Fox & Friends apologized on Monday after briefly airing a graphic suggesting that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is dead, Mediaite reports.
Booker and Sanders Plunge Into South Carolina
Politico: “For Booker, the state presents an opportunity for an early show of strength next year with the Democratic Party’s most loyal bloc of voters. As one of the few African-American candidates likely to run, he’ll have a moment to break out of the crowded field after voting takes place in overwhelmingly white Iowa and New Hampshire.”
“For Sanders, it’s an opening to move beyond his dismal 2016 performance with black voters here, when he won only 26 percent of the total vote in the primary against Hillary Clinton and exposed a weakness that was repeated across the South.”
How Bloomberg Plans to Create His Own Lane In 2020
Politico: “At first glance, Michael Bloomberg would seem to have zero appeal in a Democratic Party where progressive populism is on the rise and activists and elites say it’s time for a woman or a person of color to win the White House.”
“But unlike any of the other presidential hopefuls, Bloomberg plays a dominant leadership role on two of the top issues on the minds of progressives heading into the 2020 cycle: climate change and gun control. He’s spent a decade as the nation’s preeminent financier on those issues, buying considerable goodwill in progressive circles. If he runs, those familiar with his thinking say, they’ll be the pillars of his campaign.”
“No successful presidential campaign has ever been anchored to those issues. But the politics surrounding climate change and gun control have changed dramatically in recent years, and nowhere more than in the Democratic Party.”
‘For the People’
Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) picked “For the People” as the slogan for her presidential campaign, a reference to her courtroom introduction when she served as a prosecutor, when she would address the court as “Kamala Harris, for the people,” the San Francisco Chronicle reports.
“Her campaign logo is designed in part as a throwback to the campaign of Shirley Chisholm, who became the first black woman to run for president from a major party when she mounted a 1972 run for the Democratic nomination. The logo borrows Chisholm’s light yellow and red color scheme, with a retro font.”
Senate Republicans Surrender to Trump on Shutdown
Washington Post: “Under pressure from conservatives to help Trump deliver on a signature campaign promise and unable to persuade him to avert the partial government shutdown, these lawmakers have all but surrendered to the president’s will. Their comments show how the cracks in the 53-member Republican majority that emerged at the outset of the shutdown have not spread beyond a handful of lawmakers.”
“Asked about the pressure from constituents and some of the 800,000 affected federal workers to end the impasse, GOP senators insisted they are facing equal — if not more — insistence to stand behind Trump and his call for $5.7 billion for a U.S.-Mexico border wall, especially from conservative voters.”
Kamala Harris Will Run for President
Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) “joined the 2020 presidential contest on Monday, thrusting a daughter of immigrants from Jamaica and India into the Democratic race two years after she arrived in the Senate,” the Washington Post reports.
“Harris, a 54-year-old former prosecutor raised in a state that has been the crucible of the Trump resistance, expanded a growing field of candidates fighting for the nomination of a party that is increasingly nonwhite and fueled by women alienated by the president.”
“She made the announcement during an interview on ABC’s ‘Good Morning America‘ and in a video that her campaign posted online.”
Book Describes a White House ‘Out of Control’
The New York Times got an early copy of Team of Vipers by former White House aide Cliff Sims.
“The book, which will be published at the end of January, describes a nest of back-stabbing and duplicity within the West Wing, a narrative by now familiar from other books and news media reports. But Mr. Sims, who left last year after clashing with Mr. Kelly, is one of the few people to attach his name to descriptions of goings-on at the White House that are not always flattering to Mr. Trump, and many of the scenes are not particularly flattering to anyone, including himself.”
What Was Rudy Thinking?
In a remarkable CNN interview, Rudy Giuliani suggested it was possible — and would be “perfectly normal” — that Trump talked to Michael Cohen before he testified about him to Congress, Jonathan Swan observes.
“It’s not ‘perfectly normal’ for subjects of or witnesses in a Congressional investigation to discuss testimony directly with each other. If witnesses or subjects are talking to each other, the government can always claim one is trying to influence the others’ testimony. That’s why lawyers counsel against doing it.”
Trump Failed to Win Over a Single Democrat
“In the 24 hours since Trump offered his immigration proposal, not a single Democrat has publicly expressed openness to it,” Axios reports.
“Senior White House officials told Axios their strategy — conceived largely by Jared Kushner and Vice President Mike Pence — was to get Trump’s “compromise” immigration bill through the Senate with an overwhelming vote and then pressure House Democrats to break from Speaker Nancy Pelosi.”
“But the Democrats have a consensus: No immigration talks until the government is back open. Even the moderates who sometimes break with the party, including Sens. Joe Manchin and Chris Coons, are sticking with leadership on this, for now at least.”
No Daylight Between Chuck and Nancy
Politico: “Republicans have tried to drive a wedge between the duo for more than a month now. They’ve cast Schumer as eager to cut a deal and Pelosi as an impediment. They’ve floated the idea that Pelosi would be more willing to compromise after she was elected speaker. Trump tried again on Saturday, pitching temporary protections for Dreamers and other immigrants, in exchange for $5.7 billion in border wall funding.”
“None of it has worked.”
“Democrats believe the only way to get the president to cave on the wall and reopen the government is to stick together, a plan they reiterated when they rejected Trump’s latest proposal. And by setting a model of unity, Schumer and Pelosi have kept moderates in their caucuses from breaking ranks and underscored how difficult it will be for Trump to get Democrats to fold.”
A Dealmaker Who Can’t Make a Deal
Washington Post: “Trump’s management of the partial government shutdown — his first foray in divided government — has exposed as never before his shortcomings as a dealmaker. The president has been adamant about securing $5.7 billion in public money to construct his long-promised border wall, but has not won over congressional Democrats, who consider the wall immoral and have refused to negotiate over border security until the government reopens.”
“The 30-day shutdown — the impacts of which have begun rippling beyond the federal workforce into everyday lives of millions of Americans — is defining the second half of Trump’s term and has set a foundation for the nascent 2020 presidential campaign.”
“The shutdown also has accentuated several fundamental traits of Trump’s presidency: His apparent shortage of empathy, in this case for furloughed workers; his difficulty accepting responsibility for a crisis he had said he would be proud to instigate; his tendency for revenge when it comes to one-upping political foes; and his seeming misunderstanding of Democrats’ motivations.”
New York Times: “In business and governing, Trump seeks victory in chaos.”
Schiff May Subpoena Michael Cohen
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff told CBS News that he will subpoena President Trump’s former longtime attorney Michael Cohen to testify before his committee “if necessary.”
Cohen is already slated to testify before the House Oversight Committee next month prior to the start of his three-year prison sentence.
Exchange of the Day
BuzzFeed News reporter Anthony Cormier told Brian Stelter on CNN that he’s confident in reporting that President Trump told Michael Cohen to lie to Congress, despite the challenge from special counsel Robert Mueller’s office that claimed the story was inaccurate.
CORMIER: “This story is accurate.”
STELTER: “What if the sources are just wrong?
CORMIER: “They’re not.”
STELTER: “Not intentionally. Not trying to hurt you, but what if they’re wrong?”
CORMIER: “They’re not. They’re not. I’m confident.”
Meanwhile, Marcy Wheeler suggests the special counsel issued his unprecedented statement in an attempt to preserve Cohen’s ability to testify at trial.
Many Still Believe the Trump Myth
A series of University of Maryland surveys find that large swaths of the American public believe the myth of Donald Trump being a self-made billionaire.
“Across three surveys of eligible voters from 2016 to 2018, we found that as many as half of all Americans do not know that he was born into a very wealthy family. And while Americans are divided along party lines in their assessment of Trump’s performance as president, misperceptions regarding his financial background are found among Democrats and Republicans.”
“The narrative of Trump as self-made is simply false. Throughout his life, the president has downplayed the role his father, real estate developer Fred Trump, played in his success, claiming it was ‘limited to a small loan of $1 million.’ That isn’t true, of course.”
Pompeo to Discuss Running for Kansas Senate Seat
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo “is slated to meet with veteran Republican strategist Ward Baker on Sunday afternoon to discuss a possible 2020 run for the vacant Kansas Senate seat,” Politico reports.
“Pompeo and Baker are expected to talk about what a Senate campaign would entail. Baker has deep political experience, having served as National Republican Senatorial Committee executive director during the 2016 election cycle. During the 2018 midterms, he helped to spearhead Tennessee Republican Marsha Blackburn’s successful Senate bid. He is also close to McConnell.”
Mark Meadows Is Trump’s Closest Adviser
Politico: “Four sources with knowledge of their relationship said Trump talks to Meadows more than he does with many of his senior aides. They sometimes spend an hour-plus on the phone together or speak more than once per day.”
Voters Not Blaming Democrats for Shutdown
Playbook: “Democrats have been telling us that they are looking at polling that indicates they are hardly getting any blame for the shutdown. That could change soon if it looks like Republicans are making offers and Democrats are sitting pat.”
Bonus Quote of the Day
“I don’t take him on his word on anything.”
— Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), quoted by CBS News, on President Trump’s proposal to end the government shutdown.