Oct. 16

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New Senate: DEM 46     Ties 2     GOP 52

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Trump Stumbles Through Saudi Fiasco

Donald Trump would very much like the Saudi government in general, and his good buddy Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman in particular, to be free of any and all blame when it comes to the disappearance of Saudi-born journalist and American resident Jamal Khashoggi. The easiest path to that result would be if Khashoggi showed up alive somewhere, but that possibility—which has been pretty remote for days—became all-but-impossible on Tuesday. Which meant it was time for the President to come up with something new.

So, what was that something? Readers will surely be shocked to learn that the conspiracy-theorist-in-chief came up with...a conspiracy theory. While reiterating over and over that the Saudi government denies everything, Trump speculated that "rogue killers" somehow got into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, and did Khashoggi in. Yes, just another shameful chapter in the world's ongoing struggle with consular drive-bys. And you thought opioids were a crisis.

Nobody outside of—well, Trump's own head—bought this. Even the Saudi government didn't try to make it fly. No, given that they have been caught red-handed, they have officially shifted into damage-control mode. They are reportedly going to admit to the crime sometime on Tuesday; the only holdup is apparently coming up with a plausible scenario that excuses Salman from blame. Reportedly the story is going to be that it was an interrogation and kidnapping operation that accidentally went south. The Saudis may also try to work in that the whole thing was done by rogue agents, and that Salman knew absolutely nothing about an operation that might lead to the death of one of his foremost critics.

As soon as the Saudis have their story straight, Donald Trump will undoubtedly embrace it lock, stock, and barrel. The question is whether the folks at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue do the same. For what it is worth, lobbying firms across the District are dumping the Saudi government as a client. So, that may be a clue as to which way the winds are blowing. On the other hand, the next time the GOP-controlled Congress stands up to Trump will pretty much be the first time, so don't bet the house that they will do so here. But you can bet the House might in January (if the Democrats win it) (Z)

Takeaways from Donald Trump's "60 Minutes" Interview

Donald Trump does not often sit for interviews with anyone other than the ministry of propag...er, Fox News. That means he does not often get challenged on the dissembling, dishonesty, duplicity, and distortion that are a standard part of his presentation. Which, in turn, means that cranky Donald is not often seen on TV. However, presumably realizing that there are at least some midterm viewers that don't watch Fox, he agreed to sit for an interview with Lesley Stahl of "60 Minutes." It was the kind of performance that leaves Trump lovers in a state of rapture, and everyone else aghast. Washington Post op-ed writer Greg Sargent is in the "everyone else" category; here's his summation:

In an interview broadcast Sunday night on CBS, President Trump spectacularly outdid himself in revealing all of his very worst qualities in a compressed time period: the relentless lying; the unabashed sympathy with autocrats and dictators; the gloating, misogynist contempt for Christine Blasey Ford and the millions who saw her as an icon; the rabid xenophobia; and the lack of even minimal regret over the cruelest policies birthed by that xenophobia, such as the family separations resulting in thousands of children locked in cages.

In short, Sargent is not a fan.

Anyhow, it was a big enough event that a great many outlets published takeaways. Here's a selection:

The Guardian (UK)

The Root

Washington Post

USA Today

So, nobody had anything positive to say, and that includes the reasonably Trump-friendly outlet (USA Today) that published his op-ed last week. Maybe the right-leaning sites are impressed, but it doesn't seem that way. They are giving the interview very little coverage, and certainly no "takeaways." That may be instructive. (Z)

Trump Doubles Down on Climate Change Denial

As noted above, a major segment of Donald Trump's interview with "60 Minutes" was devoted to downplaying climate change. This is a subject of particular interest at the moment, since just last week a distinguished consortium of scientists published their findings that time is running out, and if something drastic is not done by 2030, the problem will likely become irreversible. The President's position on Sunday night was that "something is happening" with climate change, but that it will eventually "reverse itself." On Monday, he doubled down, reiterating the same basic sentiments, while also declaring that you can't trust scientists because "they have a very big political agenda."

A fair bit has been written recently about how a majority of Americans are finding themselves in the thrall of the minority, thanks to the Electoral College and the Senate's small-states bias. We'll have a contribution to that discussion sometime soon, but for now we make the observation that the entire world is kind of in the same position. In terms of total contributions to global warming over the last century, the United States is far and away the biggest culprit among the nations of the world (contributing more, for example, than the entire European Union). At the moment, the U.S. is #2 on an annual basis behind China.

In short, the world cannot hope to confront this problem in a meaningful way without American buy-in. And yet, one of the country's two major parties has climate skepticism as a core tenet. There are a lot of reasons for this, but among the big ones are: (1) Successful lobbying/propagandizing against climate scientists by corporate interests, particularly the Kochs, who make money from petroleum; (2) The evangelical belief that the next world/life is the one that really matters, not this one; (3) A general anti-intellectual posture; and (4) Reflexive anti-Obama-ism—anything he supports must be opposed. As a consequence, only a tiny fraction of Republicans have publicly embraced the scientific consensus on climate change, including just 8 of the 278 GOP members of Congress (that is to say, 3%). The United State is the only country where anything like this situation exists; the Republican Party is the only climate-denying major political party in the world.

The crystal ball is pretty cloudy in terms of figuring out what happens next. However, the U.S. has spent the last half-century telling the other nations of the world to jump, and waiting for them to ask "how high?" Between Trump's withdrawal from various international commitments, and his trade wars, and his climate change skepticism, the kow-towing seems likely to come to an end in the near future. And maybe the EU, or the Trans-Pacific Partnership participants, or even all of the signatories to the Paris Accord (which is everyone but the U.S.) will start to lay down the law, and will take their trade elsewhere if the Americans don't join Team Earth pronto. The short-term pain may not be pleasant, but the Theresa Mays and Angela Merkels and Shinzo Abes of the world may decide that it's better than having London, Berlin, and Tokyo under three feet of water. (Z)

Budget Deficit Explodes

Global temperatures aren't the only thing spiraling out of control while Donald Trump does his ostrich routine. The United States' budget deficit has risen to $898 billion, which is considerably higher than projected. Actually, it's higher than was projected for the entire fiscal year, and there's still a month to go. The last time the deficit was this high was in 2012, when the U.S. government (in proper Keynesian fashion) was spending money like a maniac in order to spur recovery from the Great Recession. The government has never run a deficit like this in boom times, when massive deficits are not supposed to be necessary.

This is, of course, unsustainable in the long term. Eventually, the economy will start to shrink, probably even going into recession. Tax revenues will drop, the government's costs for borrowing will balloon, and the deficit will skyrocket. The theory, for the last year or so, is that this is exactly what the GOP is hoping for, because it will then give them cover to slash entitlements like Medicare and Medicaid. We are skeptical that any political party, regardless of how intense the culture wars might get, would be able to kill programs that help so many poor people so that rich people can keep their tax breaks due to the blowback. If the Democrats retake the House, the problem becomes that much trickier since they will never agree to cutting Social Security. Add it up, and the only politically and economically viable resolution would appear to be that the tax cuts have to go. And if the GOP doesn't reach that conclusion, the Democrats will presumably reach it for them once the blue team has its hands on the levers of power again. (Z)

Judge Dismisses Stormy Daniels Defamation Lawsuit

Michael Avenatti, lawyer to porn star Stormy Daniels (nee Stephanie Clifford), is very good at generating publicity. And one way to do so is to have as many legal irons in the fire as is possible. To that end, he has filed just about every lawsuit against Donald Trump that he can come up with, including one that claimed that the President defamed Stormy Daniels when he went on Twitter and accused her of pulling a "total con job." On Monday, a judge dismissed the suit, summarily finding that Trump's tweet was "rhetorical hyperbole" and not defamation. He ordered Daniels to pay Trump's legal fees.

Surely, Avenatti knew this day was coming, and accepted it as part of the cost of doing business and keeping Daniels' (and his) names in the headlines. There was very little chance that defamation was going to stick, given the facts of the case. If a judge agreed that every moderate-level insult on Twitter constitutes defamation, the courts would no longer have room on their dockets for any other kind of case. In any event, Trump ends this chapter of his fight against Daniels with a win. That has no effect on Daniels' other lawsuits, however, which are considerably less likely to go in the President's favor. (Z)

Trump Has $106 Million in the Bank

No, not in his personal bank account. The likelihood is that Donald Trump has far less than that in his personal account. Maybe he's even overdrawn. Anyhow, the $106 million is actually in his campaign's bank account. The President has been raising money hand-over-fist, having built a massive network of small donors, most of whom give less than $200. He's also doing a brisk business in t-shirts, Christmas ornaments, pint glasses, and MAGA hats (Kanye West alone must have dropped five figures).

The $64,000 question—actually, the $106 million question—is: Will this money do Trump any good? The 2020 presidential contest is going to be decided by 12 states, at the most. Trump could blanket Florida, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, etc. with commercials, but will they really move the needle? Doesn't everyone in the country already know everything they need to know about him, and also everything he hates about his opponents? Where else is Trump going to spend the money? On $50 million in Facebook ads? To stage six rallies a day, every day? On the world's most robust data operation? He already gets that for free from Robert Mercer. Trump could use the cash to help other Republicans, but he's not willing to do that, since it's his money, as he sees it.

The situation is actually pretty similar to that of Rep. Beto O'Rourke (D-TX), who has vast piles of cash, but isn't having much luck moving the needle with those funds. O'Rourke also refuses to share, as he made clear on Tuesday, and both he and Trump have a point on that front. If all those donors wanted the money to go to some other candidate, they would have donated directly to that person.

And if Trump doesn't have anything particularly useful to do with the money, why is his operation working so hard to raise it? Easy. It's because, in his world, money is a sign of success. If he has raised more money through two years than anyone else (particularly the hated Barack Obama), Trump must necessarily be a better and more successful and more beloved president than Obama. Of course, by that logic, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is even more beloved, but don't tell Trump that. (Z)

Elizabeth Warren Proves Native Descent

Donald Trump thinks that his 2020 opponent is likely to be Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and so he's gotten the smear campaign off to an early start, mocking her claims of Native American heritage by calling her "Pocahontas." He's also goaded her about proof. At a July 6 rally in Montana, for example, he mentioned her and then declared:

We will take that little kit and say, but we have to do it gently. Because we're in the '#MeToo' generation so I have to be very gentle. And we will very gently take that kit and we will slowly toss it, hoping it doesn't hit her and injure her arm even though it only weighs probably two ounces. And we will say, I will give you a million dollars to your favorite charity, paid for by Trump, if you take the test so that it shows you're an Indian.

Just this weekend, Trump renewed his attacks, claiming that even he has more Native American blood than Warren does.

On Monday, Warren called his bluff, publishing the results of a DNA test that "strongly suggest" she has a Native American relative between 6 and 10 generations in the past. DNA tests are not actually that great at differentiating Native American heritage from that of several other non-white ethnic groups (Latinos and Asians), but the test was conducted by Stanford University professor Carlos D. Bustamante, who is a world-renowned expert. Further it squares with Warren family lore that holds that her great-great-great-grandmother, O.C. Sarah Smith, was part Native American. Warren was born in Oklahoma and grew up there and many, if not most, people in that state have some Native American heritage, so her claim was always plausible.

Trump, of course, has not rushed to drop a check in the mail, despite the fact that Warren has helpfully already identified the charity of her choice. In fact, when he was told of the news, the President said, "Who cares?" and insisted that he never offered the $1 million. Since, after all, there were only 10,000 live witnesses or so, not to mention the hundreds of thousands more watching on TV.

Undoubtedly, Warren knew there would be no payment. She also knows that Trump's base doesn't care if he welshes out on his financial obligations, since he's been doing it for decades. Ask literally every subcontractor he's ever worked with. So, why did she do it? Quite a few pundits think she made a mistake by essentially stooping to Trump's level and playing the game under his terms. Maybe so, but Warren's a very shrewd political mind, so she's undoubtedly got a good reason (or maybe several). Only she knows for sure, but one cannot help but notice that Trump pretty much shut up about Barack Obama's birth certificate once #44 called Trump out on his lies and posted the long-form document to the White House website. Warren likely believes that the whole "Pocahontas" bit is doing damage, and wants to follow in Obama's footsteps and shut it down. Who is it that might be listening to Trump, but also might be a potential Warren voter, if not for his slurs? Hard to think, but maybe Obama-Trump voters who are still registered as Democrats? If their states have closed primaries (and most do), voting for Trump won't be an option in round one. Maybe Warren wants to be available as a viable alternative. (Z)

Today's Senate Polls

Four of these races are essentially over. In the fifth, Sen. Dean Heller (R-NV) gets his third or fourth good poll in a row. None of the others have him with anything close to a seven point lead (he's usually up 1-2 points), so this result is probably an outlier. (V)

State Democrat D % Republican R % Start End Pollster
Maryland Ben Cardin* 49% Tony Campbell 22% Oct 01 Oct 06 Gonzales Research
Nevada Jacky Rosen 41% Dean Heller* 48% Oct 10 Oct 12 Emerson Coll.
Pennsylvania Bob Casey* 47% Lou Barletta 32% Oct 01 Oct 02 Morning Consult
Utah Jenny Wilson 23% Mitt Romney 59% Oct 03 Oct 09 U. of Utah
Wisconsin Tammy Baldwin* 52% Leah Vukmir 42% Oct 10 Oct 11 PPP

* Denotes incumbent


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