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Welcome to the commentary magazine podcast today is Thursday November 30th, 2017.

I'm John Poghurtz, the editor of commentary, the 73 year old monthly of intellectual analysis, political probity, and cultural criticism from a conservative perspective.

Join us as always at commentarymagazine.com where we give you a few free reads and then ask you to subscribe as ever 1995 for a digital, 29.95 for an all access subscription, including our beautiful monthly magazine, your mailbox 11 times a year with me as always.

Dave Greenwald, our senior editor, HelloAve.

Hi John.

No arothman or associate editor, Hi Noah.

Hi John.

And Sorab Amari, our senior writer, Hi Sorab.

Hi John.

So news has just come across the wires that Senator John McCain is a yes on the tax reform bill, thus indicating that it is now far more likely than not that by the close of this week, the Senate will vote 51-48 to pass the tax reform through the Senate.

And since the House has already passed it, they will go to committee.

And indeed, there may well be a tax reform bill on the president's desk for Trump to sign before Christmas, thus giving Republicans and Trump the first major legislative victory of his presidency and their tenure as the dominant single dominant party in Washington.

So this is a pretty big moment.

What's interesting about it is it doesn't feel like quite that big a moment because Trump simultaneously muddies and confuses and creates all sorts of controversies surrounding it that rob the, that seem to rob the moment of its, of its, of its grandeur and its seriousness and the, and the political achievement that, that comes with passing what is at least at this moment,

or pretty unpopular bill according to polling.

So what kinds of things has Trump been doing that have been muddying these waters, Abe?

Well, yesterday morning that was the sort of crazy rash of tweets, right? Like is that it was the one?

Yeah, we're so, let's see. So he retweeted some, some far right first British first, some Britain first, anti Muslim tweets, some sort of, you know, fallacious debunked footage on those tweets.

He, piggybacked us thus thus, occasioning a review from Theresa May and questions in parliament about about sort of like whether or not Trump should somehow be censored for this.

That's right. He piggybacked on on the, the, the Matt Lauer story of all things to then ask allowed when NBC would be firing, taking action to fire newsheads for, for, for, for peddling all the fake news.

He implied that Joe Scarborough has a murder in his past.

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