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What we know about Donald Trump: He’s supposed to leave for Florida today around 4pm ET; he’s demanding Congress re-do its spending/pandemic relief bill; he’s beginning a pardoning spree combining the unsurprising with the shocking; he’s planning to veto the defense authorization measure; he’s continuing to lead a challenge of the election returns; he’s planning to go to Georgia for a big Senate rally; he’s threatening Republicans who he believes are failing his loyalty test, including Mitch McConnell and John Thune.
What we know about Joe Biden: he’s continuing to staff his government; he’s strategizing on a plan to combat the pandemic while warning of dark days ahead; he’s still of the belief that congressional Republicans will work with him without any meaningful outreach to Trump supporters; he’s benefiting from the nature of the (often multipart) questions that the media assigned to cover him choose to ask; he’s talking tough about the alleged Russian hack and criticizing Donald Trump, “a remarkable departure from tradition, in which incoming presidents are careful about not second-guessing the actions of the incumbent.”
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The two most fundamental questions at this writing are related: does Donald Trump have an actual, semi-well-thought-out-plan here and what will he do next on all these matters?
I hear you laugh.
While no close observer would attribute a master strategy to this, uhm, eclectic admixture of moves, it would be a mistake to assume it is all just totally rando.
Trump got elected president (and almost won again!) in no small part because he well understands the behavior of the energy that is released when his semi-controlled chaos is propelled into the atmosphere.
At dawn, here are some major news organizations best sense of WTF on the spending bills (which is the only storyline in the bunch that is truly unexpected and new):
Aides said they view the tweet more as the president voicing his displeasure with the bill than an actual veto threat. One aide said Mr. Trump’s announcement amounted to an effort to make Congress squirm.
“So dumb,” one administration official said. “So, so dumb.”
Current and former administration officials speculated on Tuesday evening that Mr. Trump did not like the narrative that he had been sidelined from the negotiations and that calling for higher direct payments was a political move to please his base.
I will say that none of the president’s Donny-come-lately complaints are off-brand for him: populisty desire to hand out more tax money to taxpayers, opposition to foreign aid, cherry-picked denunciations of spending on the arts, anti-swamp rhetoric, etc.
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The primary developments we are waiting on, besides the president’s next moves, are
* the reaction of Mitch McConnell (now that Speaker Pelosi has said the House will vote on the $2,000 direct payments, which of course won’t address the president’s other stated objections to the overall package).
* the reactions of David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, after both bragged about the bill the president now balks at.
* The light-of-day reactions of Joe Biden and Steve Mnuchin, which will be interesting indeed.
The only thing I can state with confidence is that no one – not even the Chaos Commander-in-Chief -- knows how (or when) this reel ends.
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ESSENTIAL READING
* These two Washington Post paragraphs:
Pence and his advisers have begun thinking about how to handle Jan. 6 and escape Trump’s ire, but no final decisions have been made.
“The vice president does not want to leave on bad terms with the president, I can assure you that,” one administration official with knowledge of Pence’s thinking said.
Plus this op ed from the same paper laying out the tough January 6 choices the Veep faces.
* The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Mark Meadows’ surprise mission to the Peach State to check out the voting process: “’I’m not making any allegations as much as I am trying to get to the truth,’ Meadows was overheard saying.”
* Also from the Washington Post:
The FBI has concluded that Iran was behind online efforts earlier this month to incite lethal violence against the bureau’s director, a former top U.S. cyber expert and multiple state elections officials who have refuted claims of widespread voter fraud promoted by President Trump and his allies, federal and state officials said Tuesday.
* The Wall Street Journal does a round of investigative reporting on Hunter Biden’s business empire, with nearly nothing new, but it doesn’t take a Gang of 500er or veteran journalist to know that this is a warning to Wilmington that more such stories (and not just by the Journal…) are in the pipeline.
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I was so so very wrong in telling you that Gavin Newsom would select a woman to replace Kamala Harris in the Senate. I have sent notes to my sources and my instincts to the repair shop.
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Here’s the trailer for my recent town hall on how you can become part of our good Gang of Grace:
Please watch and then sign up here to join our Gang, which will be working in the coming days to raise the level of our national conversation one soul at a time.
Join our efforts to make the world a kinder, gentler place.
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Among the best reactions to the Beatles item from Tuesday was the sharing of this classic work from the so-called “Fifth Beatle”:
As the president would say: ENJOY!