The Morning Briefing: NYT Doubles Down, Military Plane Crash, Bernie Predicts Healthcare 9/11

Good Tuesday Morning.

Here is what’s on the President’s agenda today:

In the afternoon, President Donald J. Trump will meet with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin, Secretary of Defense James Mattis, and National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster.

Wait, where did you go?

Did you know that more than half the memos penned by former FBI Director James Comey and shared with a third party to be leaked to the media contain classified information? Forget about that story from yesterday because the media has moved on to the more important second day stories about a much more important narrative.

Buckle up…

More anonymous sources say Trump’s son was told about RUSSIAN ‘effort’ to aid campaign

The New York Times is reporting that no less than three (!!!) anonymous sources have said that Donald Trump Jr. was told in advance that the he would be meeting with a Kremlin-connected lawyer interested in colluding with the Trump campaign to help his father win the election.

That’s not what the Times writes but that’s what it means. Here’s what the Times wrote:

Before arranging a meeting with a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer he believed would offer him compromising information about Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump Jr. was informed in an email that the material was part of a Russian government effort to aid his father’s candidacy, according to three people with knowledge of the email.

Three people with knowledge. Who are these people and how do they know what was in the email? I’m serious, who would have this information (three people!!!)? (Answer: IMO, the IC who are/were monitoring Manafort. Here’s that pesky unmasking again…) And why are the Times and other media outlets relying on anonymous sources when so many of their sources have misled them? (answer: #resist)

The meeting was set up by Trump Jr. friend Rob Goldstone.

Mr. Goldstone’s message, as described to The New York Times by the three people (!!!), indicates that the RUSSIAN government was the source of the potentially damaging information. It does not elaborate on the wider effort by Moscow to help the Trump campaign.

So the Times doesn’t have the email and did not see the email but had the email described to them.

This nefarious smoking gun meeting with a RUSSIAN person who wanted to collude with the Trump campaign on behalf of the RUSSIAN government was reported by Jared Kushner, who said he had already disclosed the meeting to the feds.

And the Times contradicts itself. What did Trump Jr. know that the man who brokered the meeting didn’t know and how did he know it?

It is unclear whether Mr. Goldstone had direct knowledge of the origin of the damaging material. One person who was briefed on the emails said it appeared that he was passing along information that had been passed through several others.

I thought the origin of the materials was the RUSSIANS? Since Mr. Goldstone brokered this meeting and Trump Jr. was told in an email he would be meeting with an agent of the RUSSIAN government, as the Times wants you to believe, where did that nugget of information come from? And when was Trump Jr. informed that this meeting was with a Kremlin-connected RUSSIAN since Goldstone didn’t know? Was Goldstone dropped off the email chain and then someone else added who had this knowledge?

In an interview Monday, Mr. Goldstone said he was asked by Mr. Agalarov to set up the meeting with Donald Trump Jr. and the Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya.

“He said, ‘I’m told she has information about illegal campaign contributions to the D.N.C.,’” Mr. Goldstone recalled, referring to the Democratic National Committee. He said he then emailed Donald Trump Jr., outlining what the lawyer purported to have.

But Mr. Goldstone, who wrote the email over a year ago, denied any knowledge of involvement by the Russian government in the matter, saying that never dawned on him. “Never, never ever,” he said. Later, after the email was described to The Times, efforts to reach him for further comment were unsuccessful.

In the interview, he said it was his understanding that Ms. Veselnitskaya was simply a “private citizen” for whom Mr. Agalarov wanted to do a favor. He also said he did not know whether Mr. Agalarov’s father, Aras Agalarov, a Moscow real estate tycoon known to be close to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, was involved. The elder Mr. Agalarov and the younger Mr. Trump worked together to bring a Trump Tower to Moscow, but the project never got off the ground.

So the person setting up the meeting denied any knowledge that he was setting up a meeting with a RUSSIAN government agent and yet Trump Jr. did know because the Times wrote that Trump Jr. was “informed in an email that the material was part of a Russian government effort to aid his father’s candidacy.” This is absurd.

All this RED SCARING and for what? The meeting turned out to be “just a vague, generic statement about the campaign’s funding and how people, including RUSSIAN people, living all over the world donate when they shouldn’t donate” before turning to her anti-Magnitsky Act arguments. (FUN FACT: Obama did exactly this.) If the meeting was indeed the RUSSIAN government dropping oppo on the Clinton campaign, where is the info?

Veselnitskaya denies acting on behalf of the RUSSIAN government and the RUSSIAN government has said it had no idea about the meeting. Even if you don’t believe the RUSSIANS, and you shouldn’t, the rest of the Times’ story doesn’t make sense.

At least 16 killed in military plane crash

According to officials, a U.S. military plane has crashed in rural Mississippi, killing at least 16 people.

Leflore County Emergency Management Agency Director Frank Randle told reporters at a late Monday briefing that 16 bodies had been recovered after the KC-130 spiraled into the ground about 85 miles (135 kilometers) north of Jackson in the Mississippi Delta.

Marine Corps spokeswoman Capt. Sarah Burns said in a statement that a KC-130 “experienced a mishap” Monday evening but provided no details. The KC-130 is used as a refueling tanker.

Witness Brian Jones was working on his families catfish farm when the plane crashed.

Jones said the plane hit the ground behind some trees in a soybean field, and by the time he and other reached the crash site, fires were burning too intensely to approach the wreckage. The force of the crash nearly flattened the plane, Jones said.

…

Jones said firefighters tried to put out the fire at the main crash site but withdrew after an explosion forced them back. The fire produced towering plumes of black smoke visible for miles across the flat region and continued to burn after dusk, more than four hours after the crash.

Aerial pictures taken by WLBT-TV showed the skeleton of the plane burning strongly.

Information about the cause of the crash has not been released yet.

Welcome to the latest installment of “toning down the political rhetoric”

DNC victim Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) spoke at a rally on Sunday in West Virginia, warning his audience that the GOP health care bill will kill more people than 9/11.

The self-described Democratic socialist, who has long advocated for a national single-payer health care system, made the striking comment Sunday at a rally in Morgantown, West Virginia. Supporters at the event held signs that read, “Improve the Affordable Care Act. Don’t Destroy It.”

Sanders delivered the speech as the GOP-led Senate works to earn enough votes to pass the Better Care Reconciliation Act, which some Republicans say would repeal and replace Obamacare. The Republican-controlled House passed a bill in March that also purportedly repealed and replaced Obamacare.

Sanders lectured “nobody can predict exactly how many people will die if they lose their [health insurance] coverage.”

Matt Vespa at Townhall astutely observes:

There is a difference between policy impact and that of a fully fueled 747 crashing into a building and killing thousands. It’s a gross overreach in health scare tactics, though we all know that Sanders is just waiting for this bill to fail, so he could put forward his single payer bill.

I like to point out to those single-payer system enthusiasts that we already have beta tested such a plan — it’s called the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. How is that working out?