Politico:
Barrage of setbacks spoils Trump’s post-Mueller reset
A claimed 'exoneration' after the Russia probe seemed to promise a fresh start for the president. No such luck.
While Trump added a new threat to slap tariffs on cars manufactured in Mexico, he was effectively backing down for the second time in a week on an issue he had elevated. Trump overruled senior members of his administration last week and took legal action to invalidate Obamacare. Days later — again under pressure from members of his own party — he deferred any new action on health care reform until after the 2020 election, leaving fellow Republicans bewildered and fearing the political fallout over an issue that has proven toxic for the GOP.
The twin retreats in particular left some Republicans privately expressing deep frustration, arguing that Trump once again squandered an otherwise triumphant moment with half-baked proclamations, and fearing that whatever momentum he seemed to gain last week had already been squandered.
"I think the administration blew it," said one Republican donor with close ties to the White House. "The Mueller report was good news. They failed to take advantage of it and now look where we are."
The border and healthcare snafus represent the risks of bold White House action aimed at charting a more proactive policy agenda that can carry Trump into the 2020 campaign.
Politico:
Dems ratchet up pressure on Barr over Mueller probe
Schiff said the reports that Mueller's team crafted summaries meant to be made public undercut Barr's decision to deliver his own analysis of the report.
"Those summaries may be among the most carefully drafted worded parts of the entire report by the Mueller team," Schiff said. "They know that most Americans aren't going to read all 400 pages. They are going to look to those top lines, and so they were probably wordsmithed very carefully, which means any deviation by Barr to give perhaps an overly optimistic picture of the president's behavior particularly as to obstruction would have concerned the members of that team."
Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.) said there’s increased urgency to be concerned Mueller’s report may be destroyed, adding, “The best indicator of future activity is past activity.” He said Barr’s “biased” summary was such an indicator
New Yorker:
The “Reputational Interests” of William Barr
Barr’s effort to discredit the Mueller investigation should have brought to mind the not-so-distant history of his first stint as Attorney General, under George H. W. Bush. In 1992, just as Bush was leaving office, he issued, with Barr’s support, pardons for six Reagan Administration officials—including the former Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger—who had been either charged for or were convicted of crimes connected with covering up the Iran-Contra affair and its violations of the U.S. Constitution. Weinberger’s pardon came before his case went to trial, and it was commonly believed that it was itself part of another coverup, to prevent the presentation of evidence that would have indicated Bush’s personal involvement in Iran-Contra, when he was Reagan’s Vice-President. Thanks to the pardons, the whole truth was never known.
Mimi Rocah/Daily Beast:
Barr Looks Like He’s Trying to Protect Trump, Not Get Out the Mueller Report
The attorney general had neutral ways to relay what the special counsel found. Instead, he’s being coy. It’s hard not to infer bad reasons from how he’s acting.
In 48 hours, in just a few short paragraphs, Barr essentially threw out the window the facts, findings, nuances, and “difficult questions of law and fact” of Mueller’s nearly two-year investigation which, to any rational observer, was thorough and conducted with integrity.
Coming from the man who had written the 19-page memo saying Trump couldn’t commit obstruction, this looked pre-determined and political -- like a lawyer trying to protect his client, not a public servant trying to get the truth and facts where they belong.
Matthew Miller/Politico:
The Barr-Shaped Cloud Over the Justice Department
The attorney general has made a total hash of the Mueller report, undermining the very department he runs.
Barr simply could have told Congress that he had received the report and would make a version available when he had completed his review and made appropriate redactions. He could have released Mueller’s principal findings, as he initially said he would do, without adding his own conclusion on obstruction of justice. Or he could have released one of the multiple summaries prepared by Mueller’s team while review of the full report continued. As a U.S. official briefed on the matter told the Post, “the front matter from each section could have been released immediately — or very quickly. It was done in a way that minimum redactions, if any, would have been necessary, and the work would have spoken for itself.”
Barr instead chose the one path that could call his behavior into question, while negating the entire reason for appointing a special counsel in the first place: to ensure that the taint of politics is removed from the Justice Department’s decision-making. That choice would be odd for any attorney general. It makes even less sense for one whose impartiality was questioned from the outset, given that he was chosen for the job after he wrote an unsolicited memo questioning some of the very foundations of the special counsel’s investigation.
David M Drucker/Wash Examiner:
Must-win Ohio declines to join Trump effort to overturn Obamacare
Republicans in Congress have effectively abandoned attempts to repeal Obamacare. Their position against it helped forfeit Republican seats in a midterm election that cost them their House majority. Fearing another backlash, they told Trump they would not consider legislation to repeal Obamacare before the next election. Instead, Republicans are focused on defending the popular components of the law.
But make no mistake, that’s what they wish to do.
Gabe Sherman/Vanity Fair:
“THERE’S NO BRAIN TRUST”: POST-BARR, TRUMP IS WAKING UP TO A WORLD OF PAIN
The prospect of damaging Mueller revelations is alarming advisers who worry the president’s 2020 campaign is in “disarray” as Parscale falters and Don Jr. and Jared Kushner jockey for control.
The prospect of damaging Mueller revelations is particularly alarming to advisers who worry the president’s 2020 re-election campaign is in “disarray,” according to three Republicans close to the White House. “There’s no brain trust,” a former West Wing official said. Campaign manager Brad Parscale, a social-media consultant with no political experience prior to Trump’s 2016 campaign, is struggling to exert control over the operation and reverse Trump’s upside-down poll numbers with women voters, sources said. “The polling is very bad. They’re going to have a big problem with female voters,” a Republican who’s been briefed on the internal numbers said. According to a source, Parscale told Trump over the weekend of March 16 that he could improve his standing with women if he dialed back the tweeting. Trump responded with a tweetstorm the following day that included an attack on the late Senator John McCain and a retweet of a user who had promoted the QAnon conspiracy. “Brad went to him and Trump’s response was like 40 tweets,” the source said.
Charlie Cook/National Journal:
The Minds of Voters in the Middle
The more things happen, the more convincing is the view that 35 percent of the electorate is made up of President Trump’s hard base, 45 percent is the equally adamant opposition, and the remaining 20 percent is in the middle. Too many seem obsessed with the Trump base, asking when it will collapse (the truth is, never). Or they are fixated on the anti-Trump forces that make up almost half of the electorate, and whether it will grow or diminish. But the reality is that this group is pretty fixed in size as well. About three-quarters have made their decisions, one way or the other.
The focus should be on that fifth in the middle. Who are they? What makes them tick? What is going on in their minds? Excellent questions all. They tend to be independents and moderates; no demographic characteristics really jump out. One reason that they have not boarded either the Trump Train or joined the anti-Trump forces in the streets is that they don’t think about politics very much—they don’t follow it, they don’t watch cable news, they don’t read newspapers, and if they watch local news, it is as much for the weather and sports as for the news. If they had thought much about these things, they would have chosen up sides by now….
America First seemed like an attractive idea to these voters back in 2016, but they sense that the United States is getting more isolated, and they wonder about this idea of currying favor with our adversaries while trashing our friends, or at the very least, making life very difficult for them. While they had grown tired of America as the global policeman, they did like it that we were the world leader. The world is seeming to be a scarier place than it was two years ago. They wonder whether Trump really is on top of this foreign policy thing. Does he know what he is doing? Maybe it matters after all.
Increasingly, it looks like it is going to come down to whether Democrats come up with an acceptable alternative. Does the person they nominate seem to be a greater or lesser risk than the person in the White House today? The standard for these swing voters is not that the Democrat needs to be Mount Rushmore material, but should at least seem plausible and not threatening. That may well matter more than anything else.
Yep. How such things are decided is not fair, mind you, but it is real.
Charlie Sykes/Atlantic on the WI election:
Warning From Wisconsin
A liberal expected to win a Supreme Court seat was upset by a conservative. What went wrong?
“The backlash was overwhelming,” one Republican activist told me. “The left made this about bigotry, but Christians saw this as an attack on their faith.” Others saw a replay of attacks on Justice Brett Kavanaugh, which helped turn out Republican voters last fall.
As central as the fight over religion was, Republicans in Wisconsin cited two other major factors in the conservative resurgence.
After a controversial lame-duck legislative session, liberal groups got a judge from liberal Dane County to invalidate the entire legislative session, including all the appointments made by then-Governor Walker and confirmed by the legislature. The decision has since been stayed by the court of appeals and is likely to be overturned, but the sweeping ruling revived memories among Wisconsin Republicans of previous judicial rulings that sought to invalidate other conservative victories.
And finally, for those who complain about seeing conservative authors or outlets here, I give you Molly Ivins: