Politico:
Louisiana delivers Trump a black eye
The president lost two of three gubernatorial elections in conservative Southern states, raising questions about his standing heading into 2020.
President Donald Trump campaigned hard in three conservative Southern states this fall, aiming for a string of gubernatorial wins that would demonstrate his political strength heading into impeachment and his own reelection effort.
The plan backfired in dramatic fashion.
The latest black eye came on Saturday, when Trump's favored candidate in Louisiana, multimillionaire businessman Eddie Rispone, went down to defeat. The president went all-in, visiting the state three times, most recently on Thursday. Earlier this month, Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin lost reelection after a similar presidential effort on his behalf. Of the candidates Trump backed, only Tate Reeves in Mississippi won.
The losses raise questions about Trump’s standing as he heads into what will be a grueling 2020 campaign. By throwing himself into the three contests — each in states that Trump won by double-digits in 2016 — the president had hoped to gain a modicum of political momentum at a perilous moment of his presidency.
Don’t kid yourself. Every Republican in Congress was watching these elections for evidence of Trump’s mojo.
NY Times:
President Trump Bet Big This Election Year. Here’s Why He Lost.
“If you had any doubt that Trump was a human repellent spray for suburban voters who have a conservative disposition, Republicans getting wiped out in the suburbs of New Orleans, Louisville and Lexington should remove it,” said Tim Miller, a Republican strategist and outspoken critic of the president.
The Louisiana results are a stinging rebuke for the president, because he spent so much time there and because Trump allies couldn’t chalk it up entirely to local factors as they did for Kentucky, where Mr. Bevin was deeply unpopular. And even before the Louisiana race was called on Saturday night, finger-pointing from the Capitol to the White House to Mr. Trump’s campaign broke out about why he spent so much political capital on the race in the first place.
Their strategy is failing.
Politico:
Trump attack on Yovanovitch exposes GOP's muddled impeachment defense
The president was left isolated after Republican lawmakers refused to follow his lead and attack the former ambassador to Ukraine.
Democrats worked methodically to portray Yovanovitch’s removal as the opening act of Trump’s impeachable abuse of power, suggesting the smears against her were in service of a sinister effort by Trump to pressure Ukraine to investigate his Democratic rivals.
Though Republicans noted that Trump has the authority to recall any ambassador at any time — a fact Democrats didn’t dispute — Yovanovitch left them with a question they similarly declined to address.
“I do wonder,” she mused, “why it was necessary to smear my reputation.”
If Yovanovitch’s testimony to impeachment investigators revealed anything, it’s that the president’s defenders didn’t share his limitless capacity to tear down his critics. Furthermore, the Republicans’ unwillingness or inability to undermine Yovanovitch’s narrative underscores the tremendous difficulty they face in mounting a factual defense against impeachment.
Susan B Glasser/New Yorker:
In Trump’s Jaded Capital, Marie Yovanovitch’s Uncynical Outrage
A fired Ambassador demonstrates that it is apparently still possible to be shocked by the President.
Yovanovitch’s account of the moment when she was unceremoniously fired by Trump was gripping. It was a spring night, and she was hosting an event to celebrate a “woman of courage” award being given by the U.S. Embassy to one of Ukraine’s fearless anti-corruption crusaders, who had been gruesomely murdered in an acid attack. After the gathering, at 1 a.m., Yovanovitch received a phone call ordering her back to Washington on the next flight. When she arrived, she was told by State Department officials that she had been fired on personal order of the President. By then, she knew about Giuliani’s campaign against her; she knew that two businessmen with ties in Kiev, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, had gained his ear. She knew that even Donald Trump, Jr., was part of the campaign, tweeting that she should be ousted. What she did not know until that day was that the President himself was going along with it, and she pronounced herself amazed at the implications. “Our Ukraine policy has been thrown into disarray, and shady interests the world over have learned how little it takes to remove an American Ambassador who does not give them what they want,” she said.
Yovanovitch’s firing has always struck me as problematic for Trump. Republican committee members did not attempt to defend it, and instead simply fell back on Trump’s right to fire her. Yovanovitch skewered that excuse after her G.O.P. questioners reminded her one too many times that Trump held this right. “The President has the right to withdraw an Ambassador at any time, for any reason,” Yovanovitch said, “but what I do wonder is, why was it necessary to smear my reputation?”
Will Bunch/inquirer.com:
Marie Yovanovitch, impeachment, and America’s last stand for playing by the rules
It would be hyperbole, perhaps -- in such a bitterly divided country -- to say that for one remarkable day, we were all Marie Yovanovitch. But many of us were. Politically, in the crisis at hand, the 61-year-old career diplomat and daughter of Ukrainian emigres moved the ball forward on the Trump impeachment -- making it clear why the president and his designated hit man Rudy Giuliani wanted to get an ardent anti-corruption fighter out of Kyiv before foisting an indecent proposal on Ukraine’s new president.
Benjamin Haas/NY Times:
Trump Betrays the Military
His intervention in decisions about war crimes undermines the moral standing of the armed forces
Mr. Trump, to the detriment of the United States Armed Forces, remains fixated on condoning the aberrant conduct of those convicted or accused of flouting the laws of war. He should have left the military justice system to do its job. But perhaps this is not surprising, considering that Mr. Trump himself has recently advocated a war crime — the appropriation of oil in Syria.
Jonah Goldberg/newsletter:
Playing the Position vs. Playing the Man
One of the most interesting contrasts of the Trump era is between John Bolton and Mike Pompeo. They highlight two archetypes of Republicans in the age of Trump. I think of them as playing a position vs. playing the man (even though it’s not a perfect sports metaphor). Both men took their jobs to get things done, to be in the mix, to enhance their political positions, and all that. But Bolton had ideas, agendas, principles, etc. that were more important than being a Trumper or being seen as a Trump loyalist. He wanted nothing to do with Giuliani’s “drug deal.” He opposed the holding up of aid to Ukraine. We’ll no doubt learn more when his book comes out, but it’s obvious that he prioritized the policies he believed in. Oh, I have no doubt there were compromises and humiliating moments of suck-uppery. But the truth of it is still clear.
As for Pompeo, he plays the man. He’s been willing to lie and compromise for Trump in ways Bolton wouldn’t. I’m sure he’s tried to steer the president away from all kinds of mistakes behind the scenes. But, when push comes to shove, he puts the president’s cult of personality—and perhaps the hope of inheriting his mantle—ahead of everything else. All of this Ukraine stuff has happened because Secretary of State Pompeo allowed it to happen under his nose. He may not have liked whatever drug deal Giuliani was cooking up, but he lacked either the will, the ability, or the courage to stop it.
Ultimately, it’s the difference between two kinds of people. There’s those who—for whatever reason—start from the view, at least publicly, that Trump is right and then reverse-engineer their arguments to fit what he did. And then there’s those who may praise or flatter Trump, or excuse his behavior, but do so in pursuit of something more important to them.
Jonah has an interesting point. You can play the man if you want. But if you are in the tank for Trump, don’t pretend to be a neutral analyst who plays the position.
Mimi Rocah and Jennifer Rodgers/USA Today:
Impeachment: Trump abuses power by harassing, intimidating witnesses like Yovanovitch
Trump has a pattern of public witness tampering. Using his presidential platform this way may not be criminal but that is not relevant to impeachment.
Federal witness tampering law, which is part of a broader obstruction of justice statute, makes it a felony to try to dissuade or hinder witnesses from attending or testifying in an official proceeding. Intentional harassment of a person to dissuade them from testifying is a separate felony.
As a legal matter, do Trump’s actions rise to the level of witness intimidation or harassment under the federal statutes? Such a case would come down to whether a prosecutor could prove that Trump’s intent in sending the tweet was to intimidate or harass Yovanovitch and/or other witnesses in the impeachment inquiry against him.
Newsday:
Long Island Divided
Newsday has removed its paywall to allow everyone access to this groundbreaking and essential investigative project.
In one of the most concentrated investigations of discrimination by real estate agents in the half century since enactment of America’s landmark fair housing law, Newsday found evidence of widespread separate and unequal treatment of minority potential homebuyers and minority communities on Long Island.
The three-year probe strongly indicates that house hunting in one of the nation’s most segregated suburbs poses substantial risks of discrimination, with black buyers chancing disadvantages almost half the time they enlist brokers.
Additionally, the investigation reveals that Long Island’s dominant residential brokering firms help solidify racial separations. They frequently directed white customers toward areas with the highest white representations and minority buyers to more integrated neighborhoods.
They also avoided business in communities with overwhelmingly minority populations.
Rebecca Traister/The Cut:
‘The Meanie, the Lightweight, the Crazies, and the Angry, Dissembling Elitists’
Lessons from a year of six women running for president.
In October, during an LGBTQ forum, Warren was asked what she’d say to someone who believed that marriage was “supposed to be between one man and one woman.” She took a thoughtful beat before replying that she assumed this hypothetical questioner was male, and that she’d tell him that he should feel free to “marry one woman.” Then came a deadlier beat, and … “if he can find one,” followed by a crisp turn and the rubbing together of palms, which reads as Warren’s special signal that she has chomped up and is now digesting her prey.
Lots of people loved it. The clip went viral.
But some people didn’t. Soon, the Washington Post was reporting that Democratic strategist Hank Sheinkopf heard Warren’s one-liner as a “stab” at those who disagree with her and “a battle cry for men to turn out against” her. The Post piece described her tone while delivering the line as “acerbic,” and former George W. Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer called it “insulting.” That Warren was making a joke about a man put it squarely in line with the history of some of presidential campaigning’s best-loved zingers: “You, sir, are no Jack Kennedy.” But that it was a woman, making a crack at the expense of an imagined man’s imagined romantic prospects (he might not be able to find a wife … because he is homophobic), like Harris’s jabs at Trump’s diminutive stature, make the humor particularly combustible — uproarious and resonant for some, inflammatory for others. The reaction recalled the old observation, often attributed to Margaret Atwood, that while women are afraid that men will kill them, men are afraid that women will laugh at them.
And maybe it’s that reaction — of men who really, really don’t like to be laughed at, or criticized — that prepared the ground for what was going to be an inevitable attack on Warren, who speaks often of her fury at inequity and her commitment to fighting hard: that she was angry. In a bad way.