Week 8 began with more fallout from Trump’s wire-tapping cliams: McCain called on Trump to retract the claim.
Sean Spicer tried to convince everyone that Trump did not actually mean wiretapping literally. And the Justice Department requested more time from the congressional investigations to prove that wiretapping actually occurred.
This resulted in: House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) threatened to subpoena the Trump administration to produce evidence of Trump’s claim, and congressional Republicans lined up to deny Trump’s claims.
Also, Democrats on the investigative committees said that they would abandon the bipartisan committees if they believed the Republicans were not holding an open and unbiased pursuit of the truth of what happened in the 2016 election.
In health care news, the Congressional Budget Office calculated that Paul Ryan and Trump’s American Health Care Act would result in 24 million people losing their health insurance. This Politico story is essential to understanding the reasons GOP are rushing the passage of the bill. And here is conservative David Frum arguing–for the uptenth time–how Republicans can win by making their peace with Obamacare.
Trump released his budget this week. Here is a good summary by the Wall Street Journal, and how the GOP Congress will probably rewrite most of it.
The week ended with yet another nation injunction of Trump’s travel ban, and how the legal argument is resting on Trump’s campaign pledge to ban Muslims.