Trump listened to grieving school shooting victims in the White House for about an hour. Some of them lost friends and family in the Parkland Florida shooting last week. He mentioned that he wants to strengthen background checks and increase the age limits to buy an AR-15.
The Washington Post reported Friday that the DOJ contacted the white house on February 9th to tell them there there was significant issues with Kushner they were investigating that would keep him from getting a security clearance any time soon. Trump also announced that he would let Kelly decide if Kushner can continue to receive classified information.
White House sources are leaking about who is up and down in the Kushner vs. Kelly story. Kushner is fighting the prospect of losing access to classified intel.
In Russia News:
Trump spent the weekend after the 16 indictments at Mar-A-Lago tweeting about how he has been vindicated. He failed to condemn Russia for what was revealed in the indictments.
Here is Haberman with the same story: “President Trump began the weekend believing that something good had just happened to him… The president’s mood began to darken as it became clearer to him that some commentators were portraying the indictment as nothing for him to celebrate, according to three people with knowledge of his reaction.
People are starting to openly worry about the implications of Trump not leading the charge against Russia for the election attacks. Here is Friedman and Frum.
A colleague of Gates and Manafort was indicted by Meuller and plead guilty.
On Friday, Gates plead guilty and is now cooperating with Meuller.
Three pieces this week where writers are musing about the Meuller investigation, and What It All Means. First Andrew McCarthy makes his case for why he things the Obstruction case among other matters are not going to lead to legal trouble for Trump.
Mathew Yglesias of Vox argues that there is a lot of evidence already public that the Trump campaign worked with the Russians.
And Douthat advises us (mostly liberals) not to blame the Russian menace for Trump and instead grapple with the fact that many Americans voted for him because they agreed with him.
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Trump’s Job Approval: 40%