Asa Hutchinson Is Running - Updated

Former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson is running for president. From Politico: 

“I am going to be running. And the reason, as I’ve traveled the country for six months, I hear people talk about the leadership of our country, and I’m convinced that people want leaders that appeal to the best of America, and not simply appeal to our worst instincts,” Hutchinson said during an interview with Jonathan Karl on ABC’s “This Week.” “I believe I can be that kind of leader for the people of America.”

Hutchinson will make a formal announcement later this month in Bentonville, Arkansas, he said.

Mr. Hutchinson has an interesting take on Donald: 

On Sunday, Hutchinson, a former federal prosecutor, reiterated the call he first made Friday for Trump to withdraw from the race.

“Well he should,” Hutchinson said, when asked whether Trump should pull out of the race. “But at the same time, we know he’s not [going to]. And there’s not any constitutional requirement.” The indictment will become too big of a “sideshow,” Hutchinson said, adding that the former president should focus on his defense instead of another bid for the White House.

“I mean, first of all, the office is more important than any individual person. And so for the sake of the office of the presidency, I do think that’s too much of a sideshow and distraction, and he needs to be able to concentrate on his due process[.] Read the entire article here. 

I've moved Mr. Hutchinson to the "I'm Running" list:

I'm Running (and the date they declared their candidacy)

1. Donald Trump (November 15, 2022)
2. Nikki Haley (February 14, 2023)
3. Vivek Ramaswamy (February 21, 2023) By the way, who is this guy? Politico describes him as a "multi-millionaire biotech entrepreneur and self-described intellectual godfather of the anti-woke movement." Okay.  
4. Asa Hutchinson (April 2, 2023)

... and deleted his name from the "I'm Thinking About Running" list:

I'm Thinking About Running

1. Governor Greg Abbott, Texas
2. John Bolton, former White House National Security Adviser
3. Liz Cheney, former congresswoman from Wyoming
4. Chris Christie, former governor of New Jersey, was a candidate in 2016
5. Rep. Dan Crenshaw, Texas 
6. Senator Ted Cruz, Texas 
7. Governor Ron DeSantis, Florida
8. Governor Doug Ducey, Arizona
9. Richard Grenell, former ambassador to Germany and former acting director of national intelligence
10. Will Hurd, former congressman from Texas
11. Mark Meadows, White House chief of staff and former North Carolina representative 
12. Governor Kristi L. Noem, South Dakota
13. Robert C. O’Brien, national security advisor 
14. Vice President Mike Pence
15. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
16. Senator Mitt Romney, Utah, 2012 Republican nominee for president
17. Senator Marco Rubio, Florida 
18. Senator Ben Sasse, Nebraska 
19. Senator Rick Scott, Florida
20. Senator Patrick J. Toomey, Pennsylvania

Days until Election Day: 583

And one more thing: Since my last post, Donald has been indicted (or "indicated", as he put it in a Truth Social post) by the Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, after a vote to indict by the Grand Jury. I have lots of thoughts about this, no surprise, but for now I'll just say that my dream in life is to live in a country where no one is stupid enough to send money to Donald Trump. Apparently a fund-raising blitz, which started seven seconds after the indictment was announced, has raised as much as 5 million dollars. How can people still be sending this man money? Wouldn't it be more entertaining to sit around setting $100 bills on fire? 

Update: Back on January 6, The Daily Mail ran a story saying that John Bolton would run in 2024, based on an interview Bolton gave to Good Morning, Britain. I saw the tweet the Mail sent out at the time but the story didn't get much traction, and as of yet Mr. Bolton hasn't officially announced, so I'm keeping him on the I'm Thinking About Running list. (Am I obsessed with lists? Yes.) You can read the Daily Mail story here.  

Update #2 on April 12: Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina has formed a presidential exploratory committee. This is from the Washington Post:

Scott, the only Black Republican in the Senate, has spent recent months laying the groundwork for a national campaign via early state travel and donor events. The exploratory committee will allow Scott's team to ramp up fundraising and fund travel before he officially declares a bid.

Based on this, I'm moving him to the "I'm Running" list. 

I'm Running (and the date they declared their candidacy)

1. Donald Trump (November 15, 2022)
2. Nikki Haley (February 14, 2023)
3. Vivek Ramaswamy (February 21, 2023) By the way, who is this guy? Politico describes him as a "multi-millionaire biotech entrepreneur and self-described intellectual godfather of the anti-woke movement." Okay.  
4. Asa Hutchinson (April 2, 2023)
5. Senator Tim Scott (April 12, 2023)

There's one more piece of political news. Yesterday it was announced that Chicago will host the 2024 Democratic National Convention, which will take place on August 19-22 next year.

Days until the election: 573

Mike Pence For President? Umm, No.

Did Mike Pence destroy his chance to be elected president by standing up to Donald Trump? In an article titled "Pence Reached His Limit With Trump. It Wasn't Pretty," the New York Times says yes:  

WASHINGTON — For Vice President Mike Pence, the moment of truth had arrived. After three years and 11 months of navigating the treacherous waters of President Trump’s ego, after all the tongue-biting, pride-swallowing moments where he employed strategic silence or florid flattery to stay in his boss’s good graces, there he was being cursed by the president.

Mr. Trump was enraged that Mr. Pence was refusing to try to overturn the election. In a series of meetings, the president had pressed relentlessly, alternately cajoling and browbeating him. Finally, just before Mr. Pence headed to the Capitol to oversee the electoral vote count last Wednesday, Mr. Trump called the vice president’s residence to push one last time.

“You can either go down in history as a patriot,” Mr. Trump told him, according to two people briefed on the conversation, “or you can go down in history as a pussy.”

The blowup between the nation’s two highest elected officials then played out in dramatic fashion as the president publicly excoriated the vice president at an incendiary rally and sent agitated supporters to the Capitol where they stormed the building — some of them chanting “Hang Mike Pence.”

Evacuated to the basement, Mr. Pence huddled for hours while Mr. Trump tweeted out an attack on him rather than call to check on his safety.

It was an extraordinary rupture of a partnership that had survived too many challenges to count.

The loyal lieutenant who had almost never diverged from the president, who had finessed every other possible fracture, finally came to a decision point he could not avoid. He would uphold the election despite the president and despite the mob. And he would pay the price with the political base he once hoped to harness for his own run for the White House.

“Pence had a choice between his constitutional duty and his political future, and he did the right thing,” said John Yoo, a legal scholar consulted by Mr. Pence’s office. “I think he was the man of the hour in many ways — for both Democrats and Republicans. He did his duty even though he must have known, when he did it, that that probably meant he could never become president.”

Former Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona, one of Mr. Trump’s most outspoken Republican critics and a longtime friend of Mr. Pence before they drifted apart over the president, said he was relieved the vice president had finally taken a stand.

“There were many points where I wished he would have separated, spoke out, but I’m glad he did it when he did,” Mr. Flake said. “I wish he would have done it earlier, but I’m sure grateful he did it now. And I knew he would.”

Not everyone gave Mr. Pence much credit, arguing that he should hardly be lionized for following the Constitution and maintaining that his deference to the president for nearly four years enabled Mr. Trump’s assault on democracy in the first place.

“I’m glad he didn’t break the law, but it’s kind of hard to call somebody courageous for choosing not to help overthrow our democratic system of government,” said Representative Tom Malinowski, Democrat of New Jersey. “He’s got to understand that the man he’s been working for and defending loyally is almost single-handedly responsible for creating a movement in this country that wants to hang Mike Pence.”

The rift between Mr. Trump and Mr. Pence has dominated their final days in office — not least because the vice president has the power under the 25th Amendment to remove the president from office with support of the cabinet. The House voted on Tuesday demanding that Mr. Pence take such action or else it would impeach Mr. Trump.

Mr. Pence sent a letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi late Tuesday refusing to act. But Mr. Trump has been nervous enough about it that he finally broke five days of the cold shoulder to invite his vice president to the Oval Office on Monday night to smooth over their split. The official description of the hourlong conversation was “good”; the unofficial description was “nonsubstantive” and “stilted.”

The clash is the third time in 20 years that a departing president and vice president came to conflict in their last days. After Vice President Al Gore lost his presidential campaign in 2000, he had a bitter fight with President Bill Clinton in the Oval Office over who was to blame. Eight years later, just days before leaving office, Vice President Dick Cheney castigated President George W. Bush for refusing to pardon I. Lewis Libby Jr., the vice president’s former chief of staff, for perjury in the C.I.A. leak case.

Mr. Trump came into office with no real understanding of how his predecessors had handled relationships with their running mates. In the early days, when it became clear that there would be no organizational chart or formal decision-making process, Mr. Pence made himself a regular presence in the Oval Office, simply showing up with no agenda, often walking into a policy discussion for which he had received no briefing materials.

He arrived in the West Wing each morning, received an update about when the president was coming down from the residence and then simply stationed himself in the Oval Office for most of the day. He was almost never formally invited to anything and his name was rarely on official meeting manifests. But he was almost always around.

Calm and unflappable, Mr. Pence took on the role of confidant for cabinet secretaries and other officials fearing Mr. Trump’s ire, advising how to broach uncomfortable topics with the president without triggering him.

Not angering Mr. Trump “was a key objective of his,” observed David J. Shulkin, the former secretary of veterans affairs. “He tried very hard to straddle a very tough line.” But that meant Mr. Pence’s own views were often opaque.

“Were the policies and the statements being put out, were they ones that he completely agreed with?” Dr. Shulkin asked. “Or was it his strategy that it is better to be in the room, it is better to be a trusted party to help moderate some of those strategies and the way to do that is not to publicly disagree? I think that was a really hard one to figure out, exactly where he stood.”

Mr. Pence ultimately discovered that loyalty to Mr. Trump only matters until it does not. Tension between the two had grown in recent months as the president railed privately about Mr. Pence. The vice president’s allies believed Mr. Trump was stirred up in part by Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, who told him that Pence aides were leaking to reporters. That helped create a toxic atmosphere between the two offices even before Election Day.

When Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the election results were rejected at every turn by state officials and judges, Mr. Trump was told, incorrectly, that the vice president could stop the final validation of the election of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. in his role as president of the Senate presiding over the Electoral College count.

Mr. Pence’s counsel, Greg Jacob, researched the matter and concluded the vice president had no such authority. Prodded by Rudolph W. Giuliani and Jenna Ellis, two of his lawyers, Mr. Trump kept pressing.

Mr. Pence’s office solicited more constitutional opinions, including from Mr. Yoo, a prominent conservative at the University of California at Berkeley who served in Mr. Bush’s administration.

In the Oval Office last week, the day before the vote, Mr. Trump pushed Mr. Pence in a string of encounters, including one meeting that lasted at least an hour. John Eastman, a conservative constitutional scholar at Chapman University, was in the office and argued to Mr. Pence that he did have the power to act.

The next morning, hours before the vote, Richard Cullen, Mr. Pence’s personal lawyer, called J. Michael Luttig, a former appeals court judge revered by conservatives — and for whom Mr. Eastman had once clerked. Mr. Luttig agreed to quickly write up his opinion that the vice president had no power to change the outcome, then posted it on Twitter.

Within minutes, Mr. Pence’s staff incorporated Mr. Luttig’s reasoning, citing him by name, into a letter announcing the vice president’s decision not to try to block electors. Reached on Tuesday, Mr. Luttig said it was “the highest honor of my life” to play a role in preserving the Constitution.

After the angry call cursing Mr. Pence, Mr. Trump riled up supporters at the rally against his own vice president, saying, “I hope he doesn’t listen to the RINOs and the stupid people that he’s listening to.”

“He set Mike Pence up that day by putting it on his shoulders,” said Ryan Streeter, an adviser to Mr. Pence when he was the governor of Indiana. “That’s a pretty unprecedented thing in American politics. For a president to throw his own vice president under the bus like that and to encourage his supporters to take him on is something just unconscionable in my mind.”

Mr. Pence was already in his motorcade to the Capitol by that point. When the mob burst into the building, Secret Service agents evacuated him and his wife and children, first to his office off the floor and later to the basement. His agents urged him to leave the building, but he refused to abandon the Capitol. From there, he spoke with congressional leaders, the defense secretary and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — but not the president.

A Republican senator later said he had never seen Mr. Pence so angry, feeling betrayed by a president for whom he had done so much. To Mr. Trump, one adviser said, the vice president had entered “Sessions territory,” referring to Jeff Sessions, the attorney general who was tortured by the president before being fired. (A vice president cannot be dismissed by a president.)

On Thursday, the day after the siege, Mr. Pence stayed away from the White House, avoiding Mr. Trump. The next day, he went in, but spent most of the day at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next door, where he held a farewell party for his staff.

But aides said Mr. Pence did not want to become a long-term nemesis of a vindictive president, and by Monday he was back in the West Wing.

Unlike Mr. Trump, Mr. Pence plans to attend Mr. Biden’s inauguration, then expects to divide time between Washington and Indiana, possibly starting a leadership political committee, writing a book and campaigning for congressional Republicans.

But no matter what comes next, he will always be remembered for one moment. “We’re very lucky that the vice president isn’t a maniac,” said Joe Grogan, Mr. Trump’s domestic policy adviser until last year. “In many ways, I think it vindicates the decision of Mike Pence to hang in there this long.” (This is the article in its entirety.)

The subject of Pence's political future also came up on Morning Joe this morning, as Mika and George Conway discussed the fact that Pence is refusing to invoke the 25th Amendment to get Trump out of office. Mr. Conway said this: "If Michael Pence thinks he's going to be president any other way than the 25th Amendment or impeachment, he's smokin' something." 

One week from today, (Yay!) Joe Biden becomes the 46th president of the United States. Four years from now, will Mike Pence be inaugurated as the 47th? My guess is no. 

"Anthony Scaramucci Is How You Got Trump"--Rick Wilson - Updated

Once again, Rick Wilson is having fun with words, this time as he slices and dices "I don't love Donald anymore" former Trump sycophant Anthony Scaramucci:

As a card-carrying, O.G. never-Trump Republican, I’m almost tempted to cut Scaramucci some slack, welcome him to the fold and assure him that this was inevitable. His bromance with Trump could never last because Trump is an utterly faithless creature for whom support is never enough: Trump demands humiliation and subjugation, not counsel and insight. It only took Scaramucci’s mild chiding — that Trump’s unseemly response to the mass killings in El Paso and Dayton, Ohio, including his recent visits to those cities, was a “catastrophe” — for Scaramucci to hop off (or be tossed from, depending on your point of view) the Trump train and to dutifully sign up for The Resistance™.

Before Scaramucci gets his own #WokeMooch hashtag, let’s check his credentials.

Yes, he’s had it with Trump, but there’s something that grinds about the road-to-Damascus conversion narrative of the president’s former confidante and fellow New York blowhard. There’s a whiff of a reality-TV tease, the aroma of a pro-wrestling kayfabe, the faint stench of a canned I’m fired? No, you’re fired! melodrama, mostly because none of Trump’s character flaws was hidden from Scaramucci or anyone else in the enabler class: The short-fingered, short-tempered vulgarian occupying 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. didn’t just spring his semi-literate, Twitter-raging, race-baiting, self-declared-private-parts-grabbing, logic-averse, serial-lying and crony-coddling governing style last week — he’s been this guy all along. And Scaramucci, and his ilk, have defended him, touting his alleged brilliance every step of the way. Here’s a gem from Scaramucci’s introductory news conference, in the White House press briefing room, at the start of his ill-fated 11-day run as Trump’s communications director:

“I was in the Oval Office with him earlier today, and we were talking about letting him be himself, letting him express his full identity. I think he’s got some of the best political instincts in the world and perhaps in history. When you think about it he started his political ascent two years and two months ago, and he’s done a phenomenal job for the American people.” 

Or a week later, on CNN:

“He’s our leader and one of the smartest people that I’ve ever met, if not the smartest. He’s just smart in a different way than maybe some of the people in the journalist community don’t like.”

It raises the question: Is Scaramucci on an all ‘shrooms and bootleg vodka diet? Does his circle of friends consist primarily of members of the Trump University dean’s list? Or is it more likely he always knew Trump was a trash-talking clod before getting behind him and later taking a West Wing job. Odds are Scaramucci had seen Trump up close and personal, the president actively governing as a policy-allergic windbag, when “The Mooch” gave him all those glowing reviews. So before deciding whether to stamp or yank Scaramucci’s never-Trump card, it’s also worth asking: Was Scaramucci’s shtick performative then or is it performative now? (From the Washington Post, read the article here.) 

Update: More from the Mooch. 

Trump isn’t racist. He’s worse. He’s so narcissistic he doesn’t see people as people. It’s why he doesn’t have any real friends. It’s why he gives a thumbs up next to an orphaned baby after a mass shooting. Everybody is an obstacle or a stepping stone. https://t.co/RGw1R5ByPb

— Anthony Scaramucci (@Scaramucci) August 16, 2019

Here's the Vanity Fair story in it's entirety, written by William D. Cohan:

New York financier Anthony Scaramucci, aka the Mooch, had his 15 minutes of fame back in the summer of 2017 when he spent 11 days as Donald Trump’s communications director in the White House. Even after John Kelly, then the chief of staff, fired him in the aftermath of his profanity-laced diatribe against other members of the White House staff that appeared in the New Yorker, Scaramucci stayed loyal to Trump, defending him publicly on TV spot after TV spot. But now, nearly two years later, the Mooch has soured bigly on Trump—and vice versa.

It all broke into the open a week ago during the Mooch’s appearance on the Bill Mahershow. Trump retaliated with a stream of tweets directed Scaramucci’s way. But the Mooch says that the president has met his match. A Harvard Law School graduate with working-class roots from Port Washington, Long Island, he’s not one to back down and is happy to go toe-to-toe with the most powerful man on Earth. I’ve been reporting on the Mooch for years, and so was curious about just what he is up to this time. What follows is a lightly edited and condensed version of our recent conversation, now that Scaramucci has decided to throw cold water on the man he calls “The Wicked Witch of the West Wing.”

William D. Cohan: You’ve had quite the last few days.

Anthony Scaramucci: Oh my god, this jackass. You know, it’s all good. I mean, it could be the best three or four days ever, actually.

You were on the Trump train for more than three years. Now, in the last week or so, you’ve very publicly gotten off. Why? Was there a catalyst?

Let’s go back, okay? I had always stated very clearly where I was with the president, okay? When I joined his campaign—I could send you a copy of my book, if you haven’t read it—I had an epiphany. He was talking to blue-collar people that have felt left out. They have felt a vacuum of advocacy from establishment politicians on the left and right for probably three decades. So when he descended in those areas to talk to them, he didn’t say they were deplorable; he didn’t say they were misfits; he didn’t say any of those things. He said, “Hey, you got a problem, and I’m gonna try to help you.” Okay? And he also identified and crystallized three or four things that have to be fixed.

Number one, we hollowed out our manufacturing, and we allowed these asymmetric trade deals which helped the global system to hurt a large percentage of people in our own country. We have to fix that, and we’re capable of fixing it. Second thing that he recognized—you may disagree with me on this, but I believe this—is that we have to have a propitious balance between regulation and releasing the animal spirits of the system. The third piece, which frankly he gets an incomplete on, is you had to reform the tax code. You had the highest corporate taxes in the industrial world. You had to reform the code. Now you could’ve scored it differently, and you could’ve put more middle-class incentives in there, and, you know, you didn’t—you don’t need to be doing this level of deficit spending, ’cause what you find about this level of deficit spending, it’s not necessarily increasing growth. So he didn’t get everything right, but at least he was trying to move in the right direction, okay? Those are the positives.

And the negatives:

Go look at the tweeting and the craziness and the fracturing of the alliances and the irrational Trump trade-tariff roulette. Okay, we’re putting the tariffs on; we’re taking the tariffs off; we’re putting them on; we may take them off. Hey, you can’t run a business like that if you’re a business leader. Business leaders large and small in the United States have said, “Hey, I gotta stop my capital investing. I don’t know what this guy is doing, because if he—if I start to invest in Mexico and he slaps a 20% tariff down there for some reason that I don’t understand, that’s gonna kill my business in Mexico. Let me wait this guy out.”

It’s a regressive tax. Okay, and moreover, it’s the least representative tax in our nation’s history, and let me explain why. We broke from England. We broke from them because our chant was no taxation without representation, and yet when you look at what Trump is doing with his tax, he’s using an arcane law that was established right after the Cuban Missile Crisis to give the president executive power to put on tariffs for national-security purposes, okay, and so you have one person deciding on this tax. It hasn’t gone through the legislature to be approved.

But what was the moment the scales actually fell from your eyes?

The red line was the racism—full-blown racism. He can say that he’s not a racist, and I agree with him, okay? And let me explain to you why he’s not a racist, ’cause this is very important. He’s actually worse than a racist. He is so narcissistic, he doesn’t see people as people. He sees them as objects in his field of vision. And so therefore, that’s why he hasbno empathy. That’s why he’s got his thumb up in the air when he’s taking a picture with an orphan. That’s why when someone’s leaning over the desk and asks [Nobel Prize–winning human rights activist Nadia Murad], “Well, what happened to your family members?”—they were murdered—he just looks at her and says, “Okay, when are we getting coffee here?”

You know, he doesn’t look at people—and by the way, if you and I were in his field of vision and he had a cold and the two of us had to die for him to get a Kleenex, you’re fucking dead. I mean, there’s no chance. You understand that, right?

And then there’s the mental element, right?

I think the guy is losing it, mentally. He has declining mental faculties; he’s becoming more petulant; he’s becoming more impetuous. Okay, you see just by the way he’s sweating, his body’s not doing well. It’s obviously not a guy that takes care of himself, right? And he doesn’t listen to anybody. And just think about this, okay? There’s no one—there’s no Jim Mattis; there’s no Gary Cohn; there’s no one to check him anymore. Whatever my differences were with General John Kelly, after he left, this thing has completely unspooled.

What do you think people get wrong about Trump?

I don’t have Trump derangement syndrome, but what I do have is Trump fatigue syndrome. It’s a very different thing, okay? And I submit to you that the nation, my party members, all have Trump fatigue syndrome, okay?

Trump is crazy, everything about him is terrible, or we gotta do everything we can to defeat him. He wants that. The George Conway Twitter feed is an example—and I love George, and he’s absolutely right about everything—but Trump has anesthetized the country to George Conway’s Twitter feed. Right? You’re looking at George Conway going, Okay, he’s very emotionally attached to hating on Trump, and he’s lighting Trump up every day. Even though he’s 100% right.

Trump has figured out a way to push people so that the average person says, “Okay, wait a minute.” They’ve lost their—they’re too emotionally invested in hating. I don’t hate him. He needs to be dismantled because he’s un-American; he’s hurting our civics, and he’s hurting our culture; and he’s done a good job of proving that some of the policies he has work. Let’s get the policies in place. Same policies, less crazy.

So what’s your role in all this?

He has nobody that he’s going up against that can fight like him. And by the way, watch what I’m doing. I’m not calling him Small Hands or saying he’s got a small penis. I’m not doing any of that. I’m attacking him by asserting presidential leadership; this is where the bar is, this is where you are. You’re bullying. You’re angry. You’re detached. You can’t put a coalition together. You can’t delegate and form a managerial structure to run the country.

And why are you doing this?

I love my country. You may not agree with my political views, you may not like my demeanor or personality, but you can’t say I don’t love my country. And so the point is, you want to attack me, no problem. I want to show my fellow Republicans those are paper bullets coming out of that gun. They are not as piercing as you think, because if you change your attitude and you reflect back, you don’t absorb that and you reflect it back, you’ll demolish this guy. He’s a paper tiger, Bill. He can be completely dismantled and defeated. And unfortunately, this isn’t about a personal thing.

This is an observational objective thing: the guy’s nuts. We’ve gotta defeat him. Everybody in the Republican Party knows it. They don’t want to lose their mantle of power and their mantle of leadership, so let’s primary the guy. And by the way, let’s find somebody younger, charismatic, understands the issues, can reach into the population and say, “Yeah, I got it.” But come on, this guy is gonna take us off the rails.

His poll numbers are quite bad at this stage. Do you think he might drop out, like Lyndon Johnson in 1968?

Yes. He’s gonna drop out of the race because it’s gonna become very clear. Okay, it’ll be March of 2020. He’ll likely drop out by March of 2020. It’s gonna become very clear that it’s impossible for him to win. And is this the kind of guy that’s gonna want to be that humiliated and lose as a sitting president? He’s got the self-worth in terms of his self-esteem of a small pigeon. It’s a very small pigeon. Okay. And so you think this guy’s gonna look at those poll numbers and say—he’s not gonna be able to handle that humiliation. And by the way, he is smart enough to know that that entire Congress hates his guts.

So therefore, that’s why he amps up the bullying: let me show you what I’m gonna do to Scaramucci. I’m gonna disgrace and bully him, okay, and therefore he’s gonna now become a pariah, and that’s what I’m gonna do to you if you open your mouth about me. But what I've just proven, you can’t really disgrace me. I’m sorry. I don’t care, and I’m gonna now dismantle you, and I’m gonna explain to the American people what you’re doing to them.

You know me, I’m a happy warrior so it’s no problem. I make fun of my hair. You know, Nikki Haley was looking at a bruise on my forehead. I said, “That was from a Botox injection at 7 a.m.. Don’t judge it, Nikki. Don’t judge.” There was a little contusion there.

So what’s the logical conclusion of all this, do you think?

Well, he’s gotta be primaried, so we have to find somebody to primary him, and I think we will. And again, not that Bill Weld isn’t a great guy, but unfortunately Bill Weld doesn’t have the panache right at this moment. He doesn’t have the panache to light up that group. And again, remember, all you need is to get enough delegates to get in the game here and disrupt this thing. And so listen, there’s gotta be somebody in the Republican Party that’s worried about 2024 and the identity of the Republican Party.

You know, this is like Game of Thrones. We need an Arya Stark, okay? We gotta take this guy out because this is like the Night King. The minute the Night King is vaporized, all the zombies are gonna fall by the wayside, right? We had the Wicked Witch of the West, but he is the Wicked Witch of the West Wing. We gotta get some water thrown on him. He’ll start melting.

The Mooch is really on a roll. He even called Donald fat:

Said the fattest President since William Howard Taft . . . https://t.co/T3Cbnx5T4S

— Anthony Scaramucci (@Scaramucci) August 16, 2019

More Information About Donald's Visit To The Chucrh

Talking Points Memo provides some background on how Donald's stunt visit to a church on Sunday came about. It turns out that contrary to what the White House said, the visit had nothing to do with praying for the victims of the Virginia Beach shooting, it was prompted by Franklin Graham's call to pray for Donald:

The pastor of a Virginia church that received a surprised visit from President Trump on Sunday apologized to his congregants who were “hurt” by his decision to allow the President on stage for a prayer.

“Sometimes we find ourselves in situations that we didn’t see coming, and we’re faced with a decision in a moment when we don’t have the liberty of deliberation, so we do our best to glorify God,” McLean Bible Church pastor David Platt said in a letter to church goers, explaining the circumstances of Trump’s arrival.

Platt said he was alerted at the end of his sermon on Sunday that President Trump was on his way to the church and would be there “in a matter of minutes.” The White House had apparently requested that the pastor pray for Trump, a request likely fueled by prominent evangelical and ardent Trump supporter Franklin Graham’s decision to proclaim Sunday as a special day of prayer to Trump. Graham claimed last week that Trump needed protection from his “enemies.”

The pastor said he wrestled with the decision for a few moments, knowing there were people with “varied personal histories and political opinions from varied socioeconomic situations” within the congregation, but ultimately decided to invite him on stage to pray in accordance with gospel scripture that asks Christians to pray for their leaders.

Trump spent about 10 minutes on stage with Platt and left without making any remarks. He was criticized for wearing a “USA” hat, which he removed once on stage, and golf clothes under a blazer, especially in a state that was just ravaged by a mass shooting on Friday evening that left 13 people dead.

According to Platt’s letter, not everyone was pleased with his decision to pray for Trump on stage.

“I wanted to share all of this with you in part because I know that some within our church, for a variety of valid reasons, are hurt that I made this decision. This weighs heavy on my heart,” he said. “I love every member of this church, and I only want to lead us with God’s Word in a way that transcends political party and position, heals the hurts of racial division and injustice, and honors every man and woman made in the image of God. So while I am thankful that we had an opportunity to obey 1 Timothy 2 in a unique way today, I don’t want to purposely ever do anything that undermines the unity we have in Christ.”

That is the TPM story in its entirety. This is a tweet from Franklin Graham:  

Along with 250+ Christian leaders, I am asking believers across our nation to set aside next Sunday, June 2, as a special day of prayer for the @POTUS, @realDonaldTrump. https://t.co/mLEV4UwmsY

— Franklin Graham (@Franklin_Graham) May 26, 2019

Unsurprisingly, some members of the church were not happy to see Donald; this is the pastor's letter in response: (MBC is the McLean Bible Church)

Dear MBC Family,

Sometimes we find ourselves in situations that we didn’t see coming, and we’re faced with a decision in a moment when we don’t have the liberty of deliberation, so we do our best to glorify God. Today, I found myself in one of those situations.

At the end of my sermon at the 1:00 worship gathering, I stepped to the side for what I thought would be a couple of moments in quiet reflection as we prepared to take the Lord’s Supper. But I was immediately called backstage and told that the President of the United States was on his way to the church, would be there in a matter of minutes, and would like for us to pray for him. I immediately thought about my longing to guard the integrity of the gospel in our church. As I said in the sermon today, Christ alone unites us. I love that we have over 100 nations represented in our church family, including all kinds of people with varied personal histories and political opinions from varied socioeconomic situations. It’s clear in our church that the only reason we’re together is because we have the same King we adore, worship, fear, and follow with supreme love and absolute loyalty, and His name is Jesus.

That’s why, as soon as I heard this request backstage, the passage from God’s Word that came to my mind was 1 Timothy 2:1-6:

“First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, 2 for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. 3 This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, 4 who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. 5 For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, 6 who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time.”

Based on this text, I know that it is good, and pleasing in the sight of God, to pray for the president. So in that moment, I decided to take this unique opportunity for us as a church to pray over him together. My aim was in no way to endorse the president, his policies, or his party, but to obey God’s command to pray for our president and other leaders to govern in the way this passage portrays.

I went back out to lead the Lord’s Supper and then walked off stage, where the president was soon to arrive. In that brief moment, I prayed specifically for an opportunity to speak the gospel to him, and for faithfulness to pray the gospel over him.

While I won’t go into the details of our conversation backstage, one of our other pastors and I spoke the gospel in a way that I pray was clear, forthright, and compassionate. Then I walked back out on stage, read 1 Timothy 2:1-6, and sought to pray the Word of God over the president, other leaders, and our country. (If you would like to see the full context of my comments and prayer, I have included the video below.) After I prayed, the president walked off stage without comment, and we closed our gathering by celebrating heroes among us, a couple who has spent the last 48 years spreading the gospel in remote places where it had never gone before they came. We then recited the Great Commission as we always do, sending one another out into the city for the glory of our King.

I wanted to share all of this with you in part because I know that some within our church, for a variety of valid reasons, are hurt that I made this decision. This weighs heavy on my heart. I love every member of this church, and I only want to lead us with God’s Word in a way that transcends political party and position, heals the hurts of racial division and injustice, and honors every man and woman made in the image of God. So while I am thankful that we had an opportunity to obey 1 Timothy 2 in a unique way today, I don’t want to purposely ever do anything that undermines the unity we have in Christ.

In the end, would you pray with me for gospel seed that was sown today to bear fruit in the president’s heart? Would you also pray with me that God will help us to guard the gospel in every way as we spread the gospel everywhere? And finally, I’m guessing that all of us will face other decisions this week where we don’t have time to deliberate on what to do. I’m praying now for grace and wisdom for all of us to do exactly what we talked about in the Word today: aim for God’s glory, align with God’s purpose, and yield to God’s sovereignty.

I love you, church.

Your Pastor,
David

My first post about this, including the strange pictures of Donald at the church, is directly below, read it here. 

I Knew It! - Updated

photo credit: Carolyn Kaster/AP

I've said many times here at Writing The World that Jared Kushner is the reason Chris Christie never got a job in the Trump White House; now apparently Christie's new book confirms it. The Guardian got hold of a pre-publication copy of Let Me Finish; the article about it was so interesting I cut-and-pasted it whole:

Chris Christie, who was ousted as chairman of Donald Trump’s White House transition team in 2016, has written a blistering attack on Jared Kushner, whom he accuses of having carried out a political “hit job” on him as an act of revenge for prosecuting his father, Charles Kushner, a decade ago.

In his soon to be published book, Let Me Finish, Christie unleashes both barrels on Trump’s son-in-law, who remains a senior White House adviser with responsibilities for Middle Eastern peace, sentencing reform and “American Innovation”.

Christie blames this key player in the president’s inner circle for his ignominious dismissal shortly after Trump’s election victory in November 2016. Christie, the former governor of New Jersey, writes that Kushner’s role in his sacking was confirmed to him by Steve Bannon, Trump’s campaign chief, in real time.

As Bannon was carrying out the firing, at Trump Tower in New York, Christie forced him to tell him who was really behind the dismissal by threatening to go to the media and point the finger at Bannon instead.

“Steve Bannon … made clear to me that one person and one person only was responsible for the faceless execution that Steve was now attempting to carry out. Jared Kushner, still apparently seething over events that had occurred a decade ago.”

The political assassination was carried out by Kushner as a personal vendetta, Christie writes, that had its roots in his prosecution, as a then federal attorney, of Charles Kushner in 2005. The real estate tycoon was charged with witness tampering and tax evasion and served more than a year in federal prison.

Even for a White House that has generated an extraordinary cornucopia of hypercritical kiss-and-tell books, Christie’s is exceptional for its excoriating description of events at which he was present. As he points out in Let Me Finish, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian ahead of publication on 29 January, none of the other authors “has known Trump for as long or as well as I have – or was right there in the room when much of this occurred”.

It is also exceptional as a chronicle of the score-settling and animosity that drove key decision-making in Trump’s nascent presidency. As political scientists look for the roots of the mayhem in the current White House, the book provides new clues.

At the heart of it is Christie’s desire to tell the American people that had his transition plan been adopted after Trump’s shock victory on election night in November 2016, the Trump White House would be a much more effective place today. Once he had been tossed overboard, the new transition team led by Vice President-elect Mike Pence had a “thrown-together approach” that led to appalling choices of senior personnel “over and over again”.

But the emotional heart of the book is Christie’s account of the actions of Jared Kushner. In this telling, Christie was ditched by a young man who made it his business to discredit and denounce him because of what he had done to his father.

“The kid’s been taking an ax to your head with the boss ever since I got here,” Bannon confessed at Christie’s dismissal.

Christie was the US attorney in New Jersey when he spearheaded the prosecution of Charles Kushner for witness tampering. The case arose out of a bitter family feud.

The elder Kushner hired a sex worker to seduce his brother-in-law Bill Schulder, then filmed them having sex in a motel and sent the tape to his own sister, Esther. The bizarre plot was an attempt to blackmail the Schulders into keeping their silence about Bill’s knowledge of Charles’s fraudulent activities.

Charles Kushner pleaded guilty to 18 charges and served 14 months in a federal prison in Alabama.

In one of the most visceral passages of the book, Christie recounts for the first time how Jared Kushner badmouthed him to Trump in April 2016, pleading with his father-in-law not to make Christie transition chairman. Remarkably, he did so while Christie was in the room.

“He implied I had acted unethically and inappropriately but didn’t state one fact to back that up,” Christie writes. “Just a lot of feelings – very raw feelings that had been simmering for a dozen years.”

Kushner went on to tell Trump that it wasn’t fair his father spent so long in prison. He insisted the sex tape and blackmailing was a family matter that should have been kept away from federal authorities: “This was a family matter, a matter to be handled by the family or by the rabbis.”

Trump, in an effort to settle the dispute, proposed a dinner between him, Jared and Charles Kushner, and Christie. Much to Christie’s relief, Jared didn’t acquiesce.

In the end, Trump gave Christie the job. But according to Let Me Finish, Kushner had the final say.

Let Me Finish bears all the hallmarks of classic, brash Chris Christie. Its language is blunt, caustic and at times self-satisfied, much like his political reputation.

It has its lighter moments. At his first meeting with Trump in 2002, at a dinner in the Trump International Hotel and Tower, in New York, Trump ordered his food for him. He chose scallops, to which Christie is allergic, and lamb which he has always detested. Christie recalls wondering whether Trump took him to be “one of his chicks”.

At another dinner three years later Trump told the obese Christie he had to lose weight. Addressing him like one of the contestants in Miss Universe, the beauty contest organisation that he owned, Trump said “you gotta look better to be able to win” in politics.

Trump returned to the theme of girth during the 2016 presidential campaign, exhorting Christie to wear a longer tie as it would make him look thinner.

Meanwhile, Kushner is not the only subject of Christie’s wrath. The author is scathing about Michael Flynn, the retired general who was briefly national security adviser before resigning over his dealings with Russia, and who is now cooperating with the special counsel and awaiting sentencing for lying to the FBI.

In one of the book’s more memorable put-downs, Flynn is dubbed “the Russian lackey and future federal felon”. Christie also calls the former general “a train wreck from beginning to end … a slow-motion car crash”.

However, one central character escapes relatively unscathed: Trump himself. The president is utterly fearless and a unique communicator Christie writes – and his main flaw is that he speaks on impulse and surrounds himself with people he should not trust.

Christie gives a detailed account of his effort to be named as Trump’s vice-presidential running mate in the summer of 2016, after his own bid for the Republican nomination for president failed. He detects yet again the hand of Kushner – and that of his wife and Trump’s beloved daughter, Ivanka Trump – working against him. An anonymous “high-ranking Trump staffer” is depicted calling to warn that “the family is very upset that he says it will be you”. A mollifying call from son Eric Trump follows but that is as close as Christie gets. Trump chooses ultra-conservative Indiana politician, Mike Pence, after a mystifying wait. Christie repeatedly says he was not disappointed.

US attorney general, the other role Christie would have accepted, also eluded him. As with most appointments he is scathing about the man who got the job, Jeff Sessions, whom he calls “not-ready-for-prime-time” and whose recusal from the Russia investigation he blames for its ever-growing scale. Trump did apparently offer Christie “special assistant to the president in the White House”, which he turned down, prompting from the president-elect “an expression that said maybe he hadn’t heard me right”.

Christie would have taken chair of the Republican National Committee and seemed poised to get it. But according to Christie, once again Trump’s family worked against him. In a near-comic scene, Reince Priebus, the RNC chair who would become Trump’s first chief of staff, offers him role after role in a frantic attempt to fulfil the directive from Trump to “make Chris happy”. One by one, Christie turns down labor secretary, homeland security secretary and ambassadorships in Rome and the Vatican.

Christie is relatively forgiving of Kushner in the context of the infamous June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower between the candidate’s son-in-law, his son Donald Jr, his campaign manager and a group of Russians, some with Kremlin ties, offering “dirt” on his Democratic presidential opponent, Hillary Clinton. Bannon memorably told the author Michael Wolff the meeting was “treasonous” but Christie writes that taking the meeting was merely “dumb” or, in the case of Kushner and Trump Jr, a “sign of profound inexperience”. He faults Trump’s response to Robert Mueller’s investigation into links with Russia, but does not go into detail about the work of the special counsel.

He does, however, contend that Kushner misjudged two Russia-related firings: that of Flynn in February 2017 and most famously that of the FBI director James Comey in May the same year. According to Christie, Kushner thought firing Flynn would end talk of links between the Trump campaign and Russia – it did not – and that firing Comey would not provoke “an enormous shit-storm” in Washington. It did.

“Again,” Christie writes, having detailed conversations with Kushner in which he was acting in an informal capacity, “the president was ill served by poor advice.”

The book officially comes out two weeks from today; this is only the tip of a very juicy iceberg of coverage to come. Ryan Lizza points out that staffing really isn't the problem...

Any book that argues, as this one apparently does, that Trump’s real problem is just a staffing issue isn’t worth reading https://t.co/deJrVXFgzY

— Ryan Lizza (@RyanLizza) January 15, 2019

...then acknowledges that yes, staffing is part of the problem:

Ok, maybe there are some minor staffing issues pic.twitter.com/EjpGUoDqbS

— Ryan Lizza (@RyanLizza) January 15, 2019

Grab the popcorn and get comfy. This is going to be fun. Click here to read my previous posts about Chris Christie. 

Tuesday afternoon update. Some history from Steve Kornacki:

I saved the NY Post cover from one of the most memorable stories I followed in my NJ days: U.S. Attorney Chris Christie’s 2004 takedown of the Democratic governor’s top donor, Charles Kushner pic.twitter.com/4bT28Ez2sP

— Steve Kornacki (@SteveKornacki) January 15, 2019

A little Googling delivered the story below, which was published in the New York Post on July 15, 2004 under the headline "Sex Gal Now Helping Feds -- Hooker Turns On Kushner." I don't think it's the story referenced in Kornacki's tweet, which, if I squint really hard, appears to be dated July 14, but it does provide an overview of what happened and I have to ask. Could the Kushners be any classier? And how cool would it be if Sex Gal, if she's out there somewhere, would come forward and tell her side of the story?

The hooker hired by New Jersey real-estate tycoon Charles Kushner to carry out the steamy videotaped seduction of a key tax-fraud witness against him is cooperating with federal authorities, The Post has learned.

The blond bombshell agreed to testify against Kushner after she was given two options – cooperate or face arrest, according to sources familiar with the case.

Kushner, 50, was arrested Tuesday on charges he set up and taped the compromising motel-room sex romp in a bid to intimidate the witness – his brother-in-law William Schulder, who had worked for Kushner, according to a criminal complaint filed in Newark and prosecutors.

Schulder – who is married to Kushner’s sister, Esther – had been helping the feds investigate tax fraud and campaign-contribution violations allegedly committed by his brother-in-law, said Newark U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie.

Kushner recruited the prostitute – described by sources as a slender high-priced call girl – to lure Schulder to a motel room for secretly videotaped sex after two co-conspirators Kushner had hired failed to find a hooker to do the job.

The seductress Kushner recruited was “a high-end call girl for an elite escort service in Manhattan,” a source familiar with the case told The Post.

She’s “very attractive – really, really pretty,” with “shoulder-length, dirty-blond hair,” said the source.

Kushner paid her from $7,000 to $10,000 to lure Schulder to a motel for sex early last December so a videotape of the torrid tryst could be sent to his wife, according to the complaint.

The call girl delivered – enticing Schulder to a room in the Red Bull Inn in Bridgewater a day after he had “rescued” her outside a nearby diner when she asked for a ride, claiming her car had conked out, the complaint says.

Kushner had a tape of the X-rated encounter mailed to his sister in May – after some of his associates were notified they were targets of the federal probe, the complaint says.

But instead of being intimidated, his sister and her husband were enraged and reported the dirty deed to authorities.

The feds located the call girl – through a phone number she had given Schulder, sources said. She agreed to cooperate, rather than face prosecution, they said.

A bid to use the same scam to videotape a second witness having sex failed when the man targeted by Kushner resisted another call girl’s erotic overtures, the criminal complaint said.

The witness was Kushner’s former chief bookkeeper, Robert Yontef.

Kushner was released on $5 million bond on Tuesday after pleading not guilty to witness tampering, obstruction of justice and promoting interstate prostitution.

A top fund-raiser for New Jersey Gov. Jim McGreevy and other Democrats, he became the target of federal investigators after a number of lawsuits were filed against him accusing him of financial mismanagement – including illegally using money from his businesses for political contributions.

Some of the suits were filed by Kushner’s close relatives, including his brother Murray, in a bitter family feud over their financial empire.

The two brothers had inherited the business from their father, Joseph, a Holocaust survivor, and built it up over the years – until Charles told his brother in 1999 they could no longer work together.

Update #2 on Friday afternoon. Politico published an excerpt from the book, with more details about Christie's interactions with Jared:

And Jared began to detail his ancient grievances against me. “He tried to destroy my father,” Jared said.

“There was a dispute inside the family,” Jared reminded Donald, severely underplaying the sordid details of the felony indictment of Charles Kushner and subsequent guilty plea and imprisonment. In Jared’s version, his uncle’s lawyer brought the matter to me, and I collected damaging evidence from members of the family who already hated his father. He implied I had acted unethically and inappropriately but didn’t state one fact to back that up. Just a lot of feelings — very raw feelings that had been simmering for nearly a dozen years. Those feelings were now, finally, coming to a boil in front of the man who had brought all this heat on the Kushner family — me.

“My father made those people rich, and they did nothing,” Jared said. “They just benefited from my father’s hard work. And those are the people who turned him in.”

As Jared spoke, he never raised his voice. But some strong emotions are not dependent on volume. Jared delivered his in a soft quiver. As he continued, his voice began to crack.

“It wasn’t fair,” he said.

He said I had worked with a bookkeeper who’d stolen private information. He said that once I got involved in the case, I said false things about his father and, after the guilty plea, I made his father stay in prison longer than he was supposed to. He had it down to the exact number of additional days. Jared said I did all of that because I was vindictive and ambitious and untrustworthy.

“This was a family matter,” Jared said, “a matter to be handled by the family or by the rabbis” — not by a hard-charging federal prosecutor.

Jared glanced at me, then fixed his gaze on his father-in-law, Donald. “How can he be trusted to handle the transition?”

As Jared plowed through this litany, I didn’t dignify his decade-old rantings with a response of any kind. I just didn’t speak. Not to correct his version of the record. Not to add crucial details. I didn’t say a word. I looked right at him. I kept thinking to myself, What is this? — and shooting perplexed looks at Corey and across the desk at Donald. How long are we going to let this go on?

Finally, Donald spoke up.

“Jared, if you were in Chris’ position, you would have done exactly the same thing. It was a big case against a famous person who had done something wrong, and he did what he had to do. You’re a lawyer. You would have done exactly what Chris did if you would have had that job.”

Trump stopped there for a moment, letting his words sink in. Then he said one more thing that I didn’t expect to hear: “And your other problem was you didn’t know me at the time. Maybe if you would have known me, maybe I could have helped.”

I wasn’t entirely sure what Donald meant by that. But as I sat there and soaked it all in, the thoughts in my head had more to do with Donald than with Jared. (Read the article here.) 

Just A Few Random Tweets - Updated

This aged poorly https://t.co/BHAMb53mXf

— Brian Klaas (@brianklaas) November 29, 2018

WSJ correction pic.twitter.com/SwBBEo678G

— W.G. Dunlop (@wgdunlop) November 29, 2018

I would love to know whether Ivanka reported this on her security clearances applications, as legally required. Let’s find out @RepCummings , @RepAdamSchiff ? https://t.co/dYQnkDWrTh

— Daniel Jacobson (@Dan_F_Jacobson) November 30, 2018

This day keeps getting better and better....and there’s still 4 hours left. https://t.co/LGr0iuuFYC

— Ana Navarro (@ananavarro) November 30, 2018

Yes, the Cohen document is worth reading, but you really must watch #babycannon hitting the #easycheese. Another stroke of brilliance from @benjaminwittes https://t.co/qwbMrvI0Z3

— Lara Flint (@Lara4DC) November 29, 2018

Two years ago this morning, almost to the minute. https://t.co/2TGmmkCY10

— Philip Bump (@pbump) November 30, 2018

BREAKING: The Trump Organization planned to give a $50 million penthouse at Trump Tower Moscow to Vladimir Putin during the 2016 campaign.

Sources say that Michael Cohen, Trump's lawyer at the time, discussed it with a rep of Putin’s press secretary https://t.co/W7BMEfRApB

— BuzzFeed News (@BuzzFeedNews) November 29, 2018

I agree with Alexey here. If this was truly offered to VVP, it exposes the amateurish ways of the Trump Organization team. But if true, it also exposes their illegal ways. This is called a bribe, a kickback, a payoff. Its illegal both in Russia and the US.  And it's disgusting. https://t.co/uqaNT6xH5j

— Michael McFaul (@McFaul) November 30, 2018

All too plausible that Russia has information that could end Trump's presidency at any time and that he knows this to be true. https://t.co/72tQgS1wpM

— Brendan Nyhan (@BrendanNyhan) November 30, 2018

In light of Michael Cohen's guilty plea this morning, re-posting this clip from our 2016 interview with Paul Manafort about then-candidate Trump's potential business ties to Russia pic.twitter.com/pNwMtY49l6

— Norah O'Donnell🇺🇸 (@NorahODonnell) November 29, 2018

The dolts who work for Trump are so busy doing Mafia Cosplay that they don't realize that calling Cohen a "rat" is admitting that Trump committed crimes on which he can "rat" https://t.co/6TS7a3OpWb

— Dan Pfeiffer (@danpfeiffer) November 29, 2018

I’m convinced @RudyGiuliani needs to retain his own lawyer.

His view that attorney-client privilege covers the disclosure of confidential info from Mueller via Manafort’s attorneys is not only wrong, but is so unsophisticated that it’s clear he hasn’t considered this carefully. https://t.co/7mGmvXRT7i

— Renato Mariotti (@renato_mariotti) November 29, 2018

CNN Senior Legal Analyst @JeffreyToobin: "Today is the first day I actually thought Donald Trump might not finish his term in office. I think this thing is enormous." https://t.co/argQDB2vI1 pic.twitter.com/6beYMQQEu9

— Anderson Cooper 360° (@AC360) November 30, 2018

Even then, I thought this was a big moment for HRC in the second debate. She just laid out exactly how it was clear Russia was helping Trump. But guess what the NYT ignored completely in its main post-debate analysis? Not. A. Word. https://t.co/r5Ln2GF5eT https://t.co/ZIIYN766Of

— TVMoJoe (@TVMoJoe) November 30, 2018

The iceberg of lies, deceit, corruption, & criminality is steadily but surely surfacing, despite the efforts of many in high places to keep it submerged. How large is the iceberg & who will be found clinging to it? The wheels of justice turn slowly, but grind exceedingly fine. https://t.co/yeMZiWTlVM

— John O. Brennan (@JohnBrennan) November 30, 2018

This is really, really bad for Jr. https://t.co/ybPJOFPf0U

— Susan Hennessey (@Susan_Hennessey) November 30, 2018

For now, at least, I'll end with this, from a couple of weeks ago. As far as I can tell, the Vice President is keeping his head down and doing his best to appear loyal in public, but when he's alone with his thoughts at the Naval Observatory... You know he's just slobbering at the possibility that Donald won't make it to January 20, 2021:

It’s finally dawning on him who has the biggest incentive to see him impeached. https://t.co/0uvuNZ0ue3

— Lawrence O'Donnell (@Lawrence) November 16, 2018

Friday afternoon update. I can't resist posting this one:

never forget pic.twitter.com/oRNbixkhd1

— Adam Parkhomenko (@AdamParkhomenko) November 30, 2018

2nd update, on Saturday afternoon. In his column yesterday, Jonathan Bernstein ponders Donald's weaknesses after the midterm elections and finishes with this:

But it would surprise me if there aren’t quite a few congressional Republicans, and a fair number of party actors, who daydream about having a nice, reliable, normal president again. Perhaps some of them once believed that Mueller’s probe, which has now netted so many guilty pleas and indictments, was a witch hunt. Perhaps they believed Trump’s lawyers that Mueller would surely be wrapping things up by Thanksgiving, or New Year’s at the latest. (Oops — that was Thanksgiving 2017.)

Now, though, they surely understand that the Trump-Russia story and other scandals aren’t going away any time soon. Even in the best-case scenario, they will continue producing stories that Republicans don’t want in the headlines. And at the very worst … well, surely some Republicans are also having nightmares about just how bad the very worst could be.

I’m not predicting anything. Just noting some obvious facts. The incentives for supporting Trump that have held since his election have suddenly become a lot weaker. In mid-July of 1974, President Richard Nixon could still count on virtually every conservative Republican in Congress to oppose his impeachment and removal, even if they weren’t exactly thrilled with him. By early August, he had only a handful of supporters remaining. That’s not to say that Trump’s support will necessarily evaporate — just that if it does, it could happen extremely quickly, perhaps in days. And nice, reliable, normal Mike Pence will be sitting right there.

Like I said. Slobbering. (Is Mike Pence really nice, reliable and normal? That's a blog post for another day.)

Read Bernstein's column here.

Primary The President?, Part 2

In my first "Primary The President" post, on November 16, I quoted Conservative columnist Michael Gerson, who says a Republican must run against Donald in the 2020 primaries. (Read it here.) 

Now political scientist Jonathan Bernstein looks at the possibility of a serious nomination challenge:

It’s true that the last four presidents to be re-elected all dipped below 45 percent approval at some point between the midterms and the presidential election. Ronald Reagan got as low as 35 percent in early 1983 before winning 49 states the next year. The problem for Trump is that there’s no reason to expect his current numbers to improve significantly, and it probably wouldn’t take much for him to return to his 2017 lows.

If that happened, the chances of a serious nomination challenge would increase rapidly. A 40 percent approval rating seems like a rough line dividing incumbents who get renominated by acclamation and those, such as Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush, who have to overcome serious threats. Although such a challenge would be unlikely with a president who seemed competitive, it certainly could happen if Trump looked like he was about to get clobbered in a general election and bring the whole party with him. After the midterms, it’s hard to believe many Republicans still think Trump is immune from the normal laws of politics. Nomination challenges don’t cause re-election weakness; it’s the other way around.

Meanwhile, we’re entering a period of real danger for Trump, in which the incentives for elite Republicans to support him will be weaker than they’ve been at any time since he clinched the nomination. If he runs into further trouble in the next six to 10 months, he might find less loyalty from his party than usual, which in turn could push his approval numbers lower and make a serious nomination challenge more likely. Of course, it’s possible that the administration won’t run into any new scandals or otherwise create bad news out of nothing. Possible. But not likely. (Read the article here.) 

It Happened In 2006

Yes, that really is the current president of the United States:

The Only Video Ever of Donald Trump Wearing Blue Jeans and Singing with Megan Mullally🤠
(Green Acres at the Emmys, 2006)#ThisIsAmerica #MustWatch pic.twitter.com/oEuK4qeDpQ

— PolishPatriot™️ (@PolishPatriotTM) October 16, 2018

On To Bigger Things? - Updated

Big announcement with my friend Ambassador Nikki Haley in the Oval Office at 10:30am.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 9, 2018

Is it just that she's resigning, which has been announced (or at least, leaked,) or is there something else afoot? For what it's worth, Axios has a quote saying she's not running for president in 2020. (Read it here.)

Update: Why did Nikki Haley resign? So far, no one knows for sure, but as the saying goes, there's got to be a reason.

From Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo:

The most repeated explanations of Nikki Haley's departure today are that she wanted to make money in the private sector or she wanted a "breather." I just wanted to reiterate that this makes absolutely no sense. People do sometimes leave high profile positions for those reasons. But not without warning and not four weeks before an election. President Trump claims she gave him a heads up six months. But he's a notorious liar. Various reports claim that neither John Bolton nor Secretary of State Pompeo knew anything about it. Apparently nobody did.

I'm not saying there's some big scandal lurking here. But these explanations do not hold up. There's certainly some as yet unknown driver of this decision.  (Nothing to link to, this is the whole post.)

From the Washington Post:

"Resignations in national politics are highly calculated maneuvers -- it's not just like, 'Uh, I think I'll have chili for lunch,' [Republican strategist/Trump critic Mike] Murphy said. "This was so abrupt and the timing so politically weird that it sure reads like it's preempting something... If it's the political masterstroke, where's the landing pad? Where's the ooh and ahh?" (Read the story here.)

From Bill Kristol via Twitter:

Re-upping from a few months ago. https://t.co/232vC6cj9e

— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) October 9, 2018

And Mike Murphy again, also via Twitter:

No idea what happened with Nikki Haley sudden resignation, but no admin says “hey, here’s a brainstorm! Let’s have one of our biggest Administration stars suddenly resign just 28 days before a rough election.”  There is a story here, we just don’t know it... yet.

— Mike Murphy (@murphymike) October 9, 2018

Stay tuned...

Wednesday morning, update #2: Who will replace Haley at the U.N.? Not Ivanka:

It is an honor to serve in the White House alongside so many great colleagues and I know that the President will nominate a formidable replacement for Ambassador Haley. That replacement will not be me.

— Ivanka Trump (@IvankaTrump) October 9, 2018

It's A Metaphor

Today Trump boarded Air Force One with toilet paper stuck to his shoe.

How’s that for a metaphor?
https://t.co/jbko5CVvmx

— Simran Jeet Singh (@SikhProf) October 5, 2018

And here's the video:

This video of President Trump with toilet paper on his shoe is 100% real. He was boarding Air Force One in Minneapolis earlier today. pic.twitter.com/wr0ZnXknCx

— Beatrice-Elizabeth Peterson (@MissBeaE) October 5, 2018