As he was leaving a media event at the White House, President Trump told Business Insider that he has confidence in acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney: “Yes, I do. Yes.”
Trump’s Defenders Embrace Nihilism
Benjamin Wittes and Quinta Jurecic: “In the absence of any prospect of a sufficient bloc of Republicans voting to remove the president, it’s easy to write off the impeachment process as meaningless. It’s not. Done properly, the House’s amassing of a record and the Senate’s trial of the president will create a vivid account of Trump’s abuses of power and criminality on the national stage. It will force Republicans to shackle themselves to those abuses in support of the president. The stakes of whether a majority of voting Americans will vote for a party that has done so—or at least a majority in the states necessary to swing the Electoral College—are high. But a Senate trial of the president will pose the matter to the electorate with the starkness it deserves.”
“It will make Senate Republicans cast a vote for the proposition ‘LOL nothing matters ¯\_(ツ)_/¯’—thereby enabling the 2020 electorate to evaluate nihilism as the governing philosophy of a political movement.”
Warren Leads Among LGBTQ Voters
A new YouGov/Out magazine survey found that LGBTQ+ voters favor Elizabeth Warren by a nearly 2-to-1 margin over her Democratic rivals in the 2020 primary race.
Warren leads with 31% support, followed by Bernie Sanders at 18%, Joe Biden at 16% and Pete Buttigieg at 14%.
Bloomberg’s Ad Blitz In Perspective
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Trump Ordered Esper to Allow Navy SEAL to Keep Status
Secretary of Defense Mark Esper confirmed to CNN that President Trump ordered him to allow a controversial Navy SEAL accused of war crimes to keep his status in the elite service, despite resistance from Navy leaders.
Quote of the Day
“President Trump reads more than anybody I know.”
— Sarah Huckabee Sanders, on Fox News.
What It Takes to Be a Loyal Republican
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Trump’s Hospital Visit Was Highly Unusual
CNN: “Given that the White House had previously given plenty of advance notice about the President’s past physical exams, last weekend’s visit to Walter Reed reportedly took everyone by surprise, including much of the staff at the hospital itself. Whenever the President is planning a visit to Walter Reed, an institution-wide notice goes out, making staff aware of certain road and corridor closings. According to a person familiar with the matter, that didn’t happen last weekend. Also striking: the fact that the president’s physician, Dr. Sean Conley, rode with Trump in the presidential motorcade. Typically, the doctor rides separately from the President for security reasons. A former White House doctor said it had never happened during their time there.”
“All tests Conley described could’ve been performed at the White House instead of the hospital. Many blood tests require the patient to fast overnight and are thus performed first thing in the morning — not in the middle of the afternoon, as apparently happened with the President. And remember, the President had these tests just nine months ago. One of the reasons doctors wait a year to order labs for a routine physical is to better assess the impact of medication and lifestyle changes over a consistent interval of time. There is no benefit to drawing the blood early, unless there is a concern about something. Finally, there is no such thing as a phased physical exam, as Trump had described it in his tweet from last weekend.”
The Hackery of Devin Nunes
Charlie Sykes: “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.”
How Approval Rate Can Predict Vote Share
Seth Masket finds a very strong correlation between presidential approval a year out from the election and vote share.
Based on President Trump’s 2019 approval rates, there are currently just six states that can be considered Toss Ups: Arizona, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Trump would need to win nearly all to win re-election.
That’s identical to the latest consensus Electoral Vote Map, an interactive map where you can test your own assumptions.
Graham Blocked Resolution on Turkey’s Genocide
The White House asked Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) to block the resolution that would have formally recognized Turkey’s genocide of the Armenian people, Axios reports.
Graham was leaving the Oval Office after he joined a meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan when a senior White House staff asked him to object on the floor to the resolution that had passed the House to avoid upsetting Erdogan.
Biden Picks Up Big Endorsement In Nevada
Rep. Dina Titus (D-NV) announced her support of Joe Biden for president, becoming the first sitting member of Congress from an early voting state to issue an endorsement.
Said Titus: “I’ve seen him up close. I’ve worked with him in Congress. I’ve known him for a long time. I think he’s the best qualified to be president of all the good Democratic candidates.”
Judge Will Rule Today on McGahn Subpoena
A federal judge has said she will rule by the end of the day on whether former White House counsel Donald McGahn must testify before Congress, MSNBC reports.
The ruling could have implications for the Trump administration officials who have refused to comply with congressional subpoenas in the impeachment inquiry.
Don’t Buy the Conventional Wisdom on Impeachment
Jonathan Bernstein: “I’m not predicting that President Donald Trump will be removed from office; that’s probably not going to happen. But there’s a big difference between probably and certainly. And after two weeks of public impeachment hearings, it seems to me that a certainty has set in: that there’s simply no way that Republicans will ever turn on Trump.”
“Perhaps! It’s true that congressional Republicans seem to be more solidly behind Trump than ever. In particular, Representative Will Hurd, who might’ve been the most likely member of the party to vote for impeachment and take a few others with him, seems to have decided against it. The most likely outcome may still be a close-to-party-line impeachment in the House and acquittal in the Senate.”
“But remember that conservative Republicans stuck with President Richard Nixon in 1974 … right up until they didn’t. 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.”
U.S. Resumes Operations Against ISIS in Syria
New York Times: “United States troops have resumed large-scale counterterrorism missions against the Islamic State in northern Syria, military officials say, nearly two months after President Trump’s abrupt order to withdraw American troops opened the way for a bloody Turkish cross-border offensive.”
Exchange of the Day
Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) was interviewed by Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday:
WALLACE: Senator Kennedy, who do you believe was responsible for hacking the DNC and Clinton campaign? Russia or Ukraine?
KENNEDY: I don’t know. Nor do you.
WALLACE: The entire intelligence community says it was Russia.
KENNEDY: Right. But it could be Ukraine. Fiona Hill is entitled to her opinion.
Trump Crosses Another Line with Firing of Navy Secretary
David Ignatius: “Spencer had tried to find a compromise, sources tell me, after Trump tweeted Thursday, ‘The Navy will NOT be taking away Warfighter and Navy Seal Eddie Gallagher’s Trident Pin.’ Spencer feared that a direct order from Trump to protect Gallagher, who is represented by two former partners of Trump’s personal attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani, would be seen as subverting military justice.
“After that Trump tweet, Spencer cautioned acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney that he would not overturn the planned SEAL peer review of Gallagher without a direct presidential order; he privately told associates that if such an order came, he might resign rather than carry it out. Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, spoke with the White House late Thursday to try to avert this collision.”
“Milley’s de-escalation efforts initially appeared to be successful… But the truce was short-lived. By Saturday, the White House was demanding to know whether Spencer had threatened to resign; the Navy secretary issued a statement denying that he had made any such public threat and continued to seek a deal that would protect the Navy from a direct showdown with Trump.”
“‘It was a hold-your-nose solution,’ said a source close to Spencer about his effort to broker an arrangement that would allow Gallagher to retire at the end of November with his former rank, an honorable discharge and his Trident pin, as Trump wanted, but without direct presidential interference in the SEAL review process. As so often happens with attempts to work with Trump’s erratic demands, this one ended in disaster.”
New York Times: “A Defense Department official said Chief Gallagher would now keep his Trident pin, the symbol of his membership in the SEALs, at Mr. Esper’s direction because of concerns that the events of the past few days would make it impossible for him to get an impartial hearing.”
Rick Perry Says Trump Is the ‘Chosen One’
Energy Secretary Rick Perry told Fox & Friends that he believes President Trump is the “chosen one.”
Said Perry: “God’s used imperfect people all through history. King David wasn’t perfect. Saul wasn’t perfect. Solomon wasn’t perfect.”
He added: “And I actually gave the president a little-one pager on those Old Testament kings about a month ago and I shared it with him. I said, ‘Mr. President, I know there are people that say you said you were the chosen one and I said, ‘You were.’ I said, ‘If you’re a believing Christian, you understand God’s plan for the people who rule and judge over us on this planet in our government.'”
