OnPolitics Today: Wray, Kelly added to Trump Containment Team

with Brett McGinness

Happy Tuedsay, folks! Christopher Wray and John Kelly just got added to the cast of characters in Washington, and Americans are loving it -- for example, did you know that now up to one-third of voters say things are not at all chaotic in the White House right now? Things are looking up!

Wray waits in a hallway prior to his meeting with Sen.

Wray of sunshine

Almost everyone loves the new FBI Director! For now, at least. Christopher Wray was confirmed by the U.S. Senate 92-5 Tuesday afternoon, with five Democrats voting "no." The first thing he's going to see when he arrives at his desk is a major project his predecessor, James Comey, left unfinished: the investigation into possible ties between President Trump's 2016 campaign and the Russian government.

"This is a tough time to take this tough job," said Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., who serves on the Judiciary Committee. "Mr. Wray showed that he has the integrity, that he will follow the law, and that he believes in the independence of the FBI ... Most importantly for me, he showed the respect for the agents, he showed a respect for his predecessors - both Mr. (Robert) Mueller and Mr. Comey - he showed a respect for the law, and he understood the somber time in which he comes in to take this job."

Bask in the bipartisan praise for now, Chris. Eventually you'll be making the call on how much freedom Robert Mueller has in his independent investigation, and roughly 50 percent of the country will be less than happy.

Trump, still with #nofilter

Great news for fans of government by social media: President Trump won't allow newly minted Chief of Staff John Kelly to rein in his tweeting. Tweeting is the "(o)nly way I can get the truth out!" Trump tweeted early Tuesday morning.

Critics both inside and outside of the GOP had hoped Kelly's immediate dismissal of Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci would have signaled a change in the White House, both to tighten up the administration's messaging and clean up leaks.

Of bigger concern than Twitter right now: allegations that Trump personally crafted his son's statements mischaracterizing his meeting in 2016 with Russian lawyers. The Washington Post reports that Trump personally directed Donald Trump Jr. to say the meeting was about Russian adoptions, instead of admitting from the start that the meeting was to dig up dirt on his father's opponent, Hillary Clinton.

Trump's legal team says the story is fiction. "Apart from being of no consequence, the characterizations are misinformed, inaccurate, and not pertinent," Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow told the Post.

Trumpcare: Dead or alive?

Conventional wisdom says that efforts at repealing Obamacare and replacing it with
¯\(°_o)/¯ are officially dead, killed by John McCain's thumb early Friday. But is it really dead? I mean, it's not like they ever found the body. We don't even know what the body looked like, to be honest. But instead of making another go at a repeal-and-replace vote, a bipartisan group is crafting a plan to stabilize health insurance markets in the near term.

"If your house is on fire, you want to put out the fire, and the fire in this case is the individual health insurance market," said Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), whose Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee will hold hearings starting Sept. 4 to hash things out.

But before then, one issue looms: Trump could, as he has said via Twitter, withhold payment on cost-sharing reductions. (Technically, he would be dropping a government appeal on a court case that says the payments weren't properly authorized.) But that option doesn't seem popular, even among members of his own party.

"Without payment of these cost-sharing reductions, Americans will be hurt," Alexander said.

The quickest way to declare victory, though, would be to declare that all the health-care reform ideas were Republican ideas all along.

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