Rick Klein: “If week one of the Trump presidency was about action, week two was about reaction. After a wild initial flurry, Congress is showing signs of exerting itself, slowing Cabinet nominees and seeking to rein in presidential impulses on national security and domestic policy alike. The judiciary has stopped, for now the most controversial early Trump move — the temporary travel ban that now isn’t. Trump’s not-filled Cabinet appears to have convinced him to engage in a more formal process around executive orders. Even the federal bureaucracy is playing a role in softening the administration’s harder edges, or at least forcing a more deliberate pace. And the most powerful part of the reaction may just be making itself known. The raucous scenes starting to play out at congressional town halls are already drawing comparisons to 2009-2010. So yes, there’s a big push. But the big pushback might be just as important.”
Become a member to get many great benefits -- exclusive analysis, trending news, a private podcast, no ads and more!
Will Anyone Stand Up to Trump?
Jeff Greenfield: “First: Is there any figure—inside this administration or out—with the willingness to present to President Trump an argument that he is on a wrongheaded, dangerous course?”
“Second: If there is such a person, is there any reason to believe that the president would listen and change course, as opposed to dismissing any argument, no matter how steeped in evidence, that suggests that he has been wrong?”
“It is impossible to overstate just how much may be riding on the answers to those questions.”
Greg Sargent: This is what the resistance looks like.
Bonus Quote of the Day
“Any negative polls are fake news, just like the CNN, ABC, NBC polls in the election.”
— President Trump, on Twitter.
Trump Blames ‘Obama People’ for Leaks
In an interview with Fox News, President Trump denounced the leaks of transcripts of his telephone conversations with leaders of Australia and Mexico as “disgraceful” and said his administration was searching “very, very hard” for the leakers.
Trump accused “Obama people” of giving news organizations embarrassing details of his recent tense phone conversations with his Australian and Mexican counterparts, and said that the holdovers from the Obama administration still serving on his White House and National Security Council staff were being replaced.
Washington Post: “The breadth of the leaks has surprised — and, of course, delighted — journalists, who say it gives the public an unfiltered view of what those in power are thinking and doing.”
Will Mulvaney Be First to Resign from Trump Cabinet?
Stan Collender says that OMB Director Mick Mulvaney will be either the most important member of the Trump cabinet or the first one out the door.
“Mulvaney’s positions on a variety of critical spending, tax and budget process issues are so different from Trump’s and so likely to get in the way of White House and congressional Republican plans that he could quickly find himself opposing what both Trump and the GOP majorities in Congress want to do. That’s why it’s not hard to imagine Mulvaney quitting or Trump demanding his resignation shortly after he joins the administration.”
Trump Threatens Defunding Sanctuary States
President Donald Trump said that he would not be opposed to using defunding as a “weapon” against states that want to be sanctuaries for undocumented immigrants, ABC News reports.
Said Trump: “I don’t want to defund anybody. I want to give them the money they need to properly operate as a city or a state. If they’re going to have sanctuary cities, we may have to do that. Certainly that would be a weapon.”
Quote of the Day
“You can’t expect to have Mexico say, ‘We’re going to pay for the wall.’ They’ll never do that. All Mexicans oppose the idea of being arm-twisted into paying for the wall. They’re not going to do it.”
— Former Secretary of State James Baker, in an interview with Politico.
Few Recall Gorsuch’s Volunteer Work at Harvard
Wall Street Journal: “When President Donald Trump introduced his Supreme Court pick on live television last week, he said Neil Gorsuch had ‘demonstrated a commitment to helping the less fortunate’ by working in the Harvard Prison Legal Assistance Project and the Harvard Defenders. His affiliation with these volunteer programs — which offer law school students real-life legal experience representing prison inmates and the poor — helped give Mr. Gorsuch’s deeply conservative résumé a personal touch, and the groups were highlighted in news reports about his nomination.”
“But roughly three dozen students who participated in the two programs while Mr. Gorsuch was at Harvard Law School from 1988 to 1991 said they have no recollection of his involvement.”
Trump Didn’t Know He Was Putting Bannon on NSC
New York Times: “Mr. Priebus bristles at the perception that he occupies a diminished perch in the West Wing pecking order compared with previous chiefs. But for the moment, Mr. Bannon remains the president’s dominant adviser, despite Mr. Trump’s anger that he was not fully briefed on details of the executive order he signed giving his chief strategist a seat on the National Security Council, a greater source of frustration to the president than the fallout from the travel ban.”
Obamacare Replacement May Not Be Ready Until 2018
President Trump said the process for coming up with a replacement for the Affordable Care Act could stretch into 2018, a longer time frame than he previously indicated, Bloomberg reports.
Said Trump: “Maybe it’ll take till some time into next year, but we are certainly going to be in the process. I would like to say by the end of the year, at least the rudiments, but we should have something within the year and the following year.”
NPR: “Suddenly, people are more in favor of the Affordable Care Act than are against it.”
Trump Is Definitely Not a Health Nut
“Sure, Trump doesn’t drink or smoke. But those were about the only health vices he avoided on the trail. He guzzled Diet Coke all day long. Fast food was a constant. The ‘three staples,’ in the words of one aide: Domino’s, KFC, and McDonald’s. Big Macs were served on silver trays in his private jet.”
Alone in the White House
New York Times: “Cloistered in the White House, he now has little access to his fans and supporters — an important source of feedback and validation — and feels increasingly pinched by the pressures of the job and the constant presence of protests, one of the reasons he was forced to scrap a planned trip to Milwaukee last week. For a sense of what is happening outside, he watches cable, both at night and during the day — too much in the eyes of some aides — often offering a bitter play-by-play of critics like CNN’s Don Lemon.”
“Until the past few days, Mr. Trump was telling his friends and advisers that he believed the opening stages of his presidency were going well… But his opinion has begun to change with a relentless parade of bad headlines.”
The Biggest Liar In Presidential History
Los Angeles Times: “Presidents of all stripes and both major political parties have bent, massaged or shaded the truth, elided uncomfortable facts or otherwise misled the public — unwittingly or, sometimes, very purposefully.”
“But White House scholars and other students of government agree there has never been a president like Donald Trump, whose volume of falsehoods, misstatements and serial exaggerations — on matters large and wincingly small — place him ‘in a class by himself.'”
Court Showdown Looms Over Immigration Action
“Fresh challenges to President Trump’s court-frozen immigration order took shape Monday with two former secretaries of state claiming the White House was undermining national security and nearly 100 Silicon Valley tech companies arguing it will keep the best minds from coming to America,” the Washington Post reports.
“The powerful new voices were added with another legal showdown coming as early as Monday. The suspension of the order, meanwhile, has allowed those previously banned more time to try to reach the United States.”
New York Times: “President Trump is barreling into a confrontation with the courts barely two weeks after taking office, foreshadowing years of legal battles as an administration determined to disrupt the existing order presses the boundaries of executive power.”
Trump Attack on Judge Raises Stakes for Gorsuch
“President Trump’s Twitter assault on the ‘so-called judge‘ who put a nationwide hold on the president’s executive order on immigration has motivated Democrats to challenge Trump’s choice for the Supreme Court, Judge Neil Gorsuch, on an important but elusive issue,” the Washington Post reports.
“Is Gorsuch independent enough, they ask, to stand up to the president who picked him?”
“As the legal battle over Trump’s immigration directive shows, Gorsuch’s nomination lands at a time when the Supreme Court is likely to be called upon to review what Trump already has shown to be a broad reliance on executive power.”
Resisting Trump Is Key Credential for 2020
“The Democratic base is so roiled and enraged after only two weeks of Donald Trump’s presidency that a take-no-prisoners posture toward the White House is emerging as the price of entry for the 2020 primary,” Politico reports.
“An election that could have focused in on economic inequality and the excesses of Wall Street — the issues that animate the left’s leading tribunes, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren — is already shaping up as a contest about the intensity of the resistance to Trump.”
Trump Resumes Twitter Attacks on Judge
President Trump resumed tweeting against the judge who blocked his executive order on immigration, blaming the court system “if something happens” that could put the U.S. in “peril,” Politico reports.
Said Trump: “Just cannot believe a judge would put our country in such peril. If something happens blame him and court system. People pouring in. Bad!”
A few minutes later, he added: “I have instructed Homeland Security to check people coming into our country VERY CAREFULLY. The courts are making the job very difficult!”
SNL Sees Ratings Surge
Political turmoil has been very, very good to “Saturday Night Live,” Variety reports.
“Overall, SNL viewership for the season to date is up 19% in adults 18-49 (3.5 vs. 2.9 rating) and up 22% in total viewers (10.6 million vs. 8.7 million) over the comparable period in the 2015-16 season. This marks the show’s strongest ratings performance in 22 years, since the 1994-95 season, according to NBC.”
