John Cassidy, writing for The New Yorker:

What is going on here?
Some of Trump’s supporters may have believed they were electing a pragmatic businessman who wouldn’t be restricted by obligations to either party or other powerful interest groups. But he is putting together a cabinet that looks almost exactly like the modern Republican Party: older, white, anti-government, and extremely conservative on virtually every issue. It could have been constructed by the Heritage Foundation, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, or one of the other corporate-funded institutes that have helped drag the G.O.P. so far to the right on issues ranging from taxation to environmental regulation to charter schools.

A couple-three takeaways from this piece:

1. Trump is the GOP and the GOP is Trump, as I’ve been saying all along.

2. These revelations re: Russia and the election are sexy and infuriating and exciting to follow along with, but Occam’s Razor tells us to believe what Cassidy is preaching here. I think it is time to stop treating Trump as an out-of-his-depth idiot, and recognize that he really did just want to win, and now he will be content to let the GOP do their thing, making him an incredibly dangerous useful idiot.

3. If your vote for Trump was cast as a shake-up-Washington, anti-establishment vote—you got suckered.

Joe Stracci