David Rothkopf/USA Today:
Russia's 2016 chaos bomb defines the Trump presidency, right up to Ukraine and Syria
America is weaker and Russia is stronger because an unscrupulous Russian leader exploited Trump's ambition and disregard for laws and U.S. interests.
In foreign policy and national security terms, America is weakened and Russia, relatively speaking, is strengthened. As a consequence, impeachment and legal issues in the U.S. aside, history will certainly view both what happened in 2016 and what has happened this year as part of one single story — that of a canny, unscrupulous Russian leader taking advantage of the unbridled ambition of an American leader with little regard for the law or the best interests of his country.
Yeah, it’s one story, but Ukraine has all the elements and is easier to explain.
WSJ:
Majority of Americans Back Trump Impeachment Probe, WSJ/NBC Poll Finds
But plurality of respondents say that, based on what they know now, Mr. Trump shouldn’t be removed from office
Jeff Horwitt, a Democrat who conducted the survey with Mr. McInturff, found it meaningful that more Americans support an impeachment inquiry or impeachment itself now than during the course of the Mueller investigation. “It shows more openness to hearing this out,” Mr. Horwitt said.
Moreover, he said, the poll found signs of “dry kindling” that could fuel support for impeachment.
While 43% support impeachment now, an additional 12% of Americans disapprove of Mr. Trump’s job performance but don’t support removing him from office. This group could prove problematic for the president, Mr. Horwitt said, as 76% disagree with the idea that he has been honest and truthful in the Ukraine matter and 88% have an unfavorable view of the president personally.
Josh Kraushaar/National Journal:
Trump’s Presidency Is in Peril
The president needs to maintain his rock-solid support from Republican voters to avoid impeachment. A new poll and fresh GOP defections show cracks with his base.
The trendlines for Trump are not encouraging. If even a small number of Republicans start to speak out—building cracks in Trump’s solid GOP wall of support—it’s easy to see how things crater quickly. Soft Trump supporters who follow cues from their party leaders could defect. The political antibodies protecting Trump from impeachment have already dissipated in record speed.
At the beginning of the scandal, many pundits thought Democrats were facing more political risk in calling for an impeachment inquiry. Just two weeks later, it’s clear that Trump’s presidency is in peril.
Michael Gerson/WaPo:
If Republicans stay loyal to Trump, they’ll be implicated in the moral decay of our politics
Elected Republicans, as a result, are looking mighty uncomfortable. Mouthing the words that Trump wants from them — saying that corruption is really anti-corruption — would mean sounding like a fool and surrendering what remains of their political honor. Some, like Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), have lamely claimed that Trump was really making a joke. Because, you know, presidential corruption is normally such a laugh riot. But Trump has insisted on his own seriousness. Rubio and the rest must swallow the gelatinous pile of offal Trump gives them — all of it — or they are no longer in the club.
Republicans are being called to follow their leader down a relativist rabbit hole. Trump is not only asking them to accept his arguments on policy matters such as building a wall or provoking a trade war. To be loyal foot soldiers, they must affirm that morality means what Trump says it means — even when it violates their clearest instincts. They know, deep down, that if a Democratic president had asked France or China for help in destroying a prominent Republican rival, they would be in a fever pitch of outrage. But, in the Trump era, this isn’t supposed to matter anymore. Consistency means nothing. Principle means nothing. Character means nothing. It only matters who wins.
Colin Reed/Fox News (a Republican POV):
The Democratic nomination is now Warren's to lose (at least for the moment)
The rise of the former Harvard Law professor was palpable all summer as she basked in an unceasing flow of fawning press coverage. Reporters marveled over the size of her crowds and selfie lines while applying little skepticism to her background or the price tag of her policy proposals. When the calendar turned to fall, polls in Iowa, New Hampshire and nationally all showed Warren pulling ahead of former Vice President Joe Biden, the erstwhile frontrunner in name only.
To those who think she’s too extreme, too divisive and too outside the mainstream to go the distance — we heard those same arguments four years ago amid the rise of another fire-breathing populist fueled by grievance politics. He currently calls the White House "home."
Andy Slavitt/USA Today:
2020 Democrats, you're doing it wrong on health care. Stop arguing and show leadership.
Americans need a bigger picture, and with President Donald Trump claiming that Democrats “want to take away your health care,” they need a more accurate picture. Any of the Democratic candidates’ plans would be a dramatic shift from the Trump administration, which really is trying to take away your health care. There will be a dozen candidates onstage for the Oct. 15 Democratic debate in Ohio. The country needs to know how they would lead to fix our health care system in five important areas:
Think about health, not just care
►The next president must have a broad vision that is about health, not just health care or health insurance. We will continue to pay more and get sicker if we don’t work to eliminate racial and other biases that get in the way of health and make sure everyone has better access to preventive tests, good nutrition, affordable housing, trauma counseling, transportation and child care. We dramatically underspend healthier nations in these areas. We should follow the example of North Carolina, a purple state, and reorient health care systems to focus on services that lead to healthy outcomes and lower costs.
Marc Bowden/Atlantic:
Top Military Officers Unload on Trump
The commander in chief is impulsive, disdains expertise, and gets his intelligence briefings from Fox News. What does this mean for those on the front lines?
Military officers are sworn to serve whomever voters send to the White House. Cognizant of the special authority they hold, high-level officers epitomize respect for the chain of command, and are extremely reticent about criticizing their civilian overseers. That those I spoke with made an exception in Trump’s case is telling, and much of what they told me is deeply disturbing. In 20 years of writing about the military, I have never heard officers in high positions express such alarm about a president. Trump’s pronouncements and orders have already risked catastrophic and unnecessary wars in the Middle East and Asia, and have created severe problems for field commanders engaged in combat operations. Frequently caught unawares by Trump’s statements, senior military officers have scrambled, in their aftermath, to steer the country away from tragedy. How many times can they successfully do that before faltering?
Adding to the chaos is not useful in a chaotic situation.
Trump has a good argum.. oh, wait. It’s not a good argument.
NY Times:
Trump’s Ukraine Call Was ‘Crazy’ and ‘Frightening,’ Official Told Whistle-Blower
The whistle-blower wrote a memo describing an official who heard the call as “visibly shaken” by it.
A White House official who listened to President Trump’s July phone call with Ukraine’s leader described it as “crazy,” “frightening,” and “completely lacking in substance related to national security,” according to a memo written by the whistle-blower at the center of the Ukraine scandal, a C.I.A. officer who spoke to the White House official.
The White House official was “visibly shaken by what had transpired,” the C.I.A. officer wrote in his memo, one day after Mr. Trump pressured President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine in a July 25 phone call to open investigations that would benefit him politically.
A palpable sense of concern had already taken hold among at least some in the White House that the call had veered well outside the bounds of traditional diplomacy, the officer wrote.
“The official stated that there was already a conversation underway with White House lawyers about how to handle the discussion because, in the official’s view, the president had clearly committed a criminal act by urging a foreign power to investigate a U.S. person for the purposes of advancing his own re-election bid in 2020,” the C.I.A. officer wrote.
In our ongoing look at corruption on an international scale, Daily News:
Rubio becomes first Republican to demand probe of crooked Brazilian meatpacker that benefited from Trump farm bailouts
Rubio, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relation Committee’s panel on transnational crime, urged Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin in a letter to have his department begin a formal review of how JBS SA has been able to become one of the biggest players in the U.S. food industry, even though its notoriously corrupt owners have admitted to bribing thousands of Brazilian officials, done business with Venezuela and relied on financing tied to China’s authoritarian government.
Rubio’s letter, which was co-signed by Senate Foreign Relations Committee Ranking Member Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), stressed that Mnuchin should use his authority to look into whether JBS’s American foray was illegal, since it has admitted to using illicit funds to establish its main U.S. subsidiary, Colorado’s JBS USA.
"Given its admitted criminal conduct to secure loans that were used for investment in the United States...we ask that CFIUS conduct a review of JBS SA’s acquisition of U.S. companies,” Rubio and Menendez said in the letter, using an acronym for the department’s Committee on Foreign Investment.
JBS is controlled by the Batista brothers and is a part of the theft of rural resources meant for US farmers.
Politico:
‘There’s nothing discernible to show Biden’s been punched in the nose’
Polls suggest Trump’s assault on the former vice president isn’t registering with Democratic primary voters.
Joe Biden has been under sustained assault from President Trump for more than two weeks.
But there’s little evidence that Biden has been significantly bloodied, according to a raft of new polls.
If Biden falls, it will be our decision, not Trump’s.