Monthly Archives: October 2019

JACKSON, Miss. The South is continuing to stick with President Donald Trump, though 47 percent disapprove of how hes handling his job, according to results from a new NBC News|SurveyMonkey poll.

That's a slight uptick from the 45 percent who disapproved of the president in the July poll. The new poll found that 52 percent approve of the president's work.

But support for impeachment in the region does not mirror that disapproval number. Only 44 percent said Trump should be impeached and removed from office, while 54 percent opposed it.

NBC News|SurveyMonkey polled voters and residents in 11 states across the South, but the data comes during a particularly interesting time for Mississippi, which is in the midst of a hotly contested governors race.

The president is expected to visit the state on Friday to help campaign for the Republican nominee, Tate Reeves, the state's lieutenant governor. Donald Trump Jr. also joined Reeves at several events over the weekend.

Reeves who has closely tied his campaign to Trump and his family has struggled against the Democratic nominee, state Attorney General Jim Hood, in a race that would be a layup for most Republicans in the deeply red state.

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Its particularly noteworthy as the current governor, Phil Bryant, a Republican, maintains an approval rating of 69 percent.

Nevertheless, polls throughout the race have shown Hood, the only statewide elected Democrat in Mississippi, remaining close to Reeves.

The new poll comes two weeks before the Nov. 5 election. Reeves has outspent his opponent $8.3 million to $3.1 million and holds a single-digit lead, 47 percent to Hoods 40 percent, well outside the nearly 2-percentage-point margin of error.

The Reeves campaign did not respond to requests for comment. The Hood campaign declined to comment.

Trumps presence could give Reeves a needed boost: Forty-one percent of Mississippians said the presidents endorsement would play an important factor in who they decide to vote for in November.

Reeves campaign is banking on that.

Theres no doubt that conservatives are rallying behind our efforts, Reeves said at a press event NBC News attended on Wednesday.

Obviously, President Trump [and] Vice President Pences involvement in our campaign is helpful. With respect to that, were honored to have the president coming to Mississippi in the next 10 days.

But Mississippians also hunger for policy answers at a time when the state has seen its economic growth sputter and stop at or below about 2 percent every year since the recession, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

As the state faces major questions on whether it should take federal assistance and expand Medicaid, how to fund necessary fixes to its faltering infrastructure and how to increase teacher pay and retain talent, 54 percent of Mississippians said those three issues should be the next governor's top priorities, and more than 60 percent said they would be willing to pay more taxes to support public schools and fund infrastructure improvements.

On Wednesday, however, Reeves insisted that taxes were not the answer but provided few proposed solutions himself.

We believe you know how to spend your money better than any government entity ever will, he said next to a sign that listed the cost of Hoods policy proposals, which includes expanding Medicaid, providing statewide pre-K and increasing teacher pay and education funding.

The NBC News|SurveyMonkey Southern Regional Poll was conducted online from Oct. 8 to Oct. 22, 2019. Results are among a regional sample of 9,050 adults aged 18 and over, including 7,905 registered voters. The regional sample includes respondents who live in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas or Virginia. The error estimate for registered voters is plus or minus 1.9 percentage points.

Phil McCausland is an NBC News reporter focused on the rural-urban divide.

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South still supports Trump, but base of disapproval is also steady - NBC News

President TrumpDonald John Trump Comey: Mueller 'didn't succeed in his mission because there was inadequate transparency' During deposition, official says he made several efforts to advocate for Marie Yovanovitch Bolton looms large as impeachment inquiry accelerates MORE has attacked ambassadorWilliam Taylor, a very experienced and respected professional member of the U.S. foreign service, for presenting the facts as he saw them in Ukraine to the House committee conducting the preliminary impeachment investigation.

Trump accepted Taylor as acting ambassador to Ukraine but is now smearing him as a "Never Trumper"without providing any evidence to support his claim.

I know Taylor, a Vietnam veteran. He is anything but a political hack, as the president claims. I do not know ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, whom Trump earlier ousted as ambassador to Ukraine, but I do know that she is a respected, experienced and capable American diplomat. Taylor and Yovanovitch understand vastly more about U.S. diplomacy and national security than this president, who appears to know much more about stiff hairspray options than foreign policy.

These attacks on professional career members of the federal government are an outrage and a real threat to rule of law in the nation. These professionals have shown the courage to see wrongdoing and expose it. They raised their concerns inside the government without effect and then reported them through a legal process of congressional testimony and whistleblower reports. Those accused of improper behavior hate credible whistleblowers; those who oppose corruption and mismanagement in government see great value in them.

The presidents personal attack on a career professional falls in line with the wacky right-wing theory again without evidence that a "deep state" opposition to Trump exists among career federal employees.

Career government employees are restricted by law and regulation in the participation in many political activities. Like every American, they have personal political views, but a career civil service employee will destroy his or her career if he or she becomes an active political zealot for one political party at the expense of responsibilities to support the legal policies of the elected officials. Can an individual employee go politically rogue? Sure, but a broad conspiracy against the president is a fantasy. Unfortunately, many Americans believe the conspiracy nonsense being promoted by Republicans in Congress, right-wing television and radio pundits, and Russian internet trolls.

Career federal employees are sworn to uphold the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. They are responsible for implementing the legal policies of the political authorities elected or appointed over them. When they cannot support the policies of those above them, they have institutional means to raise their objections within their chain of supervision or as a whistleblower. They also can resign from government in protest and go public, as many experienced professionals have done.

In the case of Taylor, he made his objections well known in a cable to the secretary of State and to others involved in Ukraine policy within the government.

Trumps frantic concern with the ongoing impeachment inquiry caused him to appeal to Republicans to get tough and fight. Shortly thereafter, two dozen Republican members of Congress stormed the secure impeachment investigation hearing room to disrupt the procedures. They should have been wearing jack boots in their tawdry stunt to block what is essentially a grand jury hearing with Republicans present to participate. The hearing procedure is established in precedent and procedure approved, and used, by the former Republican House majority.

Allies of the president criticize process and attack witnesses without evidence to refute what is being revealed in public by the written testimony and transcripts.

Trump apparently developed his tactics of deny, deceive, deflect and attack at the knee of his legal mentor, notorious New York attorneyRoy Cohn. Wheres my Roy Cohn? Trump famously asked after Jeff SessionsJefferson (Jeff) Beauregard SessionsTruth and competence clearly terrify Donald Trump Feud by Alabama Democrats threatens Doug Jones's reelection Sanctuary city policies are a threat to decent people MORE recused himself from the Russia probe, according to The New York Times. Cohn is famous as chief counsel to former Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-Wis.) during the red-baiting Army-McCarthy hearings in 1954. After McCarthy was discredited, Cohn became a lawyer in Manhattan known for his aggressive intimidation of opponents. For Trump, Cohn was a lawyer and adviser. Cohn was disbarred by the New York Supreme Court for unethical behavior and died of AIDS in 1986.

With Cohn in the grave, Trump turned to Rudy GiulianiRudy GiulianiDuring deposition, official says he made several efforts to advocate for Marie Yovanovitch Bolton looms large as impeachment inquiry accelerates Giuliani associate used small town in Ukraine to gain influence with American figures: report MORE to help with his Washington adventures.

Now that Trump has severely damaged American leadership in the world with his unilateralist and incoherent foreign and national security policy, he is moving to destroy public confidence in the civil service. Putin and other enemies of the United States must be ecstatic with the chaos created by Trumps frantic domestic fury.

The desperate attacks by an increasingly unstable president to stop investigations into his potential abuse of power and illegal activities will continue and probably increase.

The one thing Trump has not been able to stop is the credible information provided to investigators by courageous career professionals who saw wrongdoing and reported it. In doing so, these professionals are placing their oath to the Constitution and the rule of law in the United States above some shallow personal loyalty to a flawed president.

Taylor and others like him who see abuse and expose what they see within the existing federal laws and procedures are American heroes. Hopefully, more of them have the courage to come forward.

James W. Pardew is a former US ambassador to Bulgaria and career Army intelligence officer.He has served as Deputy Assistant Secretary General of NATO and is the author ofPeacemakers: American Leadership and the End of Genocide in the Balkans.

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Truth and competence clearly terrify Donald Trump | TheHill - The Hill

There is no evidence to support President Donald Trump's claim, made repeatedly this past week, that top US diplomat to Ukraine Bill Taylor is a "Never Trumper."

The low-key diplomat rose to global attention after testifying on Capitol Hill in the impeachment inquiry. He provided a damning account of how Trump told his appointees to establish a quid pro quo, trading much-needed US military aid for political favors from Ukraine.

Trump first made the unfounded accusation against Taylor in a tweet on Wednesday, and repeated it twice on Friday to a gaggle of reporters on the White House lawn.

"Here's the problem," Trump said, referring to Taylor. "He's a Never Trumper and his lawyer's a Never Trumper."

Facts First: There is zero public evidence that Taylor is a Never Trumper. All available information paints him as respected and apolitical public servant. But Trump is correct when it comes to Taylor's attorney John Bellinger, who helped lead the charge of Republicans against Trump in 2016.

Taylor's career

There is no indication that Taylor has ever donated to political candidates for federal office, according to Federal Election Commission data. Taylor has a relatively common name, but there are no records matching his name, home state of Virginia and employment history.

After he was appointed by then-President George W. Bush to be the US ambassador to Ukraine in 2006, he told lawmakers that he never contributed to any political campaigns, according to the congressional record. He was confirmed by voice vote by the Republican-controlled Senate.

At that time, Taylor disclosed that his wife made one political donation before: She gave $150 in 2003 to 21st Century Democrats, a political action committee that backs "genuinely progressive" and "populist" Democrats. The group endorsed Barack Obama's campaign for Senate in 2004.

In the Senate disclosures, Taylor detailed a slew of donations his parents gave to Republicans over the years. This included money to Arizona Sen. John McCain, Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar, the Republican National Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

"I've known Bill Taylor for 26 years, and he doesn't take positions based on politics," said former US Ambassador to Ukraine Carlos Pascual, who was appointed by President Bill Clinton and stayed on during the Bush administration. "Bill Taylor is a guy who volunteered for Vietnam. He isn't a radical. Anyone who starts barking up that tree has got to get their facts straight."

Nine additional former State Department officials who previously spoke to CNN described Taylor as a person of high character who was more likely to put sound foreign policy before politics.

He was so respected that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo asked him to come out of retirement to lead the US embassy in Kiev this year, a position he first held during the Bush administration.

Trump's disdain for Taylor apparently isn't shared by Pompeo, one of the President's closest allies. In an interview on Friday with The Sunflower, the student-run newspaper at Wichita State University, Pompeo voiced some subdued approval of Taylor's performance since taking over in Ukraine.

"He and I both share this vision for how American interests in Ukraine can properly be represented. I have every reason to think that he's still out there, banging away at that problem set," Pompeo said.

What about Taylor's lawyer?

Unlike Trump's claims against Taylor, his criticism of Taylor's lawyer John Bellinger is accurate.

Someone as outspoken as Bellinger is surely an interesting choice of attorney for Taylor, who has been described as a "quiet guy" by people who know him well. But associating with Bellinger does not make Taylor a Never Trumper himself. He may have just wanted an attorney with strong credentials in DC.

A registered Republican, Bellinger served under the Bush administration first as senior associate counsel to the President and later as legal adviser to the State Department.

In August 2016, months before the general election, Bellinger drafted a letter that was co-signed by 50 senior Republican national security and foreign policy experts and stated that Trump was "not qualified" to be President and "would put at risk our country's national security and well-being."

"(Trump) weakens U.S. moral authority as the leader of the free world," the letter said. "He appears to lack basic knowledge about and belief in the U.S. Constitution, U.S. laws, and U.S. institutions, including religious tolerance, freedom of the press, and an independent judiciary."

After Trump was elected, Bellinger joined "Checks and Balances," a group of conservative lawyers formed to speak out against Trump. The group also includes George Conway, husband of White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, who supports impeachment and rails against Trump almost daily on Twitter.

Bellinger told The New York Times that the group came together because they felt "conservative lawyers are not doing enough to protect constitutional principles that are being undermined by the statements and actions of this president."

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The latest on the Trump impeachment inquiry: Live updates - CNN International

President Donald Trump will stick with presidential tradition and attend the World Series, but he will not throw out the first pitch. He is also afraid he would look too fat with the bullet proof vest. When reporters asked him if he would throw out the pitch, like George W. Bush did in the Yankee Stadium in 2001, he said he wasnt sure. I dont know, he told reporters, according to the Associated Press. Theyre going to have to dress me up in a lot of heavy armor. Ill look too heavy. I dont like that. The Washington Nationals, who will decide the such matters, had already said that the president was never asked to throw out the ceremonial pitch, which will be thrown by Trump critic Jose Andres, a celebrity chef and humanitarian. The Associated Press also reports that the president will arrive after the first inning and leave before the last out in the fifth game to be held on Sunday to avoid disrupting the game for fans.

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Donald Trump Will Stick With Tradition and Attend World Series on Sunday - The Daily Beast

Steven Bannon said on Sunday morning that he believes Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is "winning" the impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump and "will impeach the president."

Bannon, who previously served as a top strategist and senior counselor for the president, made the remarks during an interview with radio talk show host and billionaire John Catsimatidis on The Answer in New York. The Trump official, who co-founded the alt-right website Breitbart News, went on the show to promote his news podcast called War Room: Impeachment, which intends to defend the president.

Pelosi, the top Democrat in Washington, "will impeach the president of the United States on two counts: one, abuse of power, the other obstruction of power," Bannon told Catsimatidis. He classified her impeachment inquiry as the "most sophisticated political warfare" and "the most sophisticated political disinformation campaign."

"They're winning right now," the former White House strategist asserted. He said his podcast was set up to provide the American public with "the facts and the details of the witnesses, the testimony, the legal arguments." Bannon argued that he would defend Trump until he was "acquitted."

Democrats launched the fast-moving impeachment inquiry against Trump at the end of September after an anonymous government whistleblower raised concerns that the president was abusing his office to pressure Ukraine to launch investigations in an effort to damage his political rivals. It was also alleged that the president temporarily withheld nearly $400 million in military aid to Ukraine as part of the pressure campaign. Bill Taylor, the current top U.S. diplomat to Ukraine, and Gordon Sondland, the U.S. Ambassador to the European Union, have both confirmed to investigators that the aid was withheld to pressure the leaders of the Eastern European nation to open the probes.

The military aid to Ukraine was approved by Congress with bipartisan support, and several prominent Republicans have raised serious concerns about the president's actions. However, Trump and his supporters have argued that the impeachment inquiry is purely "partisan." Bannon told Catsimatidis that Trump's goal right now should be to pressure all Republicans to vote against impeachment, so the entire investigation will be viewed as merely political.

Numerous polls have shown that the majority of Americans support the impeachment inquiry against Trump. However, the support is divided along party lines, with the vast majority of Democrats approving of the congressional probe, while the majority of Republicans disapprove.

Bannon departed from the Trump administration in August of 2017 following the violent Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville. The event brought together neo-Nazis and members of the alt-right, many of whom felt emboldened by Trump's victory. A counter demonstrator was killed during the protests, but Trump insisted there were "very fine people" on both sides. Bannon had reportedly encouraged the president to spread blame for the violence, instead of specifically condemning the white nationalists.

Despite Bannon's departure from the White House, he has continued to be a supporter of the president. Trump has also reportedly stayed in contact with the alt-right figure.

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Steve Bannon Says Nancy Pelosi Is 'Winning' And 'Will Impeach' Donald Trump - Newsweek

President Donald Trump claimed that the Saturday killing of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi by US forces was more significant than the US assassination of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden under former President Barack Obama during a Sunday morning press conference.

"This is the biggest there is. This is the worst ever," Trump said. "Osama bin Laden was very big, but Osama bin Laden became big with the World Trade Center. This is a man who built a whole, as he would like to call it, a country, a caliphate, and was trying to do it again."

US forces killed bin Laden, the mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, in a 2011 raid in Pakistan under Obama's watch.

And Trump again falsely claimed that he "predicted" the threat Bin Laden posed to the US before 9/11 in his 2000 book, "The America We Deserve." He suggested to reporters on Sunday that if the US government had "listened to me," 9/11 wouldn't have happened.

"I wrote a book, a really very successful book, I said, there is somebody named Osama Bin Laden, you better kill him or take him out, something to that effect, he's big trouble," the president said on Sunday morning. "And I'm saying to people, take out Osama bin Laden, that nobody ever heard of ... nobody listened to me ... let's put it this way, if they'd listened to me, a lot of things would've been different."

The president also tweeted that false claim last November.

"Of course we should have captured Osama Bin Laden long before we did. I pointed him out in my book just BEFORE the attack on the World Trade Center," the president tweeted on November 19, 2018. "President Clinton famously missed his shot. We paid Pakistan Billions of Dollars & they never told us he was living there. Fools!"

And on the campaign trail in 2015, Trump also falsely claimed that he urged the US government to "take him out, referring to Bin Laden, before he "crawl[s] under a rock."

In fact, Trump made just one passing reference to Bin Laden in his book, which was more than 300 pages long. At the time, Bin Laden was well-known as one of the world's most dangerous terrorists and, as Trump wrote, had been pursued by US forces.

"One day we're all assured that Iraq is under control, the U.N. inspectors have done their work, everything's fine, not to worry. The next day the bombing begins," Trump wrote. "One day we're told that a shadowy figure with no fixed address named Osama bin Laden is public enemy number one, and U.S. jet fighters lay waste to his camp in Afghanistan. He escapes back under some rock, and a few news cycles later it's on to a new enemy and new crisis."

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Trump claims the killing of ISIS leader al-Baghdadi is more significant than Osama bin Laden's assassination - Business Insider

President Donald Trump seems to have recently switched to an iPhone without a home button, and he doesnt seem to like it very much. So much so that he decided to casually subtweet Apple CEO Tim Cook with a bit of light tech commentary.

We cant tell if Trump recently upgraded to the iPhone XS, iPhone XR, or one of the iPhone 11 variants. But all the top-of-the-line Apple smartphones since last year have ditched the home button last seen on the iPhone 8 for the edge-to-edge design first introduced with the iPhone X in 2017.

We learned in March 2017 Donald Trump switched from Android to iPhone, but we didnt know which iPhone he switched to. It definitely had a home button, since the iPhone X wasnt out at that time.

Perhaps Trump will be first in line for the rumored iPhone SE 2, which will reportedly look like an iPhone 8. That means itll have the home button Trump sorely misses.

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Donald Trump wants the iPhone home button back - The Verge

Alan Jacobs: What a clash between conservatives reveals

While that may be true for some, it neglects a little-known but long-standing constitutional argument for an all-powerful, redemptive executive, one rooted in fundamental law and high principle, and one that has underwritten the thinking rights steadfast support of this president. This argument long predates the rise of this real-estate developer turned politician, and its origins lie not within the nations premier law schools or the Federalist Society, but in the pages of major mid-century conservative publications such as Triumph and Modern Age; on radio and television programs such as Fulton J. Sheens Life Is Worth Living; in books; and in academiaand, crucially, within the philosophy and political-science departments, not the law schools.

In these places, students of the Jewish German migr philosopher political philosopher Leo Straussin particular, the Claremont McKenna political scientist Harry V. Jaffaand a diverse array of Christian thinkers insisted, often in high, prophetic dudgeon, that the ultimate foundation of the U.S. Constitution was not structural, institutional, or procedural, as other conservatives were arguing at the time, but moral. To them, the Constitutions foundational principles were to be found not in the shallow, democratic soil of what we the people happened to want at any given timeincluding the 1789 Foundingor in the Constitutions first three articles, but in the eternal principles of natural law and right set out in 1776 in the stirring language of the Declaration of Independence: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men.

In practicing and tolerating chattel slavery in 1789 and afterwards, Jaffa argued, the American Founders had betrayed the bedrock moral commitments of the Declaration, the countrys foundational constitutional text. Only when President Abraham Lincoln belatedly pronounced slavery morally wrong was the regime redeemed. Others echoed his views: Both other Straussians and touchstone Christian-right thinkers such as the evangelical Francis Schaeffer, a seminal figure in the anti-abortion movement, and the Thomist Catholic theologians Sheen and John Courtney Murray, insisted that only those who likewise affirmed and attested to the natural-rights and natural-law foundations of the American republic earned our approbation as statesmen, guardians, and defenders of the American constitutional republic.

Jaffas seminal 1959 book, Crisis of the House Divided, set out these understandings in an extended moral-philosophical exegesishe called it his teachingof the Lincoln-Douglas debates. Trained by Strauss at the New School for Social Research (before Strauss moved on to a long career at the University of Chicago and then, briefly, at Claremont and later St. Johns College, in Annapolis), Jaffa read those debates as a world-historical clash very nearly in form identical with the issue between Socrates and Thrasymachus recounted in Platos Republic. Jaffa pronounced the debates one of the most profound texts in human history, pitting against each other the respective claims of merely positive, human-fashioned lawwhat the majority of the people willand natural, divinely ordained law, which is to say what is true, right, and good, or what the people should will. In the Lincoln-Douglas debates, Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois argued for positive law in propounding his theory of popular sovereignty concerning slavery in the countrys western territories. Lincoln argued for natural law, insisting that the people had no right or power to enact any law that violated the equality of natural rights by providing for the enslavement of other human beings.

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The Overlooked Conservative Tradition That Embraces an Executive Like Donald Trump - The Atlantic