felonies, and we’re “unclear” whether investigations of Clinton and Comey might be underway right now. That’s one fcklord of a cliffhanger right there, NYT.

Meanwhile, there are a growing number of court challenges to Matthew Whitaker’s appointment as acting Aggorney General. Oh, and what about her emails?

So, yeah, the Creature should be thankful tomorrow is a national holiday and people will be watching football and stuffing themselves on turkey and not paying attention to him.