News Breaking Like a Bowl of Eggs

Per pool: "Yes, Trump did say that when he talked to Putin about the Mueller report and Russian meddling, Putin 'sort of smiled' before he called it 'a mountain' that 'ended up being a mouse.'"

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) May 3, 2019

"Which raises the pertinent question:  whose version of the phone call do we accept as true and trustworthy?"

"Putin 'sort of smiled' "?  On a phone call?  Was this on Skype?  Or was it a metaphor?  Or delusion?  Or does Trump really believe its true because, why not?  Whose version of this conversation is the right one?

“Official after official, when brought up to Capitol Hill, has bemoaned the fact there’s no top-down order to tell Russia to stay out of our democracy,” [MSNBC anchor Nicolle] Wallace noted.

“There’s no order,” [MSNBC legal analyst Mimi] Rocah agreed. “He’s doing the opposite.”

“This phone call between Trump and Putin today reminded me of what we would call — when we were on wires of criminals and listening to their conversations and they didn’t know it — the ‘get your story straight call,'” Rocah replied. “They would do something, they didn’t know we were listening to them after whatever crime they just committed, they robbed a bank or whatever, then they’re on the phone, sort of talking, kind of sort of in code, but it’s a yeah, ‘when we went to the store earlier and I bought the milk,’ you know, they’re making their cover story, congratulating each other, patting each other on the back, saying ‘it’s all good, we made it, we didn’t get caught.’ That’s what this reminded me of.”

“If you look at the obstruction that Trump, I think, clearly committed, it was obstruction of the investigation into Russia, not just Trump, but into Russia’s actions,” Rocah suggested. “And that’s what this phone call was about.”

I can remember the days when that would have been considered the wildest and most inappropriate speculation without hard evidence of the actual content of the conversation; and even then....