BY PRIYANKA ARIBINDI, BRIAN BEUTLER
& CROOKED MEDIA

Friday, March 9, 2018

(Source: The Chicago Tribune)

DEAL OR NO DEAL

This afternoon, Sarah Huckabee Sanders appeared to pump the brakes on talks with North Korea, insisting that leader Kim Jong Un must take “concrete actions” to denuclearize before a meeting. However, just hours later, Trump tweeted “the deal with North Korea is very much in the making...time and place to be determined.” It’s almost as if—stick with us here—this was a haphazard decision made without any real planning so no one in the White House, let alone the rest of the administration, has a clue what to say or do.

As of Friday evening, North Korea has yet to confirm the offer to meet with Trump, or to make any public commitments on denuclearization efforts. Our understanding of these promises comes from South Korean officials who had met with North Koreans earlier this month. 

Crooked Media’s Take: We’re glad that Trump has chosen to take a risky diplomatic step instead of a military one, but these negotiations are highly technical and historically take years, not weeks. If the U.S. is going to give North Korea the meeting it has wanted for decades, that decision needs to result in verifiable proof that North Korea is dismantling its nuclear weapons program. In order to reach an agreement like that, Kim Jong Un would have to allow on-the-ground inspections, removal of nuclear material, and a host of other requirements to ensure North Korea is not and cannot make a nuclear weapon. 

But it’s not clear that the U.S. and North Korea have the same expectations or goals and the stakes couldn’t be higher—the intelligence community estimates Kim has up to 60 nukes. By comparison, the Iran deal took seven years of sanctions, diplomacy, secret talks, and active negotiations. Obama didn’t do it alone. There’s no reason to believe Trump can wing this and be successful. 

MEETING OF THE MINDS

Trump’s lawyers are considering offering Special Counsel Mueller a sit-down interview with Trump as part of a deal to end his Russia investigation. One possible deal would only grant an interview if Mueller commits to ending the Russia investigation 60 days after the interview. Trump’s legal team is also trying to limit the scope of Mueller’s questioning, which they expect to focus on Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey and his former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. Sure, pal. No hard questions and stop the investigation. Anything else? Should Mueller pick up McDonald’s for you?

Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen used his Trump Organization email address to communicate with Stormy Daniels before paying her $130,000 in hush money. The Washington Post reports “federal election law was almost certainly violated” because the address belongs to the Trump Organization and the payment to Daniels was made to silence her in order to facilitate Trump’s victory in the election. Cohen responded that he used his business account for personal matters and that the funds came from a home equity line of credit. May you have in your life a stooge so dumb and loyal that he uses the money from his home loan to hide your secrets.

The U.S. added 313,000 new jobs last month, but strong growth still isn’t translating to higher wages. Average hourly pay is only up 2.6% from last year. According to the Economic Policy Institute, wage increases need to be greater than 3.5% “for workers to claw back losses... they’ve felt during and since the Great Recession.”

Florida governor Rick Scott broke from the NRA to sign a gun control and school safety bill that raises the minimum purchase age to 21, creates a three-day waiting period before most purchases of long guns, and bans bump stocks, among other things. It also creates a program to arm some teachers. Following the announcement, the NRA filed a federal lawsuit challenging the legislation raising the purchase age. (P.S. The bill certainly wasn’t everything Parkland students asked for, but does anyone think it would’ve happened without their activism?)

The DNC is considering eliminating superdelegates in the presidential nomination process. In 2016, superdelegates were the 714 delegates (often party elites) who could support any presidential candidate they wanted at the national party convention, regardless of who the Democratic voters in their respective states supported. The rest of the party’s 4,000-plus delegates were “pledged delegates,” or those who had to vote in accordance with the state’s results. 

Trump tweeted that Australia would join Mexico and Canada in receiving an exemption from his steel and aluminum import tariffs. 

“Pharma bro” Martin Shkreli was sentenced to seven years in prison for securities fraud. Shkreli is notorious for raising the price of a lifesaving HIV drug by more than 5000%. Just one of the many reasons why his lawyer wanted to punch him in the face. 

On Pod Save America: Jon, Jon, Tommy, Dan, and Pod Save the People’s Brittany Packnett hit up Houston to take on this week’s onslaught of breaking news. Plus, we play “Shut Up and Dribble” with former NFL player Arian Foster.

Listen→

Trump had Fox News host Jesse Watters and his former deputy assistant Seb Gorka over for dinner at the White House this week because “he couldn’t get enough of them on TV.” An unnamed source said “it was so lit.” The worst people are having a great time.

False stories are 70% more likely to be retweeted than actual, verified news, according to a new MIT study. They’re also more likely to go viral, reach people six times faster than the truth, and often perform best when the news is political. Most alarming: These falsehoods proliferate “because humans, not robots, are more likely to spread it.”

The Parkland kids call NRA spokeswoman Dana Loesch “the woman from the Super Beet commercials” because they watch this video of her hawking beet juice on repeat and laugh.

Oopsie doopsie: Yesterday we included a tweet from one of our favorite parody accounts, DPRK News. We thought everyone would know it was a joke. We did not think North Korea tweeted a picture of Donald Trump looking for a golf ball. We will be more clear in the future.