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Sarah Sanders: Lawmakers not 'smart enough' 
to read Trump's tax returns

FOCUS: Charles Pierce | The Mueller Report Is a Challenge to Congress: Save the Republic. Impeach the President.

19 April 19 Help Out, Dang It! Sorry but long slow fundraisers are the worst for everyone, and the project itself. We can easily finish this fundraiser TODAY. Why not? Marc Ash Founder, Reader Supported News Sure, I'll make a donation! Update My Monthly Donation If you would prefer to send a check: Reader Supported News PO Box 2043 Citrus Hts, CA 95611

19 April 19 It's Live on the HomePage Now: Reader Supported News ATTENTION PLEASE: URGENT CALL FOR DONATIONS - We have not yet reached the 30% mark for our April budget. At this point the lack of support is doing significant damage to the organization. In earnest. / Marc Ash, Founder Reader Supported News Sure, I'll make a donation! FOCUS: Charles Pierce | The Mueller Report Is a Challenge to Congress: Save the Republic. Impeach the President.  Charles Pierce, Esquire Pierce writes: "Subpoena them all. Put them under oath and on television. Begin impeachment inquiries on Monday." READ MORE Contribute to RSN Update My Monthly Donation

Fact Checker: Trump claims ‘big victory’ as GOP loses the House

Democracy Dies in Darkness

The truth behind the rhetoric

Trump claims ‘big victory’ as GOP loses the House President George W. Bush called it a “thumping" when Democrats took the House in the 2006 midterms. President Barack Obama called it a “shellacking” when Republicans won the House back in the midterms in 2010. President Trump called it a “big victory” after his party lost the House in this week’s midterm elections. In an after-action news conference, Trump gave a flurry of statistics about the Senate, which the GOP held, and patted himself on the back for campaigning in battleground states. His statistics were wrong or based on Senate results that are still up in the air. This was an 87-minute news conference, so there was plenty more to fact-check, including some of Trump’s well-worn claims about how his tax returns wouldn’t reveal much new information (false), how his support has soared among African Americans (nope), and how Obama allowed Russia to annex part of Ukraine (false). Magic numbers from DHS on criminals in the migrant caravan The Department of Homeland Security claims there are as many as 500 people with criminal records along the same route as the migrant caravan traveling from Central America to the U.S.-Mexico border. How do they know? That’s a great question that they can’t answer at all. Not only has the total magically evolved — first it was 300, then DHS said in response to our questions that 200 more had been identified — the way they describe this figure is so vague it could include people who are not part of the caravan and are just passing through Mexico on their own. It wouldn’t be the first time the administration comes up with fishy statistics to back up some eye-popping claim from President Trump. “We’re getting a lot of heat because, I was saying, there were some bad people in that caravan. Right? So we checked, 300 people," Trump said at a recent rally. At another rally, he said, “They gave you 300 names yesterday.” Actually, there were no names. There’s just a vague news release issued Nov. 1 titled “Myth vs. Fact: Caravan.” We gave it Three Pinocchios.

Sarah Sanders smears CNN reporter with a video doctored by conspiracy theorists 

The White House press secretary never had a stellar track record of telling the truth, but this is a new low.

Here’s a play-by-play: Trump holds a news conference and CNN’s Jim Acosta asks his usual, combative questions. Trump calls him a “rude, terrible” person. A female White House intern tries once to take Acosta’s microphone; he holds onto it. The intern tries again, forcefully reaching and tugging at the mic, but Acosta holds onto it and uses his free arm to block her reach. Acosta says, “Pardon me, ma’am," and keeps questioning Trump.

An indignant Sanders later announced that Acosta’s press pass had been yanked because the White House would “never tolerate a reporter placing his hands on a young woman just trying to do her job as a White House intern.” Gaslighting the public about an encounter everyone could see on video is nothing new for the Trump White House.

But Sanders tweeted out a video that made Acosta look much worse — since it appears to have been edited for dramatic effect. A close look at the video shows someone sped up Acosta's arm movement and appears to have inserted duplicated frames at the moment of contact with the intern, which made Acosta’s parry seem much more like a karate chop. The video was first shared by Paul Joseph Watson, known for his conspiracy-theory videos on the far-right website Infowars. (Watson claims he made the video out of a GIF, which could achieve the same effect as duplicating frames.)

There’s a real lesson for the public in this clumsy attempt by Sanders at Orwellian propaganda. As our Washington Post colleague Drew Harwell wrote, it highlights “how video content — long seen as an unassailable verification tool for truth and confirmation — has become as vulnerable to political distortion as anything else.” Viewer beware. We’re always looking for fact-check suggestions. Scroll down for this week’s Pinocchio roundup. — Salvador Rizzo

Trump’s Four-Pinocchio claim: ‘Democrats let him into our country’ The president's campaign ad ignores the fact cop-killer Luis Bracamontes was deported when Bill Clinton was president. He snuck back in under George W. Bush. By Glenn Kessler  •   Read more »  The Trump administration’s fuzzy math on ‘criminals’ in the caravan President Trump claims there are 300 "rough, rough people" in the caravan of migrants traveling through Mexico. But the administration won't explain how that figure is calculated. By Glenn Kessler  •   Read more »  Fact-checking President Trump’s post-election news conference Here's a look at ten claims made by President Trump at his post-election news conference. By Glenn Kessler and Salvador Rizzo  •   Read more »  The Fact Checker’s crash course for the 2018 elections We rounded up 47 fact-checks of Democrats, Republicans and outrageous campaign ads. By Salvador Rizzo  •   Read more »

The 5-Minute Fix: How to follow the Paul Manafort trial

Democracy Dies in Darkness

Keeping up with politics is easy now

By Amber Phillips It's just the first full day of his former campaign chairman’s trial on bank and tax fraud charges, and President Trump seems to be following it closely. For him — and anyone else who also has a day job — your 5-Minute-Fix today is a viewing guide to the trial, with lots of details from The Post's fantastic live blog. Does it matter that the judge is limiting talk of Paul Manafort's wealth? Paul Manafort in June. (Mandel Ngan/AFP) Manafort is an international lobbyist. He's really rich. He wears crystal watches and owns six homes as well as a $15,000 ostrich jacket. On Wednesday, the prosecution brought in salespeople to tell the jury how Manafort spent $334,000 in two years at what is billed as the world's most expensive suit store. And that was just one of the stores where he apparently shopped. But how much do Manafort's personal spending decisions tie into the prosecution's allegations that he committed bank and tax fraud? The judge is skeptical that it's relevant. He keeps cutting off the prosecution when he thinks it is going too far on talking about Manafort's wealth. That could be a problem for the prosecution, because it seems as if Manafort's wealth is a key story line for them so far. “This is a straightforward paper case on tax and bank fraud,” said Jeffrey Jacobovitz, a white-collar defense lawyer who has tried cases in this court. “But [limiting talk of Manafort's wealth] certainly detracts from some of the flavor the prosecution is trying to add about Manafort.” Will Rick Gates testify? Gates was Manafort's business partner when they lobbied together in Ukraine. He was Manafort's deputy on the Trump campaign in the summer of 2016. The special counsel investigation into Russian election meddling charged Gates alongside Manafort with financial crimes. But here's where their story splits: Unlike Manafort, Gates pleaded guilty to lesser charges and is cooperating with special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. The Post's legal team reports that Gates was expected to be a star witness against his former boss. Richard Gates, in the sweater, in January. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) Manafort's team raised the stakes of Gates's importance when they blamed him for bad bookkeeping. Then the prosecution raised eyebrows when it suggested that Gates might not testify, saying everything is up in the air. Will Manafort testify? Jacobovitz thinks Manafort may have boxed himself into a risky move. Testifying on their own behalf can backfire on defendants: “They end up hanging themselves because frequently the jurors do not think they are credible.” But Manafort may have no choice. His main defense so far is that Gates took advantage of him, and Jacobovitz said Manafort is the best person to explain why: “There's no one else who could do it for him.” Is Trump shaping the trial at all? Conspicuously, on the first full day of the first criminal trial in the Russia investigation, Trump is going out of his way to try to discredit the broader investigation — and even suggest that he wants to make moves to end it. In a series of tweets, Trump tried to distance himself from Manafort:

He defended Manafort by comparing him to a mob boss: And he called on the nation's top law enforcement official to end the Russia investigation. (Attorney General Jeff Sessions technically can't, because he recused himself from all things Russia.) While the jury is prohibited from talking about or reading about this trial, it seems the president is determined to shape public opinion about it. A group that you should be familiar with: QAnon Audience members at a Trump rally in Tampa wear T-shirts referring to the “QAnon” conspiracy theory. (The Washington Post) What it is: A “deranged conspiracy group,” as described by The Post's Isaac Stanley-Becker, that inhabits anonymous message boards and often spouts sometimes racist or anti-Semitic conspiracy theories to defend the president. But things got very real Tuesday in Tampa, when people came to Trump's rally wearing Q T-shirts or holding Q signs. Why they matter: These aren't just your average conspiracy theories peddled by the president about, say, the Russia investigation. The stuff that these people believe is way, way out there, Stanley-Becker writes: “In the world in which QAnon believers live, Trump’s detractors, such as Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona and Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin, wear ankle monitors that track their whereabouts.” The Post's media columnist, Margaret Sullivan, called their presence at the rally “dangerous.” Now, this stuff is out in the real world and part of our national political conversation. Your water-cooler conversation talker about the Manafort trial: Judge T.S. Ellis III This courtroom sketch depicts Paul Manafort, fourth from right, standing with his attorneys in front of U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III. (Dana Verkouteren/AP) Judges are normally not the story line in a case already filled with colorful characters. But Ellis, who is presiding over the Manafort trial, has become one of the trial's most talked-about people. The Post's Rachel Weiner reports that he was appointed by President Ronald Reagan and is senior enough to pick and choose his cases. He's also senior enough, apparently, not to put up with any nonsense. “He has torn my head off in front of my wife multiple times,” a former U.S. attorney told Weiner. And he is super-quotable. Here are some things he has said in the trial: When news broke that Gates might not be called to testify, Ellis said of the journalists in the courtroom who had left to write about the news: “Twenty-five people just scurried out of here like rats leaving a sinking ship.” When asking for more details of the case in plain language, he said: “I don’t have an email account; I never have and I never will.” And when picking the jury, he asked who has business with the Justice Department. The case being heard about 10 miles outside D.C., nine hands shot up: “Oh, my goodness. I’m not going to ask that question again.”

If you want to get The 5-Minute Fix in your inbox three afternoons a week, sign up here. And click here if you want to ask me a question about politics, send me a gif or give me a compliment. Still want more politics in your life? Read these awesome pieces: Analysis Sarah Sanders won’t condemn the vitriol toward the media and Jim Acosta among Trump’s base A group whose cultural anxieties drove them to the polls is perpetuating anxiety. By Eugene Scott  •  Read more »   Analysis Sarah Huckabee Sanders uses a debunked story to blame the media for damaging the hunt for bin Laden George W. Bush and the 9/11 Commission both blamed a media report for bin Laden turning off his satellite phone. The Post has labeled this an “urban myth.” By Aaron Blake  •  Read more »   Analysis Trump is telling farmers to trust him on trade. It may be working. President Trump maintains that he loves farmers, even as he continues to cripple their markets. By JM Rieger  •  Read more »   Analysis Mueller is looking at Trump’s tweets for obstruction of justice. And Trump just handed him more potential evidence. Here are the ones that could be most problematic, including today's about Jeff Sessions. By Aaron Blake  •  Read more »   Analysis Are young voters going to sway the midterms? New data shows that’s not very likely. There's little sign of a youth turnout wave on the horizon. By Emily Guskin  •  Read more »   Analysis Trump is trying to decimate Obamacare. But that has proved hard to do. Health policy experts say the law is surprisingly intact and it will probably take an act of Congress to undo it. By Amber Phillips  •  Read more »   Analysis Democrats are probably fighting a losing battle over Kavanaugh’s White House documents The Senate fight over Brett Kavanaugh’s White House documents, explained. By Amber Phillips  •  Read more »