You don’t work to reelect a man you hate to get into the White House,” observes Michael Caputo, a longtime Trump adviser who agreed to join us on our time traveling experiment and says the 2020 campaign represents a real bounty for faithful, Trump-believing worker bees.
Next comes the score settling. “Trump totally unburdened and 100 percent politics all the time. Payback is hell,” predicted one of the Republicans close to the White House who insisted on anonymity because of their current job.
M.Scott Mahaskey/POLITICO
As Washington freezes through the end of winter, Trump moves his administration temporarily to Mar-a-Lago. He’s golfing six days a week with the likes of celebrity admirers Rush Limbaugh, Kid Rock and Tiger Woods but finds time between rounds to lob Twitter grenades at anyone who crossed him during his first four years in office. Republicans are not spared as Trump draws a bull’s-eye on the half-dozen senators who voted to convict him at the impeachment trial. He hounds Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to remove Ben Sasse from the Banking, Judiciary and Intelligence committees. He scouts out 2022 GOP primary challengers for Richard Burr and Lisa Murkowski. And he seethes that he doesn’t have more ways to deliver payback to Susan Collins or a certain Mormon senator from Utah.
“Romney is lucky he’s running for reelection in 2024,” said Sam Nunberg, another former Trump campaign aide from 2016 who is riding shotgun in our time machine and sees an election cycle four years into the future as far enough away to spare the 2012 GOP presidential nominee from Trump’s ultimate payback.
Trump Enemies
Imagining Trump’s second term: “Trump draws a bullseye“ on the half-dozen GOP senators who voted to convict him at the impeachment trial, and ramps up attacks on Jerome Powell.
Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT)
Sen. Lisa Murkowski
(R-AK)
Sen. Ben Sasse
(R-NE)
Jerome Powell
Chair of the Federal Reserve
Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC)
Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME)
Trump keeps trying to goose his government into action as the summer of 2021 arrives. He’s starting to sweat the U.S. economy in the months after the long-anticipated recession became official that April with the second consecutive quarter of negative growth. He tweets 10 times a day about how Federal Reserve Board Chairman Jerome Powell is responsible. He gives one of his remaining first-term holdovers, national economic adviser Larry Kudlow, one more chance to pitch a middle-class tax cut in the hope that can turn things around.
Trump also leans in harder on his Justice Department. First, he orders Robert F. Kennedy’s name removed from the building headquarters in Washington and replaces it with Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor and personal lawyer to the president whom Trump has installed as the director of his revamped and celebratory Voice of America. Then Trump threatens to fire Attorney General William Barr and every U.S. attorney in the country if criminal charges are not filed by Thanksgiving against any holdovers from the Obama administration who had a role in the original 2016 Russia investigation.
M.Scott Mahaskey/POLITICO
Trump cancels the annual turkey pardoning event and replaces it with a ceremony to give the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn and Roger Stone. All three former 2016 campaign aides had been sentenced to jail for crimes tied to special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe, but Trump thinks he’s got room to maneuver now that he’s safely in a second term and decides to wipe their records clean.
Confounded and depressed by the 2020 election results, Democrats can’t figure out how to respond to every new example of Trump defying Congress. “The infighting. The blaming. The everything. Whoo!” Democratic operative James Carville says of his party’s struggle to find itself after losing in 2020. Jim Manley, a longtime aide to Harry Reid who was with us back in 2016 the last time we zoomed off into the future, foresees a “circular firing squad” taking place in his party “with no national Democratic leader able to tamp down on the internecine warfare.”
In the House, Pelosi was a goner the moment the television networks back in November declared Trump the winner. The president had taunted her throughout the 2020 campaign for her leadership against him on impeachment. And while her party still clings to a narrow House majority, the San Francisco congresswoman decides to call it quits and hands the speaker’s gavel over to Hakeem Jeffries, a 50-year old lawmaker from a Brooklyn-Queens district that is a stone’s throw from the president’s childhood home.
Leadership
Imagining Trump’s second term: Democrats retain a House majority, but Pelosi hands the gavel to Hakeem Jeffries. In the Senate, McConnell continues churning out judges.
Nancy Pelosi Speaker of the House
Mitch McConnell Senate Majority Leader
Hakeem Jeffries Chairman of the House Democratic Caucus
Chuck Schumer Senate Minority Leader
Democrats still have subpoena power, but they’ve been neutered by repeated attempts to draw anything out of the president. In the summer before the 2020 presidential election, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority rendered Trump virtually impregnable with a 5-4 decision overturning its seminal Watergate ruling against Richard Nixon and instead embracing a broad range of presidential executive powers.
The focus for House lawmakers shifts from Trump’s alleged abuses of power and foreign meddling in U.S. elections to something that doesn’t quite pique Trump’s ire as much: neglect at the federal agencies across his administration. While the Constitution has no double jeopardy clause for impeachment, Democrats debate whether to hold their fire in even considering another attempt at removing him from office.
Sure, there’s all manner of agitation to try again—namely from the crop of freshman and sophomore Democrats who now hold the largest bloc of votes in the House conference. But Jeffries cuts that talk off by the summer of 2021, saying the party won’t consider another impeachment until after the 2022 midterms—and only if there’s a blue wave that causes dramatic shifts in the Senate. He argues there’s no point going to war again with a president who won’t stop talking about his new mandate or with Republicans who wouldn’t convict the president in the first term even after being presented with a “smoking gun” audio tape that was secretly stashed on an internal White House server of Trump offering to sell Alaska to Vladimir Putin in exchange for Russian hackers’ help to win a second term.
“He’s now free to do everything he wants, even if it’s clearly an impeachable offense because they’re not going to go after him two times in a row,” laments former Connecticut Rep. Chris Shays, one of four Republicans who voted against all four articles of impeachment against Bill Clinton in 1998.
M.Scott Mahaskey/POLITICO
With impeachment off the table, Trump tries to cut deals with a divided Congress. But he spends his political capital much faster than his aides want. He finally gets a win on a replacement for the North American trade agreement that he tore up in his first term. But that’s it. House Democrats balk at an infrastructure package. There’s nowhere close to the 60 Senate votes needed to overhaul the nation’s prescription drug laws. The resulting bickering and blaming among lawmakers kills the chances for even bigger lifts. Reforming entitlement programs is nixed during the debate over Trump’s first budget in his second term. A comprehensive immigration overhaul gets shelved in the aftermath of Mexican troops accidentally opening fire on their American counterparts outside El Paso, the resulting tensions stoked by Trump and conservative media warnings about a caravan of thousands of migrants that never materializes at the border.
As we travel further into Trump’s second term, we see that he doesn’t lose every battle in the Capitol. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, reelected in 2020 to a seventh term, continues to do his part to remake the federal courts. The Kentucky Republican clears the floor calendar to hold votes confirming more than 100 more new judges with lifetime appointments to the district and appellate circuits, and conservatives rejoice at the prospect of friendly decisions for decades to come on issues like abortion, religion, and environmental and labor policy.
Soon-to-be former judges?
Imagining Trump’s second term: Thomas and Alito retire, ensuring their replacements are conservatives. RBG and Breyer “maximize their cardiovascular workouts and adopt strict Mediterranean diets.”
Samuel Alito
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Clarence Thomas
On the Supreme Court, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, two associate justices in their mid-70s at the time of Trump’s second inaugural, opt for retirement rather than risk being replaced by a Democratic president after 2025. Meanwhile, the two remaining Bill Clinton-appointed justices, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer, maximize their cardiovascular workouts and adopt strict Mediterranean diets.
Trump doesn’t really alter his erratic, isolationist foreign policy instincts. He withdraws all U.S. troops from Afghanistan and Iraq, despite reservations even among Republicans. In Syria, ISIS has proclaimed a second modern-day Caliphate. He threatens repeatedly to pull the U.S. out of NATO, even ordering that the paperwork be drawn up but backs down as Republicans and Democrats unite to throw legislative hurdles in his way. He saber rattles on tariffs with China for all four additional years, but never closes a trade deal with Beijing; by the end of his second term, the U.S. and China have had near-skirmishes in the increasingly militarized South China Sea. Jared Kushner never actually releases the second half of his Middle East peace plan. The Iran nuclear deal collapses entirely, although Tehran doesn’t immediately restart its nuclear program as it tries to rebuild its economy. Luckily, for the Iranians, China and Russia increasingly are willing to ignore U.S. sanctions and give them a financial lifeline. There also is no breakthrough on nuclear weapon talks with North Korea, though Kim Jong Un makes his first visit to the United States and joins Trump and Dennis Rodman courtside at the United Center for a Chicago Bulls game.
Global Counterparts
Imagining Trump’s second term: “Trump doesn’t really alter his erratic, isolationist foreign policy instincts.”
Xi Jinping
President of China
Kim Jong-un Supreme Leader of North Korea
Vladimir Putin President of Russia
Trump also spends his time thinking about his legacy, and whom he wants to replace him in the White House. After dropping hints in private for months, he finally sends out a tweet on July 4, 2022, that he doesn’t support Mike Pence’s presidential ambitions. “Great guy, TREMENDOUS veep, but it’s time for some Beautiful NEW BLOOD,” he writes. Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and Rand Paul back out by Labor Day, and the field is cleared for Ivanka Trump to take the party’s nomination 17 months before anyone has participated in a caucus or primary.
Future presidents?
Imagining Trump’s second term: The president spends time thinking about his legacy, and whom he wants to replace him in the White House. He chooses Ivanka.
Ivanka Trump Senior advisor
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL)
Sen. Ted Cruz
(R-TX)
Sen. Rand Paul
(R-KY)
Mike Pence
Vice President
Meanwhile, Trump takes direct control over planning for his presidential library, which in a break with tradition will include no actual presidential papers because there are none that have been preserved. He strong arms the General Services Administration to write through the lease agreement on his D.C. hotel and tells Congress he won’t consent to end a months-long government shutdown unless it amends a century-old law restricting height limits on buildings in the Capitol. When the standoff ends, construction begins immediately on a new 75-story addition to the historic building that when finished will look down on the Washington Monument and the rest of the city.
M.Scott Mahaskey/POLITICO
Some of our fellow time travelers aren’t entirely certain that second-term Trump will be distinguishable from first-term Trump. “He’s a category 5 tornado now,” insisted Ty Cobb, the former Trump White House lawyer who managed the president’s response to the Robert Mueller investigation. “It’s not like he’s going to break the measuring point.”
Trump himself has acknowledged how a state of perpetual scandal has reset all the meters. “It’s almost become, like, a part of my day,” the president told reporters earlier this month when talking about all his interactions with lawyers.
The question is whether his opponents will finally resign themselves to his existence and find ways to adapt to his style of chaotic governance.
“This has been a war every single day since the day he won. My presumption here is that is not sustainable if he gets elected [again]. At that point it’s just too difficult to sustain,” says Gingrich. Indeed, he says he can envision a bloc of around 50 House Democrats who will eventually come around to working with a second-term Trump on issues like infrastructure or join him in a big health care push on sickle cell anemia research.
“Once they get past having to chant ‘We hate Trump!’ and ‘Impeach Trump!’, which I think will disappear if he wins reelection because it’s not sustainable emotionally, then there’s a real opportunity to put together a series of bipartisan majorities,” said Gingrich, who now lives in Rome with his wife, Callista, the U.S. ambassador to the Vatican.
That was, after all, the case with Clinton, who stayed busy in his final two years after his Senate trial, signing more than a dozen big laws, including a major banking deregulation plan later blamed for sparking the subprime mortgage financial crisis.
“We went back to work,” Trent Lott, the Senate majority leader during the 1999 impeachment trial, said in an interview. “It was a different time, different people, different media, quite frankly.”
While our time machine travels did not envision more impeachments in Trump’s future beyond what’s coming today in his first term, anyone watching the current battles can’t help but acknowledge the ever-present possibility that he could get pulled through the process again. Doug Holtz-Eakin, who in 2008 worked as a top adviser to John McCain’s presidential campaign, said he would see “little upside” for Democrats to keep trying to impeach a second-term Trump.
But he wouldn’t rule it out entirely, either. “The only way I could imagine a second impeachment would be if there was a clear, serious violation of national security laws,” he said.
There are those who clearly will never adjust to Trump, and who see the president serving four more years as a real threat to the country’s constitutional balance.
M.Scott Mahaskey/POLITICO
“As someone who has been in this business for more than 50 years in Washington, I cannot tell you how troubled I am by these prospects that the entire structure of the government system that’s operated for my lifetime and probably for a century before seems to be crumbling,” said Philip Allen Lacovara, a former Watergate prosecutor who made the winning argument in that unanimous 1974 Supreme Court case that helped lead to Nixon’s resignation.
“The very fact that people in the executive branch figure that they can simply put a thumb in the eye of Congress when they’re asked for information day after day after day after day, not on particularly controversial or sensitive single subject inquiries, that really is changing the fundamental nature of the government,” Lacovara added. “And the typical voter who is concerned about other things is simply not aware of this. And if Trump gets another four years to codify, institutionalize and embed this attitude it’s going to be very hard for Congress to reassert any effective control and oversight. I think that’s the real risk.”
Trump’s critics also worry that, given four more years in office, the president’s unconventional ways could have other long-lasting effects on society. “Young people will grow up thinking that’s the way politics is,” said Shays. “So many of the things our Founding Fathers believe in will just go out the window.”
To Trump supporters, including the ones who came along on our time machine ride, all the talk about the end of democracy sounds laughable. “We said the same thing in 2012. ‘The stakes are just so high,’” Nunberg said of the fears surrounding a second Obama term. “We were fine.”
America, Trump’s supporters argue, is much more durable than the president’s critics acknowledge—even if he wins two terms. “It drives me crazy,” Fleischer said, “when people think Donald Trump’s tweets somehow are stronger than James Madison’s handwriting.”
© 2019 POLITICO LLC
Guardian
Impeachment inquiry: Democrats say diplomat’s testimony is a ‘sea change’ – as it happened
Bill Taylor, acting US ambassador to Ukraine, says he was told Trump made aid conditional until Ukraine publicly announced investigations into Biden and the 2016 election
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Tue 22 Oct 2019 20.01 EDT
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Key events
20:01 EDT
Summary
That’s it from the liveblog for today. Here’s a recap:
Bill Taylor, the acting US ambassador to Ukraine, testifiedthat Donald Trump withheld military aid to pressure Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden and the 2016 election. Taylor contradicted ongoing insistence from Trump and his allies that there was no quid pro quo.
Democrats signaled that the Taylor testimony was a turning point, indicating that the inquiry will be speeding up in the coming days.
Trump and his allies, continued to insiston the president’s innocence. Republicanlawmakers took to the House floor, reiterating claims that the inquiry was unfair and unethical.
Democrats and Republicanscondemned Trump’s statements comparing the impeachment inquiry to a “lynching”.
The US envoy to Syria testified that he wasn’t consulted on the decision to withdraw US troops.
Russia won joint control of formerly Kurdish territory in Syria
Updated at 20:01 EDT
19:44 EDT
Bill Taylor leaves Capitol Hill after nine-hour-long deposition
Bill Taylor does not respond to questions as he leaves Capitol Hill following a deposition that lasted 9+ hours pic.twitter.com/FtQYNrNpo4
— Jeremy Herb (@jeremyherb) October 22, 2019
Updated at 19:44 EDT
19:34 EDT
Meanwhile… Pelosi creates petition to condemn Trump
Here’s what Trump has done just this week:
- He called the constitutional ban on profiting from the presidency “phony.”
- His Administration has defied lawful subpoenas and document requests.
- He stood by his shakedown of a foreign government and called it “perfect.”
— Nancy Pelosi (@TeamPelosi) October 22, 2019
Even as House Republicans rally behind Trump and seek to discredit the impeachment inquiry, Pelosi is promoting a public petition to condemn Trump.
There’s no real purpose for such a petition — but it’s a sign that Pelosi is sticking with her impeachment strategy despite Republican attacks.
Updated at 19:34 EDT
19:20 EDT
Republicans take to House floor and speak out against impeachment
Several Republican representatives are speaking out against the impeachment inquiry, repeatedly calling it a sham, echoing language from the president, his press secretary, and his associates.
Republicans including minority leader Kevin McCarthy are once again arguing that the inquiry is invalid because the House has not taken a vote to open it. Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said that there is no rule or regulation requiring such a vote.
Trump held two days of meetings with House Republicans over the weekend at Camp David, signaling that the White House is working hard to ensure support as evidence mounts in favor of impeachment.
Under Chairman Schiff and the Dem majority, the most basic responsibilities of the committee have been neglected.
Instead, the House Intelligence Committee is using its time and resources to run a sham impeachment inquiry in secret.#StopTheSchiffShowhttps://t.co/Othy2TMJYn
— Kevin McCarthy (@GOPLeader) October 22, 2019
Republican lawmakers are taking advantage of time allotted for one-minute speeches this evening to reiterate their loyalty to Trump.
“The facts will exonerate our president,” said Mark Meadows of North Carolina.
“Instead of wasting valuable time with this baseless inqurity there is so much more we could and should be doing,” said Tim Whalberg of Michigan.
Schiff’s impeachment scheme is being conducted in secret behind closed doors. He’s shutting out Republican Members.
This is a joke. The American people deserve complete transparency and access to the real facts, and @realDonaldTrump deserves due process!#StopTheSchiffShowpic.twitter.com/DxUOov2IFZ
— Steve Scalise (@SteveScalise) October 22, 2019
One after another, Republicans repeated claims that the impeachment inquiry was illegitimate and unfair.
Updated at 19:41 EDT
18:58 EDT
White House: Bill Taylor testimony was ‘triple hearsay’
Insisting “there was no quid pro quo”, the White House press secretary, Stephanie Grisham, said in a statement: “Today was just more triple hearsay and selective leaks from the Democrats’ politically-motivated, closed-door, secretive hearings.”
She also said the inquiry was “a coordinated smear campaign”.
.@PressSec releases a statement on the Taylor testimony: pic.twitter.com/TWsQsy1i8G
— Phil Mattingly (@Phil_Mattingly) October 22, 2019
US envoy says Trump used military aid to push Ukraine to investigate Biden
Updated at 19:32 EDT
18:49 EDT
Biden campaign weighs in on Bill Taylor testimony
“Trump is so desperate not to love to Joe Biden that he threatened to withhold vital military assistance,” said Biden’s campaign manager Kate Bedingfield in a statement.
“The president has betrayed his office,” the statement reads.
Joe Biden’s campaign weighs in on Bill Taylor’s testimony. pic.twitter.com/6cgJGVGU1n
— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) October 22, 2019
Updated at 18:49 EDT
18:26 EDT
Trump to Netanyahu: ‘You are great!’
In March, Donald Trump hosted Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington. Photograph: Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP
Trump wished Netanyahu a happy birthday, calling him “one of my closest allies”, in a letter sent on Monday, after the Israeli prime minister announced his failure to form a coalition government.
“You are great!” Trump added, in a handwritten note next to his signature.
According to Axios, Netanyahu’s office released the letter to show that he still had strong ties with Trump, who remains popular in Israel.
Benjamin Netanyahu tells Israeli president he cannot form government
Updated at 19:31 EDT
17:50 EDT
Syria envoy said he was not consulted on US troop withdrawal
James Jeffrey, the special envoy to Syria, said he wasn’t consulted on the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw troops. In a testimonybefore the Senate foreign relations committee, he said “I personally was not consulted before the decision.”
He defended the administration, saying that Barack Obama and George W Bush both acted in Iraq without consulting him while he worked as an ambassador and a chargé d’affaires, respectively.
“In my current job, I feel that my views, through Secretary Pompeo have been brought repeatedly and frequently and, I think in many cases, effectively,” he said.
But lawmakers were incredulous.
“Professionally are you indifferent to not being consulted about the matter that is in your lifelong expertise?” asked Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia. “Whether you mind it or not, I mind not being consulted.”
Turkey and Russia agree deal over buffer zone in northern Syria
Updated at 19:31 EDT
17:28 EDT
Democrats say Bill Taylor testimony signals ‘sea change’ in impeachment inquiry
Bill Taylor’s testimony – which contradicts claims by the president, his chief of staff and his and his associates – “is a sea change”, said the Democratic representative Stephen Lynch of Massachusetts. “I think it could accelerate matters,” he said.
The Democratic representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida said: “I do not know how you would listen to today’s testimony from Ambassador Taylor and come to any other (conclusion) except that the president abused his power and withheld foreign aid”
Meanwhile, other Democrats, including those running for president, have reiterated their support for a speedy impeachment.
I’ll say it again: This is corruption, plain and simple. Donald Trump must be impeached. https://t.co/ZZH4J3DY0t
— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) October 22, 2019
Updated at 19:24 EDT
17:00 EDT
That’s it from me today. My west coast colleague, Maanvi Singh, will take over the blog for the next few hours.
Here’s where the day stands so far:
Bill Taylor, the acting US ambassador to Ukraine, testified in House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry that he was told Trump was holding up military aid to Ukraine until the country’s president publicly announced investigations into Joe Biden and the 2016 election – contradicting Trump’s repeated denials of a quid pro quo.
Trump sparked outrage by comparing the impeachment inquiry to a “lynching”.
The anonymous author of a 2018 New York Times op-ed who claimed to be part of an internal White House “resistance” to Trump is now writing a book while maintaining anonymity.
Russia has won joint control of formerly Kurdish territory in Syria, marking a crucial victory for Vladimir Putin after the withdrawal of US troops.
The UK parliament rejected the Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s proposal to fast-track Brexit, virtually guaranteeing that Britain will not leave the EU by its set deadline at the end of the month. (Follow the Guardian’s UK politics live blog for more.)
Maanvi will have more on the news of the day, so stay tuned.
Updated at 19:23 EDT
16:40 EDT
Bill Taylor also said in his opening statement to the House committees investigating impeachment that a National Security Council official, Tim Morrison, had offered a less than glowing assessment of Trump’s call with the Ukrainian president.
The acting US ambassador to Ukraine said: “Mr. Morrison told me that the call ‘could have been better’ and that President Trump had suggested that President Zelenskyyor his staff meet with Mr. Giuliani and Attorney General William Barr. I did not see any official readout of the call until it was publicly released on September 25.”
Morrison’s opinion is a far cry from Trump’s repeated assertions that his call with the Ukrainian president was “perfect” and included nothing improper.
Updated at 16:40 EDT
16:23 EDT
A Washington Post reporter summarized the opening statement of Bill Taylor, the acting US ambassador to Ukraine, in this way:
Shorter Bill Taylor: President Trump insisted, over and over there was not a “quid pro quo.” But there was a quid. Followed by a pro. And then, finally, a quo.
— Matt Viser (@mviser) October 22, 2019
Updated at 16:23 EDT
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