- Meant to include this yesterday. The president tweeted out that if Iran attacked any US targets, he would retaliate, and that his Tweet served as legal notification for Congress. Needless to say, this is nonsense.
- Jason Leopold (Buzzfeed) posted a thread about a few government agencies reaction to Trump’s Tweets. The NSA was instructed not to get involved into the drama. The CIA responded to one of Trump’s Tweets about North Korea, but that response is entirely redacted. These agencies take Trump’s Tweeting very seriously. The Department of Justice has frequently argued in court that Trump’s Tweets are not serious and shouldn’t be viewed as such. That isn’t the stance taken by our own government.
- I posted this article yesterday, but saw a highlight today I didn’t mention. Pompeo was expecting our European allies to publicly champion the Soliemani assassination. We have now spent three years alienating those allies, especially on Iranian issues. It’s a testament to how poor this administration is handling foreign policy that they thought Europe would be cheering our actions.
- Marco Rubio said that the Senate trial had to be confined to evidence discovered in the House impeachment inquiry. There is absolutely zero legal or constitutional basis for this stance. New witnesses were called in both prior presidential impeachment trials. In fact during Johnson’s impeachment twenty five witnesses who had not testified before the House were called. The Republicans are desperate to prevent McGahn, Mulvaney, and Pompeo from testifying while painting such a restriction as normal. It is not.
- Boris Johnson has warned Donald Trump against striking Iranian cultural sites as he promised to do. Johnson pointed out this is a war crime under the Hague convention. It’s also a war crime under the Geneva convention and UN rules.
- The president has once again tweeted out an attack on Los Angeles and San Francisco over their homelessness problems. Outside of DC, the worst homelessness rate in the country is in New York City where Trump lived almost his entire life. He says he can fix the problem, but only if those cities ask politely. In short, Donald Trump claims he can solve homelessness but will withhold that solution unless mayors show an appropriate level of fealty to him.
- CBP yesterday publicly denied that anything had changed in the treatment of Iranian-Americans re-entering the country. However, since the Suleimani assassination, more than sixty Iranian-Americans have been detained in Washington alone while returning to the U.S. The extra questions included asking about political stances and allegiance to the United States.
- Yesterday the president said he wants to impose massive sanctions on Iraq if our troops leave and have them pay us “back” for our military bases there. The White House is now researching what those sanctions would entail when enacted. The president wants to harshly punish the country the United States invaded if they ask us to leave their country.
- In a rather bizarre experience, Congressman Timmons (he replaced Trey Gowdy in South Carolina) asked a question about impeachment and posted his personal cell phone number. I texted him with the information he asked about. Surprisingly, he responded and we had a cordial disagreement. His Tweet was complaining that the House investigation was partisan and the vote against impeachment was bipartisan. He said these things had not happened before. He’s wrong. Each vote against Clinton had bipartisan support. He eventually told me he meant to refer to the vote FOR impeachment instead of the vote against it. An entire five Democrats voted for the two passed impeachment articles against Clinton. His point, poorly phrased, was that no Republicans voted to impeach Trump. The problem here is that the Republican who said he’d vote to impeach was kicked out of the Republican party. If five Democratic votes for impeaching Clinton made it bipartisan, then Justin Amash voting for impeaching Trump makes it bipartisan.
