MARCO RUBIO DOESN’T LET REX TILLERSON OFF EASY

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Rubio’s opening was cutting: “Do you believe, during the 2016 Presidential campaign, that Russian intelligence services directed a campaign of active measures, involving the hacking of e-mails, the strategic leak of these e-mails, the use of Internet trolls, and the dissemination of fake news, with the goal of denigrating a Presidential candidate and undermining faith in our election process?” There was no doubt that the denigrated candidate he referred to was the one defeated by Tillerson’s soon-to-be boss.

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In the time since Trump accrued the Electoral College votes required to become President, there has been a lot of worry about the pillars and institutions of American democracy, the potential for corruption and self-enrichment posed by the new Administration, and the state of national security on a global scale. The depth and validity of those worries—whether they are urgent realities already coming to pass or are merely the overdramatic fantasies of people reading too many books about Germany in 1933—rest largely on the shoulders of Republicans in Washington, who hold the power to check the actions of Trump and his Cabinet. Today, as Rubio listed the myriad atrocities committed in Syria, and Tillerson continued to muddle, there was an indication that at least a small minority of those Republicans are taking their responsibility seriously.

http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/marco-rubio-doesnt-let-rex-tillerson-off-easy

Even if Pee-gate isn’t true, Donald Trump is stuck with it.You may have heard that some controversial documents were leaked last night by BuzzFeed, the juiciest of which alleges that Trump likes to get peed on. Or likes to pee on women. Something with piss.
The actual report, which is unconfirmed, states that Trump hired prostitutes in Russia to perform a “golden showers urination show” for him, which Russian authorities planned to use as “compromising material” to blackmail him. The details have been the subject of some amused debate on Twitter—was Trump actually showered upon? or did he just watch? is urine sterile?—but they don’t really matter. What matters is that the connection between Trump and kinky pee is now seared into our collective consciousness.

The scandal tracks closely with this famous “would you rather” conundrum: Would you rather have sex with a goat but have nobody know, or not and have everyone think you did? David Cameron is a real-life exemplar of this query. An unsubstantiated allegation was published last year alleging that he had stuck his nob in a pig’s gob. The chances that Trump or Cameron actually did these salacious acts are small, but that doesn’t change the fact that everyone can’t stop seeing and talking about it.

Trump did his best to discredit the report, signaling in a rare use of all-caps that this was a Drudge siren–level offense: “FAKE NEWS - A TOTAL POLITICAL WITCH HUNT!” Trump’s Twitter feed is fake news incarnate, but (and it pains me to say it) he was not wrong to label Pee-gate a kind of fake news. The paradox is that in the era of fake news, the term “fake news” has lost any real meaning, in no small part due to Trump. News is as partisan as anything else, a blunt weapon to be used against political opponents. And whether the story is true or not, Trump has to live with it.


https://newrepublic.com/minutes/139806/even-pee-gate-isnt-true-donald-trump-stuck-it[