After Bannon's 'treason' comment, Trump unloads on former aide

As much of the political world knows, in June 2016, top members of Donald Trump's inner circle -- Donald Trump Jr, Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort -- met with a group of Russians in the hopes of obtaining dirt on Hillary Clinton. The meeting is but one piece of compelling evidence that the Republican campaign sought and received assistance from Vladimir Putin's government during the American presidential race.

And while it's common for the president's critics to raise the alarm about the meeting, it's something else when Trump's former chief strategist uses words like "treasonous." NBC News reports today on Michael Wolff's new book, "Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House," which includes some striking quotes from Steve Bannon.

In a new book, Steve Bannon, the former White House chief strategist, calls a meeting of Trump campaign officials with a Russian lawyer in Trump Tower during the presidential campaign "treasonous" and "unpatriotic." [...]

"The three senior guys in the campaign thought it was a good idea to meet with a foreign government inside Trump Tower in the conference room on the 25th floor with no lawyers," Bannon said, according to a copy of the book obtained by NBC News.

"Even if you thought that this was not treasonous, or unpatriotic, or bad shit, and I happen to think it's all of that, you should have called the FBI immediately," he added.

We now know, of course, that no one from Team Trump called the FBI. On the contrary, Trump and his aides instead lied repeatedly about their campaign communications with Russians.

Not surprisingly, Bannon's provocative rhetoric did not go unnoticed among his former colleagues at the White House.

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Wednesday's Campaign Round-Up, 1.3.18

Today's installment of campaign-related news items from across the country.

* Former Sen. Al Franken's (D-Minn.) last day on Capitol Hill was yesterday, and former Lt. Gov. Tina Smith (D-Minn.) will be sworn in as his successor any minute now. Vice President Mike Pence will do the honors.

* On a related note, Alabama's Doug Jones (D) will also be sworn in this afternoon, though in a break with tradition, he's asked former Vice President Joe Biden to be his escort for the event. Usually, a new senator is accompanied by his or her home state's other senator.

* On a related note, Jones, who relied heavily on support from African-American voters on his victory last month, has hired Dana Gresham, a former congressional aide and former Department of Transportation staffer, to serve as his chief of staff. Jones will become the only Senate Dem with a black chief of staff.

* As Rachel noted on the show last night, Mitt Romney appears to be getting ready for a U.S. Senate campaign in Utah, and changed his location status on his Twitter account.

* House Transportation Committee Chairman Bill Shuster (R-Pa.) announced yesterday that he's retiring at the end of this session. Shuster, who's been in Congress for 16 years, represents one of Pennsylvania's reddest districts.

* Former Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) told right-wing pastor Jim Bakker she's "had people contact me and urge me to run" for the Senate later this year. Bachmann added that she's seeking guidance from God about whether to enter the race.

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As drug makers raise prices, Trump's tough talk disappears

Axios had an item this morning on rising drug prices that, at first blush, doesn't seem especially unusual. After all, the rising costs of medicines isn't exactly new.

But there's a political subtext to this that shouldn't go unnoticed.

A handful of drug companies rang in 2018 with price hikes that easily surpass inflation but stay conspicuously below double digits, my colleague Bob Herman reports. Investment banks Jefferies and Cowen highlighted some of the big ones:

AbbVie's blockbuster Humira: 9.7%
Amgen's arthritis medicine Enbrel: 9.7%
Allergan's dry eye drug Restasis: 9.5%
Insys Therapeutics' opioid spray Subsys: 9.5%
Biogen's multiple sclerosis drug Tecfidera: 8%

The piece added that prices are expected to continue to rise, and according to the investment banks' analyses, there's "almost no chance U.S. drug price controls will occur in the next three years."

Again, none of this is especially surprising. What is surprising is the fact that the political world has largely forgotten about Donald Trump's promise to tackle this issue head on -- a vow that quietly fell down the memory hole.

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Paul LePage shows how not to respond to net neutrality questions

The Republican campaign against net neutrality has been quite effective, and just a few weeks ago, it came to an end when Donald Trump's choice to lead the Federal Communications Commission helped scrap the Obama-era policy altogether.

For those who take the idea of an open internet seriously, the developments are as ridiculous as they are scary. The Portland Press Herald  reported yesterday on a high school student in Maine who reached out to Gov. Paul LePage (R) with her concerns about the policy. His response was underwhelming.

In the month leading up to the recent vote by the Federal Communications Commission to repeal net neutrality regulations, Camden Hills Regional High School sophomore Hope Osgood learned about the issue and how junking the longtime principle that all web traffic be treated equally could affect consumers' internet access. While browsing social media, she found an application that would generate a letter expressing her concerns and used it to email a message to LePage.

She wrote, "The internet is the easiest way to access anything. News, information, etc. Companies being able to put restrictions on internet usage isn't ideal! People will be left in the dark about some things. All my school work is internet-based, but what happens if I can't reach what I need to? What about my lessons in school?" [...]

Osgood said she's concerned that the loss of net neutrality could impede her studies. Beyond school, she's worried about the impact on social media because that's how she connects with friends.

The good news is, the Republican governor sent the student a hand-written response. The bad news is, the entirety of LePage's note read, "Hope. Pick up a book and read! Governor."

Ordinarily, Republican opponents of net neutrality try to assuage fears by arguing that the public may not notice the difference. It's an optimistic response, to be sure, but this is generally how conservatives prefer to respond to concerns.

LePage, however, effectively gives away the game. If you're worried about Republicans defeating net neutrality, and the impact this might have on everything from education to commerce, take comfort in the fact that books will be unaffected.

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Trump's nuclear-button boasts turn 'juvenile and frightening'

Donald Trump didn't actually complete any important tasks yesterday, but he managed to stay surprisingly busy. The Republican president called for criminal investigations into some of his perceived domestic enemies, claimed credit for safe commercial air travel, attacked the New York Times, claimed Hispanic voters love his anti-immigration posturing, and threatened Pakistani and Palestinian officials.

But the piece de resistance came in response to North Korea's Kim Jong-un's New Year's boast that it’s "not a mere threat but a reality that I have a nuclear button on the desk in my office." To which the American president responded with his version of strategic nuclear dialogue with a rogue nation.

"Will someone from his depleted and food starved regime please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button," Trump wrote, "but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!"

As Rachel noted on last night's show, the American president was effectively daring the leader of nuclear-armed North Korea "to prove that his button works." What could possibly go wrong?

This paragraph in the New York Times' report seemed to capture the true absurdity of life in Trump's America.

The president's tone also generated a mix of scorn and alarm among lawmakers, diplomats and national security experts who called it juvenile and frightening for a president handling a foreign policy challenge with world-wrecking consequences. The language was reminiscent of Mr. Trump's boast during the 2016 presidential campaign that his hands, and by extension his genitals, were in fact big enough.

In late December 2016, for reasons that weren’t at all clear, Donald Trump rattled much of the world with an alarmingly ambiguous tweet about nuclear weapons and an expansion of the U.S. arsenal. A day later, the then-president-elect reportedly said he’s prepared for a new international nuclear “arms race.”

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