Hello everyone. It is Thursday, February 16th, 2017, and you're listening to

Politico's Nurdcast. I'm your host Scott Bland, and guess what? There are once again many many many things for us to

talk about this week we've got more big news in the rolling national security

foreign policy story between President Donald Trump and his administration

in his campaign and Russia.

We've got relatedly a top White House official and a cabinet nominee going down amidst the

swirl of stories in the administration and Trump more

explicitly than ever identifying the media as his current opponent now that he

doesn't have an electoral one to use as a foil and we've got in the background a big conversation coming to

ahead about the future of the Democratic Party and their party leadership

race. So we're going to talk about all that and more this week after just a couple housekeeping notes.

First of all, please subscribe and rate the Nurdcast on iTunes.

And if you have time, write a written review.

And please email us at nerdcast at politico.com if you have questions you'd like answered in a future episode.

All right, let's lay out this week's data points. 25. That is the number of days former national security advisor Michael Flynn served in his post,

the shortest in history by a long shot.

Next day to point is 77. That was the length in minutes of President Trump's Barnburner

over a press conference on Thursday that look to us

like an attempt to regain control of the narrative

and also fulfill his thirst for bloodsport

with the press after a week that spiraled out of control.

And our final data point, shifting gears a little bit, is 447.

...