A new HuffPost/YouGov survey found that 43% of voters said they supported President Trump’s order to kill Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani. Among that pool, 30% said they strongly approved of the decision.
Thirty-eight percent of voters said they disapproved of the military action.
Jennifer Rubin has an idea:
“Pelosi can wait to transmit the articles, now that impeachment is complete, until such time as the cases involving senior officials wind their way through the courts and reach a final ruling (likely at the Supreme Court level where cases concerning production of documents now rest). In short, she can wait until the Supreme Court frees up former White House counsel Donald McGahn and former deputy national security adviser Charles Kupperman (whose case Bolton said he would rely upon for guidance) to testify. (If the Senate still won’t call them as witnesses, the House can hold additional hearings and supplement the record.)”
“Faced with a client frantic to get a Senate acquittal, Trump’s attorneys might then have a real incentive to get the courts to expedite a determination on witnesses.”
My father, who passed away last month, was profiled today in the Hartford Courant.
He would have loved this.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi lashed out at a Capitol Hill reporter who had questioned whether she “hated” President Trump following her decision to advance the Democrats’ impeachment inquiry, The Hill reports.
Said Pelosi: “I don’t hate anybody. I was raised in a Catholic house, we don’t hate anybody — not anybody in the world. So don’t you accuse me of any hate.”
She added: “As a Catholic I resent you using the word ‘hate.’ Don’t mess with me when it comes to words like that.”
Joe Sestak announced that he is dropping out of the 2020 presidential race, leaving the total number of Democrats left in the field at 17, Axios reports.
I’m so grateful for this wonderful community and that you choose to spend part of your day here. Enjoy the holiday!
Peggy Noonan: “Look, the case has been made. Almost everything in the impeachment hearings this week fleshed out and backed up the charge that President Trump muscled Ukraine for political gain. The pending question is what precisely the House and its Democratic majority will decide to include in the articles of impeachment, what statutes or standards they will assert the president violated.”
“What was said consistently undermined Mr. Trump’s case, but more deadly was what has never been said. In the two months since Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced a formal impeachment inquiry was under way and the two weeks since the Intelligence Committee’s public hearings began, no one, even in the White House, has said anything like, ‘He wouldn’t do that!’ or ‘That would be so unlike him.’ His best friends know he would do it and it’s exactly like him.”
Michelle Obama is releasing a “guided journal” meant to accompany her memoir, Becoming.
President Trump intervened in three military justice cases involving war-crimes accusations Friday, issuing at least two pardons that will prevent the Pentagon from pursuing future charges against the individuals involved, the Washington Post reports.
“The Justice Department suggested in a filing Wednesday that it had no immediate plans to prosecute former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, saying it would no longer try to keep documents related to Mr. McCabe from being publicly released because of an ongoing enforcement proceeding,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“You make your mind up about the phone call. I made my mind up. There’s nothing there.”
— Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), in KCCI interview, arguing President Trump did nothing wrong in an attempt to force Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden.
“A South Carolina aide for Tom Steyer’s 2020 presidential campaign stole valuable volunteer data collected by Kamala Harris’ campaign using an account from when he worked with the S.C. Democratic Party,” the Charleston Post & Courier reports.
“The Steyer campaign said that it does not have possession of the data and that Democratic officials were only aware of the download, which they said was inadvertent, because they proactively notified them. Both the Democratic National Committee and S.C. Democratic Party denied that.”
“Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, rivals for the affections of the Democratic Party’s left wing, are increasingly making careful but unmistakable efforts to distinguish themselves from each other as the primary heads toward its first vote in three months,” the Washington Post reports.
Asked during an Oval Office interview with the Washington Examiner if he is happy with the job Mick Mulvaney is doing for him, President Trump demurred.
Said Trump: “Happy? I don’t want to comment on it.”
“House impeachment investigators on Wednesday summoned John Bolton, President Trump’s former national security adviser, and two other top White House officials for depositions early next month,” the New York Times reports.
“The letters took the form of voluntary requests, rather than subpoenas.”
“Based on the accounts of witnesses who have already spoken with investigators, Mr. Bolton could be a marquee witness. They have described how he was alarmed in real time about the actions of Mr. Trump’s private lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, and other administration officials close to Mr. Trump. Mr. Bolton left his position in September amid disagreements with Mr. Trump.”
The House Democrats unveiled a resolution Tuesday afternoon to set the parameters of the public phase of the impeachment inquiry, the Washington Post reports.
They also released a statement and fact sheet.
The House plans to vote to formalize it Thursday.
The Guardian: “Jeremy Corbyn has announced that Labour is ready to back a general election now that the EU27 has granted a three-month Brexit delay, making a pre-Christmas poll all but certain.”
“With the Liberal Democrats and the Scottish National party preparing to support a one-line bill tabled by Boris Johnson’s government later on Tuesday, triggering an early poll, Corbyn said his party would also support it.”
“The White House script on the death of brutal terrorist Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was short. But with two words, President Trump turned the somber announcement into a vivid 40-minute news conference that included bravado, detailed descriptions of military operations, questionable statements and self-promotion,” the Washington Post reports.
“Any questions?”
“Trump eschewed the serious televised statement his predecessors might have offered. Obama, for example, said about 1,390 words when announcing the death of Osama bin Laden, and took no questions.”
“Trump, in contrast, uttered almost 8,000 words and took a dozen questions, offering an unfiltered and, at times, vivid account of the raid.”
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.