After being briefed on a devastating 17-state poll conducted by his campaign pollster, Tony Fabrizio, Mr. Trump told aides to deny that his internal polling showed him trailing Mr. Biden in many of the states he needs to win, even though he is also trailing in public polls from key states like Texas, Michigan and Pennsylvania. And when top-line details of the polling leaked, including numbers showing the president lagging in a cluster of critical Rust Belt states, Mr. Trump instructed aides to say publicly that other data showed him doing well.
After reporting that Kim Jon Un’s brother was a CIA asset, Trump said today that he “wouldn’t let that happen.”
Trump said in an interview with ABC News that he is open to accepting opposition research from foreign governments during the 2020 election, and that he would not consider this election interference. He half way walked it back in another interview on Fox News, saying he would “look at it” but also tell the FBI.
This caused a brief uproar among never Trumpers, but as David Grahm writes: Trump’s declaration, though, is neither especially surprising nor especially irrational…. It’s no surprise, then, that Trump would not foreswear a tactic that worked for him then. Rather, every indication is that the president’s electoral behavior will be worse in 2020, and there will be fewer constraints on him.
Pompeo accused Iran of attacking oil tankers in the Straight of Hermuz: Thursday’s attacks were especially brazen because one of the targeted ships is Japanese-owned, and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was in Tehran at the time carrying a message from President Trump. As Pompeo put it, Abe’s mission was “to ask the regime to de-escalate and enter into talks.” Abe was rebuffed in person by the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and, symbolically, by the attack on the tanker.
TheNew York Times reported that the DOD’s Cyber Command has imbedded cyber weapons deep in Russia’s power grids. New laws and rules give Cyber Command autonomy to operate without presidential directive: “under little-noticed new legal authorities, slipped into the military authorization bill passed by Congress last summer. The measure approved the routine conduct of ‘clandestine military activity’ in cyberspace, to ‘deter, safeguard or defend against attacks or malicious cyber activities against the United States.’ Under the law, those actions can now be authorized by the defense secretary without special presidential approval.” The article made a point of noting that Trump “Mr. Trump had not been briefed in any detail about the steps to place “implants” — software code that can be used for surveillance or attack — inside the Russian grid…. and the possibility that he might countermand it or discuss it with foreign officials…”
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Trump’s Job Approval: 42.4%