Stone Might Not Stonewall

Indictee Roger Stone told ABC News' George Stephanopoulos yesterday that he won't rule out cooperating with special counsel Robert Mueller. He also didn't rule it in. He did tell Stephanopoulos that his attorneys believe his seven-count indictment is "thin as piss on a rock," which is apparently a new legal term. However, people who have been indicted rarely opine that the prosecutors have a slam-dunk case.

After Stephanopoulos finished with Stone, he interviewed House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA), who said: "I think he is going to need a much better defense than you just heard." Next up was former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who said: "Well, listen, I think if he decides to go to trial, he's in very, very grave danger." Both Schiff and Christie are former prosecutors.

Probably Stone's decision to cooperate or not will depend on two things. First, when he and his lawyers see all the evidence that Mueller has collected, they might be very surprised (and very concerned). Second, Stone has to make a guess about whether Donald Trump will pardon him. If he expects a pardon, he can probably safely stonewall (assuming he doesn't have any exposure to state crimes). On the other hand, Trump knows that while he has the unquestioned power to pardon Stone, Mueller might see pardoning a witness to keep him quiet as obstruction of justice and the House might see it as an impeachable offense. Consequently it could be a difficult call for Trump to issue a pardon for Stone.

However, according to former prosecutor Peter Zeidenberg, who helped prosecute Scooter Libby, Mueller probably isn't even interested in a deal. First of all, his team took Stone's computer and other electronic devices and that may be what they were really after in the first place. They could contain hard, irrefutable evidence of all manner of crimes. Second, Mueller knows very well that Stone is an inveterate liar, and probably wouldn't believe anything Stone had to say anyway. Unlike Stone, who thinks he will walk, Zeidenberg says that the evidence Mueller already presented in the indictment is so solid that Stone would have no chance of being acquitted even if his trial were in Idaho or Wyoming. But it won't be there. It will be in D.C., where at least half of the jury pool consists of black Democrats who hate Donald Trump with a passion and who will fight tooth and nail to be on the jury that puts his buddy away for the rest of his life. (V)

Mulvaney: Trump Will Use Executive Power to Build the Wall

Acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney appeared on Fox News yesterday and said that one way or another, Donald Trump will build a wall on the Mexican border. One option Trump has is declaring a national emergency and then reallocating money Congress has approved for some military project for the wall. Mulvaney said that he knows the Democrats will challenge Trump in court on that, but that the administration is already working on ways to mitigate the court challenge.

Mulvaney also said that Trump is prepared to shut the government down again if need be. However, that seems unlikely, as Senate Republicans will point out to him that the blowback from a second shutdown over a wall that two-thirds of the country doesn't want would be even worse than the blowback from the first one. In addition, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has learned that if she stands up to Trump, he eventually caves and she gets her way. That is not a lesson she is likely to forget in the next 3 weeks. Trump probably realizes that and knows she won't budge next time, just as she didn't last time. (V)

The Last Shutdown Might Be the Last Shutdown

Republicans in the Senate have gotten the message that shutdowns are bad for...them. They are also bad for the hundreds of thousands of government workers who don't get paid and for those people who use the government services that are stopped, but that doesn't actually matter much to them. It is the fact that Republicans are nearly always blamed when they shut down the government that is the problem.

Accordingly, Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) has drawn up a bill that would prevent any future government shutdowns. It states that when the money to run the government hasn't been appropriated on time, funding would automatically continue at the current level for 120 days. If there was still no appropriations bill then, funding would be reduced by 1% and then again by 1% every 90 days if there was still no resolution. That would make it impossible for a president to hold the country hostage when he doesn't get something he wants. The bill already has 18 sponsors and more senators are signing up every day.

Nevertheless, not all members of Congress are on board. Some feel that the bill gives up too much congressional power. Some Democrats don't like the automatic reductions, feeling that this could be a way for Republicans to cut the budget without having to vote for it and take any pain for their vote. Nevertheless, if such a bill ever had a chance, that time is now. (V)

Sanders Is Expected to Announce a Run Imminently

Two sources with direct knowledge have told Yahoo News that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is going to run for president in 2020 and that his announcement is imminent. Sanders apparently has noticed that unlike 2016, when nobody knew who he was, he is now the most popular politician in the country. A quick announcement is necessary because his biggest rival, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), is already in the race. He and Warren are going to go head to head, whether they want to or not, because they are after exactly the same group of Democratic primary voters and there is room for only one of them.

Their respective campaigns are going to be very different. Warren is going to run as a left-wing Hillary Clinton who is a policy wonk and who has specific plans to fix the county's many ills. She is somewhat bookish and could remind people of that pedantic English teacher they had in high school and didn't like, but that is who she is. Sanders is running as Howard Beale. He's mad as Hell. For some Democrats, that's enough. Policy details can come later.

Sanders' biggest problem in 2016 was his abysmal standing with black voters, who make up a majority of Democratic primary voters in most states in the South and a substantial fraction of them in the big states in the North and Midwest, and in California. He also didn't do well with Latinos last time. If he can fix those problems, he will be a much more formidable candidate than last time. However, the problem may not be so easy to fix, since those voters also have Sens. Kamala Harris (D-CA) and Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Julián Castro as options.

The 2020 race will be completely different from the 2016 one, so Sanders will have to adapt his strategy appreciably. Last time it was basically a two-person race. This time there could be between 10 and 20 candidates. One advantage he had last time was that for Democrats who didn't like Hillary Clinton, they really didn't have anywhere else to go. This time they will have a dozen or more choices, some of whom, like Warren, have essentially the same platform as he does, and in Warren's case, can also say: "Hey, it's time for a woman president." Female voters who like their very similar platforms may decide that Warren is right. So, Sanders is likely to have a much tougher time this time than last time due to the greater competition, despite his popularity. (V)

President Schultz?

The former CEO of Starbucks, Howard Schultz, is thinking about launching an independent bid for the presidency in 2020. By running as an independent in the general election, he could avoid being crushed in either party's primaries/caucuses and stroke his ego by having run for president. Yesterday, Julián Castro, who is running as a Democrat, said that a Schultz campaign would be Donald Trump's "best hope for getting re-elected." Schultz would run as a "both parties suck" candidate and the millions of people who don't understand politics at all and think the parties should just work together might buy into it. Schultz is a Democrat, and his platform would be somewhat like the Democrats', so he would almost certainly pull more votes from the Democratic nominee than from Trump. In states like Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Florida, where Trump's margin was around or less than 1%, Schultz would only have to attract a small fraction of the vote to possibly hand Trump the state again.

However, the Democrats are not powerless to stop him if they really want to. They have a trifecta in 14 states, including Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, Colorado, Illinois, New York, and New Jersey. That means they can pass any laws they want to. For example, they could pass a law requiring independent candidates or new parties to get the signatures of 20% of the registered voters in every one of the state's counties in order to qualify for ballot access. In practice, no one could ever do that, but states have broad authority to determine the rules for elections, so that might well stand up in court. Faced with such a barrier, Schultz, who is not well known, might decide to forget the whole thing. (V)

President Coulter?

As we (and dozens of other sites) have pointed out, many conservatives feel that Donald Trump has caved on the wall, even though a bipartisan committee is still working on immigration policy. They are probably right, since the Democrats will easily agree to more money for border security, provided it is specifically earmarked for more Border Patrol agents, equipment for them (e.g., vehicles, aircraft, helicopters, drones, and radar) as well as more Coast Guard personnel, ships, and other equipment, and even more asylum judges. But they will not agree to the wall. Many anti-immigrant conservatives are worried that once the committee comes up with a bill, it will pass Congress, Trump will sign it, and there will never be any kind of wall.

Jonathan Last, executive editor of the Bulwark, dreamed up a plan to pressure Trump into building the wall (or, at least, making it the centerpiece of his 2020 campaign). It is simple: Get Ann Coulter to challenge Trump in the 2020 Republican primary. She is so well-known among Fox News viewers that all she would have to do is announce her run and money would pour in from small donors, just as it did for Bernie Sanders in 2016, although probably not from the same people.

Coulter, of course, has zero chance of getting the Republican nomination, but her candidacy could keep Trump from moving to the center in 2020, especially if he is worried about a challenge from Gov. Larry Hogan (R-MD) or former Ohio governor John Kasich. If Coulter ran and got 20-30% of the primary vote and didn't concede, she could force floor fights at the convention over the platform and more. It could put a lot of pressure on Trump. So far, she hasn't reacted to Last's proposal. However, she is one of those people who would change their names to "TV Listings" if it meant a little extra publicity, so she's undoubtedly intrigued by the idea. (V)

Monday Q&A

We start today with a couple of questions from down under. It wasn't planned that way, but it did mean that Men at Work's biggest hit was stuck in our heads as we wrote these answers.

There's been talk, including from you, about the low likelihood of Donald Trump being "primaried," with the observation that no sitting President has lost re-nomination in such a style since the nineteenth century. My understanding, though, is that both Harry Truman in 1952 and Lyndon Johnson in 1968 ran in the early primaries, and it was only after they were soundly beaten that they withdrew their re-nomination bids. It doesn't seem that their ascension via FDR/JFK dying in office triggered the 2-term limit, because if that were the case neither would have been on the ballot in New Hampshire. So why are they different enough to not have been included? J.A., Brisbane, Australia

The easier part of your question is your note about the two-term limit. Truman was specifically excluded from the terms of the 22nd Amendment, as it was passed while he was in office. He could have run 10 more times, and it would have been legal. LBJ served just over a year of John F. Kennedy's term, and so was eligible to be reelected twice, since a VP who assumes the presidency can serve up to 10 years. So, you're right that they were both eligible to run again (in 1952 and 1968, respectively). They also both neglected to announce if they were "in" or "out," allowing them to wait and to use the New Hampshire primary in order to "read the tea leaves." And, in both cases, the New Hampshire tea leaves said, "You're in big trouble," at which point both men officially declared that they were "out."

Since Truman and Johnson deliberately left their status ambiguous, they technically weren't primaried, though it's close enough for government work to say that they were. However, there are at least two relevant differences between their time and ours. The first is that the two parties, but particularly the GOP, have gotten more assertive about stacking the primaries to help the incumbent. The early-primary state of South Carolina, for example, did not even bother to hold a primary in 1984 (Reagan re-election) or 2004 (Bush re-election), and has already hinted they will follow the same program in 2020. The second is that polling, which was in its infancy in Truman's time, and was still developing in LBJ's time, is much better and much more ubiquitous today. That means that both a sitting president and a potential challenger have a pretty clear sense of their chances without necessarily needing to subject themselves to a primary.

The upshot is this: We've never said that Trump won't be primaried under any circumstances. What we have said is that he won't be primaried if his current level of approval among GOP voters holds (although a Doña Quixote challenge from Coulter is a special case since she wouldn't be running to win). We know he's in the 80s with those folks right now; that fact will encourage the national party and the state parties to manipulate things in his favor, and will also encourage potential challengers to stay away, since there just wouldn't be enough oxygen for them. His approval among Republicans would have to drop into the low 60s (maybe), or likely the 50s or 40s, before a Larry Hogan or a John Kasich or a Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) would seriously consider jumping in. If Trump does crater like that, then all bets are off. However, if he craters like that, it probably also means that things turned disastrous for him on one or more fronts, which makes it possible he would choose not to run again, anyhow.

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Nancy Pelosi's push against Trump in recent weeks must have gained her a lot of exposure. Is it likely that she would run against him in 2020? R.H., Sydney, Australia

We will likely add Pelosi to our list of candidate profiles, just to be thorough, but we think it's extremely unlikely she will run for the Presidency, for at least two reasons.

The first problem is her profile (for lack of a better term). Any liberal Democrat from San Francisco is going to trigger a fierce response from the Republican base. For Pelosi, who has been demonized by Fox News, et al., for decades, multiply that by ten. Hillary Clinton is surely the most hated Democrat in the country among those on the right, but Pelosi is not far behind. On top of that, Pelosi would be 80 years old on Inauguration Day 2020 (and just two months from turning 81). That's getting a little long in the tooth for what could be an eight-year commitment, especially since there have been three presidents who began their terms at the age of 66 or older, and one of those died within a month (W. H. Harrison), while the other two (Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump) showed signs of significant cognitive decline. And Pelosi would be more than a decade older than any of the three upon taking office.

The second problem is her skill set. She is a master parliamentarian, and a skilled herder of Congressional cats. She is not a good public speaker, however, as she demonstrated in her response to Donald Trump's Oval Office address. Nor is she a good debater, and she's also not great at connecting with voters one-on-one or in small groups. In other words, she's ideally suited to be Speaker of the House, but is ill-suited to be president, and she knows it. Pretty much everything here is also true of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), incidentally.

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I think you may be missing a reason for Donald Trump ending the shutdown when he did, namely our biggest unofficial holiday, Super Bowl Sunday. Despite his war on NFL players who kneel, Trump did not want massive travel delays impacting getting to the game. Meanwhile, the celebratory atmosphere around the event will help to put the shutdown in the rear view mirror. Thoughts? M.V.H., Middletown, Ohio

It's true that if the shutdown had continued, there were rumors that Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport would be able to keep only two terminals operating, which would have meant massive travel delays for folks attending the game. Of course, it's also true that the vast majority of Americans (99.8%) will not be attending the game and accompanying events, and so would not be affected. It's possible that such a visible sign of the shutdown's impact worried Trump a little, and so played a small role in the timing of his decision, but that was surely a minor consideration, at most.

As to the game washing away the bad memories of the shutdown, it's possible that he and his team are hoping for that, but if so, they are fooling themselves. An afternoon of football, even if it's the afternoon of football, is not going to make people forget the harm that was done, particularly since the ongoing argument over wall funding is going to remind them, over and over, in the days and weeks after the Super Bowl.

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If I understand it correctly, there were seven appropriations bills that the House sent to the Senate and were passed by the Senate by voice vote on the 25th and sent to the President's office for signature, thus ending the government shutdown until February 15. When do those bills expire? Are the expiration dates for all seven of them on the 15th, or do some run longer? If the joint committee doesn't come up with something by the 15th, will the same group of workers be affected as before, or will some of them get a reprieve? R.T., Port Ludlow, WA

In the initial reporting on the deal (Friday night), it was reported that the Senate had actually passed the bills that had already been passed by the House. If that had been true, then only the Dept. of Homeland Security would be in danger of shutting down again. That's what we went with, since it was the best available information at the time.

However, it appears now that both the House and the Senate passed a continuing resolution, by voice vote in each chamber, to re-open the shuttered parts of the federal government for three weeks. Assuming that is correct, then the same agencies/workers would be at risk in three weeks, if the government is shut down again. When there is a lack of clarity about such things, the way that we would generally resolve it is to go right to the horse's mouth, and to check the Office of the House Clerk's list of adopted legislation. However, as irony would have it, the people who update that site were furloughed.

In any case, as noted above, we think this is ultimately academic, because Trump would take even more blame and more damage if he shut down the government again. If the joint committee that is working on a border security package can't come up with something, Trump's best available move is to declare a national emergency. He would look "strong," and would avoid the blowback of a second shutdown.

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I just read that Donald had a rather bizarre-sounding meeting with Clarence Thomas' wife and some other people. The activity of Mrs. Thomas perhaps warrants a separate question, but the article said that the meeting came about because of a private dinner between the Thomases and the Trumps. Is that usual? What is the historical precedent and are there concerns here? It's seems Supreme Court justices usually attempt a (shallow) appearance of political impartiality. G.S., New York, NY

That is true; reportedly Ginni Thomas & Co. spent over an hour railing against transgender soldiers, and immigrants, and Mitch McConnell, and Trump didn't quite know what to do. Most presidents, recognizing that they are the most powerful person in the room, would get up and leave, but Trump just stammered a few responses.

It's also true that the confab came out of a dinner meeting between the Thomases and the President (there's no evidence that the First Lady was there, and she and the President generally do not eat together). There are two obvious reasons that this is problematic. The first is that it tramples upon the separation of powers between the branches of government. The second is that it weakens the Supreme Court's veneer of impartiality.

This is not to say that presidents cannot and do not have friendships with SCOTUS justices. There are numerous examples of palling around between the branches. Theodore Roosevelt welcomed Oliver Wendell Holmes to all of the parties he threw, Harry Truman played poker with Fred Vinson, and Samuel Alito attended baseball games with George W. Bush. These things are not inherently problematic; after all, there are only so many prominent people in Washington for other prominent people to socialize with.

Of course, there have also been instances where the relationship between a president and a justice became problematic, with Lyndon B. Johnson and Abe Fortas being the most obvious recent example. The two were close enough before Fortas' SCOTUS appointment that Fortas wrote many of Johnson's speeches for him. Fortas was appointed to the Court to be a vote for LBJ's policies, and to serve as something of a spy for the President. This too-close-for-comfort relationship, plus Fortas' habit of taking salaries from organizations that he should not have been taking salaries from, eventually caused even the Democratic-controlled Senate to become uncomfortable, and led them to reject Johnson's attempt to promote Fortas to the chief justiceship.

So, which side of the line is the Thomas-Trump relationship on? That's a judgment call, of course, but for a justice's wife to lobby the President of the United States on specific policy objectives (some of them likely to come before the Court) is pretty far outside the bounds of normal behavior, and certainly seems concerning from where we sit.

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Why did Donald Trump wait to fight for a wall until Democrats controlled the House, given that the Republicans controlled both the Senate and House for 2 years? J.A., Rutland, VT

There would appear to be two factors in play here. The first is that as the period of GOP dominance wound down, the base and the right-wing punditry concluded that the window for a wall funding bill was closing. They, led by Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, pitched a fit, which lit a fire under Donald Trump, and caused him to put his foot down after two years of putting the matter off.

The second is that Trump and his team (which, at this point, is made up of 100% yes men and women) badly misjudged the situation. They apparently did not grasp exactly what a shutdown would do (how serious and how broad the consequences would be). They also thought that the Democrats would get most of the blame, while the base would be thrilled to see Trump poke Nancy Pelosi, et al., in the eyes. In short, Team Trump performed like amateurs (which, to be blunt, they are).

It's worth noting that there is also an underlying dynamic here: A sizable number of GOP members of Congress don't want a wall, even if they are not willing to say it as loudly as the Democrats are. If this were really a priority, the Republicans in the House and the Senate would have gotten around to some sort of proposal on the matter, and they could have used reconciliation to get around a Democratic filibuster. That neither of these things happened makes it likely that even if Trump had put his foot down while the GOP controlled the whole show, there still would have been no wall.

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One of the things I do not like about "Individual 1" is that he has never had a pet as far as I know. I would like to know about each candidate's current pets. I think this is important as pets teach empathy and lack of pets or abuse of animals is a bad sign. E.S., Rochester, N.Y.

Let's start with a pop quiz: Name the only President, besides Trump, to have no known pets (answer at the end).

Anyhow, the fact that 42 of the 44 men who served in that office did have pets is surely instructive. It's true that, particularly in the modern era, a presidential pet is a great way to connect with voters, particularly voters of the animal-loving persuasion. And while it's certainly possible that some presidential pets were just for show, most chief executives, from George Washington to Abraham Lincoln to Franklin D. Roosevelt, harbored real affection for their animals. We would agree with your general assertion that this reflects well on them, and their ability to be empathetic, and to think of someone or something beyond themselves.

Does that make the opposite true, however? That the lack of a pet reflects badly on a person? Maybe not for the average person, since some folks have allergies, or don't have the resources (pets, especially today, are expensive!), or else live in circumstances (small residence, out of town a lot, extreme climates) that would be unkind to subject an animal to. For a president, however, none of these excuses particularly holds, since they have plenty of money, room, and assistance. So, also keeping in mind the 42-of-44 number, we think you probably have the right of it that the lack of a pet reflects poorly on the current occupant of the White House.

As to the current candidates' pets, we're going to limit ourselves to candidates who have declared, have formed exploratory committees, or are expected to declare within the next few weeks. We're also going to include only candidates who are getting 50-to-1 or better at one or more sports books. This is to keep things manageable. And with that said:

• Mayor Pete Buttigieg, as we noted in his profile, has a rescue dog named Truman, whom voters can follow on his Instagram page.
  
  
• Sen. Cory Booker does not seem to have a pet of his own, but he is a noted animal-rights activist who switched to a vegan diet for that reason, and has personally rescued a dog that was in danger on more than one occasion.
  
  
• Julián Castro, like Booker, does not appear to have a pet right now, but he is an animal-rights activist who managed to dramatically reduce the incidence of euthanasia in San Antonio's animal shelters. His family did have dogs when he was young, according to his memoir.
  
  
• Rep. Tulsi Gabbard has neither pets nor a record of animal-rights activism. In fairness, her frequent travels and military career would make pet ownership difficult.
  
  
• Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand is also an animal-rights activist, and has a Labradoodle named Maple.
  
  
• Sen. Kamala Harris does not appear to have a pet right now, but is an outspoken animal lover, and is one of the favorite candidates of the Humane Society.
  
  
• Sen. Bernie Sanders, unless he has adopted recently, does not have a pet. During the 2016 campaign he said, "People don't need to know what I buy in the grocery store or what the name of my dog is—I don't own a dog, by the way—but they do need to know why billionaires are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer."
  
  
• Sen. Elizabeth Warren has a dog named Bailey, after the main character in the film "It's a Wonderful Life."

This is how things stand, as far as we can tell. If any readers have better information, please do let us know at the e-mail link below. It's worth noting that a member of Congress, in particular, travels a lot, and doesn't necessarily have people to serve their every need, as a president does. That (and his daughter's allergies) is why Barack Obama, for example, did not adopt until he got to the White House. If any of the petless folks above is elected to the big job, they will likely follow suit and adopt soon after their inauguration. Otherwise, they will become the third petless president, along with Trump and...James K. Polk, almost 200 years ago.

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