Mark Meadows Update

In Defying the Odds, we discuss Trump's dishonesty and his record of disregarding the rule of law.  Our next book, Divided We Stand, looks at the 2020 election and the January 6 insurrection.  Some Republican leaders -- and a measurable number of rank-and-file voters -- are open to violent rebellion, coups, and secession.  

Luke Broadwater and Alan Feuer at NYT:

Mark Meadows, the final chief of staff for President Donald J. Trump, was told that plans to try to overturn the 2020 election using so-called alternate electors were not “legally sound” and that the events of Jan. 6 could turn violent, but he pushed forward with a rally anyway, the House committee investigating the Capitol attack alleged in a Friday night court filing.

In the 248-page filing, lawyers for the committee highlighted the testimony of Cassidy Hutchinson, a White House aide in Mr. Meadows’s office, who revealed new details about the events that led to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on Congress by a pro-Trump mob.

“I know that there were concerns brought forward to Mr. Meadows,” Ms. Hutchinson told investigators at a deposition on March 7, adding: “I know that people had brought information forward to him that had indicated that there could be violence on the 6th. But, again, I’m not sure if he — what he did with that information.”

Glenn Kessler at WP:

“I don’t want my vote or anyone else’s to be disenfranchised. … Do you realize how inaccurate the voter rolls are, with people just moving around? … Anytime you move, you’ll change your driver’s license, but you don’t call up and say, ‘Hey, by the way, I’m re-registering.’

— Mark Meadows, then White House chief of staff, in an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, Aug. 16, 2020

After Donald Trump lost the presidential election, falsely claiming election fraud, Meadows became senior partner at the Conservative Partnership Institute (CPI), which promotes “election integrity” efforts. The organization’s “citizen’s guide” urges activists to determine that the registrations of their neighbors are legal by checking on “whether voters have moved, or if the registrations are PO Boxes, commercial addresses or vacant lots” and then “obtaining evidence: photos of commercial buildings? Vacant lots?” and “securing affidavits from current residents that a registered voter has moved.”

Voter-list maintenance is one of the dividing lines in American politics. Republicans argue that if voter-registration records are not regularly purged and updated, election fraud can take place. Democrats push back that too many voter-list purges are conducted haphazardly, removing eligible voters who don’t learn they are no longer listed until they show up to vote.

Now it turns out that until last week, Meadows was simultaneously registered to vote in three different states — North Carolina, Virginia and South Carolina — according to state records obtained by The Fact Checker.

The overlap lasted about three weeks, and it might have continued if revelations about Meadows’s voting record had not attracted scrutiny in North Carolina. Meadows is still registered in Virginia and South Carolina.

 

Kevin McCarthy Lied

In Defying the Odds, we discuss Trump's dishonesty and his record of disregarding the rule of law.  Our next book, Divided We Stand, looks at the 2020 election and the January 6 insurrection.  Some Republican leaders -- and a measurable number of rank-and-file voters -- are open to violent rebellion, coups, and secession.  

Kevin McCarthy lied about what he said privately about the insurrection.

Rachel Bade and Eli Okun at Politico:

REPRIEVE FOR ‘MY KEVIN’? — At a moment when House Minority Leader KEVIN MCCARTHY’s shot at the speakership looked more in danger than ever, he may have saved himself Thursday night — at least for now.

WaPo’s Jacqueline Alemany and Marianna Sotomayor, citing two sources, report that McCarthy talked with DONALD TRUMP on Thursday night and Trump “was not upset” about new audio that revealed McCarthy said Trump should resign after Jan. 6.

Instead, the former president was pleased that McCarthy reneged and started backing him again, “which Trump saw as a sign of his continued grip on the Republican Party,” they report.

Axios’ Jonathan Swan confirmed the WaPo take, tweeting: “Yep. Trump liked the original JMart/Burns story bc he felt like it made him look strong bc McCarthy and McConnell said all these terrible things about him around Jan 6 and now he sees McCarthy as a supplicant and McConnell said he’ll back him in 2024 if he’s the nominee.”

Still, a lot of House Republicans know Trump can go hot and cold on people fast, forgiving one minute and furious the next. They’re still awaiting an official public response from Trump before figuring out how to proceed.

The Trump-McCarthy call followed the explosive revelation from Jonathan Martin and Alex Burns’ new book, “This Will Not Pass,” that McCarthy and Senate GOP Leader MITCH MCCONNELL had privately called for Trump to go following the Capitol insurrection — which McCarthy denied, only for the reporters to offer audio proof.

But not everyone in Trump world is mollified:

• On his show this morning, STEVE BANNON called it a “cardinal sin” for McCarthy to deny comments that were caught on tape.
• And BORIS EPSHTEYN warned that “Kevin McCarthy’s got a big problem” in his speakership bid now, per Nick Wu.

They won’t be the last. There are a lot of Trump allies who are not fans of McCarthy, so expect these types to try to stir the pot against him. But then again, McCarthy has also strategically — and smartly — hired a bunch of former Trump staffers, who could theoretically play peacemakers on his behalf.

MEANWHILE … This morning, Martin and Burns presented more snippets of leaked audio of McCarthy in the days after Jan. 6, though some of its contents were previously reported, albeit without audio. Appearing on CNN, they had the tapes:

McCarthy talking to House GOP leadership on Jan. 10, 2021: “I know this is not fun. I know this is not great. I know this is very tough. But what I want to do, especially through here, is I don’t want to rush things. I want everybody to have all the information needed. I’ve had it with this guy. What he did is unacceptable. Nobody can defend that, and nobody should defend it.”

Here’s McCarthy the next day, sounding much more conciliatory while talking to the full House GOP Conference: “Let me be very clear to all of you, and I am very clear to the president: He bears responsibilities for his words and actions, no [ifs], ands or buts. I asked him personally today: Does he hold responsibility for what happened? Does he feel bad about what happened? He told me he does have some responsibility for what happened. And he [needed] to acknowledge that.” CNN’s Melanie Zanona breaks it down … (But we already knew the gist of this one)

WHO’S THE LEAKER?: Per the WaPo story, Rep. LIZ CHENEY’s (R-Wyo.) spokesman said she didn’t leak the audio. House Minority Whip STEVE SCALISE’s (R-La.) spokesman said he didn’t leak it, nor did anyone on his team. Notably, our understanding is that staff for a lot of these top members were also on this call. So it could have been an aide.

They Knew

In Defying the Odds, we discuss Trump's dishonesty and his record of disregarding the rule of law.  Our next book, Divided We Stand, looks at the 2020 election and the January 6 insurrection.  Some Republican leaders -- and a measurable number of rank-and-file voters -- are open to violent rebellion, coups, and secession.  

Alexander Burns and Jonathan Martin at NYT:

In the days after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol building, the two top Republicans in Congress, Representative Kevin McCarthy and Senator Mitch McConnell, told associates they believed President Trump was responsible for inciting the deadly riot and vowed to drive him from politics. Mr. McCarthy went so far as to say he would push Mr. Trump to resign immediately: “I’ve had it with this guy,” he told a group of Republican leaders.

But within weeks both men backed off an all-out fight with Mr. Trump because they feared retribution from him and his political movement. Their drive to act faded fast as it became clear it would mean difficult votes that would put them at odds with most of their colleagues.

“I didn’t get to be leader by voting with five people in the conference,” Mr. McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, told a friend.

The confidential expressions of outrage from Mr. McCarthy and Mr. McConnell, which have not been previously reported, illustrate the immense gulf between what Republican leaders say privately about Mr. Trump and their public deference to a man whose hold on the party has gone virtually unchallenged for half a decade.

On Monday, Jan. 11, Mr. McConnell met over lunch in Kentucky

... 

with two longtime advisers, Terry Carmack and Scott Jennings. Feasting on Chick-fil-A in Mr. Jennings’s Louisville office, the Senate Republican leader predicted Mr. Trump’s imminent political demise.

“The Democrats are going to take care of the son of a bitch for us,” Mr. McConnell said, referring to the imminent impeachment vote in the House.

Once the House impeached Mr. Trump, it would take a two-thirds vote of the Senate to convict him. That would require the votes of all 50 Democrats and at least 17 Republicans in the Senate — a tall order, given that Mr. Trump’s first impeachment trial in 2020 had ended with just one Republican senator, Mitt Romney of Utah, voting in favor of conviction.

 But Mr. McConnell knew the Senate math as well as anyone and he told his advisers he expected a robust bipartisan vote for conviction. After that, Congress could then bar Mr. Trump from ever holding public office again.

The president’s behavior on Jan. 6 had been utterly beyond the pale, Mr. McConnell said. “If this isn’t impeachable, I don’t know what is,” he said.

How Do Republicans Plan to Govern?

Our new book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses the state of the parties. The state of the GOP is not good.

Republicans are likely to win the House. What then?  Megan McArdle at WP:

How do Republicans plan to govern? The GOP needs a positive program for reducing inflation, fighting crime, reforming health care, keeping entitlements solvent and boosting employment. The party also desperately needs the administrative capacity to get a recalcitrant civil service to carry out its plans. Without those things, the GOP will fail voters and quickly lose power again.

Republicans might retort that they’re winning, aren’t they? Why not ride cultural antitrust to power, then worry about the rest when they get there?

Donald Trump’s whole presidency testifies to the dangers of running hard on emotional issues, without policy substance behind it: He left having accomplished almost nothing that could not be undone by an unfriendly judge or the stroke of a Democratic successor’s pen. The notable exception was the conservative judges he appointed — notable because it involved a concrete political goal (appoint these judges!), enabled by decades of work by conservative legal scholars who built up a law-school-to-judiciary pipeline.
That’s exactly the kind of patient work Republicans are not doing, on cultural issues or anything else. If Republicans want to change things, or even to hold office for more than a few years, they need to prepare to run the federal government, not just yell about the things they’d do if only they’d been elected governor, or king.

Rick Scott: Gift to Democrats

Our new book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses the state of the parties. The state of the GOP is not good.

Michael Scherer and Josh Dawsey at WP:

Florida Sen. Rick Scott has been publicly dressed down by Republican leader Mitch McConnell, privately rebuked by his colleagues and repeatedly accused of running the National Republican Senatorial Committee in a way that benefits his own future over the candidates he was hired to get elected.

He has directed a sizable share of his fundraising as NRSC chair to his own accounts, while shifting digital revenue away from Senate campaigns and buying ads promoting himself that look all but identical to spots he does for the national committee.


But during the seven weeks of turmoil since Scott dropped a provocative conservative policy bomb on an unsuspecting party — a plan that called for tax increases and expiration dates for all federal laws, including those establishing Social Security and Medicare — he has not once expressed regret. Instead, the former hospital chain CEO and two-term governor, the richest man in the Senate, argues that he owes his detractors nothing.

...

“We’ve got three words for him: Keep it up,” said David Bergstein, the communications director at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which has been championing the Scott plan as a way to scare voters. “No NRSC chair has done more for Senate Democrats than Rick Scott.”

Julia Manchester at The Hill:

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) marked Tax Day on Monday by rolling out billboards in Florida and Wisconsin, hitting Republicans over Sen. Rick Scott’s (R-Fla.) proposed plan to require all Americans to pay at least some income tax.

The billboards, which read “Senate Republicans’ Plan: Raise Your Taxes,” will be deployed in Orlando, Miami, and Oshkosh, Wis., near the offices of Sens. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), and Ron Johnson (R-Wis.). Scott is the chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee and Rubio and Johnson are facing closely watched reelection bids.

Tom Howell Jr. at Washington Times:

President Biden used Monday’s tax-filing deadline to promote his social welfare agenda while lobbing attacks at Senate Republicans, saying his tax plan would look out for the little guy while Senate Republicans promote a plan that would impose income taxes on those who currently pay none.

Mr. Biden is making hay with an “11-point” plan released by Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, who leads the Senate campaign arm. The plan said all persons should pay some income tax to “have skin in the game” and that all legislation should sunset after five years, an idea that would ostensibly apply to Medicare and Social Security.

“The president is fighting for tax cuts for the middle class and to ensure that the super wealthy and large corporations pay their fair share, while congressional Republicans, led by Senator Scott, are proposing big tax increases on middle-class families,” the White House said in a fact sheet.

The Ides of Inflation

 Our new book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses state and congressional elections.   

Joan Greve at The Guardian:

In the days leading up to the release of the US labor department’s latest inflation report, the White House tried to deflate expectations. White House officials said they expected the March inflation rate to be “extraordinarily elevated” because of rising gas prices, driven largely by war in Ukraine.

Unfortunately for Joe Biden and his fellow Democrats, they were proven right. The inflation report, released on Tuesday, showed US prices increased by 8.5% between March 2021 and March 2022 – the highest level of US inflation since 1981.

The White House tried to downplay concerns last year by arguing price increases were caused by the coronavirus pandemic and would prove “transitory”. Now, more than a year after vaccines became widely available, Democrats are grappling with how to help families struggling under the weight of inflation. Centrists and progressives alike warn that unless Democrats come up with an effective plan, Republicans could be on the way to a historic victory this November.

Democrats’ prospects in the midterm elections were already considered lackluster at best. The president’s party usually loses seats, particularly the House, in midterm years. Democrats have very little margin for error, given slim majorities. Biden’s approval rating, in the low 40s for months, is not helping matters.

Trump for Vance

 Our new book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses state and congressional elections.   

Once again, Trump endorsed the biggest celebrity. It's as simple as that: Hershel Walker, Dr. Oz, and now Vance.

He'd love nothing more than a Senate filled with Celebrity Apprentice characters who'll grovel for his approval. https://t.co/jONvd6l05S

— Kevin M. Kruse (@KevinMKruse) April 15, 2022