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Cohen and Manafort kept haunting Trump
The legal wreckage from Michael Cohen and Paul Manafort was still setting the terms of Trump’s November, keeping the Russia-era damage front and center in public view.
Edition · November 23, 2018
The Daily Fuckup: November 23, 2018 Edition
A backfill look at the day Trump-world kept tripping over its own legal, ethical, and political shoelaces.
On November 23, 2018, Trump’s orbit was still absorbing the aftershocks of a brutal late-summer cascade: the legal and political fallout from Michael Cohen and Paul Manafort had not gone away, the emoluments fight kept chewing through the courts, and the administration’s immigration politics were drawing fresh criticism on the record. This edition pulls together the strongest documented screwups that landed, escalated, or stayed freshly relevant on that exact calendar day.
Closing take
The common thread on this date was not one dramatic new explosion, but a steady, self-inflicted burn: court losses, credibility problems, and policy choices that kept turning into evidence against Trump’s own claims. That is often how a presidency gets in trouble in the long run — not with one clean collapse, but with a pileup of smaller disasters that won’t stop happening.
Ranked by how bad the fuckup was
5 stars means maximum fallout. 1 star means a smaller self-own.
Story
The emoluments fight keeps biting Trump
A federal judge’s refusal to let Trump slow-walk the emoluments case kept the constitutional ethics fight alive and put his hotel and business dealings back under a harsher spotlight.
Story
Trump’s immigration hardball kept deepening the mess
Fresh reporting and official remarks kept underscoring how Trump’s hard-line immigration politics were generating diplomatic strain, policy confusion, and ugly criticism instead of clean solutions.