Trump’s Red Wall in the Senate
Axios shows just how strong that wall is: 51 Republican senators from states Trump won in 2016. He only needs 34 to save him from being convicted and removed from office if the House impeaches him.
- 36 Republican senators represent Trump states where he’s still popular. 15 of them are up for re-election.
- 15 Republican senators represent Trump states where his approval ratings are underwater, but only 4 of them are up for re-election.
- Trump could lose 17 senators from his red wall — or 19 Republicans if Collins and Gardner were in the mix — and still stay in office.
The bottom line: Trump believes the combination of right-wing media backing plus GOP senators’ fear of crossing Trump voters will save him.
Trump’s Impeachment Polling Is Unprecedented
“The poll numbers are in on impeachment, and it’s not good news for President Trump. A clear plurality of Americans approve of the House’s impeachment inquiry into Trump, and they are split on whether they want to impeach and remove him from office,” CNN reports.
“Americans are more eager to impeach Trump now than they were at similar points in the impeachment sagas of Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon.”
The Smoking Texts
Daily Beast: “The texts laid bare, with great specificity, a coordinated effort between State Department officials and Trump’s attorney, Rudy Giuliani, to compel the new Ukrainian government of Volodymyr Zelensky to publicly commit to investigating a firm tied to former Vice President Joe Biden’s son, thereby making foreign aid contingent on the Ukrainians helping Trump’s re-election efforts.”
Philip Bump: “It’s generally not a good sign when a government official sends a written message questioning the propriety of an action and another official replies by suggesting they talk on the phone. The implication is that the second official is worried about leaving behind evidence of their conversation. A phone call doesn’t leave a paper trail.”
“While the released text messages are neither comprehensive (representing ‘only a subset of the full body of the materials,’ according to the letter accompanying the messages) nor directly implicate Trump, they include significant new revelations and suggestions about the Trump-Ukraine interactions. Including, in two suggestive moments, specifically the sort of don’t-document-this responses that imply an awareness of lines being crossed.”
Ex-Commander Says Trump ‘Must Be Held Accountable’
Retired Navy Admiral William McRaven, the former top commander of the U.S. Special Operations Command, believes President Trump “needs to be held accountable” for taking actions that don’t uphold the “dignity” of the office of the presidency, he said in an interview with CBS News.
Said McRaven: “Every public servant who fails to do things that are moral, legal, and ethical, ought to be held accountable.”
Trump’s ‘Impeach Me’ Strategy
“President Trump is going all in. He declared he has the ‘absolute right’ to call for foreign nations to investigate political rivals — publicly calling on China to investigate the Bidens — and he plans to ask Democrats to vote on starting impeachment or get stonewalled,” Axios reports.
“It now seems increasingly inevitable the House will impeach Trump. Think about it this way: Imagine a Democrat who called for impeachment before the China comment voting against impeachment after it.”
Playbook: “Here’s what we can say definitively: President Trump is bending the machinations of the U.S. government toward taking down Joe Biden. Senate and House Republicans are helping him by sticking by his side. That’s not an opinion; it’s a fact.”
“The only difference of opinion now is not over the facts, really. Republicans say there’s nothing to see here; it’s just Trump trying to root out corruption. And Democrats say his own words are evidence that the president is deeply unfit for office and deserves to be impeached.”
Ben Sasse Condemns Trump’s Call for China Probe
Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE) pushed back strongly against President Trump’s suggestion that the Chinese government investigate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, in a statement to the Omaha World Herald.
Said Sasse: “Hold up: Americans don’t look to Chinese commies for the truth. If the Biden kid broke laws by selling his name to Beijing, that’s a matter for American courts, not communist tyrants running torture camps.”
Text Messages on Ukraine Released
Three House committee chairmen released pages of text messages from U.S. diplomats that add background and context around President Trump’s desire to have Ukraine investigate Joe Biden and his son.
Where Republican Senators Stand
“The Financial Times contacted all 53 Republican senators on Thursday to ask if they were concerned that President Trump had encouraged China, a U.S. adversary, to investigate the Bidens. While some were unavailable for comment due to their travel schedules, not one of the members responded via their staff to express any concern.”
Buttigieg Bets His Campaign on Iowa Breakthrough
New York Times: “Boasting a huge financial war chest but struggling in the polls, Mr. Buttigieg is now staking his presidential candidacy on Iowa, and particularly on connecting with rural white voters who want to talk about personal concerns more than impeachment. In doing so, Mr. Buttigieg is also trying to show how Democrats can win back counties that flipped from Barack Obama to Donald Trump in 2016 — there are more of them in Iowa than any other state — by focusing, he said, on ‘the things that are going to affect folks’ lives in a concrete way.'”
Extra Bonus Quote of the Day
“I don’t say this lightly, but let’s be frank: a national nightmare is upon us. The basic rules of our democracy are under attack from the president.”
— Chuck Todd, on Meet the Press.
Diplomats Drafted Statement Committing Ukraine to Probe
“Two of President Trump’s top envoys to Ukraine drafted a statement for the country’s new president in August that would have committed Ukraine to pursuing investigations sought by Mr. Trump into his political rivals,” the New York Times reports.
“The drafting of the statement is new evidence of how Mr. Trump’s fixation with Ukraine and unsubstantiated conspiracy theories began driving senior diplomats to bend American foreign policy to the president’s political agenda in the weeks after the July 25 call between the two leaders.”
“The statement was drafted by Gordon Sondland, the United States ambassador to the European Union, and Kurt Volker, then the State Department’s envoy to Ukraine.”
Rick Perry Will Resign Next Month
“Energy Secretary Rick Perry is expected to announce his resignation from the administration by the end of November,” Politico reports.
Trump Raised Biden In Call With Chinese Leader
CNN: “During a phone call with Xi on June 18, Trump raised Biden’s political prospects as well as those of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who by then had started rising in the polls… In that call, Trump also told Xi he would remain quiet on Hong Kong protests as trade talks progressed.”
“The White House record of that call was later stored in the highly secured electronic system used to house a now-infamous phone call with Ukraine’s President and which helped spark a whistleblower complaint that’s led Democrats to open an impeachment inquiry into Trump.”
White House Wants Formal Vote on Impeachment Probe
“The White House is planning to send Speaker Nancy Pelosi a letter as soon as Friday arguing that President Trump and his team can ignore lawmakers’ demands until she holds a full House vote formally approving an impeachment inquiry,” Axios reports.
“By putting in writing the case that Trump and his supporters have been making verbally for days, the White House is preparing for a court fight and arguing to the public that its resistance to Congress’ requests is justified.”
Biden Raised $15 Million Last Quarter
“Joe Biden raised $15.2 million in the third quarter for his presidential bid as he seeks the 2020 Democratic U.S. presidential nomination,” Reuters reports.
“Though the former vice president is one of the leading candidates for the nomination, his take lagged behind those of fellow presidential hopefuls Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg, who raised $25.3 million and $19.1 million in the third quarter, respectively.”
McConnell Ads Say He Will Stop Impeachment
“In a new campaign video on Facebook, Senate Majority Mitch McConnell pitches himself as the man who can end the House’s impeachment inquiry, a sign of how the chief Republican in the chamber might handle an impeachment trial should the House pass articles charging President Trump with crimes,” CNN reports.
Bonus Quote of the Day
“Sometimes, I think he is having a limbo contest with himself, to see how low he can go in his rhetoric. I think he was surprised that this happened, because he thinks he can do whatever he wants.”
— Speaker Nancy Pelosi, quoted by the Washington Post, on the impeachment inquiry launched against President Trump.
