The Weekly List

This week concerns about Trump’s foreign policy were front and center,  as the regime rolled back sanctions against a Russian oligarch, and  withdrew from the Cold War-era Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces  Treaty — both seen as victories for Putin. The Financial Times  reported on a previously undisclosed one-on-one meeting between Trump  and Putin at the G20 just months after Helsinki. Congress rebuked  Trump’s foreign policy again this week in a piece of legislation drafted  by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell over Trump’s withdrawal of troops  from Syria and Afghanistan. Heads of U.S. Intelligence agencies  testified before the Senate on their annual “Worldwide Threat  Assessment,” revealing findings in sharp contrast from Trump on Iran,  ISIS, and North Korea, as well as the southern border. Trump reacted by  castigating his appointed agency heads, then later inviting them to the  Oval office and blaming the media instead. Read the full list here: https://theweeklylist.org/weekly-list/week-116/

This is the longest and perhaps most perilous week for Trump so far.  Not only did House Speaker Nancy Pelosi outmaneuver him in the  government shutdown, but by week’s end she was publicly questioning if  Trump is beholden to Russian President Vladimir Putin, and if his  campaign coordinated efforts to subvert the 2016 U.S. election.  Meanwhile, House committees, now chaired by Democrats, geared up to  challenge Trump and his regime on a number of fronts, including  inquiries into Deutsche Bank’s handling of Trump’s accounts and the  regime’s process of granting of security clearances. Following dire warnings from agencies, unions, and former government  officials about safety and security risks, public outcries and protests  from unpaid furloughed workers, and plummeting approval, Trump finally  agreed to reopen the government Friday. The final impetus appeared to be  delayed flights at New York’s LaGuardia Airport due to staffing issues  with unpaid air traffic controllers. Read the full list here: https://theweeklylist.org/weekly-list/week-115/

This week marked 29 days of the government being shuttered, with no  end in sight. Agencies continued to feel the effects, as thousands of  furloughed employees were called back to work unpaid. Federal workers  formed blocks-long lines at food banks, and borrowed from retirement  accounts to make ends meet. Trump’s approval continued to fall this  week, with one poll indicating he is losing support from his base.  Conversely, House Speaker Pelosi’s popularity hit a 10-year high as the  two did battle, and Trump reckoned with the first check on his power. This week was full of bombshell stories which, along with the  continued shutdown, rocked the country and made people increasingly  anxious and scared about the direction of the country. Major storylines  included Trump concealing contents of meetings with Russian President  Vladimir Putin, Trump’s continued fixation of withdrawing the U.S. from  NATO — a boon to Russia, and Michael Cohen paying an IT firm to rig  online polls to boost Trump. Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani made  headlines, telling CNN, “I never said there was no collusion between the  campaign or between people in the campaign,” which he later retracted. A  bombshell BuzzFeed News story suggesting Trump directed Cohen to lie to  Congress on Trump Tower Moscow was refuted by Mueller’s team, which  Trump and his allies quickly weaponized to attack the credibility of the  media. Read the full list here: https://theweeklylist.org/weekly-list/week-114/

This week Trump struggled to create stagecraft and find narratives to  justify funding for his border wall, while keeping the government  shuttered. Trump delivered a prime-time Oval Office address, visited the  U.S.-Mexico border, and held an immigration round-table to make his  case, while the reality of the shutdown hurt federal workers and  contractors, and agencies started to cut back or cease operations and  functions. This was a week of bombshells on the Trump-Russia front, as an  inadvertently unredacted filing by Paul Manafort’s attorneys revealed  Manafort had delivered 2016 president campaign polling data to  Konstantin Kilimnik, who the FBI believes has ties to Russian  intelligence. Michael Cohen set a date to testify before the House, and  Natalie Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer with ties to the Kremlin who  attended the June 9 Trump Tower meeting was back in the news. Late  Friday, a bombshell story by the Times revealed the FBI had  opened an inquiry in May 2017 into whether Trump was knowingly working  for Russia or had unwittingly fallen under Moscow’s influence. Read the full list: https://theweeklylist.org/weekly-list/week-113/

This week, for the first time since he took office, Trump faced a  check on his power as the 116th Congress was sworn in. As House Speaker  Nancy Pelosi took back the gavel, she made clear she will take Trump on,  telling the Times she considers herself Trump’s equal, and the  “TODAY” show that Trump can be indicted while in office. The 116th  Congress, the most diverse by race, religion, and gender — on the  Democratic side — stood in sharp contrast to Trump, who increasingly  surrounds himself with rooms full of white men. The government shutdown passed three weeks, with no end in sight, as  Trump dug in his heels and Pelosi’s House voted to reopen the government  without any funding for his wall. As the shutdown’s impact was  increasingly felt across the country, including unpaid essential TSA  workers calling in sick at four major airports, reporting indicated the  Trump regime had not planned for or anticipated a long-term shutdown,  and is caught flat-footed. Trump’s lack of empathy for those impacted by  the shutdown, and threat to call a national emergency, further belied  his autocratic tendencies. Read the full list here: https://theweeklylist.org/weekly-list/week-112/

Increasingly, Trump stands alone. The generals are gone, much of his  experienced and competent senior staffers have resigned or been fired.  This week, in a tantrum over his decision to shut down the government,  Trump stewed and tweeted and blamed and attacked from the White House,  while the rest of Congress was home for the Christmas holiday. At one  point on Christmas Eve day, as the stock market was plummeting, Trump  bemoaned his self-imposed status, tweeting, “I am all alone (poor me) in  the White House.” Presidential historian Douglas Brinkley called it, “a  sad and pathetic moment.” As the week came to a close, Trump again  complained: “I am in the White House waiting for the Democrats.” This week the stock market continued wild gyrations, as Trump again  publicly lashed out at his Federal Reserve Chair, and privately  threatened to fire his Treasury Secretary. Parts of the government were  shuttered during the holiday week, and the effects of the shutdown  started to be felt. Trump took a surprise visit — his first — to a  combat zone, but even that backfired and led to further criticism as he  held a campaign rally-style event with U.S. troops at a military base in  Iraq, and continued his partisan criticisms of Democrats and  demagoguery about his wall and the shutdown while abroad. Iraqi  politicians denounced Trump’s visit and demanded U.S. troops leave their  country. Read the full list here: https://theweeklylist.org/weekly-list/week-111/

This week Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, thought to be one of the sane  and sober voices remaining in the regime, resigned in a public letter  rebuking Trump’s treatment of allies and deference to authoritarians.  Trump’s abrupt withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria was the last straw  for Mattis, a decision reportedly made on a call with Turkish President  Recep Tayyip Erdogan the week before. Mattis’ departure elicited  bipartisan concern, and placed the country on edge. This week Trump’s beloved stock market continued to crater, as the  markets entered a correction period with Dow Jones Industrial Average’s  worst weekly performance in 10 years, and on track for the worst  December since the Great Depression. By the week’s end, Trump was  privately agitating about firing Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, in  what would be an unprecedented act. Read the full list here: https://theweeklylist.org/weekly-list/week-110/

As I’ve been listing, I’ve always suspected things would crescendo as we were moving towards the end of the Trump era. Week 109 is the longest list so far, with 181 not normal items. Up until now, Trump has never been questioned or countered in his authority, other than in rulings by the Judicial branch. Soon he will be facing Democrats as equals — a House that can hold him accountable — as well as the multiple investigations and lawsuits steaming ahead and expanding in scope. Trump is unprepared and understaffed for what is coming his way starting January. He is going to hate 2019. This week, confronted by presumptive House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, his first check on power in person, Trump cowered and retreated — ill-prepared for how to face a direct challenge to his previously unequivocal power and authority. The Republicans, in small measure, stood up to him on the slaying of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, condemning Saudi crown prince MBS and approving a resolution to end its military support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen. Trump’s small inner circle is in disarray and shrinking — even replacing the chief of staff role became an arduous task. This week reporting indicates a possible new phase in the Mueller probe relating to Middle East countries, and their attempts to influence the 2016 election to gain access. Meanwhile, cases against Michael Cohen, Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, and Maria Butina progressed, bringing the investigations closer to Trump, his campaign, and regime. Also this week there were three bombshell stories on Trump’s inaugural committee, relating to unaccounted monies and pay for play, foreign contributions, and overpaying for the Trump Hotel DC with Ivanka a part of negotiations. As Trump prepares to depart for Mar-a-Lago for a 16 day holiday, new or expanding investigations threaten to engulf every part of his life, including his campaign, regime, family and business — with possible felony charges after his time in office. Read the full list: https://theweeklylist.org/weekly-list/week-109/

This week featured the normalcy and tranquility of the funeral of George H.W. Bush, juxtaposed with bombshells of damning information on Trump coming from the Mueller probe and other investigations. As the Mueller probe is reportedly nearing its close, Mueller’s team filed court memos relating to three of its most high profile defendants: Michael Flynn, Michael Cohen, and Paul Manafort. The Southern District of New York also filed a memo on Trump Friday —including the clearest implication yet that Trump committed felonies. As the country awaits Mueller’s final report, Trump’s White House has no plans to counter it in place, but rather will reportedly wing it. This week major stock indexes tumbled more than 4%, erasing all the year’s gains, as economic data softened, showing Trump’s trade tariffs and the growing budget deficit are slowing the economy. As Trump’s second year comes to a close, he reportedly has no vision or strategy for 2019, save for his xenophobic and racist agenda, and instead is distracted by the Mueller probe and the incoming Democratic House majority. Continued shake-up in personnel plague the regime, and many key roles remain vacant, or are filled with loyalists who are unqualified. Read the full list here: https://theweeklylist.org/weekly-list/week-108/

This week started with escalations, both between Russia and Ukraine, and at the U.S.-Mexico border. Heartbreaking images and video surfaced from Tijuana of migrants from Central America, including women and children, some in diapers, being showered with tear gas from U.S. Customs and Border Protection. As Trump and the regime sought to justify the use of force, and Republicans remained almost universally silent, other condemned the action, including the Auschwitz Museum which invoked the uprise of Hitler. This, as data and reporting continues to point to a dangerous uptick in right-wing violence and acts of, and normalization of, hate. This week the Mueller probe was center stage, as Trump stepped up his attacks to discredit Mueller ahead of the findings being released. The week started with focus on Jerome Corsi and Roger Stone as possible conduits between the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks. Until a bombshell Thursday, when Michael Cohen outlined in a plea agreement how he misled Congress about negotiating on the Trump Tower Moscow. Cohen said negotiations continued until June 2016, and that Trump and his children were also in the loop. Cohen’s documents made clear that other members of the regime, including Donald Jr., may have lied to Congress, and also called into question Trump’s written answers in the Mueller probe, submitted under oath in recent days, on his and his campaign’s contact with Russians. Read the full list here: https://theweeklylist.org/weekly-list/week-107/

There is no such thing as a slow holiday news week in the era of Trump! This week, in the chaos of news and not normal, reporting of Ivanka Trump’s use of a personal email account for White House business — remarkably similar to Hillary Clinton’s private server on which Trump fixated throughout his 2016 campaign and beyond — was barely mentioned in the news 48 hours later. This week there were more alarming breaks from norms, including Trump siding with Saudis over U.S. intelligence on the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, Trump bypassing advice by White House counsel to give troops at the U.S.-Mexico border the right to use lethal force, Trump attacking the admiral who oversaw the Osama bin Laden raid, and once again Trump attacking the Judiciary Branch for ruling against him — this time drawing the ire of both Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts and the American Bar Association. Read the full list here: https://theweeklylist.org/weekly-list/week-106/

We are back after a midterm hiatus. Reporting this week indicates Trump is reeling from the midterms, as additional House seats were called for Democrats, possibly leading to a 40 seat pick-up, as well as the Mueller probe, from which additional indictments are expected soon. This week Trump skipped many duties typically carried out by a head of state, instead brooding and threatening to fire more cabinet level officials — the regime continues to operate in utter dysfunction. As wildfires raged in California, with 71 dead and more than a thousand missing, Trump blamed forest management, insulted the firefighters risking their lives, and showed a complete lack of empathy for the residents impacted. Trump skipped more ceremonies for fallen soldiers in Paris for Armistice Day and in the U.S. for Veterans Day. Read the full list here: https://theweeklylist.org/weekly-list/week-105/

This was a heartbreaking week in America, after several domestic attacks left the country shaken, frightened, and on edge. On Monday, an explosive device mailed in a package to the home of George Soros was discovered. Then starting Wednesday, one by one, 13 more packages addressed to high profile Democrats, all of whom were Trump critics and people Trump had publicly and repeatedly attacked, were found. There was a deadly shooting of two Black Americans in a supermarket in Kentucky, minutes after the shooter was unable to gain access to a predominantly black church in Jeffersontown. Then, the week closed with mass shooting during Shabbat services at Pittsburgh’s oldest Jewish congregation, killing 11 and injuring 6, likely the deadliest attack on the Jewish community in U.S. history, which was charged as a hate crime. Unlike his predecessors, Trump was unable or unwilling to rise to the occasion and seek to unite and comfort the country. Instead, he blamed the media, lightened but continued his attacks on political opponents, and complained these crimes were distracting from his messaging ahead of midterms. Trump also refused to call out hate or the rise of white supremacist groups, who view themselves as on his side and his defenders. Instead, Trump announced he is a “nationalist” — a term with historical connotations to white nationalism, seemingly a guiding philosophy behind much of his regime’s actions and policies. All the attacks this week were carried out by middle-aged white men. Read the full list here: https://theweeklylist.org/weekly-list/week-102/

With midterms approaching, the country is electrified and on edge. This week Trump recycled themes from his 2016 campaign to help boost Republican messaging: stoking fear of “the others” (a caravan of immigrants), accusing Democrats of being the party of open borders and crime and claiming the left is encouraging violence (“the mob”). Journalists and watchdog groups in several states continued to report and document overt efforts by the Republican Party to suppress the votes of people of color. In an alarming reveal of his authoritarian bent, Trump refused to condemn Saudi Arabia’s murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi despite a bipartisan Congressional outcry and diplomatic actions by world leaders. Trump also glorified Rep. Greg Gianforte at a campaign rally in Montana for shoving a journalist in 2017, sparking further condemnation for encouraging violence against the free press. This week marked the first charges against a Russian, Elena Khusyaynova, for conspiring to interfere with the 2018 U.S. election. Trump continues to deny 2016 campaign ties to Russia or acknowledge Russian interference in our 2016 election. Reporting this week indicates the Mueller probe is speeding along and could be completed shortly after midterms. Read the full list here: https://theweeklylist.org/weekly-list/week-101/

This week as Republicans celebrated the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, polling told a different story: more Americans disapprove of the confirmation, are concerned about Kavanaugh politicizing the court and believe there should be further Congressional investigation. Under Mitch McConnell’s Senate leadership, a record number of Trump judicial nominees have been pushed through, including restacking 15 percent of circuit court judges. In the final weeks before midterms, Democrats poured record donations to House candidates, and Beto O’Rourke, the Senate candidate from Texas, pulled in a record-smashing haul of $38.1 million for the last quarter. Republicans sought to counter Democrats’ enthusiasm by riling their base by vilifying the left as paid protestors or a “mob” that threatens violence against the right. These tactics serve as an acknowledgment that traditional issues like tax cuts and the economy no longer excite the Republican base. Read the full list here: https://theweeklylist.org/weekly-list/week-100/