Dutch documentary on Trump’s shady business dealings

There has been a great deal of speculation that Donald Trump is Russian president Vladimir Putin’s puppet. But the evidence for a direct connection has been weak. It has always seemed to me to be more likely that Trump has financial dealings with shady Russian oligarchs and mobsters and organized crime figures, and that his deference to Putin is indirect, that Putin has connections to those same shady interests and thus has knowledge that he can reveal about Trump’s dealing that can be very damaging.
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Trump may be shrewder than we think

There is a well-established pattern in American journalism. There is first a bandwagon effect where almost everyone piles on to a single narrative structure about some event. At that point, someone decides to stand out from the crowd by taking a contrarian view and argue that the conventional wisdom is wrong. So at various points in the past we had stories that suggested that Dick Cheney was not the evil mastermind of the Bush administration, that Sarah Palin was not as dumb as rocks, and so on. While these contrarian authors risk ridicule, they also get short-term notoriety and attention, which is what seems to matter more than actual credibility. I decided to be that contrarian today. This is not just for the sheer hell of it but because I heard a couple of interviews yesterday that made me realize that maybe many of the analysts of the Trump administration, and that includes me, may have been played for chumps by him.
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Is Trump losing his marbles?

Donald Trump’s performance in the The Economist magazine interview was widely ridiculed because his responses to questions were “unimaginative and incoherent” and “riddled with falsehoods and confusion”. Who would have thought the day would come when George W. Bush with his malapropisms and Sarah Palin with her word salads would be seen as exemplars of lucidity by comparison? The magazine published its own scathing review of the interview.
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Political comedy on network TV

Donald Trump has been lashing out at Stephen Colbert. What is pathetic is that Trump spends so much energy and time lashing out at others, such as light night talk show hosts. Presidents in the past have been able to pressure TV networks into muzzling critics who were comedians. Perhaps the most well-known example is how president Johnson tried and later president Nixon succeeded in leaning on CBS management to can The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in 1969. Long before there was cable TV with its greater freedoms, Tom and Dick Smothers were the trailblazers for today’s TV political comedians.
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It’s the little lies that get you, not the big ones

One of the things that one learns about lying is that it is the little lies that get you caught. If you are trying to lie your way out of trouble, the best strategy is to talk as little as possible. Put out the big lie that matters and then shut up. It is when you try to add to it in the effort to create added verisimilitude that you trip yourself up and fall flat on your face.
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The weird aftermath of the Comey firing

There has been considerable distancing by the FBI from Donald Trump in the wake of the firing of its head James Comey, with the new acting head already contradicting the White House version of events that the rank and file had lost confidence in Comey.

When confronted with the Trump administration’s claim of Comey’s unpopularity, Andrew McCabe – who has been the FBI’s acting director since the sacking – told the Senate intelligence committee: “That is not accurate.”

“I can tell you he and I worked very, very closely from the time we started at the Washington field office,” McCabe said on Thursday. “I hold Director Comey in the highest regard for his considerable abilities and his integrity. It is the greatest honour of my professional life to have worked with him. He enjoyed broad support in the FBI and he still does to this day … The vast majority of FBI staff enjoyed a deep and positive connection to Director Comey.”
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McCabe’s testament to the high esteem Comey was held in within the FBI came a day after the White House deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said: “The rank and file of the FBI had lost confidence in their director.”

McCabe also contradicted the White House on the scale of the Russia investigation. Huckabee Sanders had said it was “probably one of the smallest things” on the FBI’s plate. McCabe denied that, calling it a “highly significant investigation”.

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The Daily Show correspondents reunion

Stephen Colbert invited many of his former colleagues on The Daily Show to reminisce about the old days. It included Jon Stewart, Rob Corddry, John Oliver, Samantha Bee and Ed Helms, and the appearance was split into many parts. One of the interesting comments by Corddry was that the so-called ‘real’ news media were now copying what the fake correspondents of The Daily Show were doing a long time ago, and that is play old clips of politicians contradicting their present statements


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Watch this video

At a town hall meeting in New Jersey, a voter named Geoff Ginter gives an earful to his Republican congressperson Tom MacArthur for drafting and voting for the amended Republican health care bill. This kind of heated meetings have become commonplace but this one is exceptional because Ginter provides a passionate and articulate attack on the bill and an insightful analysis of what is wrong with the system in the US. I was highly impressed that although he was clearly extremely furious, he did not let his anger take over and lose control. He was very lucid and coherent and the congressperson had to just stand there and take it.
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Portrayals of minorities in films and the media

Richard Gere stars in a new film that has just been released called Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer, about a Jewish ‘fixer’ or dealmaker in New York. He happens to do an expensive favor for an obscure Israeli politician who later becomes prime minister of that country and this suddenly makes Norman a highly sought-after influence peddler. Jeffrey Salkin writes that he cringed many times while watching the film and explains why.
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