First thoughts on this. 

If Trump is out soon congressional Republicans will intensify efforts to shut down the Mueller probe.  This must be rejected outright. If and when Trump is out the public must have a full accounting of what Mueller finds pertaining to Trump.  And, as important, Pence's role and actions must also be revealed. There already are ample grounds to justify a deep dive to find out everything that can be found out about Pence. 

But first things first.  In light of these findings, if they hold up to scrutiny as I strongly suspect they will, there must be a widespread, overwhelming public demand for Trump to resign immediately.  That call must include important Republican party officials who have not to date hinted at any willingness to put country over party.

If this does not happen we might as well inform the rest of the world that the new national motto of our once and future great country has been temporarily changed to: We suck.

What was the time stamp on this Times piece?

eta more from the Sargent piece

"As explosive new Russia revelations hit Trump, Republicans throw him a lifeline", Greg Sargent, The Plum Line, WaPo online, 9:28 AM, at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2018/07/19/as-explosiv...

One graf, towards the middle of the piece:

....

The Republican approach has been to set the threshold for an acceptable Trump response at the point of acknowledgment that the Russian interference effort did take place. In this arrangement, as long as Trump takes that minimal step, there is no need to talk much about why Russia interfered (to elect Trump), or about the fact that the Trump campaign eagerly sought to benefit from that Russian interference, or about why Trump lied to cover that up. There is no need for Republicans to play a more active role in trying to ensure that the fuller truth comes out (by passing a bill protecting the Mueller probe) or in trying to get to that fuller truth themselves (by forcing transparency on Trump’s tax returns, to learn whether he is beholden to Russians in some way).

.....

But the new revelations from the Times fundamentally change the situation. The question is no longer: Why won’t Trump accept the intelligence services’ verdict on what happened, and act accordingly? That question can be easily answered, by, say, the idea that Trump’s ego won’t let him publicly admit to anything that diminishes the greatness of his victory. But the question now is a lot harder: Why did Trump continue actively trying to deceive America into believing that Russian sabotage didn’t happen at all, after having been comprehensively briefed to a previously unknown extent on Putin’s direct involvement in that sabotage effort?

This should only increase the urgency of answering all of those follow-up questions, not to mention the imperative that congressional Republicans use their authority to the fullest extent possible to answer them. Yet, in an interview with CBS News that ran last night, Trump claimed he does acknowledge Russian meddling and even said he warned Putin against doing it again. And now he’s tweeting that this has been his position all along.

So it’s perfectly possible that Republicans will now profess great relief that Trump is now admitting Russian sabotage did happen, as if this settles the issue. But can they really get away with avoiding the questions raised by the new revelation that Trump has had detailed knowledge of Putin’s direct involvement for 18 months now?

...........

If I may, I'd like to offer my interpretation of what MSNBC did with the NYTimes piece, because I happened to have CNN instead of MSNBC on in the background when I saw rmrd post this.  I think it's important to understanding how the right side of the spectrum might not take this as a "bombshell".

So I saw the post go up and I go: hmmm, they are not mentioning it on CNN. And I looked at the NYTimes website and they aren't headlining this story, it's placed as a secondary story.  (The published it @ 9:08 pm, I recorded that because I saw American Dreamer asked.)

And then I saw rmrd put up the explanation of why he used "bombshell", because they were using that word on MSBNC.

So I kept CNN on and watched it for like quite some time, and they never did talk about it. And at first glance, the article didn't seem that bombshell to me it seemed to be a review of what has already been known for a very long time, that Trump was given briefings on Russian attempts like all candidates were even before the election, and he was given more detailed briefings after he was elected.  But that what we also have known for a long time, as the article says, he had/has always not taken those seriously because they came from the Obama administration people.

So I read the article carefully and I saw that what was new there, what MSNBC was calling a bombshell, was that some sources had added new detailed information: that  besides what has been reported for a very long time, that he got detailed briefings, in the Trump tower briefing Trump was shown texts and emails that supposedly are very strong proof that orders to interfere on Trump's behalf came directly from Putin.

And then I switched to MSNBC and watched the late night reruns of all the 3 MSNBC shows: O'Donnell, Brian Williams and Rachel.

And it was indeed exactly as rmrd reported, both O'Donnell & Williams. they were treating it as a very big story, making a big deal of it, used the word "bombshell", had panels on it and asked questions of most guests and discussed it for a great deal of time. (Rachel did not cover it because it was published after her show started.)

But then one of them--I don't remember which--got Ref. Adam Schiff on live, squeezing in an appearance after a vote. And they asked him about it. And he kind of burst their bubble some. He said what I thought, too: well, there's that much new here, a few new details, but we've always known that Trump was briefed before and after he was elected. and he's always just dissed the Obama administration intel.  He disagreed with Brennan and Clapper about it continuing, and that Trump also argues if it was just a big deal, why didn't Obama, Brennan, Clapper and Comey do something about it before the election. That this has always been the problem, that Trump argues it is just a sour grapes political witch hunt to make it look like he won unfairly. But he argues he won fairly, and this thing was all bogus to make it look like he didn't. I also think Schiff pointed out that Brennan and Clapper did not work for Trump and that we all know how Comey was fired by him. The point: Trump has always framed this as a false thing cooked up by politically motivated intel people.

I also had noticed that all three: Brennan Clapper and Comey, have been very vocal about their outrage about Helsinki.

So I surmise that the sources for the NYTimes article are probably close to them or are actually one or more of them. And that putting out this extra info, through NYTimes reporters, this is how they thought they might make it even clearer why they are so outraged about Helsinki. As in: this is the last straw, we are going to tell everything about the briefing now, that which they held back before (Important to note it was held back before because the source was very close to Putin and it could endanger the source, and that is why it was never mentioned or leaked before.)

After that, I checked Breitbart. And this is the headline I found in the wee hours last night, a confirmation that the vast right wing Trump people, they totally buy Trump's story that Brennan, Clapper and Comey are the politically-motivated liars, loyal to Obama/Hillary:

Donald Trump: No Confidence in Intelligence Led by Brennan, Clapper, Comey Brennan and Clapper
“Certainly I can’t have any confidence in the past,” Trump said, citing the “all of the shenanigans that have gone on” in the intelligence community under former President Barack Obama.

So, to sum up, what I think was going with the promotion by MSNBC of the NYTimes article as a "bombshell": they could see that it would be a bombshell to their liberal audience. But to others, like CNN and maybe even the NYTimes itself, it might look if MSNBC was overplaying it a bit too much.

It wasn't treated as that much of a bombshell on Twitter as far as I could see ( admittedly, I don't follow a lot of left people, mostly just mainstream reporters, and a few pundit types.) Because it's not the kind of thing that's going to convince very many people to change their mind, especially if they already buying the kool-aid that Trump's been selling all along.: that if it comes from Obama intel people, it's not only not true, but also he suggests it might be involved with something with that criminal Hillary, too. And Adam Schiff basically not being impressed that the leaks in thea article are not going to help change things was good confirmation for what I was suspecting.

Edit to add: it is also a possibility that MSNBC has a close relationship with the leaker(s) to the NYTimes story, and were informed about it before it was even published, and that this person/persons described it as a "bombshell."

FBI director Wray from the Aspen Security Conference:

Tweeter Kevin Baron is a Pentagon reporter, is there and has tweeted other interesting input from the conference

https://twitter.com/DefenseBaron

​I found him because the couple of reporters I follow were retweeting his stuff.

McConnell calls for Senate hearings on Russia sanctions

By Jordain Carney @ TheHIll.com, - 07/19/18 11:39 AM EDT

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Thursday said he has asked two key Senate panels to hold hearings on Russia sanctions and make suggestions for legislation.

McConnell met with Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker(R-Tenn.) and Banking Committee Chairman Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) on Wednesday night to discuss steps to advance legislation following President Trump's meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki earlier this week.

"I tasked the chairmen of the Banking and Foreign Relations committees with holding hearings on the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, and to recommend to the Senate additional measures that could respond to or deter Russian malign behavior," McConnell said in a statement Thursday.

Congress overwhelmingly passed Russia sanctions last year as part of the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, despite pushback from the White House [.....]

Trump-backing congressman (Ted Yoho) doesn't want a 2nd Putin summit in Washington

By Sophie Tatum @ CNN.com, Updated 8:14 PM ET, Fri July 20, 2018

Rep. Ted Yoho, a Florida Republican who has been a staunch supporter of President Donald Trump, said the US should "absolutely not" invite Russian President Vladimir Putin to Washington.

"I think with what you reported earlier and what we've seen with these three other candidates being already hacked this year, if indeed this does go back to Russians that are in the Russian military or government, absolutely not, I don't think we should invite President Putin over here at this time," Yoho said Friday on CNN's "The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer." [....]

[....] Yoho, who sits on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said Russian interference in US elections is something that should not be tolerated.

"I do agree that we should have relationships with all leaders of all nations, but if it's something like this so soon after the election of (the) President, of the last election, and Russian meddling is still going on, I think we need to bring an end to it and send a strong signal," he told Blitzer.

Juicy stuff if you're into reading White House leakers and wondering what their purpose is, like I am (I know, I'm bad)

Trump’s Putin fallout: Inside the White House’s tumultuous week of walk-backs

By Ashley Parker, Philip Rucker, Josh Dawsey and Carol D. Leonnig @ WaPo.com, July 21 at 4:31 PM

Sample excerpt:

[....] On Tuesday morning, Trump told friends he did not understand what the big fuss was about. But his advisers understood. A coterie of them — including Vice President Pence, Chief of Staff John F. Kelly, counselor Kellyanne Conway, deputy chief of staff for communications Bill Shine, senior policy adviser Stephen Miller, Bolton and Sanders — met with Trump to draft a statement that he would deliver that afternoon seeking to clarify his Helsinki remarks.

Shine, new to his job, also wanted to change the narrative, and after a career as a Fox News executive, he focused on the imagery — eager for Trump to supplant the image of himself standing admiringly next to Putin with fresh content for cable news.

Trump personally reviewed first the transcript and then the video of his news conference and came up with the “double-negative” explanation that he ultimately provided — that when he said in Helsinki he saw no reason that the election hackers “would” be Russian, he had meant to say “wouldn’t.”

Initially, the president worried that his statement would be viewed as backing down or not toughing out the criticism — the sort of concessions he is loath to make. But senior advisers reassured him that if he had really meant to say that he didn’t see why Russian wouldn’t be to blame, he would be simply offering a clarification, not caving [....]