President Trump claimed that he’ll release “my financial statement (my decision) sometime prior to Election” and it “will only show one thing — that I am much richer than people even thought.”
Trump Attacks Holmes During Hearing
President Trump attacks David Holmes on Twitter just as he begins his testimony:
“I have been watching people making phone calls my entire life. My hearing is, and has been, great. Never have I been watching a person making a call, which was not on speakerphone, and been able to hear or understand a conversation. I’ve even tried, but to no avail. Try it live!”
Another Poll Shows Buttigieg Leading In Iowa
A new Iowa State University poll finds Pete Buttigieg leading the Democratic field with 26%, followed by Elizabeth Warren at 19%, Bernie Sanders at 18% and Joe Biden at 12%.
Warren has dropped by nearly 10% over the past month.
Said pollster Dave Peterson: “Warren has seen heightened scrutiny this past month, while Buttigieg has received mostly positive attention. A little over 60% of the people who supported Warren in October still support her now, and those who switched went to Buttigieg.”
A Warning to Republicans on Fiona Hill
Banjamin Wittes: “This is a good opportunity to say a few words about Fiona Hill, who has been a Brookings Institution colleague for many years. Fiona is a formidable person—a first-rate mind with genuine and unusual expertise in Russia policy.”
“She was not a Trumpist, in any sense, which made her decision to go into the administration a matter of some surprise among her colleagues. For a serious Russia hand to serve in Trump’s NSC was, after all, quite a leap. I am sure that Fiona has had to make compromises as a result of the contradictions inherent in that decision. (Imagine being a serious Russia person on the NSC during and after Helsinki, for example).”
“But it should be impossible to dismiss Fiona’s testimony as that of a Never Trumper. This is someone who was not a career bureaucrat who was willing—to the confusion of much of her professional cohort—to go into government in a political role to serve under Trump on Russia.”
“One other thing—a warning to the cocky Republican member who may try to be patronizing or think he or she is gonna have a good C-SPAN moment at Fiona’s expense: Fiona is smarter than you. She knows more. And she is impatient with idiocy. You are likely to embarrass yourself.”
House Impeachments Hearings Continue
The last publicly scheduled House Intelligence Committee impeachment hearing begins today at 9 a.m. ET.
David Holmes and Fiona Hill will testify.
Playbook: “Democrats have high hopes for Holmes and Hill for different reasons. Holmes, of course, is a bit of an accidental witness. He overheard the Gordon Sondlan/Donald Trump high-volume phone call while at lunch in Kyiv — a phone call during which the ambassador and president talked about investigations and A$AP Rocky.”
“Of course, Hill is expected to be a bombshell for Democrats. She reported to John Bolton and was close with him, so she could be a stalking horse for some of his ideas, theories and views on this matter. She was intimately involved in Russia and Ukraine policy, so expect her to be able to answer questions about the inner workings of the Trump White House.”
Leave your reactions in the comments.
What America Is Reading This Morning
As the last publicly scheduled impeachment hearings begin, here are how the nation’s major newspapers covered yesterday’s hearings on their front pages:
New York Times: “We Followed the President’s Orders”
Washington Post: “Diplomat Acknowledges Quid Pro Quo”
Wall Street Journal: “Envoy Says Trump Directed Effort”
USA Today: “Everyone Was In the Loop”
For those wondering how Fox News covered the hearings, the front page of their website is all about Democratic debate last night. But if you scroll down the page, there’s a small headline: “Media Buzz: Sondlan declares quid pro quo, pundits call testimony damaging to Trump”
Trump Calls Democrats ‘Human Scum’
President Trump on Twitter this morning:
“Corrupt politician Adam Schiff’s lies are growing by the day. Keep fighting tough, Republicans, you are dealing with human scum who have taken Due Process and all of the Republican Party’s rights away from us during the most unfair hearings in American History…”
“But we are winning big, and they will soon be on our turf.”
Trump Slams Fox News for Interviewing Swalwell
President Trump slammed Fox News over its coverage of the House impeachment probe, taking issue with the network’s decision to interview Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA).
Said Trump: “Fox should stay with the people that got them there, not losers!”
Fiona Hill Undercuts Another GOP Defense
Former National Security Council official Fiona Hill will say in her opening statement to the House Intelligence Committee this morning that some lawmakers appear to believe Ukraine, not Russia, sought to interfere in 2016 election: “This is a fictional narrative.”
Says Hill: “I refuse to be part of an effort to legitimize an alternate narrative that the Ukrainian government is a U.S. adversary, and that Ukraine—not Russia—attacked us in 2016. These fictions are harmful even if they are deployed for purely domestic political purposes. President Putin and the Russian security services operate like a Super PAC. They deploy millions of dollars to weaponize our own political opposition research and false narratives. When we are consumed by partisan rancor, we cannot combat these external forces as they seek to divide us against each another, degrade our institutions, and destroy the faith of the American people in our democracy.”
Politico: “She could also prove to be a colorful witness. During her closed-door testimony last month, she fought back when some Republicans sought to turn the conversation to allegations of Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election. Hill rejected the assertion and said evidence that some low-level bureaucrats got involved was being weaponized to distract from Russia’s massive interference operation, approved by Vladimir Putin and carried out by Russian intelligence services.”
Congress Needs to Hear from More Witnesses
The New York Times editorial board tells House Democrats to slow down on impeachment.
“Americans shouldn’t be distracted by Republican smoke bombs, but they should also not be satisfied with a truncated inquiry into a question as consequential as whether the president of the United States should be removed from office.”
“It is essential for the House to conduct a thorough inquiry, including hearing testimony from critical players who have yet to appear. Right now, the House Intelligence Committee has not scheduled testimony from any witnesses after Thursday. That is a mistake. No matter is more urgent, but it should not be rushed — for the protection of the nation’s security, and for the integrity of the presidency, and for the future of the Republic.”
Democrats Heed Obama’s Warning
John Harris: “As voting gets closer, the candidates are getting closer to voters. Closer, that is, to power as it really exists in the contemporary Democratic Party—a coalition in which African-Americans and women and working-class voters matter very much, and liberal commentators and social media warriors may not matter as much as it sometimes seems in the daily rumpus.”
“This debate was not a competition, as the first debate outings last summer were, over who could sound most unhesitantly progressive, or most flamboyantly impatient with conventional politics or the incremental liberalism of Barack Obama. Instead it was a competition over who could sound most credibly in touch with the political, policy, and even psychic needs of a country they see as ready to move beyond the traumas of the Trump era.”
Quote of the Day
“Women are held to a higher standard. Otherwise we could play a game called ‘name your favorite women president,’ which we can’t do because it has all been men. … And if you think a woman can’t beat Donald Trump, Nancy Pelosi does it every single day.”
— Sen. Amy Klobuchar, during last night’s Democratic debate.
Buttigieg Gets a Pass
Politico: “Pete Buttigieg came into Wednesday night’s debate bracing for an onslaught that never came. Yes, Amy Klobuchar and Tulsi Gabbard questioned his experience. Cory Booker dinged the young mayor’s resume, pointing out that he’s the ‘other Rhodes scholar mayor on the stage’ and warning voters against picking a Democratic nominee with an ‘inauthentic’ connection to African American voters — a bloc that has largely ignored Buttigieg’s upstart where Buttigieg has failed to gain traction.”
“But Kamala Harris declined a served-on-a-platter chance to hit Buttigieg again over a recent campaign misstep involving a stock photo of black people, instead pivoting to her own case for the Democratic nomination.”
“And Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, who remain packed together at the top of recent Iowa and New Hampshire polls alongside Buttigieg, didn’t take him on at all — a testament to the still-unsettled nature of the 2020 primary campaign and concerns about alienating potential voters with negative attacks less than three months before voting starts in Iowa.”
Pompeo Emerges as Major Trump Enabler
New York Times: “Mr. Sondland’s testimony has undercut any notion that Mr. Pompeo, the administration’s most powerful national security official, was not a participant in Mr. Trump’s efforts to pressure Ukraine. It also firmly places him at the center of one of the nation’s biggest foreign policy controversies in nearly two decades, since the debate over the intelligence that led to the war in Iraq.”
“Mr. Pompeo has told associates that he believes the impeachment testimonies are partly aimed at forcing him to play a Washington game that would end with him turning on the president to save his own career. And he refuses to participate, Mr. Pompeo has said.”
Trump Courts GOP Senators
Politico: “President Trump is aggressively courting Senate Republicans as impeachment bears down, and on Thursday, he’ll come face-to-face with two of the most unpredictable jurors in any Senate trial: Mitt Romney and Susan Collins.”
“By day’s end, the president will have hosted more than 40 Republican senators at the White House since the fall began, mostly for weekly lunches that address a series of issues but also usually include a side of impeachment. Another group will head to the White House on Thursday, leaving just a handful of Republican senators untended by the president.”
“The flurry of activity highlights the increasingly urgent task at hand for Trump: Making sure that the GOP caucus understands his side of the Ukraine saga, not just through his tweets, but from him personally. If the 47 Democratic Caucus members stay united and vote to remove Trump from office, the president needs the support of as many of the 53 Senate Republicans as possible, both to avoid his removal from office and to keep the party from splintering ahead of his 2020 re-election bid.”
Sondland’s Testimony Leaves Trump Allies Scrambling
Washington Post: “As he traveled on Air Force One to Texas, Trump called members of the House to argue that the testimony was good for him, according to an aide familiar with the conversations who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the private talks. Trump also professed to reporters that he had little familiarity with Sondland, a major donor to his inauguration who testified that he had spoken with the president about 20 times.”
Trump Hosted Zuckerberg at Secret Dinner
President Trump hosted a previously undisclosed dinner with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook board member Peter Thiel at the White House in October, NBC News reports.
It is unclear why the meeting was not made public or what Trump, Zuckerberg and Thiel discussed.
