A progressive daily ledger of Trump-world self-owns, legal pain, policy blowback, and bad-faith chaos.
3 verified reports published on December 18, 2017.
This edition is the complete daily record. Reports remain separate so readers can see each claim, source set, correction, and update without one article being mislabeled as the entire edition.
The through line on December 18 was simple: Trumpworld kept insisting the scoreboard mattered more than the record book. The problem is that the record book kept getting thicker, and the public was already starting to notice the gap between the brag and the fallout.
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5 stars means maximum fallout. 1 star means a smaller self-own.
As the White House sold tax reform and tried to move on, the Russia probe was still chewing through Trump’s orbit and making the administration’s denials look thinner by the day.
The White House was already trying to cash a political check on tax reform, even though the deal still carried the usual Trump-era baggage: rushed process, predictable criticism, and a giant credibility gap between the bragging and the details.
The White House chief of staff’s earlier insistence that intelligence officials had essentially cleared the campaign was the kind of answer that looked sturdier on television than it did under the weight of later developments.