Trump's Response To Shooting, 100+ WH Aides Had Interim Sec. Clearance, And Immigration Status Of Melania's Parents

February 15th, 2018 Top Stories --------------------------------------------------------------- [After FL Shooting Trump Tells Students, Neighbors To Report Disturbing Behavior]( The Gist: Hours after President Donald Trump offered his condolences to the families of the victims of the shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida Wednesday, he tweeted saying there were “many signs” that the shooter was mentally disturbed and tasked “neighbors and classmates” with reporting “such instances to authorities.” [Reports: More Than 100 WH Aides Had Interim Security Clearances In November]( The Gist: More than 100 White House staffers, including Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, were working on interim security clearances as of November of last year, according to reports from CNN and NBC News. [VA Secretary Says He Regrets Expensive European Trip On Taxpayer Dime]( The Gist: After the Veterans Affairs inspector general found that VA Secretary David Shulkin and his chief of staff misled ethics officials about a trip to Europe of the summer, Shulkin told USA Today on Wednesday afternoon that he regrets the mistakes made in the process for approving the trip. From The Reporter's Notebook --------------------------------------------------------------- Mitch McConnell has decided to only allocate a few days for debate on the thorny problem of immigration, and as senators scrambled this week to put together a compromise bill that had any chance of passage, the White House once again lobbed a grenade into the process. [TPM's Alice Ollstein has the latest]( on the state of the DACA negotiations in Congress. Agree Or Disagree? --------------------------------------------------------------- Josh Marshall: "Doing conspicuous favors and fixing things is in the nature of this bizarrely public toady-chieftain relationship between Michael Cohen and Trump. Read through Cohen’s interviews. You’ll find it’s replete with mixes of mafia tough guy talk and zany levels of conspicuous self-abnegation. It’s all theater at some level. [But I think to a great degree it’s genuine](. It’s the guy’s identity, like the way a top captain thinks about the mob boss he serves. Who will rid me of this meddlesome Stormy? In the scale of money both Trump and Cohen operate at, covering the $130,000 payment himself seems entirely plausible as something Cohen would do as part of the larger relationship. He probably did get paid back some way or another. But I think it’s totally plausible he didn’t. He’d love to be that guy who made the problem go away. Doing Trump a solid like that would be something he’d happily do. It’s the basis of their relationship. He’d get paid back in other ways." Say What?! --------------------------------------------------------------- "The first thing that we all agree on is that, irrespective of efforts that were made in 2016 by foreign powers, it is the universal conclusion of our intelligence communities that none of those efforts had any effect on the outcome of the 2016 election." - Vice President Mike Pence on Wednesday [badly misstating]( the intel community's report on Russian election meddling. BUZZING: Today in the Hive --------------------------------------------------------------- From a TPM Prime member: "The rate of the spiral is just slower with Sessions not resigning. The spiral is still proceeding however. And the end is inevitable since Comey was fired. That firing and the resulting appointment of Mueller made the ending unavoidable to my way of thinking. Trump will not surrender. He would never admit any of this to himself." Related: [Report: Priebus Warned Trump Of ‘Spiral Of Calamity’ If Sessions Resigned]( Have something to add? Become a [Prime]( member and join the discussion [here](. What We're Reading --------------------------------------------------------------- What’s The Immigration Status Of Melania Trump’s Parents? ([The Washington Post]( Leaked Chat Transcripts: New York Times Employees Are Pissed About Bari Weiss ([HuffPost]( [unsubscribe from this list]( | [update subscription preferences]( | [view email in browser](