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Seeking and winning the presidency has been a magical voyage of discovery for Donald Trump.

Tuesday night, he divulged a most remarkable finding: Abraham Lincoln was are you sitting down for this? a Republican.

Most people dont even know he was a Republican, Trump told a group of Republicans. Right? Does anyone know? A lot of people dont know that.

Its possible that somebody doesnt know that Lincoln, the first Republican president, was a member of the Republican Party, also known as the Party of Lincoln. But it has not been for lack of effort on Trumps part. He has repeatedly tried to educate the populace on this little-known fact.

August 2016: Most people dont know this. The Republican Party is ... the party of Abraham Lincoln.

September 2016: A lot of people dont realize that Abraham Lincoln, the great Abraham Lincoln, was a Republican.

October 2016: A lot of people dont know that its the party of Abraham Lincoln.

Beyond this Lincoln revelation, Trump has happened upon many other things that people didnt know. Such as the complexity of health care: Nobody knew health care could be so complicated, he said recently. And the existence of abolitionist Frederick Douglass, who died in 1895: Frederick Douglass is an example of somebody whos done an amazing job and is being recognized more and more, I notice.

Later, touring the new African American history museum in Washington, Trump discovered that slavery was bad. Spying a stone auction block, Trump said, according to Alveda King, a part of his entourage: Boy, that is just not good. That is not good. King also told the Atlanta Journal Constitution that upon seeing shackles for children, Trump remarked: That is really bad. That is really bad.

Who knew?

Trumps discoveries of seemingly obvious things raise two possibilities: 1) He thinks people are awfully stupid, or 2) he is discovering for himself things the rest of us already knew. Which is true? Nobody knows. But we do know that there are many other things Trump thinks people dont know about.

Sunday school: I talk about Sunday school and people dont even know what Im talking about anymore. Its true.

That Bill Clinton signed NAFTA: A lot of people dont know that.

What a value-added tax is: A lot of people dont know what that means.

That we have a trade deficit with Mexico: People dont know that.

That Iraq has large oil reserves: People dont know this about Iraq.

That war is expensive: People dont realize it is a very, very expensive process.

That the country is divided: People dont realize we are an unbelievably divided country.

Thank you, Captain Obvious.

Trump, in his bid to educate the public about things he has learned, takes on a professorial tone. Talking about the Johnson Amendment on church-state separation, Professor Trump told an audience that its something people dont know in the kind of detail and depth that I have explained it to you today. Trump had just explained to them the Johnson Amendments provenance: This was Lyndon Johnson in the 1970s.

The Johnson Amendment was passed in 1954. Johnson retired in 1969 and died in 1973.

Trump claims that a lot of people dont know that U.S. taxes are the worlds highest and that nobody knows the U.S. murder rate is the highest in 45 years. For good reason: Those things arent true. Conversely, just about everybody knows that Russia was behind the election hacking, but Trump long asserted that nobody knows if its Russia.

While Trump has said nobody knows everything, he claims to come pretty close. In his own words:

Nobody knows health care better than Donald Trump.

Nobody knows the tax code better than I do.

Nobody knows politics better than I do.

Nobody knows the politicians better than me.

Nobody knows the system better than me.

Nobody knows more about debt. Im like the king.

By contrast, Trumps list of things other people dont know about is extensive: the heroin problem in New Hampshire, Ben Carsons performance in the primaries, President Obamas record on deportations, the number injured in the Paris terrorist attacks, the hikes in Obamacare premiums, eminent domain, the existence of two Air Force One planes, Afghanistans mineral deposits, Hillary Clinton flunking a bar exam and the authenticity of Trumps hair.

Trump may be correct when he says most people dont know how much hes worth and dont know that hes a nice person. But hes surely wrong when he says people dont know how bad things are.

A lot of people dont know it, but our countrys in trouble, he has said.

If we didnt know it before, we do now.

Twitter: @Milbank

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Lincoln was a Republican, slavery is bad and more discoveries ... - Washington Post

The Latest: Republican eyes continued care for incurably ill Kansas City Star A Republican state legislator wants to ensure Nevadans with chronic conditions such as his own experience no gaps in treatment. Assemblyman Keith Pickard of Carson City introduced a bill Monday that would outlaw insurance companies from dropping ... and more »

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The Latest: Republican eyes continued care for incurably ill - Kansas City Star

WASHINGTON U.S. House Republicans are working on changes to their healthcare overhaul bill to provide more generous tax credits for older Americans and add a work requirement for the Medicaid program for the poor, House Speaker Paul Ryan said on Sunday.

Ryan said Republican leaders still planned to bring the healthcare bill to a vote on the House of Representatives floor on Thursday. Speaking on the "Fox News Sunday" television program, he said leaders were working to address concerns that had been raised by rank-and-file Republicans to the legislation.

Republicans remain deeply divided over the healthcare overhaul, which is President Donald Trump's first major legislative initiative. It aims to fulfill his campaign pledge to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare, the signature healthcare program of his Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama.

Democrats say the Republican plan could throw millions off health insurance and hurt the elderly, poor and working families while giving tax cuts to the rich.

"We think we should be offering even more assistance than the bill currently does" for lower-income people age 50 to 64, Ryan, the top Republican in Congress, said of the tax credits for health insurance that are proposed in the legislation.

Ryan also said Republicans were working on changes that would allow federal block grants to states for Medicaid and permit states to impose a work requirement for able-bodied Medicaid recipients.

Trump told reporters in a brief conversation aboard Air Force One that he had meetings about healthcare reform in Florida at the weekend and that the effort to sell the proposal was going well.

He has been wooing lawmakers to vote for the bill and won the backing of a dozen conservative lawmakers on Friday after an Oval Office meeting in which the president endorsed a work requirement and block-grant option for Medicaid.

Trump is set to meet Ezekiel Emanuel, a health policy special adviser under Obama who helped shape the Affordable Care Acton, at the White House on Monday, along with Ryan and Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price.

Block grants would give states a set amount of money to cover people on the Medicaid program and provide flexibility in spending decisions. However, there is no guarantee funding would keep up with future demands.

"TRYING TO FIX BILL"

While Ryan said he felt "very good" about the health bill's prospects in the House, a leading conservative lawmaker, Representative Mark Meadows, told the C-Span "Newsmakers" program that there were currently 40 Republican "no" votes in the House. Republicans hold a majority in the chamber but cannot afford to have more than 21 defections for the measure to pass.

Meadows and two other Republican opponents of the bill, Senators Mike Lee of Utah and Ted Cruz of Texas, met at Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida on Saturday "negotiating with the president's team, trying to fix this bill," Cruz told CBS' "Face the Nation."

North Carolina Republican Meadows said the changes being considered for the Medicaid program would not go far enough if they left it up to states to decide whether to put in place a work requirement.

Price acknowledged the tough negotiations, telling ABC's "This Week": "It's a fine needle that needs to be thread, there's no doubt about it."

The healthcare bill would face significant challenges in the Senate even if it were to pass the House.

Senator Tom Cotton, a conservative Arkansas Republican, said the bill would not reduce premiums for people on the private insurance market. "It's fixable, but it's going to take a lot of work," Cotton said on CNN's "State of the Union."

Moderate Republicans have also expressed concerns about the bill, and their worries are often not the same as that of conservatives.

Speaking on NBC's "Meet the Press," Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine worried the bill would harm older Americans, and shift Medicaid costs to states - something critics say a block-grant approach would only make worse.

Collins said coverage issues must also be dealt with, citing a report from the Congressional Budget Office that said 14 million people would lose health coverage under the House bill over the next year and 24 million over the next decade.

Affordability has been one of the bigger concerns that insurers and hospital groups have raised about the legislation. To the extent that a change in tax credits makes healthcare more affordable for some people, insurers and hospitals could stand to benefit.

The BlueCross BlueShield Association emphasized the need for the replacement to be affordable when the draft of the healthcare bill was released earlier this month. The association represents BCBS insurers that cover the vast majority of the roughly 10 million people enrolled in 2017 Obamacare plans.

WASHINGTON FBI Director James Comey on Monday confirmed for the first time that the bureau is investigating possible ties between Republican Donald Trump's presidential campaign and Russia as Moscow sought to influence the 2016 U.S. election.

WASHINGTON Congressional Republicans recrafted their Obamacare replacement bill on Monday in hopes of satisfying critics as U.S. President Donald Trump prepared to promote his first major legislative initiative on Capitol Hill.

WASHINGTON U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson plans to skip an April 5-6 meeting of NATO foreign ministers for a U.S. visit by the Chinese president and will travel to Russia later in the month, U.S. officials said on Monday, a step allies may see as putting Moscow's concerns ahead of theirs.

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Republicans revamp US health bill, boost benefits to older Americans - Reuters

FBI Director James B. Comey said at a House Intelligence Committee hearing that he has no information that Trump Tower was wiretapped by former president Barack Obama. (Reuters)

FBI Director James B. Comey made one thing abundantly clear Monday: There is zero evidence that Donald Trump or Trump Tower was wiretapped during the course of the 2016 presidential campaign.

I have no information that supports those tweets, Comey told House Intelligence Committee ranking Democrat Adam B. Schiff (Calif.), confirming that neither the FBI nor the Justice Department had found any evidence of the alleged wiretapping after a very close look.

Comey's denial of wiretapping comes on the heels of similar statements by former director of national intelligence James R. Clapper Jr., former president Barack Obama and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.).

For Trump to continue to make the case that he was wiretapped by Obama during the 2016 election, you must believe that the current FBI director is lying in a public, nationally televised congressional hearing. And that the former director of national intelligence was lying. And that Mike Rogers, director of the National Security Agency, is lying that Britain was not involved in a wiretapping program at the behest of the American government.

That's a very, very, very, very tough sell.

Now, there are ways around this and a number of the Republican members on the Intelligence Committee are taking Trump's lead in suggesting them. The prime pushback is that when Trump used the word wiretapping, he didn't actually mean wiretapping. Instead he meant a broader palette of potential means of surveillance. And so, by denying, specifically, the words wiretapping, Comey and the rest are playing word games and not broadly denying that someone, somewhere was watching or listening to the Republican presidential nominee.

It is possible in the broadest sense of that word that such a theory could have some validity. But it is the longest of long shots, and to believe it, you have to believe that people like Comey and Clapper purposely obfuscated when asked direct questions about whether Trump was being surveilled.

Given Comey's flat denial of any evidence of Trump Tower being wiretapped, there will be increased pressure on both Trump and Republican members of Congress to back off that position and apologize for it. Reps. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) and Will Hurd (R-Tex.) have already called on Trump to apologize to Obama. It's hard to imagine that other GOPers won't follow that lead in light of Comey's testimony in front of the House Intelligence Committee on Monday.

Trump is another matter. His offhand remark at a joint news appearance Friday with German Chancellor Angela Merkel that perhaps he and she had both been wiretapped by the Obama administration suggests he isn't planning to leave the issue alone much less apologize for it.

And we know that for 35 to 40 percent of the public, that will be enough; they simply trust Trump more than they trust any intelligence official or media outlet.

But that's sort of beside the point. Trump is the president of the United States. There is now ample evidence that a very serious accusation he made about a former president is simply not true. Standing by it now is simply irresponsible.

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James B. Comey complicated the life of every Republican elected official today - Washington Post

Orlando attorney Kevin Morenski on Monday announced his plans to run as a Republican against Democrat Aramis Ayala for Orange-Osceola state attorney in 2020.

Much of the focus at his news conference at the Orange County Courthouse, however, was on Ken Lewis, a fired former assistant state attorney who Morenski said would be his top assistant if elected.

Lewis was fired in 2016 after writing in a Facebook post in the hours after the Pulse massacre that all Orlando clubs are "zoos; utter cesspools of debauchery and downtown Orlando was a "melting pot of third world miscreants and ghetto thugs."

Morenski, 31, a family law and criminal defense attorney, said he was running in response to Ayalas decision not to seek the death penalty in capital cases.

Ayala said Thursday she would not seek capital punishment for Markeith Loyd, charged with killing Orlando Police Lt. Debra Clayton and his pregnant ex-girlfriend, Sade Dixon. Gov. Rick Scott removed Ayala from the case, but she filed a motion Monday to stay that decision.

I share the outrage an overwhelming number of you feel about of the loss of faith in the position of state attorney for Orange and Osceola counties, Morenski said on the courthouse steps.

The people deserve a state attorney who is honest, ethical and dignified to serve in that capacity, he said. And above all, the people deserve a state attorney who will honor their oath to this community and follow the law. Every decision I make will not be made out of political expediency, cronyism, or an ulterior purpose.

Morenski cited Ayalas death penalty decision, as well as what he called playing the race card during her 2016 campaign in explaining why he decided to run. He also said she went too far in making an example of six employees fired over a cocaine- and marijuana-use scandal, saying two of the fired employees had no connection to the cocaine use and were unfairly targeted.

He also criticized Ayalas predecessor, Jeff Ashton, for using the Ashley Madison online dating website in his work office. Ayala defeated Ashton in the Democratic primary last year, which determined the election with only a write-in Republican challenger.

I am a Republican, and it was shameful that the Republican Party failed to give you a real choice in 2016, he said. That will change, that must change.

Morenski said Lewis, the best and most experienced homicide prosecutor this office had, would be his chief assistant if elected. That should dispel any thoughts or concerns about my administrations qualifications.

Lewis said Morenski had a powerful message, and felt that it was enough of an emegency situation that announcing more than three years before the election was warranted. He also admitted, I dont know Mr. Morenski, but [he] reached out to me Saturday and I said I would listen to what he had to say.

Lewis said the posts that led to his firing were satire, my Facebook page is satire. It has nothing to do with how we do our jobs over here. My record speaks for itself right here in this courthouse.

slemongello@orlandosentinel.com, 407-418-5920 or @stevelemongello

Death penalty decision looms large over Aramis Ayala's political future

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Republican attorney announces 2020 run against State Attorney Aramis Ayala - Orlando Sentinel