Month: December 2017

Alabama Senate Race

On Sunday Richard Shelby, senator of Alabama, said on CNN that he could not vote for Roy Moore and instead wrote in a “distinguished Republican” on his absentee ballot. This turned out to matter because on Tuesday Jones beat Moore by 1.5% and the Write-In vote was 1.7%.

Here is how Trump dealt with the Alabama loss and spun his involvement in it: “Aides to the temperamental president reported being pleasantly surprised that he did not rage against the setback in private, as he is wont to do in moments of difficulty. But neither did he concede a mistake.”

Here is Charlie Sykes, former right-wing talkshow host, on how accepting Trump in 2015 and ’16 has brought the GOP to this loss: A GOP Tragedy in Four Acts.

In an Atlantic piece about how Republicans will have a hard time finding winning candidates even after the Moore loss, McKay Coppins interviews a Republican official in Ohio who explains the reason the GOP keeps nominating out-of-the-mainstream candidates: “Part of the problem is we’ve trained our base to only respond to very specific messaging. We’ve fine-tuned what these people need to hear.”

Also on Tuesday, Trump tweeted that Kristen Gillibrand, who recently called for him to resign, used to beg him for campaign funds and “would do anything for them.” USA Today printed an unusually scathing editorial attacking Trump for the sexually suggestive tweet:  “A president who would all but call Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand a whore is not fit to clean the toilets in the Barack Obama Presidential Library or to shine the shoes of George W. Bush.”

David Ignatius opines about Congress’s rushed job passing their tax bill. An important thing to remember in the coming years as the tax bill is implemented: “Without a clear legislative history, tax lawyers at the Internal Revenue Service won’t have adequate guidance when they try to write regulations implementing the law. Courts won’t have a record of congressional intent, other than news conferences, tweets, and hurried floor and committee statements.”

On the Russian Front

Among rising right-wing clamor to discredit Meuller as partisan, Rosenstein holds his ground in congressional testimony.

A big Washington Post expose on Trump’s response or lack thereof to Russia hacking. One shocking quote: “Current and former officials said that his daily intelligence update — known as the president’s daily brief, or PDB — is often structured to avoid upsetting him.”

The Republicans leading the House Intelligence Committee has apparently decided to wrap up its investigation of Russia’s 2016 election interference. The final interviews are being rushed and several high value witnesses are being interviewed next week in New York during the tax bill vote, which means House members won’t be present for the interviews.

The week began with a Billy Bush editorial in the New York Times reminding everyone that yes Trump did indeed admit to sexual assault on the Access Hollywood tape. This is happening now because 1) the report last week that Trump is privately denying it is his voice on the tape, and 2) now that politicians are resigning for sexual misconduct allegations, many in politics and media are trying to return the focus to the many women (up to 20 by some counts) who claim Trump harassed or assaulted them.

After three weeks of equivocating, Democrats finally take a hard line on sexual harassment claims against Conyers and Franken, both of whom announce resignation.

Alabama Senate Race

Monday both Trump and the Republican National Committee gave full support to Roy Moore despite the fact he has been accused of child molestation. Despite having initially pulled support, the RNC, headed by Ronna Romney McDaniel, reversed course and began funding Moore’s campaign again. (In a bizarre side story, McDaniel, who is Mitt Romney’s niece, stopped using the name Romney joined with her married name because Trump did not approve of her keeping the name of his former and current rival.)

New York Times reports that Trump’s turnabout endorsement of Roy Moore is indicative of a wider problem for the 2018 midterms: the White House and RNC lack a top-down strategic structure in place to direct and support GOP candidates–it’s all Trump and his Twitter account.

Tax Bill

Republicans who have spent the Obama years calling for “dynamic scoring” of tax bills to show how tax cuts pay for themselves trashed the Joint Committee for Taxation’s report, which uses “dynamic scoring” because it shows the tax bill would still add a trillion dollars to the deficit.

Here is Ramesh Ponnuru on how all independent analyses of the tax bill show it will reduce revenue not increase it as the GOP claims.

Jerusalem Decision

Trump’s decision to claim Jerusalem is Israel’s capital city and the lack of serious backlash shows how Middle East geopolitics has become less focused around the fate of Palestinians.

Here is Robert Fisk on the wording of Trump’s Jerusalem announcement.

On the Russian Front

Trump’s personal lawyer John Dowd to the credit (or blame) for writing Trump’s Saturday tweet that he knew Flynn had lied to the FBI before he was fired and asked Comey to go easy on him. We learn in this reporting that Trump knew (or suspected) that Trump gave the same lie to the FBI as he did Mike Pence about not having discussed sanctions with the Russian ambassador. There is lack of clarity over whether Sally Yates told the White House counsel that Flynn had lied to the FBI. Yates’s supporters are saying she never discussed the FBI investigation with the White House, but the White House says that she gave them the strong impression Flynn had told the FBI the same thing he told Pence.

Also this week, John Dowd begins to make the argument that a president cannot obstruct justice, while another Trump lawyer says that is not the White House’s legal strategy.

Eugene Robinson draws a line from the return of official RNC support for Roy Moore to the potential that the GOP will stand by Trump no matter what the Meuller investigation concludes. The question: if you support an accused pedophile for partisan gain, you will support just about anything.

Maggie Habberman reports that Trump is telling people in private that he does not think the voice on last year’s Access Hollywood tape, in which he brags about committing sexual assault, is his voice. He is also bringing up his old lie that Obama’s U.S. birth certificate is a fabrication. Some in the media are using this reporting to further speculation that Trump is suffering dementia. But Habberman doesn’t think so. She told CNN that he has for decades had a habit of verbalizing his idealized reality in hopes of making it the accepted version of his self image. Also, he has not said these things publicly, which suggests he knows it would come off as crazy.

On Wednesday morning Trump re-Tweeted a British hate group’s anti-Muslim video. It created a uproar in the United Kingdom, and ensures that Theresa May’s offer of a state visit, so far unscheduled, will probably never happen.

The week ended on Friday with Michael Flynn pleading guilty to lying to the FBI about his Russia contacts before Inauguration. Flynn made a statement that revealed he has accepted a plea deal and will provide information to the Mueller investigation. Here are two views on the matter: Lawfare blog, as usual, sees this as a serious development and a danger for Trump;  while the National Review’s Andrew McCarthy downplays the significance.

Finally, Matt Lauer was fired for sexual assault this week. Many have made a connection to the men in political media who have recently lost their jobs over their treatment of women–Lauer, Charlie Rose and Mark Halperin–and these same mens’ treatment of Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election.