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Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin smiled merrily when he saw the reporters approaching him. It was Tuesday, the day of Donald Trump Jr.s kamikaze tweetstorm, and a deeply enjoyable day to be a Democrat in the hallways of the U.S. Capitol.

If I were in a similar situation and that request was made, the Maryland Democrat said, I would have called law enforcement. And then a flood of additional reporters swept over him, and he gamely accommodated this media mosh pit, taking on the next question, and the next, and the next.

Nationwide, the rattled American psyche tried to soothe its Twitter jitters, and meanwhile the halls of Capitol Hill were split into two neat camps: Democrats who had oodles of time to talk about the tweets in question, and GOP lawmakers who had not even heard of the tweets in question, and who is Donald Trump Jr., and what is a Twitter anyway?

I really havent seen it, Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.) demurred, as he fled a storming flock of journalists, all of whom had time to see the tweets, discuss the tweets, get in cabs and descend upon the Hill to bring up the tweets with senators.

I havent seen it yet, no comment, said Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) as he waited for the elevator to liberate him from the media pack.

Republican senators race-walked with haunted eyes while Democrats struggled to keep the pie-eating grins off their faces on this day when the presidents son, in a frankly impressive display of self-immolation, cast aside months of protestations that hed never had contact with Russians by posting an email chain with the literal subject line, Russia Clinton private and confidential.

In the emails, Trump Jr. made plans for a meeting with what his contact described in printed words as a Russian government attorney to discuss information his contact promised would incriminate Hillary. Trump Jr.s response: How about 3 at our offices?

In quick succession, two senators hopped off the trams that run beneath the Capitol.

I havent even looked at it, said the first, Sen. John Neely Kennedy (R-La.) as reporters staggered after him up the stairs.

Lets try the other:

Senator Schatz?

Its Schahtz. The Democratic senior senator from Hawaii, seemingly gratified just to be recognized, patiently corrected our pronunciation.

What do you think about the tweets, Sen. Brian Schahtz?

It becomes, now, impossible to have a charitable explanation of whats going on thats over, he said. And anybody who tries to spin this as anything other than exactly what it looks like is going to lose all of their credibility.

Soooo, what does it look like?

His mouth broke into a grin that spread across his face in crinkles so audible they became crackles. He grinned for four seconds without speaking. He tried to stop grinning long enough to answer:

It looks like laws were violated.

Another tram arrived:

It seems to be all coming out now, said Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md). When you get an email essentially saying the Russian government tried to help elect your dad, it should be shocking to everybody in the country. AND THEN HE TOOK THE MEETING?!

What is happening. What is happening?

Theory: Donald Trump Jr. is a bonehead.

Theory: Donald Trump Jr. is just playing dumb.

Theory: Donald Trump thinks he is playing dumb but is actually a bonehead.

Also, is this a big deal? It seems like it is, but after a while its hard to tell. Everyone kept saying the Russia investigation was all smoke and no fire, but maybe at a certain point you realize youre already living in the tar-pit flames of hell?

We are reminded of Winston Churchill: This is not the end. This is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, a sign that reality has become untethered from itself and we have fallen into a parallel dimension where there is no beginning or end.

I just heard about it, said Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.V.). I just couldnt believe it. It gets more and more bizarre every day.

Up the stairs from Manchin, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) gravely told reporters that the context of the meeting was pretty clear, while behind her, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) was shuffling past with his hands clamped on the shoulders of two small children walking in front of him. Im just trying to have lunch with my daughters, he explained.

Elsewhere, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) had no daughters to lunch with, and so he kept his hand clamped firmly to his cellphone as he strode past, talking into it loudly in a way that pretty much discouraged anyone from interrupting: Yeah, I think thats a good idea, he said to the person on the other end of the line. (We are working on the assumption there was a person on the other end of the line.)

Late in the morning, Pauls fellow Kentuckian, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, held a news conference at which he repeated, Theyll get to the bottom of whatever happened, with Pavlovian dedication to all questions related to possible Trump campaign interactions with Russia.

The investigation in the Senate is being handled by the intelligence committee and Im sure theyll get to the bottom of whatever happened, he said.

Had his trust of the president changed at all? a reporter asked.

Theyll get to the bottom of whatever may have happened.

There is no bottom. We know that now. There are Democrats making hay, and there are Republicans ducking their heads. But there is never, ever any bottom.

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Donald Trump Jr. and the kamikaze tweetstorm that set Washington on fire - Washington Post

Donald Trump and Sarah Palin. Photo: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg via Getty Images

During the Republican presidential primary, the traditional conservative Republican counterattack on Donald Trump defined him as an ideologically alien figure. Trump, conservatives insisted, was a liberal Republican, or sounds like a liberal Democrat, or was a rich, New York liberal, or possibly even a Democratic Party double agent.

This was not merely a matter of campaign messaging. Anti-Trump conservatives genuinely wanted to believe that his authoritarian demagoguery was inimical to standard Republicanism or, at the very least, that the two had little relation to one another. That distinction has grown harder to sustain as Trump has governed as a doctrinaire conservative movement ideologue. But not all anti-Trump conservatives have given it up entirely. Matt Latimer, a former George W. Bush speechwriter, supplies a lurid example of the persistence of the fantasy. In a Politico essay, Latimer suggests that Trump could well have won the presidency running as a Democrat.

It is true that Trump has advocated an incoherent and frequently shifting mix of public positions that, at times, could have identified him in the Democratic Party as comfortably as the Republican Party. Latimer argues that the qualities that failed to disqualify Trump as a Republican nominee would also have failed to disqualify him as a Democratic one. His comments on women and minorities would have exposed him to withering scrutiny among the lefts army of advocacy groups, he argues. Liberal donors would likely have banded together to strangle his candidacy in its cradle if they werent laughing him off. But Republican elites tried both of these strategies in 2015, as well, and it manifestly didnt work.

Except the Democratic Party, unlike the Republican Party, is a multiracial coalition. The Democratic Party might not be free of racism, but it has a fairly low tolerance for it. The GOP elite failed to make Trumps racism a disqualification because it endeared Trump to the most racially resentful portions of the nearly all-white party. Indeed, Trump became a Republican because he identified growing racial resentment as the most powerful impulse in conservative grassroots politics and capitalized on it. Conservative elites failed to counteract his appeal because they had been fooling themselves into believing that tea party protesters cared about balanced budgets and low marginal tax rates.

Latimer likewise argues that Trumps buffoonish reality-television persona might have played just as well in blue America as red America. Think the Democrats wouldnt tolerate misogynist rhetoric and boorish behavior from their leaders? he writes. Well, then youve forgotten about Woodrow Wilson and John F. Kennedy and LBJ and Bill Clinton.

It is true that Democrats were willing to accept Bill Clintons adultery. (Though they didnt extend the same forgiveness to John Edwards.) But it is a far cry from the long tradition of male politicians sleeping around to Trumps gross public misogyny. If Latimer has an example of a modern Democratic politician who won an election after being accused of assault by multiple women and then being recorded boasting of grabbing women by their genitals, it has slipped my mind.

Of course boorishness hardly encompasses Trumps disqualifying characteristics. Democrats tolerated Clintons adultery because he was a competent public servant who could cogently discuss public policy like Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Kerry, Al Gore, Michael Dukakis, and Walter Mondale. Trump is a flamboyantly ignorant demagogue who delighted Republicans by swatting away all opposition with crude insults that dont even pretend to address substantive objections.

The closest I can come to imagining a Democratic version of Trump is two recent figures. Alan Grayson, a bloviating populist from Florida, was crushed (by a deeply underwhelming opponent) in a primary last year. In 1998, Geoffrey Fieger, a demagogic trial attorney with a vague resemblance to Bob Odenkirks character on Better Call Saul, captured the Democratic nomination for governor of Michigan. Fieger had certain Trumplike qualities. He gobbled up press coverage with a constant stream of attention-grabbing insults. He called the Republican governor dumber than Dan Quayle and twice as ugly and the result of miscegenation between humans and barnyard animals, and accused him of stealing billions of dollars from the state budget because he failed to grasp basic facts of how the budget works. Fieger embarrassed state Democratic officials, who treated him like a leper, and he wound up pulling less than 38 percent of the vote in a Democratic-leaning state.

Trump is a product of a decades-long evolution in the Republican Party. What Richard Hofstadter accurately diagnosed as the paranoid style in American politics angry, conspiratorial, distrustful of expertise has over time assumed the dominant place in the GOP. One can draw a straight line from George W. Bushs good ol boy anti-intellectualism to Sarah Palins curdled resentment to Trump. Republican leaders tiptoed around birther conspiracy theories because they couldnt risk alienating the large segment of their base that thrilled to them.

The same process has not taken hold in the Democratic Party. A recent poll finds that 54 percent of Democrats, but only 13 percent of Republicans, have a lot of trust that what scientists say is accurate and reliable. That is an indication of two party bases that now have very different relationships with empiricism and expertise. Whatever the shortcomings of the New York Times editorial page, it has no equivalent to The Wall Street Journal editorial pages lurid trafficking in bizarre accusations of murder against the Clintons during the 1990s.

Trump is an historical outlier. But he is also the product of the political culture of a Republican Party that is fertile soil for his brand of authoritarian ethno-nationalism. The desire to regard him as a fluke who could just as easily have wound up in the other party is the kind of evasion that has prevented many Republican elites from squaring up to the forces that enabled Trumps rise.

He could tap McConnells favorite Luther Strange or Hannitys favorite Mo Brooks. Theocrat Roy Moores in the mix, too.

Alan Futerfas is a criminal attorney whos worked with some high-profile defendants.

The rookie right-fielder doesnt just hit a lot of home runs, he hits them a long way.

Go ahead and put this on loop.

After that deal fell through, the presidents son-in-law pushed for the U.S. to support the Saudis blockade of Qatar.

Maybe its not a coincidence that he was chosen by the party that almost put Sarah Palin in the White House.

Were going to have to do something that we probably never dreamed wed do.

The brutal, months-long offensive has finally liberated Iraqs second-largest city after three years of ISIS control.

Before going into public health, Brenda Fitzgerald sold (scientifically dubious) anti-aging hormone treatments to patients.

Lots of crowds and some new routes for regional commuters but things have been worse.

So long as CBO gives the revised bill a better score, one last chance to repeal Obamacare could be appealing to all of the GOPs factions.

In his morning tweetstorm, the president also suggested that the media would never be as hard on Chelsea Clinton as it is on Ivanka.

Hes been holding dinners for donors and other influential GOP figures at his home on the grounds of the Naval Observatory.

The president reversed himself after the idea was panned by both Democrats and Republicans.

The presidents son says he was lured into the June 2016 meeting with a Kremlin-linked lawyer under false pretenses.

Plague, famine, heat no human can survive. This is not science fiction but what scientists, when theyre not being cautious, fear could be our future.

Why does the president double-down every time it seems like he should retreat? Because Bannon is still his chief tactician.

There is no sign that the power-plant control systems were affected by the breaches.

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Could Donald Trump Have Been Elected As a Democrat? - New York Magazine

A Virginia Democrat wants to use the House's annual defense policy bill to block President Trump from forming a joint cybersecurity unit with Russia.

Rep. Don Beyer filed a late amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act on Monday that forbids any money from being used on intelligence sharing, equipment, personnel or facilities related to any such cyber agreement with Moscow.

The NDAA is heading to a floor vote, likely later this week, and Beyer's amendment is among nearly 400 that have been filed by lawmakers hoping to get a chance to have their issues heard. The House Rules Committee is slated to meet Wednesday to weigh which amendments may get a floor vote.

Trump floated the idea of creating an "impenetrable" cybersecurity unit to jointly oversee election hacking with Russian President Vladimir Putin after the two leaders met last week. But the idea fizzled over the weekend and was ridiculed by some top Republican senators such as Lindsay Graham and Marco Rubio.

The president appeared to have written off the idea on Sunday.

"The fact that President Putin and I discussed a cybersecurity unit doesn't mean I think it can happen. It can't," Trump tweeted following the criticism.

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Democrat moves to block Trump's joint Russia cyber unit - Washington Examiner

Sean Dowling

Jul 10th 2017 12:21PM

When it comes to dining out, some people are better tippers than others, but which group is the best?

Male Republicans are the best tippers, according to a new report from CreditCards.com.

The credit card information website partnered with Princeton researchers to survey just over 1,000 adults across the U.S., asking them how much they leave the waitstaff.

Republican men from the Northeast paying with a credit or debit card left a median tip of 20%.

The worst tippers were women, Southerners, Democrats and those paying with cash.

These groups leave a 15-16% tip on average.

Tipping between 15-20% at a sit-down restaurant is the recommended amount from the Emily Post Institute.

However, one in five people doesn't leave any tip at all.

To boil it down, researchers found tipping varies between men and women, cash and card payers and among northerners and southerners.

So here's a tip: the next time you go out to eat, leave a little something for the waiter or waitress.

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Who is a better tipper, a Republican or a Democrat? - AOL

President Trump has not ruled out cancelling Congresss August recess to force votes on nominees that the administration says have been held up by unpretending obstructionism by Democrats.

Marc Short, the White House director of legislative affairs, said Senate Democrats blocking of confirmation of key nominees was jeopardizing national security and denying Americans a fully staffed federal government.

The president has every right to call Congress back if necessary, Mr. Short told reporters at the White House.

Of the total 216 nomination for civilian positions, the Senate has confirmed 23 percent, or about 49 winning approval.

By comparison, the Senate confirmed 69 percent of President Obamas 454 nominees that were submitted by the August recess in 2009. Thats about 313 nominees confirmed in the same period of time.

Mr. Short said that Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, had run an unprecedented campaign of obstruction.

Democrats even walked out of committee hearings to deny quorums, like schoolchildren taking their toys from the playground, he said. But it is the American people who are being hurt.

Mr. Schumers office responded by saying the White House has only itself to blame for vacant administrative posts.

Thus far, the nomination process has been defined by the failure of the Trump administration to submit names for hundreds of vacant jobs, incomplete and delayed ethics and nominations paperwork from the nominees themselves, and repeated withdrawals of nominees for key positions, Mr. Schumers office said in a statement. If the White House is looking for someone to blame, they ought to look in a mirror.

Indeed, Mr. Trump has submitted about half as many nominations to the Senate as Mr. Obama at the same point in his presidency. But that does not explain the slow pace of votes on the names Mr. Trump sent over.

Mr. Schumer cited about 26 of Mr. Trumps nominees that he said were held up due to paperwork delays. With 49 confirmed, that leaves an unexplained backlog of about 141 nominees.

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Trump mulls cancelling Congress' summer recess to break Senate Democrat obstruction of nominees - Washington Times