Today in Trump’s America: GOP lawmaker blows Trump’s “Spygate” conspiracy to smithereens
We recently updated our Privacy Policy to comply with the General Data Protection Regulation, which went into effect May 25. If you have any questions about what data Mic collects or how we use it, please contact tech@mic.com.
Welcome to Mic’s daily read on Donald Trump’s America. Want to receive this as a daily email in your inbox? Subscribe here.
Good morning from Emily Singer at Mic.
Here’s what’s happening in Trump’s America:
• It’s another quiet day in Washington, so expect to keep hearing about the cancellation of Roseanne Barr’s show after her racist comments.
About last night: Jeff Sessions is key to Mueller’s obstruction probe
Trump made his anger with Attorney General Jeff Sessions known after Sessions recused himself from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.
According to a new report from the New York Times published Tuesday night, however, Trump “berated” Sessions in March 2017 about the recusal and asked Sessions to take control of the investigation again.
The New York Times described the request as “unusual and potentially inappropriate,” and it said Mueller is looking into the incident as part of his probe into whether Trump obstructed justice. Mueller’s team reportedly wants to ask the president questions about Sessions and the decision to fire former FBI Director James Comey in a sit-down interview, but Trump and his legal team have not yet agreed to one.
Today in Trump’s America: Will Trump address Roseanne Barr’s show cancellation?
I know there are other important things going on in the world, but given this week is exceedingly slow, the cancellation of Roseanne is still the top national news story.
Trump has yet to comment about the show’s cancellation, even at a campaign rally Tuesday night in Nashville, Tennessee. Still, Trump has become a fan of Roseanne Barr, even calling to congratulate her after the premiere of her show’s reboot got massive ratings. Barr is a fervent Trump supporter, and her show depicts the kind of blue collar voters who propelled Trump to victory in 2016.
Yet Barr’s racist and conspiratorial tweets finally became too much for ABC — which aired Barr’s show — to handle, and it canceled the program Tuesday after Barr tweeted that former Obama aide Valerie Jarrett looked like a mix of the “Muslim Brotherhood & Planet of the Apes.” Jarrett is black, making Barr’s comparison of Jarrett to an ape racist.
Barr apologized to Jarrett and said she was leaving Twitter, yet she continued tweeting racist conspiracy theories into the wee hours of Wednesday morning.
Capitol Hill happenings: Republican lawmaker blows Trump’s “Spygate” conspiracy to smithereens
Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) — one of the GOP lawmakers in last week’s FBI briefing on the use of an FBI informant — says he saw nothing inappropriate about the FBI’s conduct.
“I am even more convinced that the FBI did exactly what my fellow citizens would want them to do when they got the information they got, and that it has nothing to do with Donald Trump” Gowdy said Tuesday night on Fox News.
Trump has been railing against the FBI’s use of an informant to meet with members of his presidential campaign, drumming up a baseless conspiracy he’s dubbed “Spygate.”
Gowdy, who ran House Republicans’ years-long Benghazi investigation, effectively blasted Trump’s theory to pieces, however, and said the informant — who met with Trump campaign aides Carter Page and George Papadopoulos — was trying to block Russian attempts to infiltrate the Trump campaign.
“It looks to me like the FBI was doing what President Trump said: ‘I want you to do. Find it out,’” Gowdy said, referring to Russia’s effort to meddle in the 2016 campaign.
“President Trump himself in the Comey memos said, ‘If anyone connected with my campaign was working with Russia, I want you to investigate it.’” Gowdy added. “Sounds to me like that was exactly what the FBI did.”
Trump has been tweeting for days about the informant, often using false or misleading facts in the process.
“With Spies, or ‘Informants’ as the Democrats like to call them because it sounds less sinister (but it’s not), all over my campaign, even from a very early date, why didn’t the crooked highest levels of the FBI or ‘Justice’ contact me to tell me of the phony Russia problem?” Trump tweeted May 26. The FBI did warn Trump in July 2016 that Russia would try and infiltrate his campaign.
And the rest…
Puerto Rico: A report out Tuesday says the death toll in Puerto Rico is exponentially more than the official government death toll.
Classified: Trump bragged about a classified military operation to high-dollar donors at a fundraiser last week, Politico reported.
Another one bites the dust: Missouri GOP Gov. Eric Greitens resigned Tuesday after a sexual misconduct scandal eroded his support and threatened to sink other Republican candidates in his state.
