Divine Right

In other news, we know Trump was watching the Mueller hearings because he has nominated one of his groveling defenders, Representative John Ratcliffe, as the next director of national intelligence. Ratcliffe shouldn't even be directing a 7-11. He has no history of working in intelligence aside from sitting on a subcommittee for a few months.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, criticized Trump’s choice, saying “it’s clear that Rep. Ratcliffe was selected because he exhibited blind loyalty to President Trump with his demagogic questioning of ... Mueller.

“If Senate Republicans elevate such a partisan player to a position that requires intelligence expertise and non-partisanship, it would be a big mistake,” Schumer said in a statement.

Meanwhile, some economists say the Trump regime has actually been overpaying American soybean farmers through the Trump's bailout.

Finally, it looks like Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny was poisoned. Russian authorities claim he had an allergic reaction, but his doctor says he's not even allergic to anything.

Navalny was taken to the hospital from jail on Sunday with what authorities said was a “severe allergic reaction.” His face and eyes were heavily swollen and much of his upper body was covered with a rash, according to his long-time eye-doctor, Anastasia Vasilyeva. The sudden illness quickly set off fears among his supporters that the Kremlin critic might have been poisoned.

Navalny was released from the hospital and returned to jail on Monday following treatment after doctors at the hospital deemed him well enough to leave.

But his doctor, Vasilyeva, speaking to reporters outside the hospital on Monday, condemned that decision and said she had no doubts he had been poisoned, dismissing suggestions his illness might have resulted from an allergy.

“What happened to Alexey was a toxic reaction to an unknown chemical agent,” Vasilyeva said. "Alexey has had negative allergy tests for his whole life. He is in principle not allergic. At all."

I believe the doctor. I mean, there's no good reason not to. Opposition figures are killed in Putin's Russia as a matter of course and Navalny reminds me of Nemstov. Putin can't even handle non-violent, innocuous opposition figures without eventually killing them.

Bonus: here's Boris Johnson getting savagely booed when he arrived in Scotland today