Pravda: President Trump has gone to unusual and extraordinary lengths to conceal details of his conversations with Russian President Vladi­mir Putin, including confiscating the notes of his own interpreter and ordering the linguist not to discuss the conversation with other administration officials, The Washington Post Reports.

  His actions are another piece in the puzzle of his relationship with Putin and Russia. Trump has prevented even high-ranking officials in his own administration from knowing what he says to one of the country’s primary adversaries.

  The Postsays, “As a result, U.S. officials said there is no detailed record, even in classified files, of Trump’s face-to-face interactions with the Russian leader at five locations over the past two years. Such a gap would be unusual in any presidency, let alone one that Russia sought to install through what U.S. intelligence agencies have described as an unprecedented campaign of election interference.”

The Trumpster Fire:President Trump was in a complete Twitter spin yesterday about his border wall and a NY Timesreport that the FBI opened an investigation on him right after he fired Director James Comey.

  He tweeted, “Just watched a Fake reporter from the Amazon Washington Post say the White House is ‘chaotic, there does not seem to be a strategy for this Shutdown. There is no plan.’” Trump said,  “The Fakes always like talking Chaos, there is NONE. In fact, there’s almost nobody in the W.H. but me, and ….” Wait right there — that is the definitionof chaos.

  The President went on, “I do have a plan on the Shutdown. But to understand that plan you would have to understand the fact that I won the election, and I promised safety and security for the American people. Part of that promise was a Wall at the Southern Border. Elections have consequences!”

  Yes, they do.

  Today is the 23^rdday of the government shutdown and no one is talking. Trump said, “We will be out for a long time unless the Democrats come back from their ‘vacations’ and get back to work.”

  About 420,000 federal employees whose work is declared essential are working without pay. That includes the FBI, TSA and other federal law enforcement agencies. Some staff at the State and Homeland Security departments are also working without pay.

  Also riling up the President was the NY Timesreport that the FBI wondered whether Trump was acting as an instrument of Russia when he fired Comey. He tweeted, “Wow, just learned in the Failing New York Times that the corrupt former leaders of the FBI, almost all fired or forced to leave the agency for some very bad reasons, opened up an investigation on me, for no reason & with no proof, after I fired Lyin’ James Comey, a total sleaze!”

  After only a few days that investigation was folded into the Robert Mueller special counsel investigation. Trump wrote, “My firing of James Comey was a great day for America. He was a Crooked Cop who is being totally protected by his best friend, Bob Mueller, & the 13 Angry Democrats.”

  The diversions and falsehoods in Trump’s claims are familiar. The Special Counsel report is coming.

Veteran Care:The Department of Veterans Affairs is preparing a major shift in how it does business, planning to pay billions of dollars for private health care to veterans. With delays and geographical difficulty getting care, veterans would be able to go to private providers that would be reimbursed by the VA. It’s designed to make life easier for the veterans, but it would also drain money away from the regular VA system.

Weather Report:A winter storm arcing all the way from Iowa and Missouri to the mid-Atlantic coast has dumped up to 20 inches of snow in some areas. As many as 500 vehicle crashes have been reported and 100,000 Missouri power customers were in the dark last night. Between four and six inches have fallen on the Washington, DC area, which is more crippling in that town than a government shutdown. 

The Roundup: Employees in the Washington area put out of work by the government shutdown are beginning to go to food banks for supplies.—The death toll has risen to four in the Friday explosion at a bakery in central Paris.  It appears to have been a gas explosion — Three skiers were killed and a fourth is missing after an avalanche near the Austrian ski resort of Lech am Arlberg.

The Gathering Crowd:Former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julian Castro announced he’s running  for president with a speech in San Antonio yesterday. He was the city’s mayor from 2009 until 2014, when he  joined President Obama’s cabinet. His twin brother is a member of Congress.

   Castro joins Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard in what is likely to be a parade of Democratic candidates rivalling “And to Think That I Saw it on Mulberry Street.” 

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