WTF Just Happened Today

Friday, December 20, 2019

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1/ Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney is expected to leave his position after the Senate impeachment trial. Trump aides have been circulating a list of replacements and trying to nudge Trump to choose Mulvaney's successor. Rep. Mark Meadows, who announced his retirement this week, is believed to be in the running to replace Mulvaney. Despite holding what has historically been one of the most powerful jobs in the White House, Mulvaney has largely been excluded from major personnel and policy decisions and he no longer holds much control over White House staff. (Politico / Talking Points Memo)

2/ Trump once told White House officials that he believed Ukraine — not Russia — interfered in the 2016 election because "Putin told me." Trump, following a private meeting with Putin in 2017 at the G20 summit, repeatedly insisted that Ukraine tried to stop him from winning the election and that he believed Putin that Russia had not interfered in the 2016 campaign. As many as 15 former Trump and government officials said they're confounded by Trump's fixation on Ukraine despite the intelligence community's assessment that Russia interfered in the 2016 election. This fall, intelligence officials concluded that Russian propagandists spread the Ukraine theory on social media. (Washington Post / CNN / MSNBC)

3/ The federal prosecutor scrutinizing the Russia investigation is examining former CIA director John Brennan's role surrounding the intelligence community's assessment that Russian interfered in the 2016 election. U.S. Attorney John Durham requested Brennan's emails, call logs, and other documents from the CIA, and wants to know what Brennan told other intelligence officials, including James Comey, about the Steele dossier and the relationships between Russia and Trump associates. Durham is also looking into whether Brennan privately contradicted his public statements and his 2017 testimony to Congress about the dossier and the debate within the intelligence community over their conclusions regarding Russian election interference. Attorney General William Barr appointed Durham to re-examine the origins of the FBI's Russia investigation. (New York Times)

• Facebook removed more than 600 accounts tied to the pro-Trump conspiracy website that programmatically created false accounts to spread disinformation. (NBC News)

4/ A prominent evangelical Christian magazine called Trump "a near perfect example of a human being who is morally lost and confused" and that he "should be removed from office." In an editorial, Christianity Today called Trump's actions "not only a violation of the Constitution; more importantly, it is profoundly immoral." Trump responded by lashing out on Twitter, calling it a "far left" magazine that "knows nothing about reading a perfect transcript of a routine phone call and would rather have a Radical Left nonbeliever, who wants to take your religion & your guns, than Donald Trump as your President." Trump added – without e...

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