A No Good, Very Bad Week For Trump… And An Impactful Week for the Supreme Court
Hello Hackaroos!
Well, the surprise January 6th hearing certainly lived up to the hype. No matter what President Trump did or didn’t do inside the Beast, it was an awful week for him and his frothing band of election denying loyalists. We start with that and then turn to the latest Supreme Court news and finally, a few choice tidbits about one of our favorite Senate races: Georgia.
Before we get going, as we head into the holiday weekend, we want to hear what questions you have for us for a special mailbag edition next week. What do the primaries so far mean for President Trump? What will it take for Democrats to use what's happened in the last month to put together something different than just marching forward towards the red tidal wave? And, of course, what's next for politics surrounding the January 6th hearings?
Leave your questions in the comments section and we’ll try to give you some answers next week.
Okay, now let’s begin…
WHAT DOES CASSIDY HUTCHINSON’S TESTIMONY REALLY MEAN
GIBBS: So, the Trump defenders are doing what people who are guilty normally do and they try to discredit two hours of testimony by attacking one point, not answering the larger questions or addressing the larger narrative of the testimony. (Incidentally, this started by Trump World denying that he even really knew who Cassidy Hutchinson was, but the explosiveness of her testimony ended that line of obfuscation.) Whether or not the story that Cassidy Hutchinson said she heard (she didn’t testify that she witnessed the event) about the Orange Menace lunging for the steering wheel and at the Secret Service agent is immaterial. To be clear, nobody has refuted this information thus far under sworn oath. The crucial point is that Trump wanted to go to the Capitol and meet and continue the insurrection. That's clearly what the Committee is laying out. That’s the narrative Hutchinson helped illuminate and no one has denied that was the case. The next set of hearings will put Mark Meadows even closer to the center of this planning. While he listened to Cassidy Hutchinson's sage advice not to go to the Willard Hotel meeting, he did call in and, thus, continued this upper level White House planning for what we saw on January 6th.
I do want to say this, and that’s that I have great admiration for the Secret Service. I watched them protect the President that I worked for. On a few occasions they were forced to take some extra measures to protect me. And I'm greatly in their debt for that service. Telling a reporter on background what didn't happen without even attaching your name is not in any way shape or form equal to walking in, placing your hand on the Bible, and testifying. And testifying for whoever does want to refute what she said is not going to be a 15-minute affair on one incident. It will almost certainly last 6 to 10 hours, with a lot of questions on a lot of different incident and moments. It won't just be about one day, January 6th. It'll be about the lead up to those days. I hope it happens. It should happen with the Secret Service. It should happen with Pat Cipollone. It should happen with Mark Meadows. The duty people have here now is not to Donald Trump. It's to the Office of the President of the United States and to the country. I think it is clear on the Trump side that there's a recognition by some that history is taking roll. That roll call is going to decide who's on what side for the long term of history. And it will be interesting to see what that produces. This was an astonishing and devastating hearing. Murphy, what say you?
MURPHY: Hearing? What hearing? Did something happen?
OK, I couldn’t resist. It was huge. And regardless of which steering wheel the former POTUS was attempting to grab during one of his – apparently frequent – toddler tantrums several vital facts were uncovered. I won’t recap everything, but the fact that we have very persuasive testimony that Trump really, really, really wanted to go to the Capitol and try to lead an armed mob in a crazy Putsch to stop an honest tallying of the electoral college… well what else needs to be said? Guilty as sin. Sedition. It’s all there. Now politically I doubt it’ll derail the midterms – we have written about how the gas and groceries Hell most voters are caught in will likely be disastrous for Biden and the D’s – but have no doubt that Trump’s political situation did take a large torpedo under the waterline this week. Forget about the Democrats and that the Trump haters in your life now hate him even more. What counts for the future is Trump’s internal Republican organs have been badly damaged. While the GOP grassroots troops haven’t fully processed all of this yet – note the mixed results in Tuesday’s GOP primaries in Illinois, Colorado and Utah – the Big Elephant is recalculating its view of Donald Trump. Thinking about what the GOP leadership is now privately saying about Trump, I’m reminded of the classic scene in Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, where a laconic general played by the great G.D. Spradlin wistfully talks about Marlon Brando’s Col. Walter Kurtz before he (and a young Harrison Ford) sends Martin Sheen out into the jungle to assassinate him. “… His ideas, methods, become unsound.”
See it here:
And, here is the rest of the scene, with the famous, “terminate the Colonel’s command” line:
I hear Governor DeSantis has it down line for line…
GIBBS: Exactly. Apocalypse Now aside, I think politically there's no doubt this has been an enormously tough week for Donald Trump. A hit to the main engine, if you will. He's still going to have a fervent base, but there are going to be a lot of people who are thinking to themselves going forward, do I need the sideshow of all of this? Do I need the circus when, in reality, I can get the very same thing, the very same set of thoughts and policies from somebody who doesn't create chaos wherever they go?
By the way, it's also been a terrible week for Kevin McCarthy. Kevin McCarthy made a strategic decision, along with other Republicans to allow the hearings to take place the way they have. And, by the way, they're not hearings. They're presentations. They're the opening argument in a criminal case. And they're not rebutted. We talked about this many, many months ago. It was a huge strategic blunder. So, I would say, taken all together, it’s been a bad week for a lot of the GOP. Does Trump retain some real strength in the Republican Party? Absolutely. The elections on Tuesday showed, particularly in Illinois, that there is still salience in the base. In Colorado, election deniers were defeated up and down the ballot, and Tina Peters, who was indicted for tampering with election equipment in Mesa County, who ran for Secretary of State, finished third and immediately proclaimed that the election had been stolen. I know, shocker! The Republican choir has been singing the same song for a long time, and it's going to take a lot more than one week to change the tone of the music. Murphy, how long do you think that does take?
MURPHY: You will see an, um, evolution on this. Most elected R’s – except for the real hard heads – really, really want to move beyond the crazy pants "election was stolen" stuff and just hammer the big gas and groceries drum. They'll move from a walk to a fast trot on that now.
THE SUPREME COURT DEMOCRATS SHOULD GET USED TO…
GIBBS: All I’ll say is, wow, it has been quite time for the United States Supreme Court. I know that a lot of the energy has rightly been sucked up by the big decision in Dobbs around abortion, but when you take the gun case, the Dobbs case and now the case around the EPA and climate change, it’s all very scary stuff. On the EPA case from this week, readers should be clear this isn't just affecting the EPA. This affects the regulatory ability through executive action to determine whether or not government can do its job on behalf of the American people. It's a stunning case. Another case decided 6-3. Democrats should get used to hearing the score 6 to 3 because at this point: the cases that are being lined up for next year and what's happening is remarkable and you're going to hear 6 to 3 a lot. I was looking at a poll last night done by the Pew Research Center and it showed 80% of Americans favored strong regulation of power plant emissions that help cause climate change. 80%! This will help Dems paint a narrative of extremism, but it’s been a huge punch in the gut the past 10 or so days. Murphy, what’s next for the politics of the Court?
MURPHY: The Court is becoming a big lightning rod, which is something the Court has generally tried to avoid for years. While I’m sympathetic to conservative arguments that the Dems are trying to “change the rules” since they don’t like the decisions this conservative Court has made, it is true that when public opinion is clear the Court has traditionally responded to it. Not so true on these decisions. Now many make the argument that the Court should be pure and ignore public opinion; just do what is “legally right.” Easier said than done, and the Court has traditionally been very pragmatic and an astute observer of majority public opinion. The tangled reasoning behind the original Roe decision (from a Constitutional Law point of view; send your angry letters to Gibbs) is a good example. Now that the Court is busy taking away perceived rights – and is threatening to do more – it shouldn’t be surprising that the big wheels of politics are turning and there is surging interest from the Democratic side in taking big action to react to the Court’s actions. Although their short-term political chances look bleak, in the longer term, the D’s have an edge with public opinion on this culture war stuff. So in the battle over repealing perceived rights grows, the D’s may well win it in the longer term and the Court is on a risky path politically.
WHY THE FILIBUSTER FIGHT ACTUALLY MATTERS
GIBBS: So President Biden finally said he was willing to get rid of the filibuster to codify Roe, but, the reality is, there's very little that's going to be done this year on the filibuster. We know that. We've watched this story play out for almost two years and it’s made the President look weaker almost every time. Frankly, it doesn't really matter what Joe Biden thinks about the filibuster. He's not a United States Senator. But the one good thing that his mention Thursday at the press conference in Spain does do, is it now creates a rallying cry to go with and give some detail around why people need to be motivated to vote. There's now a tangible answer to the question of why should I vote? And there's now a what - if people do vote, they can elect more Democrats and get rid of the filibuster around codifying abortion. It’s not going to happen in the next four months. But the why and the what are we need two more Democratic senators so that we can change the filibuster. We also need to keep the House if we're going to pass any legislation that removing the filibuster would allow us to do. So, the question now is: is this White House and is the Democratic Party establishment in Washington ready to pick this up and run this through November? Not simply mentioning it in a press conference in Europe, but make it a rallying cry and a campaign theme from now until Election Day. Murphy, where do you see this heading?
MURPHY: It’s a good election year battle cry for the D’s. It focuses the election a bit and gives them something to be on the offensive with. But they don’t have the votes in the short term.
TIDBITS
GIBBS: Turning to one of our favorite states to cover: Georgia, with a new poll making headlines in the Warnock-Walker Senate race this week. I’ll say this: it would not surprise me that Raphael Warnock is ahead by a few points. But if people think he's 10 points ahead, I have some oceanfront property in Kansas that I'm happy to sell them (even the Warnock campaign cautioned that this race is going to be very close). The political environment is bad for Democrats in Georgia. The same poll had President Biden's approval rating with Independents there is at 29%. I do believe it shows that Herschel Walker has not had a very good month since gaining the GOP nomination. In a perfect world, you've got a great environment and a great candidate. But candidates are going to matter a lot, particularly in these Senate races. It's harder to hide your weaknesses and Walker is finding that out. And credit to Warnock who is running a very strong and impressive campaign. They're on TV. They're using their monetary advantage to hit Walker. Here’s what Democrats are going to have to get comfortable being uncomfortable about: if we're lucky, all these races go to the end and they're two-point races. We have to hope that when they go to the end and that those two points are on our side, but it is highly unlikely that a Democrat in this environment, in a swing state, and, by the way, Georgia has been a swing state for about seven and a half minutes, is up by 10 points. So keep working!
MURPHY: Yup. The Murphy Poll, which is never wrong, has Warnock just one point behind and within the margin of error (so whomever wins the Murphy Poll will be right again!). The point is, it’s gonna be a real race and both sides should campaign like that every day. The only Big Question lurking out there is will Walker blow up under intense scrutiny in the stretch? Being a first-time candidate and all that risk is there. (And clearly Warnock is hoping for it, hence the tightening of the screws with the attack ad offensive.) But if Walker can hold it all together and stay on the offensive, he has the advantage in this anti-Biden, anti-Democratic environment. (Speaking of that generic GOP advantage, wow… running for Governor again this year was a rare dumb move from Stacey Abrams. She is likely going to crash her Big Future on the midterm rocks; 2 losses don’t a bright future make, as Yoda would croak. I think she could have credibly – in this crazy New Politics we all live in – run for POTUS in the Democratic primary next year without having run for Governor again this year. Oh well.)
Don’t forget to leave your questions so we can give some answers with just four months to go until the midterms!
Have a Happy Independence Day and we’ll see you next week!
Murphy and Gibbs