TRUMP, THE GREAT EQUIVOCATER.

 David Nakamura writes. “... pundits [joked] that after eight years of [Barack Obama’s] cautious foreign policy, the U.S. was no longer ‘leading from behind.’ ...Trump’s remarks at the [NATO] event celebrating the Article 5 mutual defense treaty left the impression of a president who continues to lead from the side — with one foot in and one foot out when it comes to U.S. multilateral commitments. 

Whether it’s NATO, the Paris climate pact, the Iran nuclear deal or the NAFTA trade accord, the Trump administration has wavered and equivocated, failing to offer a full-throated endorsement and allowing such agreements to continue in an awkward state of limbo without U.S. leadership and nourishment. Thursday’s ceremony … was supposed to put an end to the uncertainty among U.S. allies and partners in Europe. Trump’s aides had laid the groundwork, hinting [that Trump] would directly endorse Article 5. Instead, [he] found no space to do so in his 900-word address.”

-- For NATO countries, the upshot is their relations with the Trump administration continue to be defined by uncertainty and anxiety even as the president wraps up a foreign trip that was intended to reaffirm U.S. global leadership: ...Ian Bremmer, president of a global risk consulting firm ... [said] Trump’s posture “makes it more likely these countries are going their own way … There will be some move towards more coordination of European-only security, and there will be less coordination with the United States."

A TROUBLING GOP WIN IN MONTANA

Janie Osborne/Getty Images

WASHINGTON POST

A troubling victory for Republicans in Montana. Gianforte’s victory after assaulting reporter reflects rising tribalism in American politics.

Greg Gianforte admitted to attacking a reporter and apologized during his victory speech last night, as he kept Montana’s sole House seat in Republican hands.

On the eve of the special election, the wealthy technology entrepreneur flipped out when the Guardian’s Ben Jacobs asked him about the CBO’s score of the health care bill. He now faces misdemeanor assault charges for reportedly throwing Jacobs to the ground and breaking his glasses.

“I made a mistake,” the congressman-elect said at his party in Bozeman. “Not in our minds!” yelled a supporter. David Weigel, who was there, reports that some in the crowd laughed.

-- After his ... six-point victory, Republican congressional leaders are making clear there will be no meaningful consequences for his behavior. 

-----

Many rank-and-file Republican voters, who follow the cues and signals of their leaders, defended their nominee’s behavior. “I understand the frustration of someone being right in your face,” Luanne Biggs, who voted for Gianforte, told the Bozeman Daily Chronicle. “I feel like it’s a little set up.”

CNN correspondent Kyung Lah went to a polling place to interview voters and reported that nearly everyone she talked with said they weren’t changing their vote.

----

The Montana NBC Affiliate reportedly refused to cover the Gianforte story at all on Wednesday night, a shocking blackout. Irate sources inside 30 Rock appear to have called up New York Magazine’s Yashar Ali to complain: “KECI news director Julie Weindel was called by NBC News to see if KECI would cover the story or had any footage of the Gianforte incident that NBC News and its affiliates could use. … She was unyielding in her refusal to share any footage she may have had access to, or run a report on the story. … Weindel said ... ‘The person that tweeted [Jacobs] and was allegedly body slammed is a reporter for a politically biased publication.’  

The station was acquired, last month, by the conservative media conglomerate Sinclair Broadcasting.”

Sinclair Broadcast Group, one of the nation's largest local TV station operators, will pay about $3.9 billion for Tribune Media, adding more than 40 stations including KTLA in Los Angeles, WPIX in New York and WGN in Chicago. (Steve Ruark/AP)

-- Here’s why that’s a big deal: Sinclair Broadcasting just struck a deal with Tribune Media to buy dozens of local TV stations. “Already, Sinclair is the largest owner of local TV stations in the nation. If the $3.9 billion deal gets regulatory approval, Sinclair would have 7 of every 10 Americans in its potential audience,” Margaret Sullivan explained in a column last weekend. “Sinclair would have 215 stations, including ones in big markets such as Los Angeles, New York City [WPIX] and Chicago, instead of the 173 it has now. There’s no reason to think that the FCC’s new chairman, Ajit Pai, will stand in the way. Already, his commission has reinstated a regulatory loophole — closed under his predecessor, Tom Wheeler — that allows a single corporation to own more stations than the current 39 percent nationwide cap…

Ajit Pai, chairman of the U.S Federal Communications Commission,  (Eric Gaillard/Reuters)

“When Sinclair bought Washington’s WJLA-TV in 2014, the new owners quickly moved the station to the right … It added conservative commentary pieces from a Sinclair executive, Mark Hyman, and public affairs programming with conservative hosts. (The deal would give Sinclair a second Washington station, WDCW.) And Sinclair regularly sends ‘must-run’ segments to its stations across the country. One example: an opinion piece by a Sinclair executive that echoed President Trump’s slam at the national news media and what he calls the ‘fake news’ they produce…

“During the presidential campaign, Trump’s message came through loud and clear on Sinclair’s stations, many of which are in small or medium-sized markets in battleground states such as Wisconsin, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, even bragged, according to Politico, that the campaign cut a deal with the media conglomerate for uninterrupted coverage of some Trump appearances. Is there a link between such content — and the expectation of more — and the loosening of federal rules?”

The darker forces that propelled President Trump’s rise are beginning to frame and define the rest of the Republican Party,” Karen Tumulty and Robert Costa explain. “When Gianforte assaulted a reporter … many saw not an isolated outburst by an individual, but the obvious, violent result of Trump’s charge that journalists are ‘the enemy of the people.’ …

Rob Quist, the folk-singing political neophyte who [ran] against Greg Gianforte, with Bernie Sanders. Photograph: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

VOX

• This isn’t much of a victory, though. Gianforte only won by 6 to 7 points — in a state that President Donald Trump had won by 20 points. [CNN / Lauren Fox]...This is yet another special election in which results were much tighter than they were just a few months prior during the presidential election.
• By some estimates, the recent special elections suggest Democrats have a 14-point advantage in the current political climate. That’s more than they had in 2006 and 2008, when they swept the House and Senate races. [Twitter / Nate Silver]
• Even before Gianforte attacked a reporter, there were signs the election was getting closer. So Republicans can’t just blame the close race on the altercation. [The Guardian / Ben Jacobs]

President’s job approval moves decidedly downward.

Monmouth University Polling Institute

...There can be no doubt that Trump has inflicted a great deal of political damage on himself. Already beset by low poll ratings and a perception that his Administration was sputtering along, the events of the past two weeks have further undermined his position. In the daily Gallup poll, his approval rating stands at thirty-eight per cent. Even more worrying for him and other Republicans, his support appears to be eroding most in parts of the country that are politically competitive. A Monmouth University poll that was released on Thursday showed that in the three hundred counties he won by ten points or less in November, his approval rating has dropped from forty-one per cent to thirty-four per cent, and his disapproval rating has risen from forty-six per cent to fifty-four per cent. “Trump has been losing support in the places that matter most,” Patrick Murray, the director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute, said.

How GOP gerrymandering is protecting Trump.

GOP control of Congress is Trump's best defense, and gerrymandering could save it in 2018.





WASHINGTON POST

MR. TRUMP GOES TO NATO

President Trump’s foreign trip had been, until Thursday, surprisingly light on crises. Then the NATO summit happened.

• 
  Trump, you may recall, was skeptical of NATO on the campaign trail — provoking serious concern that, should Russia strike a NATO member, he wouldn’t help strike back. [Vox / Zeeshan Aleem] 
• His speech Thursday was expected to clear up that worry by explicitly endorsing Article V of the NATO Charter, which promises mutual defense. He ... did not do that. And everyone promptly panicked. [Vox / Zeeshan Aleem] :

Stefan Rousseau - Pool/Getty Images

• President Trump promised NATO leaders that the U.S. would “never forsake” them, but also reminded them of their duty to pay a fair share of the costs. Trump used the occasion of his maiden summit with NATO leaders to remind fellow members that “23 of the 28 member nations are still not paying what they should be paying" and that they owe “massive amounts” from past years. The ceremony in Brussels was supposed to end uncertainty among American allies in Europe, but the president’s remarks instead left the impression of the U.S. having one foot in and one foot out on NATO and other global obligations.

• In practice, US troops are already committed in NATO activities, so Trump’s personal feelings on Article V might not be that relevant. But it’s still an unnecessary drama at best, and a reason to trust the US less at worst. [War on the Rocks / Sara Bjerg Moller] 
• The discord was palpable even in the body language, which included an awkward handshake with one world leader and a little jostling with another. 

• Trump appears to yank on Macron's arm, but the two smile afterward. A Trumpshake once again.
• [Trump]...appears to have called the Germans “bad” and complained about the number of BMWs being bought by Americans... [Quartz / Max de Haldevang] 
• .and shoved aside the prime minister of Montenegro to get the central position in a photo  [USA Today / Jessica Estepa]

All of this happened as the UK, which is livid at the US government for leaking information about the Manchester attack and investigation to the press, announced that it would limit intelligence sharing with the US to prevent leaks. [Reuters / Elizabeth Piper and Estelle Chirbon] 

U.S. President Donald Trump (L) and Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May react during a ceremony at the new NATO headquarters before the start of a summit in Brussels, Belgium, May 25, 2017. REUTERS/Christian Hartmann

• The Trump administration is promising to go after the leakers. But some of the distrust isn’t of American intelligence officers. It’s of Trump himself. Before the summit, European leaders thought of him as a “laughingstock” — they may not even be laughing now. [Politico Magazine / Susan Glasser​] 

• 
  

MANCHESTER PROBE EXPANDS

The bomb's detonator. The sophistication of the device suggests it was probably not made by Abedi himself

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4542070/Salman-Abedi-filmed-putting-bins-out.html#ixzz4i91W9MJb
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook
 

The investigation into a suicide blast that killed at least 22 people at a pop concert has dramatically widened, with security services on two continents rounding up suspects amid fears that the bombmaker who devised the bolt-spewing source of the carnage remains at large. 

Griff Witte, Karla Adam and Sudarsan Raghavan report: “The arrests stretched from the normally quiet lanes of a northern English town to the bustling streets of Tripoli, where Libyan officials said they had disrupted a planned attack by the suspected bomber’s brother. But by day’s end, British authorities acknowledged that they remained vulnerable to a follow-up attack, with the nation’s state of alert stuck at ‘critical’ — the highest possible level. The sight of soldiers deploying at London landmarks such as Buckingham Palace and 10 Downing Street underscored the gravity of the threat."

• Authorities said this morning that the bomber, 22-year-old Salman Abedi, had been in Dusseldorf just four days before the bombing. "Authorities were investigating whether he was meeting with extremist contacts in Germany, ..." Griff, Karla Adam and Souad Mekhennet report.
• 
  
• Police continue to carry out raids across Manchester: The cops apprehended the bomber's older brother, Ismail, as well as another suspect carrying “a suspicious package” about 20 miles west of Manchester. Last night, authorities also arrested a female suspect in Manchester and a man in the English Midlands town of Nuneaton, bringing to seven the number of people detained in Britain in connection with the blast. ...

-- In the Libyan-British community where Abedi lived, he was known as a university dropout and loner – and members of the community had warned authorities about signs of possible radicalization more than a year ago. Rick Noack, Souad Mekhennet and Sudarsan Raghavan report.

Top Russian Officials Discussed How to Influence Trump Aides Last Summer.

Win McNamee/Getty Images

U.S. spies collected information last summer revealing that top Russian officials were discussing how to exert influence on Trump through his advisers. 

The New York Times reports: “The conversations focused on [Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn] … Both men had indirect ties to Russian officials, who appeared confident that each could be used to help shape Mr. Trump’s opinions on Russia. Some Russians boasted about how well they knew Mr. Flynn. Others discussed leveraging their ties to Viktor F. Yanukovych, the deposed president of Ukraine living in exile in Russia, who at one time had worked closely with Mr. Manafort. The intelligence was among the clues — which also included information about direct communications between Mr. Trump’s advisers and Russian officials — that American officials received last year as they began investigating Russian attempts to disrupt the election…

“By early summer, American intelligence officials already were fairly certain that it was Russian hackers who had stolen tens of thousands of emails from the Democratic Party and Clinton’s campaign. That in itself was not viewed as particularly extraordinary by the Americans … But the concerns began to grow when intelligence began trickling in about Russian officials weighing whether they should release stolen emails and other information to shape American opinion — to, in essence, weaponize the materials stolen by hackers.”

JIM COMEY'S UNFORCED ERROR COULD HAVE COST HILLARY THE ELECTION.

 (Cliff Owen/AP)

-- “How a dubious Russian document influenced the FBI’s handling of the Clinton probe,”

 by Karoun Demirjian and Devlin Barrett: “A secret document that officials say played a key role in then-FBI Director James B. Comey’s handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation has long been viewed within the FBI as unreliable and possibly a fake … In the midst of the 2016 presidential primary season, the FBI received what was described as a Russian intelligence document claiming a tacit understanding between the Clinton campaign and the Justice Department over the inquiry into whether she intentionally revealed classified information through her use of a private email server. The Russian document cited a supposed email describing how then-Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch had privately assured someone in the Clinton campaign that the email investigation would not push too deeply into the matter…

“Current and former officials have said that Comey relied on the document in making his July decision to announce on his own, without Justice Department involvement, that the investigation was over. That public announcement — in which he criticized Clinton and made extensive comments about the evidence — set in motion a chain of other FBI moves that Democrats now say helped Trump win the presidential election…

“But according to the FBI’s own assessment, the document was bad intelligence — and according to people familiar with its contents, possibly even a fake sent to confuse the bureau. The Americans mentioned in the Russian document insist they do not know each other, do not speak to each other and never had any conversations remotely like the ones described in the document. Investigators have long doubted its veracity, and by August the FBI had concluded it was unreliable.” (Read the whole article.)

REBOOBLICAN UNFORCED ERROR #23 MILLION

Consider these four top-line projections from the CBO:

-- 23 million: The House health-care bill would leave 23 million more Americans uninsured by 2026 than under current lay — only a million fewer than the estimate for the House’s previous bill, which was withdrawn because it didn’t cover enough people. Juliet Eilperin and Kelsey Snell report on the front page of today’s Post: “The new score, which reflects last-minute revisions that Republicans made to win over several conservative lawmakers and a handful of moderates, calculates that the American Health Care Act would reduce the federal deficit by $119 billion between 2017 and 2026. That represents a smaller reduction than the $150 billion CBO estimated in late March.”

-- 14 million: The CBO projects that the number of uninsured Americans would jump by 14 million in the first year after the House bill became law. Direct quote from the report: “Although the agencies expect that the legislation would increase the number of uninsured broadly, the increase would be disproportionately larger among older people with lower income—particularly people between 50 and 64 years old with income of less than 200 percent of the federal poverty level." 

 850 percent: “That's the CBO's estimate of how much insurance premiums would rise for elderly, poor people over the next decade if the second version of this Republican bill became law,” Amber Phillips notes. “In a report filled with brutal numbers for Republicans, this may be the most brutal. (Just like it was in the first estimate.) Republicans said their bill will make health insurance cheaper. Except, they'll have to figure out a way to explain why, under Obamacare, 64-year-olds making $26,500 a year are on track to pay $1,700 in annual premiums in 2026. And under the GOP bill, they would pay anywhere between $13,600 to $16,100." 

 One-in-six Americans could lose coverage for pre-existing conditions: “Amendments in the bill allow states to opt out of key ACA provisions such as protections for people with preexisting conditions....,” Kim Soffen and Kevin Uhrmacher report. 

The numbers above underscore how hard it will be to pass a bill through the Senate.

REBOOBLICAN UNFORCED ERROR #3:

Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney holds a briefing May 22. (Jim Bourg/Reuters)

 It also came out yesterday that the debt limit will be reached way sooner than Republicans leaders planned/hoped for. 

OMB director Mick Mulvaney revealed that tax receipts are coming in “slower than expected” and that the federal government could run out of cash months before it had thought. A few hours later, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin echoed these concerns, telling a House committee: “I urge you to raise the debt limit before you leave for the summer.” ...(Damian Paletta and Max Ehrenfreund have more.)

The House Freedom Caucus replied with a statement expressing opposition to any increase in the debt limit without further cuts to the budget. That threat means Democratic votes will likely be required to prevent the U.S. from defaulting, which gives Nancy Pelosi leverage.

More significantly, an intra-party conflict over raising the debt ceiling makes it harder for Republicans to pass bills they really care about. (Keeping the government solvent does not count as an accomplishment...)

Bigger picture, there is mounting concern among senior Republicans that, from a legislative standpoint, the party will have no big-ticket items to show off after a year of unified control.

REBOOBLICAN UNFORCED ERROR #2:

Trump confers with Jeff Sessions last week. (Evan Vucci/AP)

Jeff Sessions concealed his contacts with Russian officials when filling out his security clearance form to be the nation’s highest-ranking law enforcement official. 

Sari Horwitz reports: “Sessions came under fire earlier this year for not disclosing to the Senate Judiciary Committee during his confirmation hearing that … he met twice with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the presidential election … In March, Sessions recused himself from investigations related to the 2016 presidential campaign after The Washington Post reported the two meetings. … The security clearance form requires anyone applying for a security clearance to list ‘any contact’ that he or his family had with a foreign government or its representatives over the past seven years.”

CNN's Manu Raju and Evan Perez, who broke the story last night, explain the DOJ's damage-control effort: "Sessions initially listed a year's worth of meetings with foreign officials on the security clearance form, according to (Sessions) spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores. But she (claims) that he and his staff were then told by an FBI employee who assisted in filling out the form ... that he didn't need to list dozens of meetings with foreign ambassadors that happened in his capacity as a senator. ... A legal expert who regularly assists officials in filling out the form disagrees with the Justice Department's explanation, suggesting that Sessions should have disclosed the meetings.”

Sessions was supposed to appear before two congressional committees this week, but he abruptly canceled both on Monday.

REBOOBLICAN UNFORCED ERRORS CONTINUE.

UNFORCED ERROR #1

Greg Gianforte, the Republican nominee in today’s special congressional election in Montana, has been charged with misdemeanor assault after allegedly “body slamming” a reporter for the Guardian. Gianforte, who has been seen as the favorite in the race to succeed Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, faces a maximum $500 fine or six months in jail if he is convicted, Dave Weigel reports from Montana.

In an audio recording published by the Guardian, reporter Ben Jacobs can be heard asking Gianforte to respond to the Congressional Budget Office's new score of the American Health Care Act. After Gianforte tells Jacobs to ask his spokesman, the candidate loses it and begins to scream: “I’m sick and tired of you guys! … Get the hell out of here! Get the hell out of here!”

A Fox News crew was in the room when it happened, and veteran correspondent Alicia Acuna has written a damning first-person account: “Gianforte grabbed Jacobs by the neck with both hands and slammed him into the ground behind him. At no point did any of us who witnessed this assault see Jacobs show any form of physical aggression toward Gianforte.”

The unapologetic campaign released a defiant statement that attempted to slime the respected reporter as a “liberal.” His spokesman claimed that Gianforte asked Jacobs to lower the recorder before he got physical, but the audio tape and the eyewitness accounts undercut this version of events.

Two of the state’s largest newspapers quickly withdrew their editorial endorsements of Gianforte....

But, but, but: Heavy early voting means that Gianforte may win anyway. Perversely, a physical altercation with a reporter might also help him coalesce/gin up his base. (Donald Trump won Montana last November by 20 points.) “What turnout will look like in a special election is hard to predict, but if it’s similar to 2014, 62 percent of votes have already been cast early,” Philip Bump explains. 

Bottom line: In many ways, it is now worse for national Republicans if Gianforte wins. If he loses, the NRCC can pretty easily explain it away by calling him a terrible candidate. The incident makes it harder for anyone to draw conclusions about the broader national political environment from the outcome. If he wins, though, Gianforte suddenly becomes another headache for Paul Ryan. The ongoing legal issue will be covered as a major story, and his every move in the Capitol will be tracked aggressively by the press. He becomes a liability for the party in 2018, especially if his new colleagues defend him.

TERROR IN THE U.K., DAY 2

The family of the Manchester suicide bomber have links to terror networks around the world, it has been revealed. Salman Abedi killed 22 people and injured at least 119 more when he detonated a bomb on Monday night as children were piling out of Manchester Arena having watched Ariana Grande. His father Ramadan and younger brother Hashem were in custody in Libya last night after being arrested by counter-terror police. Detectives said Hashem had links to ISIS and was planning to carry out a terror attack in Tripoli. Hashem was accused of having known about his brother's murderous plans for more than a month, while it emerged his father had been a revolutionary fighter who publicly voiced support for an Al Qaeda-linked group in Syria. A third relative, Abedi's older brother Ismail, was arrested in Manchester. It is not known what his involvement, if any, was. He was once reported to a counter- terrorism unit after concerns were raised by members of the Muslim community. Last night, attention focused on how the bomber had been allowed to slip through the net. Key warnings about his descent into jihadism were apparently overlooked.   Daily Mail


 “In suburban Manchester, a search for what might have motivated the attacker,” by Rick Noack and Souad Mekhennet: “With its red brick buildings, large villas and green lawns, the Fallowfield area of southern Manchester might appear to be an unlikely location ... But on Tuesday, police forces launched at least three operations (here) in connection with the devastating attack four miles away in the north of Manchester. In other communities at the center of recent terrorism investigations — such as the Molenbeek district of Brussels and some Parisian suburbs — authorities have openly acknowledged problems with Islamist extremism. Poverty, crime and high unemployment in these areas have long played into the hands of radicals, they say. Manchester is different. Suburbs such as Fallowfield are mostly culturally or ethnically diverse and wealthy, with little to suggest that neighborhoods there have dealt with extremism for years. ... More recently, however, authorities have largely lost the ability to monitor terrorism suspects during their visits to mosques or community centers. Instead, groups of friends or acquaintances are meeting in apartments, making it nearly impossible for Britain’s stretched security services to monitor suspects, a dynamic that could explain the seemingly sudden emergence of groups of radicalized individuals."