I Got Your Apology RIGHT HERE! Wonkagenda For Wed., July 18, 2018

White House waits for Trump to throw a tantrum, Manafort's stuck in jail, and there's millions being wasted on baby jails. Your morning news brief.

Morning Wonketariat! Here's some of the things wemaybe talking about today.

 John Kelly gave the green light for the chorus of loyal goons and milksop Republicans to denounce Trump for his embrace of Putin in Helsinki. Now White House aides are now waiting for Trump to explode and start blaming everyone but himself.

This morning Trump started shitposting about the intel agencies loving his reacharound to Putin, bragging about doing bigly goodest in Not America, and how the lying liberal lamestream media keeps ignoring his yuge MAGA gains, or whatever.

In the land of make believe, Hannity spent last night bitching about "pathological"liberalmedia bias, calling the fallout of Helsinki "the single worst 24 hours in the history of your mainstream media." And this morning on Fox and Friends, Newt Gingrich decreed everything's now dandy .

Bloomberg reports it was Trump who gave Rod Rosenstein the go-ahead to announce the indictment of Russian hackers ahead of the Helsinki meeting. SURE he did...

A US district court judge has declined a request by Paul Manafort's lawyers to move his fraud trial from the DC suburbs to Bumblefuck, Virginia, noting a "carnival or circus atmosphere" would exist no matter where the trial is held, and that the political views of the jury are irrelevant. LOCK HIM UP!

Robert Mueller wants to give five witnesses immunity in Paul Manafort's trial, and hide their identities unless they're actually called upon. Aww, somebody's snitching!

Here's a good 'splainer about how Trump doesn't know what he's talking about when he brings up the DNC server hack, and how he ends up looking like a bigger fucking idiot. Yes, it's possible.

Apparently Paul Ryan has been saving Rod Rosenstein's ass as the rabid Freedom crazies froth at the mouth and snap at boogeymen.

OF COURSE Dana Rohrabacher is defending Maria Butina, the ALLEGED Russian spy in the NRA. She's an American patriot, just like Natalia Vishnevskaya and Julian Assange.

HHS has been quietly setting millions of dollars on fire to pay for Trump's baby jails. As they ask DHS for another several hundred million, Trump officials are shuffling around even more money for internment camps. Any price to protect us from tots in MS-13.

House Republicans are still trying to cobble together $5 billion for Trump's wall in their homeland-security spending bill, but that still may not be enough for Trump, who's already threatened to shut down the government (again) unless he gets his wall.

 A number of people on the Homeland Security advisory council have quit in protest of Trump's baby jails . A DHS spox shrugged and called them Obama hippies.

After Sen. Ron Wyden lost his shit amid a new rule from the Trump IRS allowing tax-exempt 501(c) groups from disclosing the names of donors who give more than $5,000, Trump's Treasury Department defended the move by telling everyone to suck it. What WOULD Jesus Do?

 A secret service agent died of a stroke while Trump was golfing in Scotland over the weekend. Trump still hasn't offered his thoughts and prayers, but we will because we are nice.

 Trump will repaint Air Force One red, white and blue . Apparently there's money for that. Somewhere.

Five former wrestlers from Ohio State University have filed class-action lawsuits claiming university brass knew the team's doctor, Richard Strauss, was sexually abusing male athletes. Ohio Republican Rep. Jim Jordan isn't named, but one suit does cite news reports that state Jordan knew about the abuse and tried to "conceal it."

Republicans in the House Judiciary Committee dragged brass from Facebook, Youtube and Twitter up to the Hill for another farce hearing on conservative biases. Besides remaining curiously mum about InfoWars, Republicans suggested turning social media companies into public utilities. Now the WSJ is reporting that Facebook has been bending over backwards to keep the likes of conservative mouth pieces that spew fake news and peddle conspiracy theories.

After Trump's disastrous European vacation, Democrats are now adding Russia to their "kitchen table" issues platform, and crafting a strategy that paints Congress as a check on Trump now that new polling suggests people see Republicans as more corrupt than Democrats. Took 'em long enough.

Jon Tester's reelection strategy is to tell voters that he's the badass motherfucker from Montana, and research suggests reminding voters of local roots is a solid strategy. Who knew?

 Sen. Kamala Harris has signed a deal to write a book about "the core truths that unite us." #ShesRunning

 Alabama Republican Rep. Martha Roby defeated the pro-Trump Bobby Bright in a run-off last night. Roby got a seemingly reluctant endorsement from Trump late in the election, and has spent the last two years walking back her denunciation of Trump's "grab'em by the pussy" moment in 2016.

After gun humping Arizona Republican state senate candidate Bobby Wilson confessed to murdering his mother and sister back in the early 1960s, he suddenly forgot what happened until after all the witnesses died. Twenty years later it all came back to him (except for the ALLEGED murder part), and now he's just another "alt-right" conspiracy theorist blaming victims of gun violence.

According to a new analysis from Politico, only a few states are making any attempt to shore up defenses from cyber fuckery ahead of the 2018 elections. This is fine...

Yesterday Motherboard reported that ES&S, the biggest voting machine maker, admitted it sold election-management systems with backdoors to the internet for years, an insanely dangerous election vulnerability.

A new study has found Donald Trump and his PAC have spent $274,000 on Facebook ads, making them the biggest political advertiser since May . The researchers have also found Republicans are expected to spending as much as 40 percent of their advertising budgets on Facebook, compared to 10 percent for Democrats, ahead of the 2018 midterms.

A conservative MP leading the British investigation into disinformation campaigns has found that Russia accessed Cambridge Analytica data, though it's still too early to know much..

James Comey tweeted a full-throated endorsement of Democrats. Thanks, Obama?

Some rascals in New York mounted a Putin-replica on the Charging Bull statue and covered it with rainbow dildos. 

 The EU will fine Google $5 billion (€4.3 billion) for antitrust violations, and is expected to say it used its Android OS to undercut other search engines.

 Elon Musk is sorry he called the British cave explorer who helped rescue the Thai soccer team a "pedo," stating, "words were spoken in anger after [he] said several untruths and suggested I engage in a sexual act with the mini-sub..."

GOOD NEWS! The House bill to save net neutrality just got its first Republican to sign on! 1 down, 41 to go!

And here's your morning Nice Time! A BABY SLOTH!

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