News for those who like to read

Inside Trump’s Bungled Effort to Fire His Chief of Staff

Gabriel Sherman: “On Friday night, members of Donald Trump’s West Wing gathered for drinks at the Trump International Hotel following a holiday dinner at the White House. As they mingled in the lobby, Bill Shine, Stephen Miller, Kellyanne Conway, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, and others grappled with the latest West Wing upheaval: Trump had changed the plan and fired Chief of Staff John Kelly earlier that afternoon.”

Said one attendee: “It got back to Trump that Kelly was bad-mouthing him and Trump had decided he’d had enough. His attitude was, ‘fuck him.'”

“Trump’s impulsive announcement quickly became an even bigger problem when it turned out that Kelly’s replacement was not sewn up; Ayers surprised Trump later that day by insisting that he only wanted the job short term…. A senior White House official told me, in a sign of the depth of the current difficulties, that even former chief of staff Reince Priebus has been brought up as a possible replacement for Kelly.”

Source
https://politicalwire.com/2018/12/11/inside-trumps-bungled-effort-to-fire-his-chief-of-staff/

Gap Widens Between Trump and Intelligence Agencies

“President Trump continues to reject the judgments of U.S. spy agencies on major foreign policy fronts, creating a dynamic in which intelligence analysts frequently see troubling gaps between the president’s public statements and the facts laid out for him in daily briefings on world events,” the Washington Post reports.

“The pattern has become a source of mounting concern to senior U.S. intelligence officials who had hoped that Trump would become less hostile to their work as he settled into office and more receptive to the information that spy agencies spend billions of dollars and sometimes put lives at risk gathering.”

Source
https://politicalwire.com/2018/12/11/gap-widens-between-trump-and-intelligence-agencies/

Pelosi Disses Trump’s ‘Manhood’

Minutes after a very public showdown with President Trump over his border wall with Mexico, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi returned to the Capitol and railed against the president in a private meeting with House Democrats, Politico reports.

Said Pelosi: “It goes to show you: you get into a tinkle contest with a skunk, you get tinkle all over you.”

And then, Pelosi went for the most sensitive part of Trump’s ego: “It’s like a manhood thing with him — as if manhood can be associated with him. This wall thing.”

She used a similar line in October during an event at Harvard, where she said the border wall “happens to be like a manhood issue for the president, and I’m not interested in that.”

Source
https://politicalwire.com/2018/12/11/pelosi-disses-trumps-manhood/

Arkansas proposes cuts to Medicaid funds to assisted living facilities

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https://thinkprogress.org/arkansas-cut-medicaid-funds-assisted-living-facilities-elderly-people-disabilities-0117062b58a6/

Contrary To Trump’s Line, Conway Says John Kelly Will Stay On Into The New Year

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https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/contrary-to-trumps-line-conway-says-john-kelly-will-stay-on-into-the-new-year

Maria Butina plea hearing set for Thursday, her spy boss Torshin missing, Putin unhappy

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https://boingboing.net/2018/12/11/putin-butina.html

Reports: In Private, Trump Renewed Claim That Mexico Will Pay For Border Wall

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) told fellow Democrats after meeting with President Donald Trump Tuesday that the President renewed his campaign-era claim that Mexico will pay for his proposed border wall, CNN reported.

The Washington Post’s Josh Dawsey had earlier tweeted a corroboration of the story. Politico mentioned it in a report as well. A Mexican official told CNN: “Mexico’s position regarding the so-called wall is the same the previous government had. Mexico WILL NOT pay for it, no matter how you spin it.”

Read more
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/reports-behind-closed-doors-trump-kept-claiming-mexico-would-pay-for-border-wall

Instability Is the New World Order

Dan Balz: “The particulars might be different, but the upheavals playing out in Britain and France this week have familiar and common undercurrents, born of the same forces — rebellion against globalization, fear of immigrants and distrust of traditional leaders — that have stoked discontent in Germany and other European countries and that are roiling politics in the United States.”

“Instability appears to be the order of the day, whether in the United States or in Europe. Traditional politics, of the kind practiced in Western democracies for decades after World War II, is on shaky ground nearly everywhere, struggling to find the point of equilibrium that can satisfy populations fractured by economic, cultural and social changes.”

Source
https://politicalwire.com/2018/12/11/instability-is-the-new-world-order/