In the drama yesterday, as Netanyahu struggled in vain to cobble together a government, there was a legitimately hilarious moment I want to share with you. As noted yesterday, in the final hours, Netanyahu was offering crazy deals to all sorts of people – most notably Labor MKs – if only he could get one more seat (for a total of 61 out of 120) for his government AND who would support legislation to make him immune from prosecution. The appeals to Labor MKs were the crucial sign that he was willing to bargain away virtually anything to get that last seat and immunity.
So while all this is happening, Hadash MK Ayman Odeh goes up to the speaker’s rostrum in the Knesset to epically troll Netanyahu.
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I confess I’m stunned. I’ve told you again and again that the iron law of 21st century Israeli politics is that Netanyahu always wins. The election he’s finally going to lose, the coalition he’s never going to hold together – fuggedaboutit, he always figures it out; he always threads the needle. Yet, only a couple hours ago, he finally didn’t. Netanyahu managed what seemed like a come from behind election victory on April 9th of this year. But he turned out not to be able to assemble a government. He got together 60 Knesset members. But he needed 61. He held out dissolving the Knesset and holding new elections as a doomsday cudgel to get everyone in line. But it didn’t work. Now the country will return to the second election in only a few months. It is the first time in Israeli history that an election has failed to produce a government.
Let me explain what happened.
I was out at a long scheduled meeting when Robert Mueller gave his statement a short time ago. Here’s Tierney Sneed’s write up. The upshot to me is that he has to testify in public. He’s made clear he doesn’t want to. But half of life is made up of things we’d rather not do. And my takeaway is that the Congress has to approach securing his testimony with the same determination and teeth they’re using with the bad-acting administration officials. That’s not because I see him as a bad actor. It’s simply because he has to testify, time is of the essence and the decision is up to Congress.
Word is going out from within DOJ that Robert Mueller’s statement will be “substantial” and the NYT adds that it will be “lengthy.” Stay tuned.
You’ve seen that Robert Mueller will issue some sort of televised statement at 11 am this morning. Reportedly, he will not take questions. Anything is possible. But I don’t expect much from this.
Robert Mueller to make statement from the Justice Department at 11 a.m. ET. Will not take questions. More soon.
I checked my email this morning and a number of you wrote in asking about some version of this oped by Steven Rattner in The New York Times. You flagged either the original piece or various other publications picking up the underlying studies or riffing on the Times article. If you haven’t read it, Rattner notes a number of economic models which have predicted election outcomes in the past. They tell us now that, contrary to the polls, President Trump is a solid favorite for reelection.
Is this true?
For those of you who’ve been trying to make sense of the EU elections and especially the EU elections in the UK, I wanted to add a few thoughts. First, the results are a bit muddled and contradictory. But they’re also mired in a fair amount of misunderstandings and misleading spin and gloss. Rightwing parties did do well in a lot of EU countries. But in most they either underperformed expectations or fell from previous highs in the 2014 EU election. The big story overall is the decline or in some cases near collapse of the traditional parties of government – center-right and center-left – in lots of countries, particularly heartland EU countries like Germany, France, the UK, et al.
Let’s focus in on the UK.
Jubilation among deep state conspiracy types that Trump has unleashed Barr.