Information is Wealth.

White House aides feel blindsided by the bombshell revelations around Donald Trump Jr.’s campaign meeting with a Russian lawyer, while the president is using his relatively light schedule to watch TV and fume about the latest scandal, according to interviews with half a dozen White House officials and advisers. Unlike prior Russia-related controversies, the White House is not minimizing the political ramifications of Trump’s eldest son’s decision to meet with the Kremlin-linked lawyer after being offered information that he was told would “incriminate” Hillary Clinton as “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.” But top West Wing aides are exasperated by their limited ability to steer the damage control and the risk that more damaging news has yet to emerge. One Trump adviser said the White House is "essentially helpless" because the conduct happened during an "anything goes" campaign that had few rules. This person s...

A presidential contender. A sex tape. A betrayed woman. A Sunday newspaper headline. Except, it didn’t. Revelations of Cyril Ramaphosa’s "affairs" appear to have been less interesting than the initial billing promised. Yes, Ramaphosa is a presidential contender. But it turns out he wasn’t on the sex tape. And it seems he had already spoken with his wife about the affair and they had moved on. And the Sunday newspaper that broke the story? Well, it has fallen on hard times of late and now seems to be less of a newspaper than another peddler of stories of the Bell Pottinger ilk. Despite Ramaphosa’s best efforts to stay in the headlines, readers had lost interest by Monday Inside, the paper carried an editorial comment by Mosebenzi Zwane, the Gupta-crazy mining minister, with a picture byline. Its main Sunday read was an article about how state capture is "hokum". The previous week it had published an opinion piece that argued Ramaphosa ought to be tried for...