In The Atlantic today, Clare Foran provides a dispatch from Sanders’ red-state health care rallies, and interviews the man himself:

“A lot of folks go where the money is, and I understand that, we live in a time of Citizens United,” Sanders said in an interview when asked if he thinks other senators will start reaching out to red states. “People spend their lives running around the country, raising money to take on the Koch brothers, and the billionaire class. I understand that, but at the same time, Democrats have got to develop a strategy that supports the folks in Kentucky, and West Virginia, and in Tennessee and Mississippi and Alabama, and Wyoming, and Utah. That’s something we’ve got to do.”

Foran notes that Sanders’ rallies are an unusual move for a progressive politician, which points to a much bigger problem: Democrats are floundering in states with large rural populations, a situation partially of their own making.

We don’t know for certain if the Sanders approach will pay electoral dividends. But the Democratic Party needs to reclaim ground that it has lost to Republicans, and in order to do that it needs to revamp its approach to red states. These states aren’t necessarily eternal conservative bastions; some, like West Virginia, aren’t even historically red. Further, they are undergoing the same demographic shifts that affect the rest of the nation—albeit at different paces. There are plenty of practical reasons for the party to challenge the GOP’s dominance in these states.

And the formula for success may not be as complicated—or regressive—as many believe it to be. Democrats don’t need to triangulate on abortion or immigration to illustrate the dangers of Trump administration policy. There’s an increasingly stark gap between Trump’s populist rhetoric and his policies, which Democrats can exploit by hammering health care every day between now and the mid-terms. In other words, they can do exactly what Sanders is doing now.

Even if this strategy doesn’t immediately bring back voters who cast their ballots for Trump, it will almost certainly energize beleaguered progressives who live in these states and have long wanted more party investment in their communities. Democrats don’t just need those votes; they need candidates. The DNC’s recently announced investment in state parties will help, but they also need an energizing message. Bernie Sanders has created it.

The consistent pattern of projection that conservatives have engaged in to excuse Donald Trump’s behavior began during the presidential campaign, when anti-Trump conservatives suggested Trump was running a GOP-sabotage campaign at Bill Clinton’s behest, and it culminated this week when Trump loyalists insinuated that Donald Trump Jr., who agreed in principle to work with the Russian government to help his father beat Hillary Clinton, is the victim of a setup.

What I describe here as projection is by no means a phenomenon limited to the relationship between the right and Trump. It’s one of the most powerful forces of motivation and self-justification in conservative politics. Republican politicians tolerate dirty tricksters like Roger Stone, so they project the existence of dirty tricks of similar depravity onto the Democratic Party. Many conservatives use radical tactics, so they posit a massive Saul Alinsky footprint in liberal politics. It became an article of faith on the right that mainstream media journalists and Democratic Party operatives are interchangeable, so they made Fox News—“conservative” news—in that image.

The “Jr. got set up!” theory thus tells us more about Hannity’s ethics than it does about any plausible sequence of real-world events. After all, even if Trump’s political enemies did try to forge a Russia-Trump nexus, there’s still the small matter of the fact that his son (and most likely his campaign manager, Paul Manafort, and son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner) took the bait.

But it also points to a growing sense of desperation in Trumpland. Because the leftist conspiracy Hannity et al posit goes something like this:

1. Engage Trump’s son, top campaign staff in an international criminal conspiracy.

2. Say nothing.

3. Lose election as planned.

4. Let Trump take oath of office.

5. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It’s of a piece with the idea that Hillary Clinton recruited millions of illegal voters but wasted their ballots in blue states. Only stupider.

Just as The New York Times broke the story that it had obtained a copy of the June 2016 email in which Trump Jr. agreed to meet with an agent of the Russian government, Trump Jr. himself gave up the goods:

In the emails, music promoter and Trump associate Rob Goldstone literally writes, “The Crown prosecutor of Russia met with [Russian real estate tycoon Aras Agalarov] this morning and in their meeting offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father.” (N.B., there is no such thing as a crown prosecutor of Russia, though the Times suggests he may have been referring to the prosecutor general.)

He adds, “This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump—helped along by Aras and Emin.” (Emin is Aras Agalarov’s son, and a Russian pop star.)

Holy shit!

But it gets better. Trump Jr. responds, “If that’s what you say I love it.”

To sum up: Goldstone explicitly states that the intelligence is coming from the Russian government. Goldstone also explicitly states that the Russian government supports Donald Trump in his race against Hillary Clinton. Trump Jr. gives the green light without hesitation. Then he invites Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner to the meeting, forwards them a copy of the email chain, and they attend. They meet with Natalia Veselnitskaya, a lawyer with ties to the Kremlin. (Amazingly, Goldstone offers to forward the invitation to Trump himself, through a secretary, which means Trump Jr., by responding to this offer of dirt with such celerity, might have unwittingly acted as a shield for his father.)

So there you have it. Attempted collusion between the campaign and the Russians to sabotage Clinton’s candidacy. The evidence could hardly be more damning. The subject line of the email reads: “Russia - Clinton - private and confidential.”

On Tuesday, the center-right pundit published a piece that featured this remarkable paragraph, which I like to imagine Brooks celebrating with an Italian chef kiss with his greasy mortadella fingers:

There are lots of dumb things about this totally real anecdote. First off, poor people eat Italian sandwiches, which are quite common. Second, there’s the fact that he and his very real friend end up eating “Mexican,” the low-class fare that plebians would certainly be comfortable with. Hmm.

But the completely not fake sandwich story is actually just a vehicle for Brooks to make a very bad point: that the division between the upper-middle class and everyone else is caused not by structural barriers but “informal social barriers.” Brooks actually dedicates the first half of his piece to detailing a whole host of very real structural barriers: that upper-middle-class parents spend two to three times more on their children than their lower-class counterparts; that they can spend buckets of money to get their kids admitted to college; that housing policy segregates poor people from the neighborhoods and schools of rich, white people like David Brooks.

But then there is an incredible bait-and-switch. As Brooks writes, “I’ve come to think the structural barriers [analyst Richard Reeves] emphasizes are less important than the informal social barriers that segregate the lower 80 percent.”

The only way Brooks could come to that conclusion after laying out (himself!) the immense structural barriers that poor people face is through willful ignorance. If culture is the main problem, then people like Brooks don’t need to think about, say, giving up any of their wealth to create a more equal society. It’s much easier to pat yourself on the back after taking your definitely real lower-income friend out to Mexican food than it is to support policies that would help that person live in the same neighborhood as you.

The thing is, if you give poor people more money, then they can afford the freaking bufala mozzarella at David Brooks’s fancy sandwich shop.

The most striking thing about the story that has dominated the news for the last three days—that Trump Jr. met with a Kremlin-connected attorney after being promised damaging information about Hillary Clinton in an email—is just how dumb it is. Young Donald’s story changed drastically with every new revelation, as if he had forgotten that there was an email in his inbox backing the whole story up. The fact that Trump Jr. would leave an electronic paper trail for an at least mildly treasonous meeting suggests a level of naivety and/or privilege unmatched in recent American political history. More importantly, even if nothing came of this meeting, Trump Jr. has destroyed his father’s repeated insistence that there was no collusion between the campaign and the Russian government during the election.

To a large extent, this has always been an absurd argument, given how much Trump and his campaign did to amplify material released by the Russian hacks. (You will recall that Trump even publicly called for more hacks.) But Trump’s own son, who played an outsized role in his campaign, has now been shown to have set up a meeting about information he thought had been acquired by the Russian government for the expressed purpose of aiding his father’s campaign. The Trump campaign’s plausible deniability was never all that plausible to begin with, but these revelations have smashed it to dust.

This is a big problem, and Trump and his allies don’t yet know quite what to do about it. After vociferously defending his daughter Ivanka’s right to sit in his chair during a conference of the G-20, Trump has been notably silent about his son’s actions. That may reflect the very obvious favoritism that defines the Trump family’s relationships, but it also suggests that Trump doesn’t know what to say about the story that has defined and profoundly damaged his presidency. Over the last few days, Trump Jr. and some of the administration’s flacks have tried on a new narrative: 

In other words, who wouldn’t meet with a foreign power promising damaging information on an opponent? That’s a terrible argument for obvious reasons, but it might be the only one they have left.  

On Saturday and Sunday, The New York Times published two stories that are the most damning evidence we have so far of possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. First, the Times reported the existence of a meeting in June 2016 between Donald Trump Jr., aka Trump’s least favorite son, and Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Russian lawyer with connections to the Kremlin. Paul Manafort, who was campaign chairman at the time, and Jared Kushner were also in attendance.

Back in March, Trump Jr. had explicitly said that he didn’t have any meetings with Russians while “representing the campaign,” stating, “Did I meet with people that were Russian? I’m sure, I’m sure I did. But none that were set up. None that I can think of at the moment. And certainly none that I was representing the campaign in any way, shape, or form.” But the meeting described by the Times on Saturday certainly looks like it was set up.

In response, Don Jr. claimed that the meeting was primarily about Russia’s adoption policies. But then on Sunday, the Times followed up with another scoop: according to five unnamed sources, Veselnitskaya had promised DJT Jr. some sweet, sweet kompromat on Hillary Clinton, giving the incident a very collusion-y twist. (There is no proof that Veselnitskaya actually provided any damaging information.)

This forced Don Jon Jr. to change his story yet again. He conceded that he wanted the dirt on Clinton but that no dirt was to be had. As he told the Times, “After pleasantries were exchanged the woman stated that she had information that individuals connected to Russia were funding the Democratic National Committee and supporting Mrs. Clinton. Her statements were vague, ambiguous and made no sense. No details or supporting information was provided or even offered. It quickly became clear that she had no meaningful information.” The conversation then allegedly turned to Vladimir Putin banning the adoption of Russian children by American foster parents.

Then, on Monday morning, Trump Jr. tweeted the following:

So to recap: At first, Jonny Jr. claimed that he never set up a meeting with Russians to talk about sabatoging Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Then, when the Times found out he did set up the meeting, he claimed it was just about adoption. Then, when the Times found out that it was in fact about the campaign, he claimed that it was about adoption AND the campaign (but mostly about adoption). Then after a night of backlash, Don Don dismissively tweeted, “What, as if you wouldn’t have met with her to talk about the campaign??”

An excerpt from Joshua Green’s forthcoming book Devil’s Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency has a fascinating tidbit about how Coulter in 2016 was a covert advisor to the Trump campaign, even as she was also a public cheerleader for the policies she helped craft:

When Trump came under fire because his campaign hadn’t produced a single policy paper, Bannon arranged for Nunberg and Ann Coulter, the conservative pundit, to quickly write a white paper on Trump’s immigration policies. When the campaign released it, Coulter, without disclosing her role, tweeted that it was “the greatest political document since the Magna Carta.”

But if candidate Trump was the perfect sock puppet who was willing to repeat Coulter’s lines word for word, President Trump has turned out to be a disappointment. A recurring theme of Coulter’s columns and tweets over the last few months is anger that Trump isn’t living up to his immigration promises (which Coulter wrote). “He’s the commander in chief!” ran a Coulter cry from the heart in April. “He said he’d build a wall. If he can’t do that, Trump is finished, the Republican Party is finished, and the country is finished.”

Before becoming president, Trump famously decided to not participate in daily intelligence briefings, saying, “I’m, like, a smart person. I don’t have to be told the same thing in the same words every single day for the next eight years.” Instead Trump has gotten the information he needs every morning from cable television, particularly Fox & Friends.

On Monday morning, Trump retweeted Fox & Friends four times and Sean Hannity once; he sent two tweets defending his daughter Ivanka Trump for keeping his seat warm during the G-20 conference in Hamburg; one tweet about the need to repeal and replace Obamacare; and another accusing James Comey of illegally leaking classified information. The last one is the best place to start.

Trump technically tweeted about the former FBI director three times, since two of the Fox & Friends retweets were about a Hill report that alleged that more than half of Comey’s memos, some of which he shared with a friend, contained classified information.

Trump, as usual, takes a tantalizing possibility and amplifies it to its most damning possible conclusion: that Comey knowingly leaked classified information to the press. There are two problems here. The first is that the Hill report merely raises the possibility that Comey may have leaked classified information to the press. And the second is that this is the president, who could surely know more about this issue if he wished to.

Trump’s tweet about his daughter also has a lot going on:

This is the Trump presidency in a nutshell: He does something inappropriate; people correctly label what he did as being inappropriate; Trump then reacts to that reaction, usually by bringing the Clintons into it. In this case, Trump’s response is doubly weird, because he basically concedes that his critics are correct: He’s grooming Ivanka for high office and had her take his seat at the G-20 for that reason.