On this week’s episode of Versus Trump, we bring you a quick-hitting episode with multiple Trump Nuggets. We’ll be back next week with a usual discussion episode, and then we’ve got a really great guest interview the following week. As usual, you can listen online below, and subscribe here with any podcast player or here in iTunes.

Jason starts off by providing an update on news about Versus Trump’s favorite unqualified agricultural advisor to President Trump, Sam Clovis. Jason first discussed Clovis on May 17, when it was rumored that Trump would appoint Clovis to the “chief scientist” position at the U.S. Department of Agriculture—even thought the law requires that appointee to be an actual scientist, and Clovis has no science background at all. After a several month delay, Trump has officially nominated Clovis to that position, and Jason wonders what will happen next, both legally and politically.

It’s then Easha’s turn. Easha [at 7:50] begins with a discussion of a new lawsuit called Wheeler v. Fox News, which alleges that Fox News collaborated with the White House to push a false story that the murder of DNC staffer Seth Rich was somehow related to Rich’s alleged contact with WikiLeaks. Easha goes into the merits of the defamation claim against Fox News—which is based on the plaintiff’s claim that the author of the now-retracted article had fabricated several quotes—and she speculates about where the case might go. She also corrects one aspect of our earlier discussion of another case, Cockrum v. Trump Campaign.

Charlie concludes the episode [at 16:45] by discussing a potential grammatical mistake that could change the meaning of a proposed bill that is intended to provide additional protection for Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating the links between the Trump Campaign and the Russian government. He also flags some new reporting in Politico about collusion between a political campaign and a foreign power—but here, the year was 1968, and the President was Richard Nixon.

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Additional Links

• The Politico story that Jason discussed, about Sam Clovis's nomination, is here.
• The Complaint in the Wheeler case that Easha mentioned is here. NPR did an in-depth report on the matter when the suit was filed, and that article can be found here.

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