Mr. Trump’s presidency has delivered what those voters wanted on policy, the economy and the judiciary. But exit polls and Tuesday’s suburban results suggest he hasn’t delivered what many of them want in a presidential persona.
Category Archives: Donald Trump
Obama Judges Trump Judges
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U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar ruled against President Trump on an immigration matter. So Trump called him an Obama judge. And that prompted Chief Justice John Roberts to publicly rebuke the President, explaining, “there are no Obama judges or Trump or Bush or Clinton judges.”
Obama Judges
Mark Thiessen thinks jumping into a political argument is a funny way for Justice Roberts to show he’s above politics.
You may have noticed Trump doesn’t claim to be above politics. So he counterpunched that judges are a threat to national security.
Go here to see a president publicly rebuke the Supreme Court.
Cold Blooded Politics
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It looks like Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman knew about the Kashoggi murder. The CIA says he ordered it. But President Trump says, “Maybe he did and maybe he didn’t.”
Trump has MBS’s back because the Saudis buy a lot of stuff from us. He bragged that he did “$450 billion in commercial deals” on his trip to Saudi Arabia.
Cold Blooded Politics
WSJ editors think Trump is crass. But they also thinks the Saudis are important allies in a “dangerous war against Middle Eastern terror supported by the mullahs in Iran.” The editorial page calls it “Trump’s Crude Realpolitik.”
And the barbaric murder of a journalist is crude. But not as crude as 3,000 murders on 9/11. Columnist Holman Jenkins claims the 15 Saudi hijackers may have had the support of members of the royal family:
If Saudi royals crave an airing of this dirty laundry, they know what to do: Keep MBS in power. Undoubtably among the interested would be the 9/11 families who managed to win, over President Obama’s veto, sweeping bipartisan support for their lawsuit to hold the Saudi government accountable for the murder of their loved ones on 9/11.
If the Saudis think President Trump can (or wants to ) protect MBS against all that would follow, they should think again.
Update 11/28: The Washington Post’s David Ignatius says there’s a power struggle going on within the royal family. And he has an interesting story about captive family member Turki bin Abdullah and “his closest adviser, Saudi businessman Tarek Obaid.” Obaid is hiding out in Switzerland and may have barely escaped the same fate as Kashoggi. Obaid says, “There was clear abuse of power by incompetent thugs, but I don’t believe that the crown prince’s instructions were for these events to play out as they did.”
Press Pass Conference
Bureaucratic Patriotism
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World leaders gathered in Paris over the weekend to commemorate Armistice Day. It occurred 100 years ago. French president Macron used the occasion to trash Trump’s idea of nationalism. He called it a “betrayal of patriotism.”
So President Trump went into a snit. He insisted his helicopter couldn’t fly in the rain and skipped a cemetery visit.
Earlier Macron and Angela Merkel embraced patriotism for an E.U. army that would stand up to China and America.
So, classicist author Victor Davis Hanson offered a history lesson about French leaders and nationalism.
Oh, and a 101 year old French woman mistook Chancellor Merkel for the 60 something wife of the the 40 year old Macron.
Democrat’s Suburban Shift
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David Montgomery at CityLab has a killer map showing suburban congressional districts represented by Democrats. They’re a big chunk of the country. And he says almost all of the 33 seats Democrats picked up on Tuesday were in suburban districts:
Democrats retook the House of Representatives on the back of a suburban surge Tuesday, remaking a once rock-ribbed Republican bastion into a Democratic stronghold.
Though some districts remained undecided Wednesday afternoon, Democrats had picked up at least 33 seats in Congress, almost all of them predominantly suburban. These suburban districts, once closely divided, are now twice as likely to be represented by a Democrat than by a Republican. Democrats even lost some seats in rural areas, but picked up at least 22 seats that CityLab’s Congressional Density Indexclassifies as “sparse suburban” or “dense suburban.” Add that to Democrat gains in almost all of the remaining Republican-held districts with major urban populations and you have a new, blue majority.
Suburban Shift
Here’s what some others have to say about the Democrat’s suburban shift.
The reality is that Mr. Trump’s 2016 “base” included many traditional, suburban Republicans. Some voted for him, some against Hillary Clinton and some for a conservative Supreme Court majority.
Democrats have won back control of the House of Representatives, slicing through Republican-held suburbs where President Donald Trump has proven toxic to undo a Republican majority once thought to be impervious until the next round of redistricting.
And Trump should be terrified that Democrat Stacey Abrams won 56% of Gwinnett County, with 920,000 people the largest suburban county in Georgia, in the state’s still-undecided governor’s race. Gwinnett rarely if ever voted Democratic for president before Hillary Clinton, who won 51%, and has grown by 115,000 people since 2010. Nearby Cobb County,with 755,000 people and Newt Gingrich’s old geographic base, gave Abrams almost 54%.
