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Did Trump's Secret Chats with Putin Break Federal Law? - The Wednesday AM Quickie 10/9/24

By Corey Pein —

The results of Fat Bear Week 2024 offer a lot to chew on. More than 71,000 people voted for the winner, Grazer. Nearly 30,500 people voted for the second-ranked bear, Chunk. One relevant piece of information here is that Chunk killed Grazer's cub this summer after it slipped and fell down a waterfall. Just who are these Chunk voters? I have one guess! - Corey

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THE BIG NEWS

Trump Has Spoken to Putin 'as Many as 7' Times Since Leaving the White House. But Why?

Famed Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward has another book coming out, titled "War," about the power struggle between deranged felon Donald Trump and President Joe Biden "against the backdrop of cascading global crisis." It's generated a number of headlines, but perhaps the most disturbing has to do with Trump's ongoing relationship with Aspiring Tsar Vladimir Putin. That relationship, Woodward writes, citing a Trump aide, has included "maybe as many as seven" phone calls between the two men since Trump left the White House in 2021. That's no doubt more frequent contact that Trump has had with some of his children during the same time period.

None of the many summaries of Woodward's book mention the Logan Act, a longstanding law that criminalizes freelance diplomacy by private citizens acting without the blessing of the government. The omission is curious. If Trump wasn't cutting deals with Putin in anticipation of returning to government, deals meant to undermine the Biden administration's foreign policy – deals about carving up Ukraine and god knows what other countries – then what the hell was he doing?

Woodward, per the Post, "does not describe what the two men purportedly discussed" on during their private chats. Trump clearly does not want people to know. He reportedly shooed aides out of his office at Mar-a-Lago before speaking to Putin. One conversation while Trump was still in office in 2020 apparently prompted him to send Putin Covid-19 testing machines during the early stages of the pandemic, when such equipment was in short supply, because the Russian leader was "petrified of the virus." Per CNN:

"Please don't tell anybody you sent these to me," Putin said to Trump, according to Woodward.
"I don't care," Trump replied. "Fine."
"No, no," Putin said. "I don't want you to tell anybody because people will get mad at you, not me. They don't care about me."

Fascist germophobes gotta stick together, I guess.

Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris "became visibly irate" discussing this revelation on Stephen Colbert's Late Show last night.

"Donald Trump – he openly admires dictators and authoritarians. He has said he wants to be a dictator on day one if he were elected again as president. He gets played by these guys," Harris said. "If [Woodward] is right, Donald Trump secretly sent Covid test kits to Putin for his personal use. I ask everyone here and everyone who is watching, do you remember what those days were like? You remember how many people did not have tests and were trying to scramble to get them? Think about what this means. ... He thinks, 'Well, that's his friend.' What about the American people? They should be your first friend."

Do you think Trump tried to sell Putin on the bleach cure, too? Or is that sort of nonsense purely for domestic consumption?

  • Harris Pitches Big Medicare Expansion to Cover at-Home Care for Seniors "Harris will also use her appearance on 'The View' to appeal to the so-called sandwich generation, the roughly quarter of Americans who are both raising children and caring for aging parents — and that Harris campaign data shows contains a large percentage of remaining undecided voters." via the Washington Post and Politico.
  • In Latest Echo of Hitler, Trump Says 'We Got a Lot of Bad Genes in Our Country' Right-wing radio host Hugh Hewitt provided a platform for the latest fit of obscene racism from the Republican presidential nominee. via the Associated Press.
  • DeSantis Administration Threatens Criminal Charges for TV Station That Aired Ad Supporting Abortion Measure The Florida Department of Health "claims that the advertisement in question is 'false' and 'dangerous' because it informs viewers that the state's six-week [abortion] ban imperils the life and health of pregnant women. But it is demonstrably true that Florida's ban jeopardizes the well-being of women." via HuffPost and Slate.
  • Why Is Trump in Solid Blue California with Less Than a Month Until the Election? While "there have been no reports of fundraisers" during Trump's visit to California this week, on Saturday he will hold a rally at the Calhoun Ranch, a polo field outside Coachella "at a property owned by a company controlled by a family of major GOP donors." via the Los Angeles Times.

With Hurricane Milton Due to Hit Tonight, Tampa Mayor Says Evacuate or Die

Although Hurricane Milton's "extremely powerful 160 mph winds" are weakening somewhat as it approaches landfall along Florida's Gulf Coast, the Miami Herald reports that the storm's "biggest threat remains unchanged": "up to 15 feet of life-threatening storm surge spanning a huge swath of the coast." According to the Tampa Bay Times, the storm surge could breach the hospital, "send high-rise cranes toppling into buildings near downtown St. Petersburg construction sites" and knock out power "for weeks on end." Tampa Mayor Jane Castor warned residents in evacuation zones, that if they stay, "you are going to die." But as NBC News reports, gas shortages, gridlocked roads, canceled flights and a dearth of hotel rooms has made evacuation difficult even for those with the means to do so. The situation would be bad enough without a flood of misinformation and disinformation, much of which "can be traced back to Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and his supporters, who have baselessly accused federal responders of diverting disaster money to immigrants." Meanwhile in North Carolina, local and federal officials are enduring "a flurry of antisemitic attacks... which include wild claims that Jewish officials are conspiring to orchestrate the disasters, sabotage the recovery [from Hurricane Helene] or even seize victims' property, [and] are being fomented largely on [white supremacist billionaire] Elon Musk's X."

QUICKEST QUICKIES

  • Israel Is Keeping US in the Dark About About Its Plans About Attacking Iran "Bibi, what the fuck?" President Joe Biden reportedly yelled at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in July, while describing him to aides as a "liar" in charge of a "rogue state" who cares "only about himself." via the Washington Post, the Associated Press, and the New York Times.
  • Trump Interfered with FBI Investigation Into Sexual Assault By Kavanaugh Ahead of Supreme Court Confirmation The court this week weighed in on abortion in Texas and labor in California, and heard arguments on an Oklahoma death penalty case and President Joe Biden's "ghost gun" ban. via the Washington Post and HuffPost.
  • Another Eric Adams Aide Arrested and Charged as a 7th Top Staffer Resigns "Mohamed Bahi, who was the mayor's senior liaison to the Muslim community before he resigned this week, is accused of instructing multiple witnesses to lie to federal investigators about a December 2020 fundraiser for Adams' mayoral campaign." via Gothamist, the New York Times, and Politico.
  • New Biden EPA Rule Will Require All Cities to Replace Lead Pipes Within 10 Years Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson "called it a radical agenda," Biden said at a Milwaukee event announcing the policy. "I'm going to restrain my Irish side here. I don't think there's a damn thing radical about protecting kids from lead poisoning." via the Washington Post and the Wisconsin Examiner.

SOME NUMBER

60 percent

That's the share of global renewable energy capacity that will be built in China between now and 2030, according to a new report by the the International Energy Agency. Most of that capacity is in solar power projects. China's permitting of new coal power plants has meanwhile declined 100 gigawatts in each of the previous two years to only 9 gigawatts in the first half of this year, the Guardian reports.

ON THE SHOW TODAY

10/9: It’s Hump Day! And Sam is live from the Mass Torts Conference in Las Vegas!

DON'T MISS MR CLIPS‌

'We're Not Going to Hit the Climate Goals Anyway' Ex-Google CEO's AI Grift Knows No Bounds

I move that we stop asking billionaires about important things.

Republican Weirdo's Fake 'Family' EXPOSED

Why deny it? Childless dog men also deserve to live without shame.

PARTING WORDS

"We are proud to be the first state to put the Bible back in the classroom. Also I have no knowledge of who will be the person who provides these Bibles to the schools. ... What I do know is the left-wing media hates Donald Trump so much, and they hate the Bible so much, they will lie and go to any means necessary to stop this initiative from happening."

-- Oklahoma State Superintendent Ryan Walters, attempting to cover his ass in a video statement yesterday about his office's plan to buy 55,000 Bibles for distribution in public schools. His statement failed to mention one reason the plan attracted press scrutiny: the initial specification matched only one published edition of the Bible: the "God Bless the USA Bible," better known as the "Trump Bible," endorsed by the deranged felon, and which pay a royalty to Trump for each copy sold. As the Associated Press reports, the Trump Bibles are printed in Hangzhou, China at an estimated cost of $3, and sell for $59.99, more than twice as much as most editions of the text, which is in the public domain.

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