James Hohman: “It’s so easy to get distracted by political theatrics, but it’s so important not to lose sight of the forest for the trees. Tectonic changes in public policy under the Trump administration will have a vastly greater impact on the lives of everyday Americans than anything he tweets or any stunt his former campaign manager pulls on Capitol Hill. A flurry of mostly under-the-radar stories over the past 24 hours put in stark relief why it’s more important to pay attention to what the president and his appointees do than what they say.”

Former President Jimmy Carter called President Trump “a disaster,” the Atlanta Journal Constitution reports.

Said Carter: “I don’t know who I will vote for, but I will vote for one of them. I voted for Bernie the last time. But one of the major factors I have in my mind is who can beat Trump. Because I think it would be a disaster to have four more years of Trump.”

“The White House on Tuesday fired John Mitnick, the general counsel for the Department of Homeland Security, after months of shake-up at an agency responsible for carrying out President Trump’s immigration agenda,” New York Times reports.

“The White House this year has turned the Department of Homeland Security — which oversees securing the country’s borders, disaster relief efforts and addressing domestic terrorism and cybersecurity threats — into a revolving door of officials, creating a void of permanent leadership.”

A new ALG Research poll in Nevada finds President Trump’s approval numbers are abysmal in the state, 43% to 57%, with 49% of the electorate rating him as “highly unfavorable.”

Key takeaway: “The president’s numbers here should scare every Republican on the ballot next year.”

“Acting director of national intelligence Joseph Maguire has until Tuesday to turn over a whistleblower complaint regarding a ‘serious or flagrant’ abuse involving an intelligence activity and possibly the White House,” the Washington Post reports.

“If he fails to do so, he will be ordered by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff (D-CA) to explain publicly on Thursday his reasons for refusing.”

“State prosecutors in Manhattan have subpoenaed President Trump’s accounting firm to demand eight years of his personal and corporate tax returns,” the New York Times reports.

“The subpoena opens a new front in a wide-ranging effort to obtain copies of the president’s tax returns, which Mr. Trump initially said he would make public during the 2016 campaign but has since refused to disclose.”

The Alabama National Weather Service employee who tweeted that the state was not in the path of Hurricane Dorian was not aware of President Trump’s tweet that the state would be hit, the New York Times reports.

“It was incoming phone calls from Alabamians energized about Hurricane Dorian, suddenly confused and worried about whether they were in the path of the giant Caribbean storm. At one point, the few people on duty were all answering calls at the same time.”

“In response to the alarm, one employee dashed off a short message to the office’s 50,000 Twitter followers that reaffirmed what the latest models were saying: Alabama had little to worry about.”

Robert Reich: “I think we have to face the truth that no one seems to want to admit. This is no longer a case of excessive narcissism or grandiosity. We’re not simply dealing with an unusually large ego.”

“The president of the United States is seriously, frighteningly, dangerously unstable. And he’s getting worse by the day.”

“Such a person in the Oval Office can do serious damage.”

“What to do? We can vote him out of office in 14 months’ time. But he could end the world in seven and a half seconds.”

Former Attorney General Eric Holder predicted President Trump “may be prosecuted after his presidency if he doesn’t first face impeachment proceedings while in office — but warned of the possible risks to the nation,” CNN reports.

Said Holder: “It would seem to me that the next attorney general, the next president is going to have to make a determination.”

He added: “Yes, I think there is a potential cost to the nation by putting on trial a former president, and that ought to at least be a part of the calculus that goes into the determination that has to be made by the next attorney general.”

Lawfare: “No media organization has reported that this is what happened Thursday, but something clearly happened when the grand jury met—and that something wasn’t the McCabe indictment that everyone was expecting.”

“Normally, when the Justice Department informs a criminal target that it is moving ahead with charges, particularly when the target is a high-profile one, the indictment follows immediately. Yet in this case, no indictment materialized. And that wasn’t because the grand jury didn’t meet.”

Harry Litman: “A Grand Jury’s refusal to return an indictment is something that happens maybe once every five years in a given office. If it occurred here, given the magnitude and visibility of the McCabe case, it is a stunning and humiliating rebuke for overreaching and playing politics.“

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated a lawsuit that accused President Trump of violating the Constitution’s emoluments clause, Bloomberg reports.

Axios: “The decision dredges up one of the president’s most persistent ongoing legal threats. It’s a high-level ruling for such a case and could force the president to defend himself in court because only an expanded version of the Second Circuit or the Supreme Court could overturn the decision.”

Jonathan Bernstein: “Trump is, as political scientists like myself and Matt Glassman have been saying for some time, a very weak president. Congressional Republicans basically ignore his policy ideas. He loses battles to the executive-branch bureaucracy all the time. He’s been reduced to hiring flunkies and family members so he can get his way within the White House, and even they don’t seem to listen to him half the time. For those familiar with Richard Neustadt’s study of the presidency, this is no surprise: Trump is unpopular and has a poor professional reputation, so he’s not going to have very much influence.”

“What this means is that the political system is basically working. It’s imposing serious consequences on the president for doing a bad job. Refusing to respect the rules of the office is one of the ways that presidents can harm their reputations. And Trump’s unpopular Twitter persona and generally unpresidential behavior are partly why his approval rating is some 15 percentage points below where it would be based only on the economy and other fundamentals. Presidents normally care desperately about power, and Trump is squandering his.”

“The only problem is that he doesn’t realize it. We can’t know what he really thinks, but he seems to believe he’s wildly popular despite evidence to the contrary. As for his reputation? Again, we can’t know what’s in his head. But based on his public statements, he seems to think that what he’s doing is working – and if anything isn’t working, it has nothing to do with him.”

President Trump knocked light bulb efficiency standards during a House Republican retreat, The Hill reports.

The president quipped that light bulbs that the Obama administration “forced” Americans to use were “no good.”

Said Trump: “The bulb that we’re being forced to use, number one, to me most importantly, the light’s no good. I always look orange.”

Politico: “The tally represents the preliminary results of an Air Force review launched after Politico reported last week that an Air National Guard crew stayed at Turnberry in March. Congressional Democrats have also been investigating military stays at the property, but have yet to receive any information from the Pentagon.”

Politico: “At a mid-August fundraiser in Jackson Hole, Wyo., Ivanka Trump was asked to name the personality traits she inherited most from her parents. Without much of a pause, Trump told the crowd of roughly 120 high-end donors that her mother gave her an example of how to be a powerful, successful woman.”

“And her father? He passed onto her his moral compass, she said, according to two event attendees. The exchange was part of a broader conversation about Ivanka Trump’s life in Washington and the White House during a swanky retreat organized by Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy in the Wyoming mountains. Her appearance signaled an informal effort by the Trump campaign, family and top aides to woo donors this election cycle by sharing intimate, colorful details about this atypical White House.”

“I make all the decisions, and they don’t have to work.”

— President Trump, quoted by CNN, on why working for him is easy.