Reminder: Adoption is directly related to sanctions. Saying they were discussing "adoption" is barely a euphemism.

He also vaguely threatened Special Counsel Mueller, and all but admitted the Steele dossier is accurate. So, typical Wednesday, then,

Is he liked among the corn?

Keith looked like they were going to take his thumbs if he didn't clear the spread.

International news: Things are coming to a head in Venezuela. The Democratic Unity coalition held an unofficial referendum—so, a poll, basically—about Maduro's planning Constitutional Assembly at the end of the month, and 6 million people—over 90% of the vote—voted against it. Again, this referendum has no legal…

McConnell's leadership style is part of "you may not like me but I get things done" school, so him not getting a thing done is a huge disaster for him. Ostensibly Trump as well, but I don't know what people expect of him at this point.

It's his natural environment.

Checks out.

It could just be some good, old-fashioned bribery!

Because that repeal bill was dumb as hell as nobody actually wanted to do it.

The US and Venezuela have been on bad terms for a while. Maduro is a socialist—an actual socialist, not just single-payer healthcare—and was a protege of Hugo Chavez, who once compared George W Bush to the devil. No way was he and Trump going to get along.

International news: A national strike is planned this week in Venezuela, to protest President Maduro's plan to rewrite the Constitution. Trump has issued a statement supporting the protesters, calling Maduro "a bad leader who dreams of being a dictator" (insert 'takes one to know one' joke here).

They floated 'repeal now, replace later' at the start of this, and it was immediately rejected by everybody. Of course Trump is circling back to it.

But you can't trust anything Donald Trump Jr. says!

The Secret Service having to issue a statement that 1) Don Jr. didn't have Secret Service at the time of the meeting, and 2.) Their job is only to physically protect him, so even if there were Secret Service agents assigned to him, they wouldn't have stopped him from meeting anybody that wasn't literally trying to…

Frankly, I think they peaked with Infrastructure Week.

Qatar update: Part of the ostensible reason for the blockade were messages posted to official Qatari websites and social media, attributing quotes praising Iran and recognizing Israel to the Eman of Qatar. Qatar has said the quotes were fake, and they were clearly hacked. US intelligence has now confirmed that the…

It makes no sense for her to go by Lannister, since her claim to the throne is based on her relationship to Robert.

Yeah, once this thing is dead, everybody will come out to kill it.

Also, I'm from California, which has the inverse relationship with Nixon (although I guess there is a case to be made that Reagan would count as a Californian politician, even though he was born in Illinois).