One notable thing is that at least as of a few minutes ago, the White House had not released an embargoed version of the speech. That means that in most cases even though the text doesn’t get posted all the anchors and reporters know what’s coming. The point of the speech is to create some sense of drama and anticipation, whether the President is normal or not. So leaving some surprises actually makes a lot of sense. Of course, there’s the danger there could be some terrible, dangerous surprises. So who knows?
8:59 PM: It boggles the mind that anyone can still this that conservatives are focused on the deficit …
Good LORD … after the last months you can still say with a straight face that Republicans oppose infrastructure spending because they're concerned about the deficit? pic.twitter.com/q2eNjo9wQN
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) January 31, 2018
There were hints earlier today that President Trump was going to have something ‘surprising’ about North Korea in the State of the Union and that it might be surprising on the conciliatory side. That would be surprising. More recent reports suggest that Trump will make some dramatically confrontational statement on the topic, which is of course very bad but not terribly surprising.
Now comes word that the proposed Ambassador the White House announced late last year, to generally positive response, won’t be nominated after all. He didn’t toe the White House’s antic, war-mongering line. So he’s out. Read More
Here’s another one of those developments which is both jaw-dropping and somehow entirely predictable. You’ve likely seen the reports that the Trump administration violated the spirit though probably not the letter of the new Russia sanctions law by simply deciding not to impose any sanctions. But the law also mandated that the administration produce a list of “senior political figures and oligarchs” in Russia. These individuals were not to be sanctioned themselves. But the list is meant to impose some stigma and, more importantly, serve as an implicit signal about which individuals might be sanctioned in the future. Read More
Howard Fineman reports:
Instead, as is now becoming plain, the Trump strategy is to discredit the investigation and the FBI without officially removing the leadership. Trump is even talking to friends about the possibility of asking Attorney General Jeff Sessions to consider prosecuting Mueller and his team.
“Here’s how it would work: ‘We’re sorry, Mr. Mueller, you won’t be able to run the federal grand jury today because he has to go testify to another federal grand jury,'” said one Trump adviser.
I want to introduce you to a new feature we’re going to be regularly publishing. It’s one that I’m very focused on and stems from thinking I’ve done about how heavy news consumers, particularly consumers of news about politics and public policy, read news. The feature is called a Sum-Up and it’s purpose is to give you a brief yet comprehensive update on news on a particular topic on a fixed schedule once a week. Read More
Before more time goes by, I wanted to flag this item from Jonathan Swan’s Axios newsletter. An item entitled “White House Perjury Panic” explains that the President’s aides and lawyers are terrified of his doing an interview with Robert Mueller or his investigators. That seems wise. But in the piece there’s this passage … Read More
President Trump has been out bragging that “because of my policies” the African-American unemployment rate has dropped to its lowest level ever. This appears to be technically true. But I thought it made sense to give some context for the nonsensical nature of this claim. Read More
Last week was a tremendously consequential week in the Trump/Russia investigation. This was so not simply because of the number of revelations but because each new revelation layered upon the previous one to confirm one overriding, consequential reality: a pattern and practice of obstruction of justice and abuse of office that didn’t end with the firing of James Comey on May 9 but continued right down to the present day, touching almost everyone in President Trump’s inner circle and beyond. Read More