In The Past 24 Hours Or So

Your Daily Dose of Trump and His Administration News

11/2

• The federal government’s outstanding public debt has surpassed $23 trillion for the first time in history, according to data from the Treasury Department.

• Trump names Chad Wolf to be the next acting head of Homeland Security, the fifth person in the job for this administration.

• An increasing number of GOP senators are preparing to acknowledge that there was a quid pro quo in President Trump’s leveraging of military aid with Ukraine as a means to urge the country to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, breaking with Trump’s claims there was no quid pro quo. But they say they plan to argue it simply wasn’t illegal.

• UK officials say of AG Barr’s effort to manufacture evidence to discredit the Mueller probe, “It is like nothing we have come across before, they are basically asking, in quite robust terms, for help in doing a hatchet job on their own intelligence services”.

• Trump deleted and re-tweeted a thread because he misspelled the word “of” (seriously). In his 2nd version he misspelled the words “wonderful” and “people.”

• Outgoing Energy chief Rick Perry refuses to testify in House impeachment inquiry.

• Using Sawzalls, people have repeatedly sawed through new sections of Trump’s border wall opening gaps large enough for people to pass through. The saws can slice through one of the barrier’s steel-and-concrete bollards in a matter of minutes. After cutting through the base of a single bollard, the steel is pushed aside, allowing an adult to fit through the gap. Because the bollards are so tall and are attached only to a panel at the very top, their length makes them easier to push aside once they have been cut and are left dangling. 

• Fake accounts tied to intelligence services in China, Iran and Russia have directed thousands of tweets at Trump. Trump has retweeted at least 145 unverified accounts that have pushed conspiracy or fringe content, including more than two dozen that have since been suspended by Twitter. Tweets that tag his handle, @realDonaldTrump, can be found with hashtags like #HitlerDidNothingWrong, #IslamIsSatanism and #WhiteGenocide.

• The defense by Senate Republicans is becoming: “Yes, Trump did indeed use US national security interests to extort Ukraine into investigating his political rival, but there’s nothing wrong with that.”

• The Justice Department has released hundreds of documents pertaining to former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference and possible obstruction of justice by President Trump, including interviews and emails related to key witnesses, such as Rick Gates, who told investigators that former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort spread the conspiracy theory that Ukraine was behind the Democratic National Committee hack.

• Trump and top 2016 campaign officials reportedly had several private conversations about how they could obtain stolen Democratic emails as part of an effort to find damaging information on then-presidential nominee Hillary Clinton according to newly released interview notes from former special counsel Robert Mueller.

• Trump was loudly booed while attending a UFC fight at MSG