Today’s edition of quick hits:
* Trump’s former campaign foreign-policy adviser, George Papadopoulos, is going to jail: “The man whose boozy conversation with a diplomat may have launched the federal government’s investigation into Russian election interference was sentenced Friday to 14 days in jail and one year of supervised release for lying to the FBI.”
* More trade threats: “President Trump said Friday that he is ready to impose tariffs on $267 billion in Chinese goods, on top of the additional $200 billion that he said will likely be hit with import taxes in a matter of days. If eventually carried out, Trump’s latest threat could result in tariffs on all Chinese goods entering the United States, an unprecedented escalation of his trade war with China.”
* Rudy Giuliani is bad at his job: “President Donald Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani said Thursday that the president would not answer questions about obstruction of justice from the special counsel’s team, but in a subsequent interview was less definitive.”
* This was probably inevitable: “Twitter announced Thursday that it had banned the accounts of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and his far-right media company Infowars because of ‘abusive behavior’ on the platform.”
* This was apparently supposed to be funny because the congressman physically attacked a journalist and lied about it: “Last night, at his rally in Billings, Montana, President Trump singled out the state’s Republican member of Congress for praise. ‘I’ll tell you what,’ said Trump, ‘This man has fought’ — at this point, he lowered his voice into the slightly comic tone one uses to deliver an elbow–to-the-ribs punch line — ‘in more ways than one, for your state. He has fought for your state. Greg Gianforte. He is a fighter and a winner.’” * On a related note, it was kind of odd to see the president struggle quite a bit to pronounce the word “anonymous” while reading from his teleprompter. * I haven’t seen this confirmed anywhere, but I’m curious to know if it’s true: “A government photographer edited official pictures of Donald Trump’s inauguration to make the crowd appear bigger following a personal intervention from the president, according to newly released documents.” Anything to add? Consider this an open thread.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past." Recommended
