Trump v. Intelligence

In Defying the Odds,we discuss Trump's approach to governing. The update --recently published --includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms.

Jim Sciutto and Marshall Cohen at CNN:

President Donald Trump has privately and repeatedly expressed opposition to the use of foreign intelligence from covert sources, including overseas spies who provide the US government with crucial information about hostile countries, according to multiple senior officials who served under Trump.

Trump has privately said that foreign spies can damage relations with their host countries and undermine his personal relationships with their leaders, the sources said. The President "believes we shouldn't be doing that to each other," one former Trump administration official told CNN.

In addition to his fear such foreign intelligence sources will damage his relationship with foreign leaders, Trump has expressed doubts about the credibility of the information they provide. Another former senior intelligence official told CNN that Trump "believes they're people who are selling out their country."

Even in public, Trump has looked down on these foreign assets, as they are known in the intelligence community. Responding to reports that the CIA recruited Kim Jong Un's brother as a spy, Trump said he "wouldn't let that happen under my auspices."

These new details about Trump's approach to foreign intelligence follow CNN's exclusive report that the United States in 2017 removed one of its highest-level covert sources inside the Russian government. CNN reported on Monday that the asset provided the US with insight and information on Russian President Vladimir Putin and that the extraction was driven, in part, by concerns that Trump and his administration repeatedly mishandled classified intelligence and could contribute to exposing the spy. In a conference call with reporters Tuesday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said, "All these arguments about who urgently extracted whom, who saved whom -- this, you know, is in the genre of what you call pulp fiction."

But he is okay with foreigners offering intelligence on Americans:   . "If somebody called from a country, Norway, [and said] ‘we have information on your opponent' -- oh, I think I'd want to hear it."

Trump's Taliban Fiasco

In Defying the Odds, we discuss foreign policy issues in the 2016 campaign. Our update takes the story through the 2018 election.

At NYT, Peter Baker, Mujib Mashal and Michael Crowley report on the collapse of Trump's bizarre plan to invite Taliban negotiators to Camp David during the 9/11 anniversary week.

When [US negotiator Zalmay] Khalilzad left Doha after the last round of talks concluded on Sept. 1, two days after the Situation Room meeting, he and his Taliban counterparts had finalized the text of the agreement, according to people involved. Leaders of both teams initialed their copies and handed them to their Qatari hosts.

Before the end of the meeting, Mr. Khalilzad brought up the idea of a Taliban trip to Washington. Taliban leaders said they accepted the idea — as long as the visit came after the deal was announced.

That would become a fundamental dividing point contributing to the collapse of the talks. Mr. Trump did not want the Camp David meeting to be a celebration of the deal; after staying out of the details of what has been a delicate effort in a complicated region, Mr. Trump wanted to be the dealmaker who would put the final parts together himself, or at least be perceived to be.

The idea was for Mr. Trump to hold separate meetings at Camp David with the Taliban and with Mr. Ghani, leading to a more global resolution.

...

 But Taliban leaders, having refused to negotiate directly with the Afghan government until after the group had an agreement with the United States, said the Americans were tricking them into political suicide.

A senior Taliban leader said on Sunday that Mr. Trump was fooling himself to think he could bring the Taliban and Mr. Ghani together at Camp David “because we do not recognize the stooge government” in Kabul.

On Fox, Chris Wallace on Fox asked Pompeo about inviting murderous thugs to Camp David:

QUESTION: I want to get to the bigger question. Who thought it was a good idea for the President of the United States – you had an agreement in principle already, your envoy meeting with Taliban leaders in Qatar. Fine. Who thought it was a good idea for the President of the United States to meet with Taliban leaders, who have the blood of thousands of Americans on their hands, just three days before 9/11?

SECRETARY POMPEO: We know the history of Camp David. We reflected on that as we were thinking about how to deliver for the American people. And so as we considered the right path forward, your point about an agreement in principle – I think that’s true. We weren’t complete. There were still lots of implementation issues, lots of technical issues that needed to be worked on, even though we’d been doing this for months. President Trump ultimately made the decision. He said: I want to talk to President Ghani. I want to talk to these Taliban negotiators. I want to look them in the eye. I want to see if we can get to the final outcome that we needed so that we could sign off on that deal, so we found that arrangement acceptable, that the verification was adequate. And we concluded this was a perfectly appropriate place. You know the history of Camp David. Lots of bad folks have come through that place. There have been lots of peace negotiations taken place. It’s almost always the case, Chris, that you don’t get to negotiate with good guys. The reason you’re in negotiations to end wars, to end conflict, to end violence, to reduce risks to the American people, is almost always because the person across the table from you isn’t exactly the finest.

One wonders what "bad folks" he was talking about.  Sadat?

Scotlandgate

In Defying the Odds, we discuss Trump's record of scandal. The update -- recently published --includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms.

BREAKING: House Oversight is investigating whether US military expenditures have been propping up Trump Turnberry. A peculiar refueling stop in Glasgow by a US Air Force crew, who stayed overnight at the resort—there & back—tipped them off. Our exclusive: https://t.co/oRkatAAnFs

— Natasha Bertrand (@NatashaBertrand) September 7, 2019

2014: “Now, Mr Trump hopes that tourists heading to Trump Turnberry will use the airport, flying in from around the world on private planes.”

today: per ⁦@NatashaBertrand scoop, US military is generating revenue for Trump’s resort and nearby airport
https://t.co/F33x57oGd1

— John Harwood (@JohnJHarwood) September 7, 2019

A Hurricane of Lies

In Defying the Odds, we discuss Trump's character and record of dishonesty. The update -- recently published --includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms.

Salvador Hernandez at Buzzfeed:

Showing no signs of backing down or even the slightest inclination to admit he was wrong, President Trump has insisted for five days straight that his false claim that Hurricane Dorian was set to smash into Alabama — contradicting forecasts from government meteorologists — was correct.

But the president's relentless arguments and memes trying to prove himself right reached a tipping point Friday when the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the federal agency that oversees the National Weather Service, issued a statement from an unnamed spokesperson backing up the president's claim and casting doubt on a local weather service forecast office which had tried to reassure Alabama residents that despite the president's tweet, there would be "no impacts" from the hurricane felt in the southern state. (The local forecast office proved to be correct.)

Let me assure you the hard working employees of the NWS had nothing to do with the utterly disgusting and disingenuous tweet sent out by NOAA management tonight #NOAA

— Dan Sobien (@pres_nwseo) September 6, 2019

A little som’som’ about the Director of Communications of #NOAA who sent out the statement backing up President Bonkers’ hurricane forecast. pic.twitter.com/RXS2FkxXXl

— Coastal Elite (@cmkinmia) September 7, 2019

We have checked with several dictionaries and a fourth-grade grammar workbook and although the use of "their" seems to be entirely incorrect, officials at NOAA, NWS and Attorney General Barr now say the president's statement is correct and also not malignantly narcissistic. https://t.co/yvIYQuisLa

— David Simon (@AoDespair) September 7, 2019

(He has been making that spelling mistake for years.)

Leaving the Hill

In Defying the Odds, we discuss congressional elections as well as the presidential race.  The update  -- recently published --includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms.

So far this year, House Republicans are retiring at a faster clip than Democrats.  One problem is the self-reinforcing expectation that the GOP will not regain the majority. Emily Cochrane and Julie Hirschfeld Davis at NYT:

A majority of those who have announced their retirements had safe seats in Republican districts and could have easily been re-elected. But the day-to-day realities of Democratic rule — already brought home by the 2018 midterm elections and the ascension of Speaker Nancy Pelosi — have left their mark.

Curtailed access to convenient meeting rooms, a schedule set by the majority and no control over the legislative agenda are only some of the perpetual complaints of whichever party is in the minority in the House.

“When candidates would ask me, ‘What’s life like in the minority?’ I would say, ‘It’s great,’” said former Representative Steve Israel, Democrat of New York. With a chuckle, he added, “But it’s not so great.”
...
Republican strategists and aides suspect that some of the impending retirements will come not only from members tired of Washington gridlock, but from other members facing the loss of prized committee power.

“Some of it is the minority and the nastiness, no doubt about it,” said Representative Don Bacon, Republican of Nebraska. But he added, the term limits were a factor behind the conference “losing great people
...
On Capitol Hill, a rude awakening for less-senior Republicans who have never served in the minority may have also contributed to the number of departures. Nearly three-quarters of the Republican conference — 142 members in all — are in the minority for the first time in an institution where the majority carries all of the power, dictating which bills are considered and when, and what language can be debated and how.

CA Voter Demographics

In Defying the Odds, we discuss state and congressional elections as well as the presidential race. The update -- recently published -- looks at political and demographic trends through the 2018 midterm.

From PPIC:

Whites make up only 42% of California’s adult population but comprise 58% of likely voters. In contrast, Latinos make up 35% of the state’s adult population but only 19% of likely voters. The shares of Asian American (13%) and African American (6%) likely voters are proportionate to their shares of the state’s adult population—15% for Asian Americans and 6% for African Americans. Half (51%) of Democratic likely voters are white; 24% are Latino, 12% are Asian American, and 10% are African American. An overwhelming majority (76%) of Republican likely voters are white; relatively few are Latino (11%), Asian American (8%), or African American (1%). Among independents, 51% are white, 20% are Asian American, 19% are Latino,
and 6% are African American.

Sharpiegate, Continued

In Defying the Odds, we discuss Trump's character and record of dishonesty. The update -- recently published --includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms.

George Orwell wrote:

But by far the more important reason for the readjustment of the past is the need to safeguard the infallibility of the Party. It is not merely that speeches, statistics, and records of every kind must be constantly brought up to date in order to show that the predictions of the Party were in all cases right. It is also that no change in doctrine or in political alignment can ever be admitted.

Sharpiegate is just the latest example of Trump administration officials trying to backfill a provable lie. Greg Sargent at WP gives other examples:

• In January 2017, after the media reported on Trump’s paltry inaugural crowd size, resulting in enraged but preposterous pushback from Trump, he dispatched then-press secretary Sean Spicer to tell multiple lies buttressing his stance. As Glenn Kessler crucially noted, some of these were part of a prepared White House statement. Trump also ordered his then-acting National Park Service chief to hunt for helpful photographic evidence. The NPS does not estimate crowd sizes, and the official was shocked, but he carried out Trump’s request, finding nothing.
• After Trump repeatedly alleged widespread fictitious voter fraud in 2016, the White House set up an official commission to “study” the issue. When it flopped, a dissenting member explicitly declared the motive was to make Trump’s lies true. Remember that this was rooted in rage at losing the popular vote.
• When Trump declared before the midterm elections that “criminals and unknown Middle Easterners are mixed in” with migrant caravans, multiple officials tried to bolster this claim by offering an official-seeming statistic about terrorism arrests that was entirely spurious and proved nothing of the kind.
• When Trump vowed a surprise 10 percent middle class tax cut before the midterms, officials were caught off guard, but nonetheless sprang into action to try to create the impression this was a real promise by, for instance, discussing a nonbinding pledge. The tax cut never happened.
• To justify suspending the credentials of CNN’s Jim Acosta after he annoyed Trump, then-White House press secretary Sarah Sanders shared a video that experts determined had been deceptively edited to make Acosta look physically abusive toward a press aide.
• To fear-monger for his wall, Trump repeatedly told stories about traffickers tying up migrant women and silencing them with tape. After The Post flatly debunked Trump’s assertion, a top border official circulated an internal request for “any information” that would support the claim.
• To buttress Trump’s distortions of the migrant threat, the Department of Homeland Security produced a slick official presentation about the border that claimed nearly 4,000 known or suspected terrorists had been blocked from entering the United States. But this number had nothing whatsoever to do with efforts to cross the border, a distinction multiple officials also dishonestly fudged.