ICYMI, here are the big weekend stories driving the punditry:
1. F.B.I. Opened Inquiry Into Whether Trump Was Secretly Working on Behalf of Russia (NYT)
2. Trump has concealed details of his face-to-face encounters with Putin from senior officials in administration (WaPo)
3. Americans blame Trump and GOP much more than Democrats for shutdown, Post-ABC poll finds (WaPo, does not include approve/disapprove)
4. Pressure on Senate Republicans to break shutdown impasse grows (WaPo)
Trump and the GOP are taking a beating on this.
CNN (my bold):
The increase in disapproval for the President comes primarily among whites without college degrees, 45% of whom approve and 47% disapprove, marking the first time his approval rating with this group has been underwater in CNN polling since February 2018. In December, his approval rating with whites who have not received a four-year degree stood at 54%, with 39% disapproving. Among whites who do hold college degrees, Trump's ratings are largely unchanged in the last month and remain sharply negative -- 64% disapprove and 32% approve.
That matters.
Charles P Pierce/Esquire:
There Is a Bombshell of a Word in the New York Times Report on the Trump FBI Investigation
This is the most astounding evidence of Oval Office criminality since the release of the "smoking gun" tape in 1974.
And then, there's that word, "publicly."
This is not a word chosen idly, not in a piece as judiciously written as this one. Clearly, the Times printed pretty much all it was given by its sources, but the implication of that "publicly" is that investigators likely know far more than what appeared in the newspaper.
Otherwise, "publicly" is empty verbiage. To have written simply that, "No evidence has emerged that Mr. Trump was secretly in contact with or took direction from Russian government official," would have sufficed for the purposes of journalistic balance. But by dropping that fatal "publicly" in there, the Times and its sources likely are giving us a preview of coming attractions. (Judging by his manic episode on the electric Twitter machine on Saturday morning, the president* knows this, too.) And the one thing about which we can all be sure is that is whole megillah is nowhere near as weird as it's going to get.
James Hohmann/WwaPo:
‘The last election was a wake-up call.’ Why GOP leaders are turning on Steve King.
-- In addition to the substance of King’s comments, there are eight other factors that might explain why Republican leaders are more willing to publicly break with him than they have been in the past:
1. The midterms showed King could be defeated. He won his ninth term in November by only three percentage points, even though Trump had carried the district by 27 points in 2016. That was without national Democrats investing any resources to support Democrat J.D. Scholten, a former independent-league baseball player.
It’s all about winning for the GOP, never ever about doing the right thing. When they think they lose, they find a reason to do the right thing and only then.
Jonathan Chait/New York:
Mueller Is Investigating Trump as a Russian Asset
On Friday night, the New York Times published a bombshell report that the FBI has been investigating whether President Trump “had been working on behalf of Russia against American interests.” The story reframes the focus and purpose of the investigation now headed by Robert Mueller. The probe is not just about Russian election interference, or about Trump’s obstruction of the probe — it is about the secret relationship between Trump and Russia that appears to be causing both these things to happen.
The first question to ask yourself when absorbing this story is, what does it mean for a president to be working for Russia, and against the United States? Trump frequently says the United States would be better off if it got along better with Russia — and that position, right or wrong, is certainly not criminally suspect. Presidents obviously have the right to change American foreign policy, and to forge friendships with countries that had been previously hostile. Nixon’s overtures to China, or Obama’s opening of relations with Cuba, did not set off criminal investigations. The FBI would not investigate a president simply for harboring friendly views of a rival state.
The potential that Trump is working on behalf of Russia, therefore, by definition posits some kind of corrupt secret relationship. That is to say, it’s an investigation into whether Trump is a Russian asset.
Max Boot/WaPo:
Trump’s foreign policy advisers are making fools of themselves
At some point, Bolton and Pompeo need to ask themselves what they are doing in an administration that does violence to nearly every belief they have spent their careers advocating. Maybe they are restraining Trump from doing even worse. Or maybe they are just closing their eyes to the ugly reality that they are complicit because they enjoy the perks and prestige of high office.
Gregory Engel/Seattle Times:
Physicians should be on front lines of gun-safety education
I want my patients, neighbors and fellow citizens, both gun owners and non-owners, to appreciate the risks and benefits of owning a gun and the things we can do to make our homes and communities safer. Armed with accurate information, most people will make choices that promote health and safety. Physicians, as stewards of public health, need to take the lead in promoting gun literacy, both in our practices and in the public domain.
Strobe Talbott/Politico:
It’s Already Collusion
Future historians will have a serious handicap when the archives of this administration’s foreign policy are opened years from now since so much of the normal process for conducting American diplomacy has been subverted or eliminated. But we already know that that the Kremlin helped put Trump into the White House and played him for a sucker.
Or put it this way: Trump has been colluding with a hostile Russia throughout his presidency. We’ll see if it started before that.
Trump Confronts the Prospect of a ‘Nonstop Political War’ for Survival
So it has come to this: The president of the United States was asked over the weekend whether he is a Russian agent. And he refused to directly answer.
The question, which came from a friendly interviewer, not one of the “fake media” journalists he disparages, was “the most insulting thing I’ve ever been asked,” he declared. But it is a question that has hung over his presidency now for two years.
If the now 23-day government shutdown standoff between Mr. Trump and Congress has seemed ugly, it may eventually seem tame by comparison with what is to come. The border wall fight is just the preliminary skirmish in this new era of divided government. The real battle has yet to begin.
Clearly the answer is puff pieces on how overqualified Ivanka is.
Michael Tomasky/NY times:
That’s a historical record that suggests that an electoral outcome will be much more widely accepted. Mr. Trump’s partisans will whine about the unfairness of it all in either case — they’ll blame “voter fraud,” or George Soros, or the “fake news media.” But if the voters have rebuffed the president, the whining will sound to most Americans like just that.
There’s one more reason I’d prefer to see Mr. Trump laid low via the ballot. It will do more long-term damage to the Republican Party.
If Mr. Trump is removed via impeachment and conviction — that is, with those 20 Republican votes — Republicans can say, “See, we’ve come to our senses; got that out of our system.” But if they renominate Mr. Trump and stick with him through November 2020 and the voters clearly say no, not again, Republicans are left sitting in the wreckage. They will be trying to air out the Trump stench for a generation, maybe two, which is precisely the fate they deserve.