Expect Trump To Be Busy Pardoning A Lot Of People In His Last Month In The White House

Josh Dawsey, Carol Leonnig and Tom Hamburger reported in the Washington Post about more trouble for Trump. They wrote that a confidential White House review of Trump’s decision to place a hold on military aid to Ukraine has turned up hundreds of documents that reveal extensive efforts to generate an after-the-fact justification for the decision and a debate over whether the delay was legal-- clearly part of a cover-up. "The research by the White House Counsel’s Office," they wrote, "which was triggered by a congressional impeachment inquiry announced in September, includes early August email exchanges between acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and White House budget officials seeking to provide an explanation for withholding the funds after President Trump had already ordered a hold in mid-July on the nearly $400 million in security assistance."

Meanwhile, Schiff told Jake Tapper on State of the Union that the House Intel Committee "will press ahead with its impeachment report even though key witnesses have not testified, in the latest signal that Democrats are moving swiftly in their probe of President Trump’s alleged efforts to pressure Ukraine... Schiff said the evidence against Trump is 'already overwhelming.'" Felicia Sonmez and Elise Viebeck reported that "Democrats are seeking to prove Trump leveraged military assistance and an Oval Office meeting in exchange for investigations of former vice president Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden and a debunked theory concerning purported Ukrainian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Several key figures, including acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, Vice President Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former national security adviser John Bolton and Trump attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani, have declined to cooperate with the impeachment inquiry.

A federal judge is expected to rule Monday on whether former White House counsel Donald McGahn must testify under subpoena.

Some have argued that Democrats should litigate the matter in the courts to force more witnesses to testify. But Schiff said Sunday that time is of the essence and that Democrats will continue to investigate even after they have submitted their report to the House Judiciary Committee.

“We’re going to continue our investigation… The investigation isn’t going to end,” he said, adding that “we may have other depositions and hearings to do.”

He took particular aim at Bolton, arguing that the former national security adviser will have to explain why he chose to give his account of events “in a book” rather than show the “courage” that Fiona Hill, the former National Security Council Russia adviser, did in testifying before lawmakers last week.

Schiff declined to say how long it might take impeachment investigators to finish their report, saying only that “we’ll take the time that’s necessary.”

Trump, meanwhile, continued to take aim at Democrats, saying in a tweet on Sunday that they “are not getting important legislation done” because of the impeachment inquiry.

“USMCA, National Defense Authorization Act, Gun Safety, Prescription Drug Prices, & Infrastructure are dead in the water because of the Dems!” Trump said, referring to the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement and other matters.

In another tweet, Trump claimed that public opinion has “turned very strongly against Impeachment, especially in swing states,” though national polls have shown that public sentiment about impeachment has remained stable.

According to an NPR-PBS-Marist poll, 49 percent of respondents supported removing Trump from office in mid-November. This is similar to the 48 percent who said the same in early October in another NPR-PBS-Marist poll.

Administration officials and other Republicans on Sunday continued to defend Trump and sought to keep the focus on Biden, who is running for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.

White House counselor Kellyanne Conway argued that there was no quid pro quo because Ukraine eventually received its military aid and Trump met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in late September.

Conway also dismissed the notion that last week’s testimony strengthened Democrats’ hand, claiming that she sees swing-district Democrats “wringing their hands” over what to do.

“I think defense will go on offense if there is a Senate trial, and we’ll be able to call witnesses, we’ll be able to challenge their witnesses, produce other evidence,” Conway said on CBS News’s Face the Nation.

She added, “We simply can’t impeach and remove a democratically elected president from office because they didn’t beat him in 2016, they haven’t a clue how to beat him in 2020, [and] they don’t much like him.”

Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT), a member of the House Intelligence Committee, said he was “pretty sure that every single one” of Conway’s assertions was “inaccurate,” noting that Ukraine received its military aid and Trump met with Zelensky in New York only after a whistleblower made the complaint that triggered the impeachment inquiry.

“I understand that the White House is all about making facts slippery,” Himes said. “When the jig was up, yes, then the aid was released, once they [Trump and his allies] were caught.”

Himes also challenged Conway’s claim that Democrats in Congress were losing faith in the allegations.

“I don’t think any Democrat in the Congress looked at what happened over the last two weeks and said, ‘Gosh, there’s nothing there,’ ” Himes said, adding: “Every single day, every single piece of testimony brought up new information.”

Calling Trump’s alleged quid pro quo with Ukraine a “red herring,” Sen. John Neely Kennedy (R-LA) said it’s important for lawmakers to understand why Trump asked Zelensky for an investigation of the Bidens and what Hunter Biden did as a board member for Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company.

Kennedy said it was unfair that Trump was unable to call witnesses or offer a direct rebuttal during the initial proceedings of the impeachment inquiry.

“I think Speaker [Nancy] Pelosi’s judicial philosophy from the beginning has been ‘guilty,’ ” Kennedy said on Fox News Sunday. But he said that if there is a Senate trial, he does not think the allegations will be “summarily dismissed.”

“I’m in favor of doing it in accordance with due process and [letting] everybody offer whatever they want to in terms of evidence,” Kennedy said, even if that “takes a long time.”

The Louisiana Republican said he was unsure whether Russia or Ukraine hacked the Democratic National Committee’s servers during the 2016 election despite the intelligence community’s consensus that Russia was to blame. His comment drew a strong response from Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA), who said, “It was Russia, and as a country, we have to make sure that we absolutely acknowledge it was Russia [and] condemn Russia for it.”

“It actually plays into Russia’s hands if they [Republicans] have this equivalence with Ukraine where we’re saying, ‘Well, maybe we don’t know which one it was,’ ” Swalwell said.

In a separate interview on NBC News’s Meet the Press, Schiff said there is no longer a need for testimony from the anonymous whistleblower-- though Schiff had previously pledged that his panel would hear from the individual.

“We don’t need the whistleblower’s secondhand evidence anymore,” he said. “It would only serve to endanger this person and to gratify the president’s desire for retribution, and that is not a good enough reason to bring in the whistleblower.”

Schiff also pushed back against the argument that he himself should be called to testify in the Senate trial, noting, “I’m not a fact witness.”

“All I can relate is what the witnesses said in deposition and in the open hearings,” he said, arguing that calling him to testify would show a lack of seriousness by Senate Republicans.

On CNN, Schiff also declined to say whether he believes the House Ethics Committee should investigate Rep. Devin Nunes (CA), the top Republican on the intelligence panel, over allegations that he met with an ex-Ukranian official to obtain information about Joe Biden and his son.

House Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam Smith (D-WA) said Saturday that it was “quite likely” that Nunes would face a House inquiry. But Schiff said Sunday that he did not want to weigh in on the matter.

“I don’t want to comment on what the Ethics Committee should do, particularly vis-a-vis the ranking member of my committee,” Schiff said.

There seems to be an unending flow of impeachment-related witnesses and information the Democrats could still tap. Sunday night, for example, CNBC reported that Lev-- of Lev and Igor-- "wants to testify to Congress that aides to Rep. Devin Nunes called off a trip to Ukraine this year when they realized they would be required to notify Democratic committee chairman Adam Schiff. The purpose of the trip was to interview two Ukrainian prosecutors who claim to have evidence that could help President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign, according to Parnas’ lawyer. Parnas also alleges that Nunes, a leading Trump ally, himself traveled to Vienna last year to interview a potential source of political dirt on Joe Biden.

And Schiff is already in possession of video and audio tapes and photographs from Lev that are supposedly damning to Giuliani, Nunes and possibly Trump himself. "Some of the material sought by congressional investigators is already in possession of federal investigators within the Southern District of New York and thus held up from being turned over, according to sources familiar with the matter."

This morning, Bloomberg columnist Jonathan Bernstein, reminded his readers that conservative Republicans stuck with President Richard Nixon in 1974… right up until they didn’t. In other words: it ain't over 'til it's over. "Trump’s seemingly unanimous support right now is similar to the backing that Nixon had even as his original cover-up collapsed in early 1973; as the Senate Watergate committee hearings dominated that summer; as the Saturday Night Massacre unfolded in October; and as the House judiciary committee debated and voted on specific articles of impeachment in 1974. And then: The smoking gun tape came out and it all collapsed immediately. Even Nixon’s strongest supporter on the judiciary committee, the Jim Jordan of the day, who had just vigorously defended the president during televised deliberations, flipped and said he’d vote to impeach on the House floor."

Hannity & Friends Raise The Flag by Nancy Ohanian

You don't go to prison for hackery, of which Nunes is clearly guilty, but Nunes has gone much further than that. This morning, Charlie Sykes wrote that "In the real world, Nunes’ behavior has become so openly outlandish it's drawing fire from former colleagues. Even among the antics of Jordan and Stefanik on the House Intelligence Committee, Nunes stands out. As the hearings wrapped up, former Republican congressman and current (long-shot) presidential candidate Joe Walsh tweeted: 'One takeaway for what it’s worth: @DevinNunes is a stupid, partisan hack.' Perhaps, but Walsh’s critique seems incomplete. It is true that Nunes will never be confused with Abraham Lincoln in either intellect or statesmanship. It also is worth remembering that he is the guy suing a Twitter account called “Devin Nunes' Cow,” for $250 million for (among other things) calling him a 'treasonous cowpoke,' and tweeting that: 'Devin’s boots are full of manure. He’s udder-ly worthless and its pasture time to move him to prison.'"

Walsh is also right that Nunes is, like so many of his colleagues, a political hack. But he’s more than that. Devin Nunes has redefined hackery in the age of Trump.

Old-fashioned hackery generally consisted of loyalty and a willingness to take one for the party, because hacks were concerned with self-preservation. But the thing about this form of hackery is that there were limits-- a point beyond which even the most devoted hack would not go. (See: Watergate.)

So how to explain Nunes and his colleagues?

It is one thing to defend their party’s president against his partisan foes. This is hardly unprecedented. But the innovation of Trumpian hackery is the demand that hacks set their intellect, character and political future on fire.

Nunes is the very model of this new hackery. He is not merely Trump’s defender, he has become his doppelgänger and co-conspirator, willing to peddle discredited propaganda likely cooked up by Russian military intelligence if Trump demands it.

There are two possibilities here: Nunes knows that he is cynically using Trump-friendly talking points because they play well on Fox News, or he actually believes this fetid mass of falsehoods because, as Slate’s Will Saletan told me, “he’s been using his own product.” It’s not clear which is worse, but the question goes to the essence of the new hackery.

I have a strong feeling that a judge and jury will be deciding before this is all over.

Trump: The Republican Party's Biggest Albatross In History-- And Joni Ernst Vaults Towards The Top Of The Most Vulnerable List

Trump Snowball Effect by Nancy Ohanian

"Wednesday, the 1,000th day of Donald Trump’s presidency, went badly," wrote Jonathan Bernstein. "That’s no surprise; most of the first 999 days went badly too. I have no idea if he’s going to wind up getting ousted from office, either as a result of the impeachment House Democrats are readying or the 2020 election. But things are getting worse for Trump-- whether he realizes it or not." Bernstein was referring to Trump's moronic letter to Erdogan, "an embarrassment, in which Trump, soon after telling Erdogan on the phone that U.S. forces would move out of his way to enable Turkey’s invasion of Syria, tried to walk things back. Sort of. As Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman put it at the Monkey Cage, the president opted for 'threatening rhetoric reminiscent of a Mafia boss' to 'make loud threats that he may not be able to deliver on.' As soon as the letter was published, professional diplomats and historians said they had never seen something so amateurish from a U.S. president." That's Donald J. Trumpanzee!

But what really underlined Trump’s problem for me wasn’t that he wrote an incompetent letter to follow up on what seems to have been an incompetent phone call. Or that his Syria policy has resulted in chaos and death. Or that, on a crass political level, he’s managed to alienate his congressional allies just as he needs them most, with House Republicans voting overwhelmingly on Wednesday to condemn his decision.

No, what really got to me was that Trump distributed copies of this letter to congressional leaders when they showed up at the White House for a briefing. Think of it. Even if the letter had been perfectly normal, what Trump was handing them was an Oct. 9 request to Erdogan to halt his invasion-- a request that Erdogan has, as we’ve seen, totally ignored. Trump was bragging about what he considered to be a sign of his own brilliance without realizing that it was instead evidence of abject failure.

And that too, of course, is Donald J. Trumpanzee, star of his own reality show, U.S.A.! This and a million other things that are just horrifying. And Republicans in Congress see this too-- and wonder how badly its all going to blow back on them next year. Wednesday, only 60 Republicans voted against a Democratic resolution opposing his moves in Syria. 129 Republicans crossed the aisle and voted with the Democrats, including Trump suck-ups like minority leader Kevin McCarthy, minority whip Steve Scalise and names always associated with Trump worship, from stooges like Devin Nunes, Liz Cheney, John Ratcliffe, Donald J Bacon and Patrick McHenry to lackeys like Clay Higgins, Michael McCaul, George Holding and sock puppet Lee Zeldin on the tip of Long Island. The 60 who stuck with Trump are generally in the safest, gerrymandered red districts where it would take a thousand foot high anti-Republican national tsunami to displace them-- garbage members like Gym Jordan (OH- R+14), Matt Gaetz (FL- R+22), Louie Gohmert (TX- R+25), Mark Meadows (NC- R+14), Mo Brooks (AL- R+18), Scott DesJarlais (TN- R+20), Greg Pence (IN- R+18), Andy Biggs (AZ- R+15) and Jason Smith (MO- R+24).

Meanwhile, Republican senators in swing states are losing their shit. As Morning Consult explained, vulnerable senators are seeing their chances for reelection slipping away every time Trump does something normal voters hate. And lately, that's several times a day. On Wednesday, we focused on why Susan Collins might as well not even run. Morning Consult looks at the similar travails of Thom Tillis (NC), Cory Gardner (CO), Joni Ernst (IA) and Matha McSally (AZ). "The most vulnerable Republican senators," wrote Eli Yokely, "are not improving their standing in their home states ahead of a tough 2020 election cycle, while the field of potential Democratic challengers took shape and began to flex its muscle. According to Morning Consult’s latest quarterly Senator Approval Rankings based on nearly 534,000 responses from registered voters collected July 1 through Sept. 30, Republicans representing Colorado, Arizona, North Carolina, Maine and Iowa all saw their net approval-- the share of voters who approve of a senator’s job performance minus the share who disapprove-- decline between the second and third quarters of 2019."

Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst, who has already faced a cascade of negative advertising, saw a drop of 9 percentage points-- the biggest decline in net approval for any senator. The slide places her underwater with Iowa voters (39 percent approve and 43 percent disapprove) for the first time and among the 10 most unpopular senators in the country.

Iowa voters of all partisan leanings soured on the first-term senator, but GOP voters were most likely to take a dimmer view of her job performance. Her net approval dropped by 13 points among Republicans, compared with respective 9- and 7-point drops among Democrats and independents.

Ernst is not the only Republican up for re-election next year with a home-state approval below 40 percent: Among the vulnerable incumbents, Martha McSally of Arizona, Cory Gardner of Colorado and Thom Tillis of North Carolina are all below that threshold following a quarter where each saw little movement.

...As split-ticket voting continues to decline, the latest rankings show Trump continues to be a drag on Republican incumbents. In Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Iowa, Maine, North Carolina and Texas, Trump’s net approval with registered voters is worse than that of the incumbent Republican, by double digits in several cases.

Among the dozen senators with the smallest approval numbers (from voters in their own states) are 5 Republicans who have to face the voters in 2020-- with Trump further dragging them down. (In way of comparison, Bernie, once again the most popular senator in America, has a 65% approval and John Barrasso, the most popular Republican, has a 59% approval.)

• Thom Tillis (NC)- 33%
• Cory Gardner (CO)- 36%
• Moscow Mitch (KY)- 37%
• Martha McSally (AZ)- 39%
• Joni Ernst (IA)- 39%

Is It Fair To Point Out That Pelosi Is An Accessory To Trump's Crimes?

Thursday evening, Washington Post reporter's Nick Miroff and Josh Dawsey wrote that the Trumpist Regime is "considering a plan to again divert billions of dollars in military funding to pay for border barrier construction next year, a way to circumvent congressional opposition to putting more taxpayer money toward the president’s signature project." The criminal fake "president" needs $18.4 billion to finish 500 miles of photogenic wall before the 2020 election.

Planning documents obtained by the Washington Post show the cost of building 509 miles of barriers averages out to more than $36 million per mile. The documents also show that the government would need to obtain-- either by eminent-domain claims or purchases-- land that lies under nearly 200 miles of proposed barrier.

At a Sept. 11 meeting at the White House led by adviser Jared Kushner, senior officials discussed a plan that would press lawmakers to backfill-- or reimburse-- $3.6 billion of Pentagon funds that the administration diverted this year to pay for fence construction, the officials said.

Trump is forcing the Army Corps of Engineers to bypass regular contracting processes in order to steer all work to North Dakota-based Fisher Industries, a company whose top executive, Tommy Fisher, is a GOP donor and frequent guest on Fox News. North Dakota's crooked senator, Kevin Cramer-- who has received over $10,000 in bribes from the Fisher family-- is the bag-man on the project and has been "deputized" by Trumpanzee to make sure Fisher builds the wall and Republicans and the Trump campaign get appropriate kicks backs.

In short, Trump forces the Pentagon to hand over money appropriated by Congress for specific projects so he can build his vanity project expressly prohibited by Congress, and then the Pentagon goes crying to Congress that they have to have the money for those projects or it will be a disaster.

House on Fire

Apparently, Pelosi finds this aberrant behavior less distasteful than impeaching Trump, making her an accessory to his crimes, from concentration camp funding to the building of this useless monument to his disgusting xenophobia. Yesterday, in his Bloomberg column, Jonathan Bernstein let Pelosi off easy, claiming there's only so much Democrats can do about Señor Trumpanzee's increasingly bold misconduct, by asking How Long Will Republicans Tolerate Trump’s Lawlessness?. The answer is obvious: for as long as their constituents allow them to. He claims it isn't Pelosi, but the Republicans "who have the real decision to make." Bernstein's bullshit line in 3 short sentences: "Because the truth at this point is pretty obvious: If they could be assured of even a smattering of Republican votes, Democrats would almost certainly impeach the president. If they had enough votes to ensure his removal in the Senate, you could remove that 'almost'-- Trump would be gone very rapidly. It’s all up to the Republicans."

What utter bullshit. Pelosi-- who has given up all pretense of governing on behalf of the people rather than on behalf of a tiny, electorally vulnerable Blue Dog fringe within her caucus-- could easily pass David Cicilline's assault weapons sales ban. There are 210 Democratic co-sponors to the bill, one Republican co-sponsor (to give her bipartisan cover if she wants it-- which she doesn't) and at least a dozen members on both sides of the aisle who say they will vote for it on the floor but not co-sponsor it. Pelosi needs 218 to pass it. She has at least 225 votes now. She's full of shit-- and so is Bernstein. He wants to dwell on Trump's criminal behavior-- which is fine-- but excuse Pelosi for allowing it.

We still have only limited information about the emerging whistleblower scandal. But we do know (from what Rudy Giuliani has bragged about) that the president’s lawyer has pressed another country to investigate a Democratic candidate for alleged corruption. That’s on top of the original Trump campaign’s dozens of contacts with a nation attacking U.S. democracy; several documented instances of the president obstructing the investigation of that attack; violations of the emoluments clauses of the Constitution and regular use of government resources to enrich the president’s businesses; and assertions of invented presidential privileges to prevent congressional oversight.

Republicans have been okay with all this, presumably because they’re getting what they want on policy. Or perhaps out of pure partisanship. Or maybe because they’re so deep in the conservative information-feedback loop that they’ve convinced themselves none of it is real. But they should be taking stock now of just how much lawlessness they’re willing to tolerate. At this point, it looks like the whistleblower’s story involves Trump attempting to offer U.S. policy favors to Ukraine in exchange for dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden.

I’ve said all along that there’s a middle ground where the evidence may justify impeachment and removal of the president, but not demand it. Well, the evidence has long since established that impeachment is justified. Now we’re tiptoeing up to the line where it demands removal. At some point, we may wind up clearly over that line by any reasonable definition. If Republicans choose to stick with Trump then, he’ll correctly conclude that he’s above the law.

Democrats can’t do much about this by themselves. Sure, they can attempt to convince the public that Trump’s actions demonstrate that he’s unfit for office, and it’s reasonable to consider every method of doing so, including a partisan impeachment ending in a party-line acquittal in the Senate. They should also continue their investigations, even though much of the case against Trump has been public from the beginning.

But we know how public opinion works. As long as Republicans choose to stay relatively united, either in denying evidence of Trump’s malfeasance or claiming that there’s nothing wrong with it, then Democrats will be unable to generate enough constituent pressure to change their minds. Whatever evidence is turned up, Republicans probably can brazen it out if that’s what they really want, regardless of the damage it does to U.S. democracy. So that leaves one question for them: Is this really what you want?  

"A president is sitting in the Oval Office, right now, who continues to commit crimes. He continues because he knows his Justice Department won’t act and believes Congress won’t either. Today’s news confirmed he thinks he’s above the law. If we do nothing, he’ll be right."- Elizabeth Warren

Trump Is Destroying Dozens Of Republican Incumbents' Ability To Win This Cycle

Air Force One by Nancy Ohanian

Incumbents usually win reelection. It's rare when they don't. Last cycle showed what happens to incumbents when they are viewed by their constituents as enablers of a disliked president. And if Trump was disliked by voters in 2018, he is positively loathed by voters this year. Last year Republicans lost 42 seats, including 30 incumbents. The others had retired but 30 stood and fought for their lives and lost, some by huge margins in red districts. (13 GOP-held seats in which the incumbents retired were lost to Democrats-- marked in red.) This is who lost and many of them were to weak, meaningless DCCC candidates.

• AZ-02 Martha McSally (R+2)
• CA-10 Jeff Denham (even)
• CA-21 David Valadao (D+5)
• CA-25 Steve Knight (even)
• CA-39 Ed Royce (even)
• CA-45 Mimi Waters (R+3)
• CA-48 Dana Rohrabacher (R+4)
• CA-49- Darrell Issa (R+1)
• CO-06 Mike Coffman (D+2)
• FL-26 Carlos Curbelo (D+6)
• FL-27- Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (D+5)
• GA-06 Karen Handel (R+8)
• IL-06 Peter Roskam (R+2)
• IL-14 Randy Hultgren (R+5)
• IA-01 Rod Blum (D+1)
• IA-03 David Young (D+1)
• KS-03 Kevin Yoder (R+4)
• ME-02 Bruce Poliquin (R+2)
• MI-08 Mike Bishop (R+4)
• MI-11 David Trott (R+4)
• MN-02 Jason Lewis (R+2)
• MN-03 Erik Paulsen (D+1)
• NJ-02 Frank LoBiondo (R+1)
• NJ-03 Tom MacArthur (R+2)
• NJ-07 Leonard Lance (R+3)
• NJ-11 Rodney Frelinghuysen (R+3)
• NM-02 Steve Pearce (R+6)
• NY-11 Dan Donovan (R+3)
• NY-19- John Faso (R+2)
• NY-22 Claudia Tenney (R+6)
• OK-05 Steve Russell (R+10)
• PA-05 Pat Meehan (D+13)
• PA-06 Ryan Costello (D+2)
• PA-07 Charlie Dent (D+1)
• PA-17 Keith Rothfus (R+3)
• SC-01 Mark Sanford (R+10)
• TX-07 John Culberson (R+7)
• TX-32 Pete Sessions (R+5)
• UT-04 Mia Love (R+13)
• VA-02 Scott Taylor (R+3)
• VA-07 Dave Brat (R+6)
• VA-10 Barbara Comstock (D+1)

These are seats were incumbents barely held on-- seats that are seen by both parties as ultra-vulnerable this cycle. As you can see, many of the incumbents have already announced retirements-- and open Republican seats are much easier for Democrats to win

• GA-07 open (0.15%)
• NY-27 Chris Collins (0.38%)
• TX-23 open (0.43)
• MN-01 Jim Hagedorn (0.45%)
• IL-13 Rodney Davis (0.76%)
• KS-02 Steve Watkins (0.85%)
• NE-02 Donald Bacon (1.99%)
• PA-01 Brian Fitzpatrick (2.52%)
• PA-10 Scott Perry (2.64%)
• TX-21 Chip Roy (2.82%)
• TX-31 John Carter (3.00%)
• TX-24 open (3.21%)
• KY-06 Andy Barr (3.21%)
• IA-04 Steve King (3.33%)
• CA-50 Duncan Hunter (3.48)
• MO-02 Ann Wagner (3.95%)
• TX-10 Michael McCaul (3.97%)
• NY-01 Lee Zeldin (4.09)
• OH-12 Troy Balderson (4.16%)
• PA-16 Mike Kelly (4.28%)
• MI-06 Fred Upton (4.55%)
• MT-AL Greg Gianforte (4.63%)
• TX-22 open (4.98%)

Last night, one of the top candidates running for the open seat in GA-07, Marqus Cole, told us that he's "thankful that my neighbors in this district were spared the loss of resources because of the President’s illegal vanity project. However, like lots of folks, I have family members personally affected by his recklessness. My younger brother has bravely carried on my family’s tradition of service; he is the third generation to enter active duty in the U.S. Army. He is currently stationed at an Army installation in an area slated to lose funding. How can any person in good faith say they ‘support the troops’ while the President is raiding the cookie jar? We can’t elect another Republican or lukewarm Democrat to the GA-07 seat to rubber stamp the President's corruption."

In a Bloomberg News column yesterday, The Biggest Unknown About 2020, Jonathan Bernstein asserts that the biggest unknown about 2020 is about "what happens to a political party that defies the way parties have always acted."

Here’s an example. Members of Congress typically work hard to represent their districts. In particular, they try to secure benefits that they can bring home and brag about. Constituents wind up hearing good things about their representatives, and therefore tend to vote for them, all else equal. Thus the advantage of incumbency. In the era of partisan polarization, however, that “all else equal” applies less and less because voters mostly support their party’s candidate, so much so that the incumbency advantage seems to be close to disappearing.

But what happens when incumbents actively support policies that take valuable projects away from their districts? That’s what’s going on with President Donald Trump’s decision to transfer appropriated military funds to pay for his border wall (yes, the one that Mexico was supposed to pay for and that Congress has repeatedly failed to fund).

For now, these transfers appear to be getting plenty of press in the affected states-- including some with potentially vulnerable Republican senators. If this was a normal failure to win funding for projects, I’d say it’s not a big deal; certainly not something that voters would hold against their representatives. But we can’t really say that here. This isn’t a missed opportunity-- it’s a deliberate effort to take something away that had previously been secured. Sure, Trump is the one doing it. But it’s not as if Republicans in Congress can say they did everything they could to stop him.

And this is no isolated incident. Trump’s trade wars, which are actively harming domestic industries, are similar. So is his decision to conduct such an extremely partisan presidency that very few people outside the Republican Party think he’s doing a good job.

Sure, all politicians have to make hard choices that will benefit some constituents and not others. But this president seems far more reckless about it than any since, perhaps, Jimmy Carter. Back then, Democrats in Congress reacted by fighting back against Carter. That didn’t work. Now Republicans are trying the opposite. Perhaps they’ll be successful. But it’s quite possible there are just no good choices available for them right now.

Send Him Back by Nancy Ohanian

Trump's Decision Making Is A Different Kind Of Swamp

Jonathan Bernstein's question for Bloomberg readers was compelling enough-- Where Does Trump Get His Odd Ideas? "Understanding how a president thinks can help make sense of his decisions," he wrote. "Trump’s case is harder than most." [At the bottom of the page, please take a look at how Randy Rainbow deals with this question.] Bernstein wants to know how Trump learns things (or-- let's face it-- more to the point, why he doesn't). Earlier we looked at the horrifyingly dangerous example of Trump's Climate Change denial. Is it just a matter of listening to voices that serve his personal self-interest?

Trump doesn't read briefings, on politics or anything else. He doesn't appear to have absorbed the basics of public policy, whether on health care or national security or even issues, like trade, that he cares about. Instead, he seems to pick up fragments of information in conversation or, more often, from cable television. Often, it's partisan talking points, which isn't surprising since much of what airs on Fox News, CNN and MSNBC consists of partisan talking points. Trump then extracts some fact or detail he finds useful from that input, and comes up with his own way of expressing it. Usually, he pretties it up, smooths out any nuances and exaggerates significantly. Then he tests it out, on Twitter and especially at his rallies, working for the wording that gets the biggest reaction. And then? As far as I can tell, Trump winds up believing the final version of whatever it is he has produced. Once it's in there, it seems to stick, although sometimes the original 'fact' winds up growing more distorted over time.

This works on just about everything. For example, the facts contained in special counsel Robert Mueller's report were in fact devastating for Trump, especially on obstruction of justice. But for the president, it's simply become 'No Collusion. No Obstruction.' He took Attorney General William Barr's version of the report, or more likely the Fox News version of Barr's version, removed any complications or caveats, and created a new talking point. Does he really believe it? There's no way to know but he certainly brings it up all the time as if it were accurate.

You can well imagine, that he might have read Justin Amash's latest well-reasoned tweet storm Tuesday, which incapable of absorbing anything at all from it other than Amash, a Michigan Republican, being an enemy. This is a bit of a tangent, but let me pause for a second to transcribe the actual tweet storm; believe me, you'll enjoy it and I'll get back to Bernstein in a moment:

Attorney General Barr has deliberately misrepresented key aspects of Mueller’s report and decisions in the investigation, which has helped further the president’s false narrative about the investigation. After receiving Mueller’s report, Barr wrote and released a letter on March 24 describing Barr’s own decision not to indict the president for obstruction of justice. That letter selectively quotes and summarizes points in Mueller’s report in misleading ways. Mueller’s report says he chose not to decide whether Trump broke the law because there’s an official DoJ opinion that indicting a sitting president is unconstitutional, and because of concerns about impacting the president’s ability to govern and pre-empting possible impeachment. Barr’s letter doesn’t mention those issues when explaining why Mueller chose not to make a prosecutorial decision. He instead selectively quotes Mueller in a way that makes it sound-- falsely-- as if Mueller’s decision stemmed from legal/factual issues specific to Trump’s actions. But, in fact, Mueller finds considerable evidence that several of Trump’s actions detailed in the report meet the elements of obstruction, and Mueller’s constitutional and prudential issues with indicting a sitting president would preclude indictment regardless of what he found. In noting why Barr thought the president’s intent in impeding the investigation was insufficient to establish obstruction, Barr selectively quotes Mueller to make it sound as if his analysis was much closer to Barr’s analysis than it actually was:

Barr quotes Mueller saying the evidence didn’t establish that Trump was personally involved in crimes related to Russian election interference, and Barr then claims that Mueller found that fact relevant to whether the president had the intent to obstruct justice. But Mueller’s quote is taken from a section in which he describes other improper motives Trump could have had and notes: “The injury to the integrity of the justice system is the same regardless of whether a person committed an underlying wrong.” None of that is in Barr’s letter.

As a result of Barr’s March 24 letter, the public and Congress were misled. Mueller himself notes this in a March 27 letter to Barr, saying that Barr’s letter “did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance of this Office’s work and conclusions.” Mueller: “There is now public confusion about critical aspects of the results of our investigation. This threatens to undermine a central purpose for which the Department appointed the Special Counsel: to assure full public confidence in the outcome of the investigations.” To “alleviate the misunderstandings that have arisen,” Mueller urged the release of the report’s introductions and executive summaries, which he had told Barr “accurately summarize [Mueller’s] Office’s work and conclusions.” Barr declined; he allowed the confusion to fester and only released the materials three weeks later with the full redacted report. In the interim, Barr testified before a House committee and was misleading about his knowledge of Mueller’s concerns:

Barr was asked about reports “that members of [Mueller’s] team are frustrated…with the limited information included in your March 24th letter, that it does not adequately or accurately necessarily portray the report’s findings. Do you know what they’re referencing with that?”

Barr absurdly replied: “No, I don’t…I suspect that they probably wanted more put out.” Yet Mueller had directly raised those concerns to Barr, and Barr says he “suspect[s]” they “probably” wanted more materials put out, as if Mueller hadn’t directly told him that. In subsequent statements and testimony, Barr used further misrepresentations to help build the president’s false narrative that the investigation was unjustified. Barr notes that Mueller did not “find any conspiracy to violate U.S. law involving Russia-linked persons and any persons associated with the Trump campaign.” He then declares that Mueller found “no collusion” and implies falsely that the investigation was baseless. But whether there’s enough evidence for a conviction of a specific crime which Mueller thought was appropriate to charge is a different and much higher standard than whether the people whom Mueller investigated had done anything worthy of investigation.

In truth, Mueller’s report describes concerning contacts between members of Trump’s campaign and people in or connected to the Russian government. For instance, Trump Jr., Paul Manafort, and Jared Kushner took a meeting with a Russian lawyer whom Trump Jr. had been told worked for the Russian government and would provide documents to “incriminate Hillary,” as part of the Russian government’s “support for Mr. Trump.”

It’s wrong to suggest that the fact that Mueller did not choose to indict anyone for this means there wasn’t a basis to investigate whether it amounted to a crime or “collusion,” or whether it was in fact part of Russia’s efforts to help Trump’s candidacy.

Barr says the White House “fully cooperated” with the investigation and that Mueller “never sought” or “pushed” to get more from the president, but the report says Mueller unsuccessfully sought an interview with the president for over a year. The report says the president’s counsel was told that interviewing him was “vital” to Mueller’s investigation and that it would be in the interest of the public and the presidency. Still Trump refused. The president instead gave written answers to questions submitted by the special counsel. Those answers are often incomplete or unresponsive. Mueller found them “inadequate” and again sought to interview the president. Ultimately, the special counsel “recogniz[ed] that the President would not be interviewed voluntarily” and chose not to subpoena him because of concerns that the resulting “potentially lengthy constitutional litigation” would delay completion of the investigation.

"Anyway," wrote Bernstein, "there are dozens of examples like this. Trump's insistence that the Iran deal would’ve allowed the regime to develop nuclear weapons quickly, for one. Or his odd ideas about aircraft carriers. Or his infamous contention that foreign nations-- not companies, but nations-- pay for the tariffs he has imposed.The last president who had a habit of believing things that were not true was Ronald Reagan; his staff would work hard to prevent him from, for example, telling stories from movies as though they were actually from his own life. And yet Reagan knew a lot about how government and world affairs worked, and certainly had strong ideological beliefs that he really understood. He also was perfectly happy to be stage-managed, understanding that it suited his long-term interests. He was criticized for this quite a bit at the time, but he accepted that the presidency was a joint operation, not a one-person show. Trump, of course, hasn’t followed Reagan's example, in this regard and many others.

...[U]nderstanding a president's thinking helps make sense of his choices. There are places to look for clues, including party, promises made, skill level, the structure of the office and (when it comes to foreign affairs) the demands of national interests. But sometimes presidents act in ways that appear to defy all those explanations, and in those cases, it helps to know something about the person occupying the office. And Donald Trump, more than most presidents, frequently does things that scream out for a personal explanation."

As Australian activist and blogger Caitlin Johnstone wrote yesterday, "In a system where money both (A) translates directly to political power and (B) comes most abundantly to whoever is sufficiently cold and unfeeling to do whatever it takes in order to become immensely wealthy, we naturally find ourselves in a world ruled by sociopaths. These plutocratic rulers use their political influence to amass more power/money for themselves and create a system that is more and more favorable to the immensely wealthy, and they buy up media outlets to manufacture public support for that system. This ongoing propaganda campaign is what I see as the key weakness in the armor of their machine, and it’s the point I spend my energy attacking here. Whoever controls the narrative controls the world. Understand this key point and you’ll understand why plutocrat-controlled media outlets are constantly smearing Julian Assange, why they never fail to fall in line to support a US-led military agenda, why they pay massive amounts of attention to some political candidates while completely ignoring others, and why they put so much energy into keeping everyone arguing over the details of how the status quo should be maintained instead of debating whether it should exist at all. The unelected power establishment uses its control over politics and media to determine what the public believes about what’s going on in their world in order to keep them from rebelling against a status quo which does not serve them; without the ability to effectively propagandize the masses in this way, they cannot rule."

And that brings us directly to... Randy