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Is there anyone less deserving of a “I know his heart” defense than Donald Trump? Probably not, but Mike Pence is apparently making it anyway to suggest that Trump’s “shithole” outburst wasn’t blatant racism. Friends and foes are all pretty certain at this point what’s in Trump’s heart — and Trump himself has had (and missed) countless opportunities to persuade us otherwise. But that’s not the only reason this case is laughable: From his debut as a candidate and his Mexican rapists comments, the entire Trump political brand has been built on defying “political correctness” and giving voice to the racism that’s in the hearts of too many Americans.

Well, the shutdown gave us an answer: there’s no such thing as Trumpism without Bannonism. It’s worth remembering that Trump’s negotiating tactics on DACA have been a mess since he cancelled the program in September. Even as Trump said in his announcement he wanted “Congress to finally act” and “resolve the DACA issue with heart and compassion,” his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, was denouncing the program as unconstitutional, adding, “there is nothing compassionate about the failure to enforce immigration laws.”  The conflicting messages — which seem to emanate from Trump’s fantasies of forcing Democrats into groveling with him and the immigration hardliners who make up Trump’s base — led National Review’s Rich Lowry to ask at the time, “Are You Shooting the Hostage, Holding the Hostage, or Releasing the Hostage?” The limits of political power on display in the shutdown talks demonstrate how, even with Steve Bannon exiled into the political wilderness, Trump can’t muster the political might to defy the brand of nationalism and xenophobia his former chief strategist etched onto his presidency.

This is an incredibly helpful Caller ID feature:

Here is the moment the Trump White House decided to make the shutdown about keeping a hard line on immigration:

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The shutdown is about the GOP coalescing around anti-immigrant racism

Here’s a succinct way to tell which Republicans in the Senate are most anti-Trump plus which Democratic Senators are most fearful of the 2018 midterms.

The Gold Rush rules apply to most ambitious undertakings, but especially bitcoin:

1. You can’t win if you don’t play.
2. There’s no merit in winning, only luck.
3. The only way to lose is to quit.
4. Eventually the dream is betrayed and everyone becomes a wage slave.

It’s my new year’s media resolution to wean myself off the trending news that social media algorithms serves up. So every day I am trying to find five interesting stories that weren’t on any most viral lists.

1. “L.A. County sheriff’s deputy is charged with selling drugs and offering to hire other cops to protect dealers” (Los Angeles Times) – The scale of the criminality in this thorough report is just staggering.
2. “No One Is Coming to Save Us From Trump’s Racism” (New York Times) – Roxane Gay writes in an op-ed: “the president is not alone in thinking so poorly of the developing world. He didn’t reveal any new racism. He, once again, revealed racism that has been there all along.”
3. “Foreign spies are watching — and probably targeting — Fox News Channel” (Washington Post) – What do you do if you’re a foreign spy who knows the U.S. President is under the influence of Fox News? Recruit some Fox News staffers as agents, of course.
4. “Italy’s love affair with cinema cools as film fans turn to TV” (The Observer) – “Italy basically invented the arthouse film but we were the first ones to kill it.”
5. “Moscow Gets 6 Minutes of Sunlight in December” (Moscow Times) – That’s it. For the whole month. Six minutes. Bleak city.

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This reads like two sides of a dysfunctional family trying to trick a senile patriarch into writing the other out of the will.

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This is terrible advice for the Sulzbergers, mostly just unsupported sneering, with the notion of just who this “better” owner is completely unanswered. It’s rarely been a good day for journalism when newspapers pass out of family control. Complaining about newspaper owners is a cliched way of posing as the wise newsroom curmudgeon, but the reality is the list of owners who have been good for journalism, whether individuals or family dynasties, is extremely short and the Ochs-Sulzbergers clan is on it.