Help
Duration: {{video.duration.momentjs}}
-
Playlist
Playlist
-
Full Episodes
Full Episodes
The Rachel Maddow Show
Now playing
Tuesday, 05/23/17Watch the full episode of Tuesday night's The Rachel Maddow Show.
-
- Information
-
- Information
-
-
comments
Rachel Maddow StoriesRSS
In the past two weeks, reporters have been arrested, pinned against a wall, and now body slammed -- all for trying to ask a question.
— Michael Calderone (@mlcalderone) May 25, 2017
Arrested for asking @SecPriceMD a Q: https://t.co/mm6AJL1D5K
— Charles Ornstein (@charlesornstein) May 25, 2017
Pinned at @FCC: https://t.co/0jXz4IWgDk
Body slammed: https://t.co/hpIm3e8S54 https://t.co/5CcGNp7PPw
For some reason this @Bencjacobs article from a few weeks ago seems very popular tonight ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ https://t.co/00FBnXHK2n
— The Guardian (@guardian) May 25, 2017
Wednesday's Mini-Report, 5.24.17
Today's edition of quick hits:
* Manchester: "The suicide bomber who killed 22 people after an Ariana Grande concert was part of a network that included his brother, who was arrested Wednesday as he was allegedly plotting a terrorist attack on the Libyan capital of Tripoli."
* Low expectations: "President Trump arrived in Belgium on Wednesday for an audience with the nation's king, a day ahead of meetings with leaders of alliances he once derided as irrelevant — and many top officials here say they will count it a success if there are no blowups during the visit."
* Nice one, Pope Francis: "During an initially awkward meeting in Vatican City, Francis presented President Trump with a signed copy of 'Laudato Si' -- the pontiff's 192-page work calling for a new partnership between science and religion to combat human-driven climate change. In doing so, the pope seemed to make a clear statement to a president who once called climate change a Chinese plot and is on the cusp of deciding whether to honor the Paris agreement on addressing global warming."
* We may need to talk about this: "White House Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney on Wednesday said that tax receipts were coming in 'slower than expected' and that the federal government could run out of cash sooner than it had thought."
* What will I do with my unpublished item on why this would've been a ridiculous idea? "Former U.S. senator Joe Lieberman, who had risen to the top of President Trump's list of candidates to serve as the next FBI director, has fallen from the top tier amid concerns about bipartisan pushback to his nomination."
* The debate on this is overdue: "Forty Republican representatives who voted for the American Health Care Act held shares in health-care companies valued at $23 million and earned more than $2 million off those investments, a Daily Beast review of the most-recent financial records found."
read more
* Manchester: "The suicide bomber who killed 22 people after an Ariana Grande concert was part of a network that included his brother, who was arrested Wednesday as he was allegedly plotting a terrorist attack on the Libyan capital of Tripoli."
* Low expectations: "President Trump arrived in Belgium on Wednesday for an audience with the nation's king, a day ahead of meetings with leaders of alliances he once derided as irrelevant — and many top officials here say they will count it a success if there are no blowups during the visit."
* Nice one, Pope Francis: "During an initially awkward meeting in Vatican City, Francis presented President Trump with a signed copy of 'Laudato Si' -- the pontiff's 192-page work calling for a new partnership between science and religion to combat human-driven climate change. In doing so, the pope seemed to make a clear statement to a president who once called climate change a Chinese plot and is on the cusp of deciding whether to honor the Paris agreement on addressing global warming."
* We may need to talk about this: "White House Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney on Wednesday said that tax receipts were coming in 'slower than expected' and that the federal government could run out of cash sooner than it had thought."
* What will I do with my unpublished item on why this would've been a ridiculous idea? "Former U.S. senator Joe Lieberman, who had risen to the top of President Trump's list of candidates to serve as the next FBI director, has fallen from the top tier amid concerns about bipartisan pushback to his nomination."
* The debate on this is overdue: "Forty Republican representatives who voted for the American Health Care Act held shares in health-care companies valued at $23 million and earned more than $2 million off those investments, a Daily Beast review of the most-recent financial records found."
read more
CBO: Republican plan would take health coverage from 23 million
The good news for House Republicans is that they won't have to vote again on their far-right health care plan. The bad news for GOP lawmakers is that the Congressional Budget Office's final report on the American Health Care Act shows that the party's plan would be disastrous for much of the country.
Here's the key paragraph in the CBO's newly published report:
Here's the key paragraph in the CBO's newly published report:
CBO and [the Joint Committee on Taxation] estimate that, in 2018, 14 million more people would be uninsured under [the House Republican health plan] than under current law. The increase in the number of uninsured people relative to the number projected under current law would reach 19 million in 2020 and 23 million in 2026.
Or put another way, if the House GOP plan became law, the ranks of the American uninsured would jump next year by 14 million Americans. Over the course of the decade, that number would grow to 23 million.
Keep in mind, if Congress simply took a sledgehammer to the Affordable Care Act, and replaced it with nothing, the CBO has found that 23 million Americans would lose their health coverage -- suggesting the Republican plan is comparable to doing nothing except destroying without legislating.
It gets worse. The new report that because the Republican proposal guts protections for essential-health benefits, people living in effected states "would experience substantial increases in out-of-pocket spending on health care or would choose to forgo the services." This would have a particular impact on those who rely on "maternity care, mental health and substance abuse benefits, rehabilitative and habilitative services, and pediatric dental benefits," who would be forced to pay "thousands of dollars" more than under the ACA.
read more
Keep in mind, if Congress simply took a sledgehammer to the Affordable Care Act, and replaced it with nothing, the CBO has found that 23 million Americans would lose their health coverage -- suggesting the Republican plan is comparable to doing nothing except destroying without legislating.
It gets worse. The new report that because the Republican proposal guts protections for essential-health benefits, people living in effected states "would experience substantial increases in out-of-pocket spending on health care or would choose to forgo the services." This would have a particular impact on those who rely on "maternity care, mental health and substance abuse benefits, rehabilitative and habilitative services, and pediatric dental benefits," who would be forced to pay "thousands of dollars" more than under the ACA.
read more
At what point does the Russia scandal become too hot for the GOP?
The investigation into Donald Trump's Russia scandal is ongoing, but what we already know is rather breathtaking.
A foreign adversary attacked our election and helped elect its favored candidate. The president's claims that no one from his team was in contact with Russia during its attack have been discredited. The president fired the director of the FBI because of his dissatisfaction with the ongoing investigation. Before the firing, the president reportedly urged the FBI director to go easy on his disgraced former national security advisor, who remains at the center of the controversy, and who's already pleaded the Fifth.
This week, we learned Trump also reportedly urged the director of national intelligence and the director the National Security Administration to publicly comment on the ongoing federal investigation, while White House officials "sounded out top intelligence officials about the possibility of intervening directly" with the then-FBI director in order to "encourage the FBI to drop its probe of Michael Flynn." Yesterday, the former director of the CIA pointed to "contacts and interactions" between Russia and the Trump campaign that he found alarming, despite Trump's assurances that no such communications occurred.
To borrow a cliché, we've worked our way through the smoke and arrived at some fire. Standing above the flame is a sitting president who seems eager to boast, "Look at this yuge fire I set. Isn't it tremendous?"
Under the circumstances, the question isn't whether Trump has put his presidency in jeopardy; it's what more congressional Republicans need to see before they agree it's time for Trump's term to meet a premature end. As of yesterday, GOP lawmakers, who are well aware of each of the aforementioned details, effectively said they're not yet close to the threshold. Mother Jones' David Corn reported:
A foreign adversary attacked our election and helped elect its favored candidate. The president's claims that no one from his team was in contact with Russia during its attack have been discredited. The president fired the director of the FBI because of his dissatisfaction with the ongoing investigation. Before the firing, the president reportedly urged the FBI director to go easy on his disgraced former national security advisor, who remains at the center of the controversy, and who's already pleaded the Fifth.
This week, we learned Trump also reportedly urged the director of national intelligence and the director the National Security Administration to publicly comment on the ongoing federal investigation, while White House officials "sounded out top intelligence officials about the possibility of intervening directly" with the then-FBI director in order to "encourage the FBI to drop its probe of Michael Flynn." Yesterday, the former director of the CIA pointed to "contacts and interactions" between Russia and the Trump campaign that he found alarming, despite Trump's assurances that no such communications occurred.
To borrow a cliché, we've worked our way through the smoke and arrived at some fire. Standing above the flame is a sitting president who seems eager to boast, "Look at this yuge fire I set. Isn't it tremendous?"
Under the circumstances, the question isn't whether Trump has put his presidency in jeopardy; it's what more congressional Republicans need to see before they agree it's time for Trump's term to meet a premature end. As of yesterday, GOP lawmakers, who are well aware of each of the aforementioned details, effectively said they're not yet close to the threshold. Mother Jones' David Corn reported:
The Republicans still are not serious about investigating the Trump-Russia scandal. That message came through resoundingly when the House Intelligence Committee held a public hearing on Tuesday morning with former CIA chief John Brennan. [...]
Yet once again Republicans did not focus on the main elements of the story. When the Republicans on the committee had the chance to question Brennan, they did not press him for more details on Russia's information warfare against the United States. Instead, they fixated on protecting Trump.
At the hearing, one House Republican, Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), sincerely tried to push the line that Russia actually used President Obama, not Trump, as a tool.
read more
read more
Wednesday's Campaign Round-Up, 5.24.17
Today's installment of campaign-related news items from across the country.
* For the first time this year, Democrats flipped a Republican seat in a legislative special election, narrowly winning a GOP seat yesterday in New Hampshire's state House.
* On a related note, about an hour later, we learned that Democrats also flipped a Republican seat in a New York special election, unexpectedly winning a state legislative seat on Long Island that voted heavily for Donald Trump in November.
* Montana's congressional special election is tomorrow, and Vice President Mike Pence has recorded a robo-call for Republicans in support of Greg Gianforte.
* Reflecting on the special election races, DCCC Chairman Ben Ray Luján told reporters yesterday that the party faces "a tough road in Montana," though Rob Quist "continues to run a strong, Montana-focused campaign." Moments later, Lujan announced a $2 million investment in support of Jon Ossoff's campaign in Georgia.
* Despite the popularity of Maine's ranked-choice voting system -- better known as instant-runoff balloting -- the state Supreme Court yesterday unanimously struck down the voter-approved policy.
* Undeterred by Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker's (R) approval ratings, Newton Mayor Setti Warren (D), an Iraq War veteran, launched his 2018 gubernatorial campaign the other day.
read more
* For the first time this year, Democrats flipped a Republican seat in a legislative special election, narrowly winning a GOP seat yesterday in New Hampshire's state House.
* On a related note, about an hour later, we learned that Democrats also flipped a Republican seat in a New York special election, unexpectedly winning a state legislative seat on Long Island that voted heavily for Donald Trump in November.
* Montana's congressional special election is tomorrow, and Vice President Mike Pence has recorded a robo-call for Republicans in support of Greg Gianforte.
* Reflecting on the special election races, DCCC Chairman Ben Ray Luján told reporters yesterday that the party faces "a tough road in Montana," though Rob Quist "continues to run a strong, Montana-focused campaign." Moments later, Lujan announced a $2 million investment in support of Jon Ossoff's campaign in Georgia.
* Despite the popularity of Maine's ranked-choice voting system -- better known as instant-runoff balloting -- the state Supreme Court yesterday unanimously struck down the voter-approved policy.
* Undeterred by Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker's (R) approval ratings, Newton Mayor Setti Warren (D), an Iraq War veteran, launched his 2018 gubernatorial campaign the other day.
read more
Team Trump struggles to explain its 'egregious' math error
One of the most glaring problems with Donald Trump's new budget plan is that its architects are bad at arithmetic. Politico's Michael Grunwald explained:
Budget proposals always involve some guesswork into the unknowable, and administrations routinely massage numbers to their political advantage. But this proposal is unusually brazen in its defiance of basic math, and in its accounting discrepancies amounting to trillions-with-a-t rather than mere millions or billions. [...]
Trump critics in the budget-wonk world are pointing to another $2 trillion of red ink as a blatant math error -- or, less charitably, as an Enron-style accounting fraud.
Budget fights can admittedly get a little wonky, but this one's pretty straightforward: Trump's White House unveiled a budget plan that double-counts $2 trillion. The president and his right-wing budget director, House Freedom Caucus co-founder Mick Mulvaney, specifically counts on $2 trillion in revenue to eliminate the deficit that the administration also devotes to paying for Trump's tax cuts.
Harvard economist Lawrence Summers, the former Treasury secretary and National Economic Council director in the previous two Democratic administrations, wrote in the Washington Post that this represents "the most egregious accounting error in a presidential budget in the nearly 40 years I have been tracking them." Summers added that the mistake is "a logical error of the kind that would justify failing a student in an introductory economics course."
And while this is certainly a discouraging development for those hoping the White House is capable of rudimentary governmental competence -- $2 trillion isn't exactly a rounding error -- what makes this especially fascinating to me is what Trump World is saying now that "the mystery money" problem has been exposed.
read more
Harvard economist Lawrence Summers, the former Treasury secretary and National Economic Council director in the previous two Democratic administrations, wrote in the Washington Post that this represents "the most egregious accounting error in a presidential budget in the nearly 40 years I have been tracking them." Summers added that the mistake is "a logical error of the kind that would justify failing a student in an introductory economics course."
And while this is certainly a discouraging development for those hoping the White House is capable of rudimentary governmental competence -- $2 trillion isn't exactly a rounding error -- what makes this especially fascinating to me is what Trump World is saying now that "the mystery money" problem has been exposed.
read more
Pages
About The Rachel Maddow Show
Launched in 2008, “The Rachel Maddow Show” follows the machinations of policy making in America, from local political activism to international diplomacy. Rachel Maddow looks past the distractions of political theater and stunts and focuses on the legislative proposals and policies that shape American life - as well as the people making and influencing those policies and their ultimate outcome, intended or otherwise.
