President Trump speaks to students in the Oval Office last Friday. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
With Breanne Deppisch
THE BIG IDEA:Many West Wing staffers have sacrificed their personal reputations by parroting falsehoods on behalf of Donald Trump. How will their devotion be repaid? Perhaps with pink slips.
The president has a congenital inability to take personal responsibility for his own mistakes. Throughout his career, hes sought out scapegoats whenever situations get hairy. Hes doing it again amidst the continuing fallout from his decision to fire James Comey as FBI director.
Trump demands unquestioning loyalty from his subordinates, but kowtowing and paying fealty do not ensure that hell return the favor.
Several people who have spoken with the president tell Philip Rucker that he has been quick to blame his staff for the blowbackfromaxing Comey. Privately, Trump has lashed out at the communications office led by press secretary Sean Spicer and communications director Michael Dubke and has spoken candidly with advisers about a broad shake-up that could include demotions or dismissals, Phil reported on the front page of Sundays paper. Yet Trump did not inform Spicer and Dubke of his decision until about an hour before it was announced, keeping them and other senior aides out of the loop because he feared the news might leak prematurely. Their defenders said they were assigned an impossible task of orchestrating on short notice a complete rollout plan from crafting and distributing talking points to lining up lawmakers, legal experts and other Trump supporters to give interviews.
The president and his family members do not want to hear these excuses. Trump is in some ways like a pilot opting to fly a plane through heavy turbulence then blaming the flight attendants when the passengers get jittery, Phil observed. Some of Trumps allies said they are worried that the president views the Comey episode entirely as a public-relations crisis a branding problem and has not been judicious about protecting himself from legal exposure as the FBI continues to investigate possible links between his campaign and Russia. One GOP figure close to the White House mused privately about whether Trump was in the grip of some kind of paranoid delusion."
Sean Spicer prepares to address the press last Friday, as Trump refused to publicly commit to keeping him on.(Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
THE PRICE OF LOYALTY:
-- Trump reportedly asked Comey to pledge his loyalty three times during a one-on-one dinner in late January, but the FBI director refused to do so. Comey allies say he believes this conversation is what led to his termination last week.
The president denies asking Comey to pledge personal loyalty, but he also says that he does not think doing so would be inappropriate. I dont think it would be a bad question to ask, Trump said in an interview that aired Saturday night on Fox News. I think loyalty to the country, loyalty to the United States, is important. You know, I mean, it depends on how you define loyalty.
-- When you consider Trumps history, there is nothing surprising about him asking Comey for a loyalty oath.
You might recall that the president installed minders inside key agencies as soon as he took power in January. These apparatchiks, who have already proven their devotion to the president, are charged above all with monitoring the loyalty of cabinet secretaries and reporting back to the White House. This shadow government of political appointees is embedded at every Cabinet agency, with offices in or just outside the secretarys suite, Lisa Rein and Juliet Eilperin reported in March. The White House has installed at least 16 of the advisers at departments including Energy and Health and Human Services and at some smaller agencies such as NASA. These aides report not to the secretary, but to a White House deputy chief of staff.
The administrations head hunters have struggled for months to find well-qualified people for high-level posts because any past criticism of Trump is often disqualifying. Trump rejected Rex Tillersons first choice to be his deputy because he hadcriticized Trump during the campaign. A top aide to Ben Carson was summarily fired and escorted out of the Housing and Urban Development headquarters by security in February after a Trump loyalist discovered a critical op-ed he had written last fall.
During the GOP primaries, Trump asked attendees at his rallies to physically pledge loyalty. Raise your right hand, he said last March in Orlando, for example. He then told the crowd to repeat after him: I do solemnly swear that I no matter how I feel, no matter what the conditions, if theres hurricanes or whatever will vote, on or before the 12th for Donald J. Trump for president." Jewish groups complained at the time about the disconcerting imagery of people raising their right arms in what looked like a Nazi salute.
Asked during a 2014 speech about the trait he most looks for in an employee, his answer was unequivocal: loyalty, Bloomberg notes.
Corey Lewandowski arrives at Trump Tower in November. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
BUT LOYALTY DOES NOT CUT BOTH WAYS:
-- Last year, Trump repeatedly cited his refusal to fire then-campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, after he forcibly grabbed a female reporter and then denied it (even though there was video), as a testament to his own character. Folks, look, I'm a loyal person, Trump said at one town hall. It would be so easy for me to terminate this man, ruin his life, ruin his family. (He even cited Lewandowski during a meeting with Jewish leaders to make the point that hed stay loyal to Israel if elected.) This campaign, above all other things, is about loyalty, Lewandowski told New York Magazine around this time.
Shortly thereafter, however, Trump fired Lewandowski. Then a few months after that, struggling in the polls, the candidate fired his replacement. It was a reminder that, for Trump, loyalty is always conditional. There are strings attached.
-- Trump has described himself as a loyalty freak, according to a profile written last summer by Politicos Michael Kruse, but what he really meant by that is that he wants people under him to stay loyal to him.
-- From a prescient BuzzFeed profile in April 2016: A review of the billionaire's tumultuous, decades-long career including interviews with former employees, aides, and confidantes suggests that Trump's dedication to even his closest allies can wear thin, particularly at moments of professional crisis. Far from a tight-knit family of blood brothers, The Donald's inner circle has been purged and repopulated many times over the years. Devoted workaholics burn out and flame out. Longtime alliances end with lawsuits and tabloid sniping. Sometimes reconciliation follows, sometimes grudges endure and rarely does Trump refuse to bury the hatchet when it's good for the bottom line.
Trump has even been willing to throw family members under the bus to avoid accepting fault for his own mistakes. In 1990, when the disastrous opening of the Taj Mahal Casino threatened to unravel Trump's Atlantic City casino empire, he aimed his fury at his younger brother, Robert, who worked on the project, the BuzzFeed story noted. According to a 1991 book written by a former Trump executive, the magnate angrily berated Robert in front of other employees. Robert immediately departed the casino seething, according to the book, saying, I dont need this. The episode put a lasting strain on their relationship.
-- Perhaps one of the most fraught positions for someone to occupy in Trumps orbit is that of the PR man, The Atlantic noted back in March: Long before he earned the distinction of becoming the first president to live-tweet cable news, Trump was a headline-obsessed media junkie who devoured the New York Post daily and demanded round-the-clock attention from the publicists on his payroll. In one emblematic example from the early 90s, Trump became irate that he was losing the media battle with his first wife, Ivana, as their breakup dominated the tabloids so he fired the public-relations consultant that his family had employed for more than two decades. Asked about the incident years later, the consultant, Howard Rubenstein, waved it off as a short-lived temper tantrum. There was a time when [Trump] was upset with everybody, he shrugged. Still, in retrospect, the episode seems to have foreshadowed Trumps widely chronicled displeasure with Spicer.
Trump listens during an event in the East Room. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
TRUMP STILL HAS A LOT TO LEARN:
-- The president clearly prefers to surround himself with yes men. Consider what some of his favorite staffers said on TV in recent days:
-- In fact, that is not how it works. Trump is the president, not the CEO, of the United States. This is a meaningful distinction. The federal government does not belong to Trump. It is not a family business. Or even a publicly traded corporation with a board of directors. There are checks and balances. There are courts and Congress. There are laws designed to prevent obstruction of justice. As our first president to take office with no prior political or military experience, and lacking any formal training in history or constitutional law, Trump clearly still faces a Herculean learning curve.
-- This point is very important: FBI agents do not take an oath to the president. They take an oath to the Constitution. The bureau explains why this matters on its own website: It is significant that we take an oath to support and defend the Constitution and not an individual leader, ruler, office, or entity. A government based on individuals who are inconsistent, fallible, and often prone to error too easily leads to tyranny on the one extreme or anarchy on the other. The American colonists were all too familiar with the harmful effects of unbalanced government and oaths to individual rulers. For example, the English were required to swear loyalty to the crown, and many of the early colonial documents commanded oaths of allegiance to the king.
WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING:
John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Samuel Alito applaud Trump during the ceremony where Neil Gorsuch took the judicial oath in the Rose Garden last month. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
-- The Supreme Court will not review a decision that found North Carolinas 2013 voting law discriminated against African American voters, the justices said this morning. From Robert Barnes: A unanimous panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit had found in 2016 that North Carolina legislators had acted with almost surgical precision to blunt the influence of African American voters. And last summer the Supreme Court had divided evenly on whether the law could be used in last falls election while the appeals continued. But the election resulted in a new Democratic governor and a Democratic attorney general, and they had told the court they did not want to defend the law enacted by the states Republican-controlled legislature. The Republicans had asked to continue the appeal.
In an order saying the court would not review the lower courts decision, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. cited the states changed political scene, and indicated that not all of the justices agreed with the lower courts decision. Given the blizzard of filings over who is and who is not authorized to seek review in this court under North Carolina law, it is important to recall our frequent admonition that the denial of a writ of certiorari imports no expression of opinion upon the merits of the case, Roberts wrote.
Barron Trump waves to the crowd from the Truman Balcony during the Easter Egg Roll. (Susan Walsh/AP)
-- Barron Trump, the 11-year-old son of the president, will attend the private St. Andrews Episcopal School in Potomac, Md., this fall after he moves from New York to Washington with his mother. From Valerie Strauss: Barron Trump is finishing out the current school year at Columbia Grammar and Preparatory School on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where he is believed to be in fifth grade. He is expected to move to Washington this summer. He will be the first presidential child to attend St. Andrews, a co-educational college preparatory school that was founded in 1978 and educates about 580 students from pre-kindergarten through 12th grade.
North Korea'sCentral News Agency released this undated photo of multiple rocket launchers being fired during a drill.
THE WORLD IS ON FIRE:
-- Kim Jong Un celebrated the test of a so-called perfect weapon system on Sunday, after Pyongyang test-launched a ballistic missile that landed in the Sea of Japan. Anna Fifield reports: U.S. rocket scientists said the missile appeared to show substantial progress toward developing an intercontinental ballistic missile that can reach the mainland United States. North Koreas latest successful missile test represents a level of performance never before seen from a North Korean missile, said aerospace engineer John Schilling, speculating that this means Pyongyang might be just one year, rather than the expected five, from having an ICBM. The launch was widely condemned. Rattling his saber, Kim was quoted by state media:If the U.S. awkwardly attempts to provoke the DPRK, it will not escape from the biggest disaster in the history.The U.S. should not disregard or misjudge the reality that its mainland and Pacific operation region are in the DPRKs sighting range for strike and that it has all powerful means for retaliatory strike.
-- The malicious ransomware attacks that struck more than 100 countrieson Friday could worsen this week, computer experts warn, as millions of employees return to workfor the first time. Brian Fung reports: With much of the world still reeling from the digital breach that prevented people from receiving hospital care, a second wave of what European officials have called the biggest ransomware attack ever could be devastating. The software, which first affected Britains National Health Service before spreading to as many as 150 countries, locked down victims computers and threatened to delete their files unless they paid $300 in bitcoins. Much of the potential damage from Fridays attack was quickly contained by the efforts of a 22-year-old security researcher, [who] discovered that the unnamed attackers had accidentally included a kill switch. But that victory could be short-lived, experts said, because the [software]is likely to be modified soon and continue its spread in a slightly different form. For IT workers and security researchers, the episode highlights the challenge of fighting an ever-mutating foe whose motives are rarely clear."
Kara McCullough competes in the swimsuit competition during last night's Miss USA pageant at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. (Ethan Miller/Getty Images)
-- For the second year in a row, Miss D.C. won the crown at the Miss USA pageant. Kra McCullough, a 25-year-old scientist who works at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, was born in Italy and raised in Virginia Beach. She gave controversial answers during the Q&A portion, saying that she considers health care more of a privilege than a right and rejecting the feminist label. (Emily Yahr)
-- Happening Wednesday at 6:15 p.m.: Join me at The Post's headquarters for the next "Daily 202 Live" interview with Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.). We'll talk about the news of the day and his new book, The Vanishing American Adult. RSVP here to attend.
Emmanuel Macron rides in a military vehicle on the Champs Elysees towardthe Arc de Triomphe in Paris after his swearing-in yesterday. (Michel Euler/AP)
GET SMART FAST:
Trump was all smiles with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrovat the White House the day after he fired Comey.(Handout from the Russian Foreign Ministry/Via AFP)
THERE IS A BEAR IN THE WOODS:
-- Russia han't gotten much of what it hoped for from the Trump administration (at least not yet), but the Kremlin has collected a different kind of return on its effort to help elect Trump in last years election: chaos in Washington. Greg Miller reports: The presidents decision to fire [Comey] was the latest destabilizing jolt to a core institution of the U.S. government [joining] a list of entities that Trump has targeted, including federal judges, U.S. spy services, news organizations and military alliances. The instability, although driven by Trump, has in some ways extended and amplified the effect Russia sought to achieve with its unprecedented campaign to undermine the 2016 presidential race...
Current and former U.S. officials said that, even if that probe remains on track, Comeys ouster serves broader Russian interests:
James Clapper testifies before Senate lawmakers in a hearingon Russia's election interference. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)
SOUNDING THE ALARM:
-- Former director of National Intelligence James Clapper warned on the Sunday shows that Trump is undermining U.S. institutions: "I think in many ways our institutions are under assault both externally and that's the big news here is the Russian interference in our election system and I think as well our institutions are under assault internally," he said onCNN's "State of the Union." Internally from the president? Jake Tapper asked. Exactly, said Clapper.
OnABCs This Week, Clapper added that Russia sees Trumpfiring Comey as another victory on the scoreboard for them: The lead of the investigation about potential collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign has been removed. So the Russians have to consider this another victory on the scoreboard for them."
He called on other branches of the government to step up their roles in protecting the system of checks and balances: "I think the founding fathers, in their genius, created a system of three co-equal branches of government and a built-in system of checks and balances," he said on CNN. "I feel as though that is under assault and is eroding."
Clapper also said that Trump is totally wrong to cite his recent congressional testimony as proof that there was no collusion between the Kremlin and his campaign: "The bottom line is I don't know if there was collusion, political collusion. I don't know of any evidence to it. So I can't refute it, and I can't confirm it."
COMEY FALLOUT CONTINUES:
-- Key Republican and Democratic lawmakers called on Trump to turn over any recordings he has ofconversations with ex-FBI director James Comey. The president, who has a long history of taping private meetings, suggested that he has tapes in atweet on Friday. He and his aides refuse to confirm or deny that there is a taping system, raising suspicions that there are indeed tapes.
-- After a week of turmoil, none of Trumps top aides appeared on the major Sunday morning news shows to defend and explain the presidents decision, Ed OKeefe and Jenna Johnson note. Host Chris Wallace opened Fox News Sunday by highlighting who was not on his guest list, saying that the White House would not make anyone available to discuss the Comey firing. When we said we were going to focus on Comey for at least the first half-hour of this program, they put those officials on other shows, Wallace said."
-- AnNBC News-Wall Street Journal pollfindsthat just 29 percent of Americans approve of Comeys firing, while 38 percent disapproved. Another 32 percent of respondents didn't have an opinion. Asked if they prefer Congress or an independent commission or prosecutor to investigate Russias involvement in the 2016 election, 78 percent said they support an independent prosecutor, while just 15 percent picked Congress.
COMEY'S REPLACEMENT:
-- Trump suggested Saturday that he could name a new FBI director by the time he departs for his first overseas trip this Friday.Administration officials sayhe is considering nearly a dozen candidates for the position. Jeff Sessions and Rod Rosenstein interviewed eight contenders on Saturday. That list included Sen. John Cornyn, acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe; Alice Fisher, a white-collar defense lawyer who previously led the Justice Departments criminal division; Michael Garcia, a judge on the New York State Court of Appeals and former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York; Adam Lee, the special agent in charge of the FBI's Richmond field office; U.S. District Judge Henry Hudson, who presides over the Eastern District of Virginia; former Homeland Security adviser Frances Townsend; and former House Intelligence Committee chairman Mike Rogers. (Callum Borchers and Matt Zapotosky)
-- Chuck Schumersaid Senate Democrats may oppose whoever Trump nominates for FBI director until the Justice Department names a special prosecutor. We will have to discuss it as a caucus, but I would support that move, because who the FBI director is related to who the special prosecutor is, the minority leader said.
-- Republicans keep trying to float Merrick Garland for FBI director so that they can shift the balance of power on the D.C. Circuit. (This will not happen, and serious media outlets really need to stop covering it as a credible idea.)
Preet Bharara thanks well-wishers outside the New York office where he worked until he was fired by Trump in March.(Larry Neumeister/AP)
-- Inan op-ed for The Post, ousted U.S. attorneyPreetBhararaasks: Are there still public servants who will say no to the president? To restore faithin the rule of law, he says, three obvious things must happen:
Kellyanne Conway tweeted this picture with her husband, George, and children.
TRUMP STOCKING MAIN JUSTICE WITH LOYALISTS:
-- George Conway is the man at the center of everything, by Ben Terris: If it werent for George Conway, the nation might never have met Monica Lewinsky, and Donald Trump might never have met Kellyanne. In the 1990s, George was a quiet but critical presence in what Hillary Clinton would dub a vast right-wing conspiracy a hotshot young attorney working to undermine Bill Clinton by offering secret legal aid to his accusers and reportedly funneling salacious details to the Drudge Report. This one disgruntled New York lawyer almost single-handedly brought down the president, David Brock [once wrote]. Years later, George would marry [Kellyanne], a publicity-prone Beltway pollster, and move with her to an apartment in Manhattans Trump World Tower ... [But] back then, George helped sow the chaos. Now, hes coming to Washington to try to put things back together. Trump, according to sources who would know, has asked George to run the Justice Departments civil division. Pending Senate approval, he would become one of the administrations top lawyers, tasked with guarding the president and his policies from legal challenges.
UNDER TRUMP, INCONVENIENT DATA IS BEING SIDELINED:
-- The administration has deleted or tucked away important information, removed Obama-era webpages and broken with precedent by refusing to disclose even basic public information when it does not help advance Trump's agenda. Juliet Eilperinrounds up some of the startling assaults on transparency:
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke enjoys a horseback ride in the Bears Ears National Monument of Utah last week. (Scott G Winterton/The Deseret News via AP)
ROLLING BACK THE OBAMA LEGACY:
-- As Ryan Zinke listens in on the monumental divide at Utahs Bears Ears, natives feel unheard, by Darryl Fears: Long after the Black Hawk helicopter carrying the Interior secretary flew off into the bright Utah sky, James Adakai stood in the airport parking lot with an angry frown frozen on his face. As chairman of a tribal commission established to oversee the Bears Ears National Monument, Adakai, who is Navajo, felt he deserved a place in a meeting Zinke arranged at the airport to discuss the monuments fate. Instead, Zinke met and toured the site in helicopters with Utah government officials and others who adamantly oppose the first U.S. monument designated at the request of Native American tribes. The fight over Bears Ears isnt just the usual row between politicians who want to mine and drill the land and conservationists who want to preserve and ogle its natural splendor. It also pits natives who reside on reservations across three states against many Anglos as some Navajos and Hopi people call white residents who live in San Juan County.... Zinke is expected to submit a recommendation to Trump in early June, following a public comment period that started Friday. But conservationists wondered whether the Trump administration had already betrayed its intent.
Donald and Melania Trump attend a Red Cross Gala at the Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach in February. (Susan Walsh/AP)
CONFLICTS OF INTEREST:
-- ICYMI: At Mar-a-Lago, the star power of the presidency helps charities and Trump make more money, by Drew Harwell and Dave Fahrenthold: Mar-a-Lago will soon close for the season, as Palm Beachs wealthy snowbirds return north. That will bring an end to one of the oddest experiments in modern American politics in which a sitting president has become a moneymaking attraction for his own private business. [The Post] identified more than 45 events since Election Day in which outside groups paid to rent space at Mar-a-Lago. Hedge-fund investors noshed by the pool. Zoo animals prowled for the entertainment of donors. Men in military gear dropped from a helicopter near the lakefront cocktail bar and stormed a lawn full of socialites as part of a benefit for the Navy SEAL Foundation In at least 10 of those cases, the events turned out to be a little bigger, and to raise a little more money, than in past years. The reason, some organizers said, was that Trumps event customers could offer the grandeur of the presidency as an added attraction for potential attendees. The trend is likely to continue next year, as some charities planning Mar-a-Lago events for the 2018 season are hoping the dates they book coincide with times that Trump is staying at the club."
Michael Flynn, left, and deputy national security adviser K.T. McFarland, center, listen as Sean Spicer speaks to the press in February. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
ALTERNATIVE FACTS:
-- Politico, "How Trump gets his fake news," by Shane Goldmacher: [Reince Priebus] issued a stern warning at a recent senior staff meeting: Quit trying to secretly slip stuff to the president. Just days earlier, K.T. McFarland, the deputy national security adviser, had given Trump a printout of two Time magazine covers. One, supposedly from the 1970s, warned of a coming ice age; the other, from 2008, about surviving global warming Trump quickly got lathered up about the medias hypocrisy. But there was a problem. The 1970s cover was fake, part of an Internet hoax thats circulated for years. Staff chased down the truth and intervened before Trump tweeted or talked publicly about it. The episode illustrates the impossible mission of managing a White House led by an impetuous president who has resisted structure and strictures his entire adult life."
REALITY CHECK:
-- Health insurance premiums will keep going up, under either ACA or AHCA, by Glenn Kessler: Analyzing Congressional Budget Office data, here is the first visualization of premium prices over the next decade for an average 64-year-old:
(Click here to see how premiums are projected to rise for a 40-year-old and a 21-year old.)
An honor guard greets Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan at his palace in Ankara. (Kayhan Ozer/Presidential Palace/Handout via Reuters)
THE NEW WORLD ORDER:
-- As Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan prepares to travel to the U.S. to meet with Trump this week, relations between the two countries remain deeply strained. Karen DeYoung reports: Barely two months ago, [Erdogan] was one of [Trumps] biggest fans. Fed up with what he saw as the Obama administrations wishy-washy Syria policy, its unwise alliance with Kurdish terrorists and its failure to understand the need for some of his authoritarian policies, Erdogan envisioned a new dawn in U.S.-Turkish relations. But ... Erdogan has been less than pleased. Last week, his top military and intelligence officials traveled here for a final effort to stop the administration from arming Syrian Kurdish fighters for an upcoming offensive in Raqqa against the Islamic State, only to be told by their U.S. counterparts that a decision to do so had already been made.At the same time, his justice minister brought new evidence to support Turkeys long-standing extradition request for [Pennsylvania-based cleric] Fethullah Gulen. The U.S. Justice Department thanked him and sent him away with no news of progress. Turkey's diplomats said the purpose of those visits was to pave the ground for fruitful discussions between the two presidents." "We were hopeful, a senior Turkish official said. Now, we are in a crisis period.
Kinda Haddad researches civilian casualties resulting from U.S. coalition airstrikes in Syria.(Shannon Jensen Wedgwood/The Washington Post)
WAPO HIGHLIGHTS:
-- How a woman in England tracks civilian deaths in Syria, one bomb at a time, by Greg Jaffe: One recent morning in the countryside beyond London, Kinda Haddad dropped her two children off at school, came home and began scanning her computer for the days first reports of Syrian civilians killed by American bombs. This is her second year of doing this, an almost daily routine since Haddad, 45, became one of the first analysts for Airwars, an eight-person nonprofit group started with a simple question: Exactly how many civilians were being killed in the American-led air campaigns in Iraq and Syria? Was it even possible to know? The usual sources of such information reporters, the U.N. and human rights groups have been largely absent from the battlefields, especially after a series of kidnappings and beheadings of journalists and aid workers in Syria. And so Airwars which is to say Haddad in her living room and seven others began quite literally piecing together the answer a painstaking process that involves sifting through tens of thousands of fragments of information, from a war that often feels remote to everyone except the Syrians and Iraqis trying desperately to document their own destruction.
Baltimore Homicide Detective Lee Brandt (Salwan Georges/The Washington Post)
-- Did you hear that?: Amid Baltimores surge in killings, a faint cry in a locked car, by Peter Hermann and Theresa Vargas: No one saw the baby. She sat in a gold-hued car with tinted black windows as her 26-year-old father lay on the ground outside, dying. All eyes were on him, another fallen body in a city increasingly defined by them. In portions of Baltimore, the strobe of police cars is as much a part of the landscape as boarded-up homes. But the pace of the killings this year has been stunning as the city struggles to recover from rioting in 2015. As of Friday, 124 people had been slain making Baltimores homicide rate one of the highest in the country. It is more than triple Washingtons rate and higher than the homicide rates in New Orleans and Chicago, two places that have become national symbols of gun violence. But few [scenes] have been as haunting as the [one] that played out on March 27 in front of a West Baltimore carryout.
SOCIAL MEDIA SPEED READ:
Since his unceremonious firing, the world has gone full TMZ on James Comey from the news helicopters that trailed his car in L.A., to the AP reporters staking out the front yard of his McLean-area home. A nine-year-old neighbor, Abby Grace, in a burst of sympathy for her now-jobless acquaintance, baked chocolate chip cookies to bring over. This weekend,Comeywent to see the play "Fun Home." The shows website describes it as a "musical about looking back and moving forward." That's fitting perhaps,Amy B Wang reports.
Comey even posed for a picture with the cast:
Michael Flynn,Michael Cohen, and Rick Perry speak in the lobby of Trump Tower during the transition.(Drew Angerer/Getty)
President Trump's longtime attorney, Michael Cohen, tweeted a photo of his college-aged daughter in lingerie:
When one userpointed out that it is weird for a father to post a picture like this of his child, Cohen replied:Jealous? (Travis M. Andrews)
-- Politicians mostly posted about Mother's Day on Sunday:
From this "Scandal" star:
Some got pretty political with the holiday:
From a Democratic candidate for governor in Virginia:
Antonio Sabato Jr., the soap opera star who is running for Congress, would love to stump with Trump:
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The Daily 202: Loyalty is a one-way street for Donald Trump - Washington Post