NBC News: “Diplomatic efforts between the United States and North Korea are in peril with Pyongyang shunning talks in response to President Trump’s increased public attacks on Kim Jong Un.”
“Joseph Yun, a top American diplomat to North Korea, has been warning of the breakdown in meetings on Capitol Hill and seeking help to persuade the administration to prioritize diplomacy over the heated rhetoric that appears to be pushing the two nuclear powers closer toward conflict.”
“It’s not that you have to just be with the president on policy, you can’t question his behavior and still be a Republican in good standing apparently in a Republican primary.”
— Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), in an interview on Morning Joe.
The Huffington Post runs an interesting interview with four career civil servants who quit their jobs rather than continuing to work under President Trump.
All of them, at some point over the course of the last nine months, had left their posts within the current administration, having decided that they could better serve their country from outside the government than from within. They weren’t happy about quitting, either. They were civil servants who wanted to remain civil servants, who, except for one, had worked under presidents of both parties. They had disagreed with superiors over the years, they had been fearful of new regulations and wary of political appointees, but they stayed on because that’s the nature of career work in government. This was different.
Rep. Al Green (D-TX) questions Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson at an oversight hearing.
Mike Allen: “So much media coverage centers on four Republican Trump critics… Lost in this: President Trump enjoys public support (despite private gripes) from most of the 49 other Senate Republicans and 239 House Republicans, including every person in elected leadership.”
“For all the warnings of how harshly history will judge the Trump enablers, that history will need to be told in an exceptionally long book — because the vast majority of Republicans are forever marked as Trump Republicans.”
Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) refused to rule out mounting a bid to unseat President Trump in 2020, insisting that such a decision is “a long way away,” Politico reports.
Said Flake: “That’s a long way away. I’m focused on my next 14 months in the senate, making sure that we get some good policy, there are some things that I want to accomplish in the short term.”
For members: Why Trump Will Probably Face a Primary Challenge
James Hohmann: “The conventional wisdom is that Corker and Flake will both be replaced by intellectually pliable apparatchiks who will reliably support Trump. This is more likely than not.”
“But the changeover won’t happen for 14 months. Flake and Corker will be in office until January 2019. That’s an eternity in politics. It’s more than enough time to derail some of the more unconservative elements of the Trump agenda. Remember, Republicans only have a two-seat majority in the Senate.”
“Moreover, in this environment, it’s totally plausible that Democrats could pick up the open seats in both Arizona and Tennessee. If you add Nevada, and assume that Democratic incumbents up for reelection in states Trump carried find a way to survive (a big if), the GOP would lose the majority. If Republicans lose the Senate in 2018 — which was inconceivable just a few months ago — they will probably also lose the House. If Trump feels put upon now, he has no clue how miserable the second half of his term would be.”
New York Times: “With divisions roiling the party, the prospect of a once-in-a-generation bill to cut taxes on businesses and individuals increasingly appears to be the last, best hope for a fractured establishment desperate to find common ground and advance an effort it has long championed as the pinnacle of Republican orthodoxy…”
“In the face of those divides, Republican leaders retreated to the only safe ground they have left: a partisan, fast-tracked tax bill, which party leaders hope to introduce next week in the House and deliver to Mr. Trump’s desk by Christmas. The stakes are rising by the day, as Republican donors and voters watch the intraparty dispute unfold and worry about the party advancing the legislative priorities it has long espoused, let alone holding its congressional majorities in the 2018 midterms.”
“Pressure is only increasing on Republican lawmakers, with conservative commentators and other observers saying failure on a tax bill is not an option.”
Playbook: “People involved in the race tell us Flake’s support completely disappeared after he released his book, Conscience of a Conservative: A Rejection of Destructive Politics and a Return to Principle. Republicans say they and Flake, himself, knew he was going to lose.”
Just before Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) announced he would not run for re-election, he told the Arizona Republic that “there may not be a place for a Republican like me in the current Republican climate or the current Republican Party.”
Said Flake: “Here’s the bottom line: The path that I would have to travel to get the Republican nomination is a path I’m not willing to take, and that I can’t in good conscience take… It would require me to believe in positions I don’t hold on such issues as trade and immigration, and it would require me to condone behavior that I cannot condone.”
Flake also has an op-ed in the Washington Post:
There is a sickness in our system — and it is contagious. How many more disgraceful public feuds with Gold Star families can we witness in silence before we ourselves are disgraced? How many more times will we see moral ambiguity in the face of shocking bigotry and shrug it off? How many more childish insults do we need to see hurled at a hostile foreign power before we acknowledge the senseless danger of it? How much more damage to our democracy and to the institutions of American liberty do we need to witness in silence before we count ourselves as complicit in that damage?
U.S. ambassador to New Zealand Scott Brown has admitted he has been investigated over allegations he made inappropriate comments on his inaugural trip to Samoa, of which he is also the U.S. representative, the Guardian reports.
Brown told reporters that the official complaints related to comments he had made at a party in the Samoan capital, Apia, where he told attendees they looked “beautiful” and could make hundreds of dollars working in the hospitality industry in the U.S. Brown said he had “no idea” the comments would be regarded as offensive.
President Trump “is squeezing out his enemies in the Republican Party – diminishing the power of the GOP establishment and reshaping his party in his own image,” Politico reports.
“With the looming exits of Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake and Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker, come 2019 Trump will have rid himself of his two most outspoken Republican detractors. What happens in the meantime — Corker and Flake demonstrated Tuesday they are fully emboldened now to take on the president without fear of consequences – could determine the success or failure of the GOP-controlled Congress through the 2018 midterms.”
“But in the short-term, there is no question: Trump, and his former strategist and now-Breitbart chief Steve Bannon, are winning. The casualty list of Trump critics is bleeding over to the House.”
James Hohmann: “Purges like this are always bloody. If they knew American political history better, Nick Ayers, Sean Hannity and Bannon might be a little more careful about what they wish for.”
USA Today: “Since 2013, military investigators have documented at least 500 cases of serious misconduct among its generals, admirals and senior civilians, almost half of those instances involving personal or ethical lapses.”
“Many cases involve sex scandals, including a promiscuous Army general who led a swinging lifestyle, another who lived rent-free in the home of a defense contractor after his affair fell apart and another who is under investigation for sending steamy Facebook messages to the wife of an enlisted soldier on his post. Yet despite the widespread abuses, the Pentagon does no trend analysis to determine whether the problem is worsening, nor does it regularly announce punishments for generals and admirals — all public figures.”
Max Boot, writing for Foreign Policy:
It becomes ever harder to disagree with the verdict of foreign-policy sage Robert Kagan, like me an erstwhile Republican, who writes that the GOP in its current form is doomed and that Republicans who cannot stomach Trumpism “should change their registration and start voting for Democratic moderates and centrists, as some Republicans did in Virginia recently, to give them a leg up in their fight against the party’s left wing.” As I’ve explained before, I have my qualms about the Democratic Party, which is lurching to the left, but I am done, done, done with the GOP after more than 30 years as a loyal Republican.
This is truly Trump’s party, and that leaves me to root for Democrats to win a landslide victory in the midterm elections next fall. I have my differences with many Democratic candidates, but on the most important issue facing our nation — whether Trump is fit for office — they are right and Republicans are a disgrace.
“Senate Republicans voted to strike down a sweeping new rule that would have allowed millions of Americans to band together in class-action lawsuits against financial institutions,” the New York Times reports.
“The overturning of the rule, with Vice President Mike Pence breaking a 50-to-50 tie, will further loosen regulation of Wall Street as the Trump administration and Republicans move to roll back Obama-era policies enacted in the wake of the 2008 economic crisis. By defeating the rule, Republicans are dismantling a major effort of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the watchdog created by Congress in the aftermath of the mortgage mess.”
The Clinton campaign and DNC “helped fund research that resulted in a now-famous dossier containing allegations about Donald Trump’s connections to Russia and possible coordination between his campaign and the Kremlin,” the Washington Post reports.
“Marc Elias, a lawyer representing the Clinton campaign and the DNC, retained Fusion GPS, a Washington firm, to conduct the research. Fusion GPS hired dossier author Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer with ties to the FBI and the U.S. intelligence community.”
“Fusion GPS gave Steele’s reports and other research documents to Elias, the people familiar with the matter said. It is unclear how or how much of that information was shared with the campaign and DNC, and who in those organizations was aware of the roles of Fusion GPS and Steele. One person close to the matter said the campaign and the DNC weren’t informed of Fusion GPS’s role by the law firm.”
Jonathan Swan: “Flake was dead. Everybody knew it, including Republican leadership and the NRSC. The public polls showed he was going to lose badly to Kelli Ward and I’m told the internal polling wasn’t much better.”
“The GOP has a commitment to defend incumbents but money is finite, and they’re not about to pour endless amounts of cash into a losing race. Some senior officials, including several people who considered themselves close to Flake, were blindsided by his anti-Trump book.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.