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Trump’s regrets. Hours after his former lawyer pleaded guilty to crimes including hush-money payments designed to sway the election, President Trump tweeted: “If anyone is looking for a good lawyer, I would strongly suggest that you don’t retain the services of Michael Cohen!”
■ And the internet laughed.
■ The New York Times: Now that Cohen has implicated the president in a crime, what do prosecutors do next?
■ Cohen’s lawyer: “Under no circumstances would he accept a pardon from Mr. Trump.”
■ A 2015 Cohen tweet threatening Hillary Clinton with jail has disappeared. (Cartoon: Keith Taylor.)
8 was enough. Coming within minutes of one another, Cohen’s eight guilty pleas and his ex-campaign chair Paul Manafort’s conviction on eight fraud-related charges have pushed the president to the edge of … something.
■ Tribune editorial: “Trump’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.”
■ The Washington Post: … but it “could foretell more bad days to come.”
■ Ezra Klein in Vox: “It sure is a crazy coincidence that all these criminals ended up in key positions around Donald Trump.”
■ Ethics advocates writing in the Times: The
■ Democrats are mapping an emergency plan in case the president fires Mueller.
■ Former New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson compares Trump with Nixon: The cure for “the cancer in Trump’s presidency … may involve impeachment.”
■ Trump’s ex-strategist, Steve Bannon: “November is a referendum on impeachment.”
■ Stand proud, Chicago: The city played a role in Tuesday’s developments.
Meanwhile …
■ NBC News: Congressional Republicans have to decide whether “to investigate the allegation that the sitting president of the United States is implicated in a crime committed during the 2016 election.”
■ On Fox News and across other right-wing media, it was just another day.
■ RedState: “Mueller May Not Have Won Big … But Donald Trump Definitely Lost.”
■ The Onion: “Hundreds Of People Exactly Like Manafort, Cohen Enjoy Another Day Without Any Consequences Whatsoever.”
‘There’s something really wrong.’ A Wilmette mom is gobsmacked after someone reported her for letting her 8-year-old girl walk the dog around the block alone.
■ The Chicago Board of Education could vote to forbid teachers from using personal social media accounts to communicate with kids.
■ Illinois is toughening penalties for texting while driving.
■ Facebook’s taken down hundreds of pages that CEO Mark Zuckerberg says “were misleading people about who they were and what they were doing.”
Dangerous waters. For the second day in a row, the National Weather Service recommends people beware Lake Michigan’s waves.
■ The four states with the nation’s highest rate of foreclosure starts are all along the East Coast.
‘Living in a place like Oak Park … doesn’t mean you’ve made it in America.’ Filmmaker Steve James talks to the Tribune about one theme of his debuting-this-weekend Starz documentary series set in Oak Park, America to Me.
■ Next in the Chicago Public Square / Wednesday Journal Conversations series: James and your Square publisher onstage Sept. 11. Save $5 off your ticket price with the discount code SQUARE.
