In other news, the Toronto Star reported this morning that Trump made off the record comments in the White House yesterday during his interview with Bloomberg. Trump privately said he wouldn't be making any deals with Canada in NAFTA negotiations.
In remarks Trump wanted to be “off the record,” Trump told Bloomberg News reporters on Thursday, according to a source, that he is not making any compromises at all in the talks with Canada — but that he cannot say this publicly because “it’s going to be so insulting they’re not going to be able to make a deal.” [...]
In another remark he did not want published, Trump said, according to the source, that the possible deal with Canada would be “totally on our terms.” He suggested he was scaring the Canadians into submission by repeatedly threatening to impose tariffs.
“Off the record, Canada’s working their ass off. And every time we have a problem with a point, I just put up a picture of a Chevrolet Impala,” Trump said, according to the source. The Impala is produced at the General Motors plant in Oshawa, Ontario.
"Canada's working their ass off but I'm just a spoiled bully who spends his time live-tweeting Fox News"
Breaking: Canada and the U.S. have not reached a trade deal today, a Canadian official says. The talks are done for today, scheduled to resume on Wednesday. The Canadian team is set to go home by tomorrow morning.
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) August 31, 2018
Meanwhile, Justice Department laywer Bruce Ohr told member of Congress this week that pee tape dossier author Christoper Steele told him that Russian intelligence believed it had Donald Trump “over a barrel" in 2016.
Finally, Alexander Zakharchenko, the leader of the pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine, was killed in an explosion at a cafe in Donetsk this afternoon. Putin is already pointing fingers, so watch out.
Here are some other stories I didn't get to this week:
The Huffington Post reports that Senator Susan Collins signed off on Brett Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court in private before Trump publicly nominated him.
Senate hearings on Trump's desire to charge Amazon more money for Postal Service deliveries have been delayed "indefinitely."
Detroit is shutting off the water at more than a dozen public schools because of lead and copper contamination.
The Trump regime is cutting off funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) which provides aid to Palestinian refugees in multiple countries.
Facebook has cut off access to military officials in Myanmar a couple years too late after the U.N. accused the nation's military of committing genocide. Rumors and conspiracy theories about the Rohingya were spread on Facebook before the military launched a campaign that has killed 25,000 so far.
The Trump regime is blocking the World Trade Organization (WTO) from reappointing a sitting judge. It's possible the WTO won't have enough judges to even render decisions in the near future.
WTO director general Roberto Azevedo says a decision by Trump to leave the WTO would be a disaster for American businesses because other countries would be free to do whatever they want to them.
“The scenarios are not going to be good for anyone,” he said. "The U.S. is about 11 percent of global trade. So leaving the organization would be a blow to the organization. But it would be a blow to the U.S. as well.”
In particular, he said, such a move would leave U.S. businesses vulnerable to commercial discrimination and new tariffs around the world if non-U.S. members were no longer bound by the WTO’s rules.
“That is the worst thing that could happen for an economy as globally connected as the American economy,” Azevedo said.
The same people behind the "Pizzagate" conspiracy theory are now doing exactly the same thing to other, seemingly random small businesses who don't have any connections to the Clintons or politics.
Ford says they're canceling their plans to import a new crossover vehicle from China next year because of Trump's tariffs. That doesn't mean they're going to build them here instead of in China. They're just not going to sell them. At all.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) traveled to London this month to gather information about Christopher Steele, but British intelligence understandably refused to talk to him.
Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin has more than doubled the salary of one his cronies while freezing wages for state workers.
Russia has used fake shell companies to secretly fund independent news websites across eastern European who post stories that are actually dictated by Moscow.
The scheme has only come to light through Skype chats and documents obtained by BuzzFeed News, Estonian newspaper Postimees, and investigative journalism outlet Re:Baltica via freedom of information laws, as part of a criminal probe into the individual who was Moscow’s man on the ground in Estonia.
The Skype logs and other files, obtained from computers seized by investigators, reveal the secrets and obfuscating tactics used by Russia as it tries to influence public opinion and push Kremlin talking points.
The websites, all called Baltnews, presented themselves as independent news outlets, but in fact, editorial lines were dictated directly by Moscow.
Programming note... Monday is Labor Day. I'm visiting my parents. Congress will be back in town next week. We'll back in action here on Tuesday. Have a good weekend.