Category Archives: Donald Trump

A leading host on Fox News, a conservative network notorious for its loyalty to the White House, has lambasted Donald Trump for mounting the most direct attack on press freedom in American history.

Chris Wallace, widely admired for breaking ranks from Fox colleagues by putting tough questions to administration officials, delivered his most stinging critique yet of the US president at an event celebrating the first amendment.

I believe that President Trump is engaged in the most direct sustained assault on freedom of the press in our history, Wallace said to applause at the Newseum, a media museum in Washington, on Wednesday night.

He has done everything he can to undercut the media, to try and delegitimise us, and I think his purpose is clear: to raise doubts when we report critically about him and his administration that we can be trusted. Back in 2017, he tweeted something that said far more about him than it did about us: The fake news media is not my enemy. It is the enemy of the American people.

Wallace recalled that retired admiral Bill McRaven, a navy Seal for 37 years, had described Trumps sentiment as maybe the greatest threat to democracy in my lifetime because, unlike even the Soviet Union or Islamic terrorism, it undermines the US constitution.

The veteran broadcaster added: Lets be honest, the presidents attacks have done some damage. A Freedom Forum Institute poll, associated here with the Newseum, this year found that 29% of Americans, almost a third of all of us, think the first amendment goes too far. And 77%, three quarters, say that fake news is a serious threat to our democracy.

Wallace is a rare dissenting voice at the Rupert Murdoch-owned Fox News, where opinion hosts such as Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham are fiercely pro-Trump. Longtime anchor Shep Smith, who was also praised for his independence, stepped down in October and warned that intimidation and vilification of the press is now a global phenomenon. We dont have to look far for evidence of that.

Wallace, son of distinguished journalist Mike Wallace, conducts some of the sharpest grillings of any of Americas long running Sunday politics shows. When he recently took House minority whip Steve Scalise to task, Trump responded with a tweet that called Wallace nasty and obnoxious.

But at Wednesdays event, a farewell to the Newseum which is closing down after nearly 12 years at its current location, Wallace also warned the media against overreach. I think many of our colleagues see the presidents attacks, his constant bashing of the media as a rationale, as an excuse to cross the line themselves, to push back, and that is a big mistake, he said.

I see it all the time on the front page of major newspapers and the lead of the evening news: fact mixed with opinion, buzzwords like bombshell and scandal. The animus of the reporter and the editor as plain to see as the headline.

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Fox host lambasts Trump over 'most sustained assault on press freedom in US history' - The Guardian

Fox News anchor Chris Wallace has delivered a blistering assessment of President Donald Trumps repeated and sustained attacks on the press that report critically on him and his administration.

I believe that President Trump is engaged in the most direct sustained assault on freedom of the press in our history, the host of Fox News Sunday said at an event celebrating the First Amendmentat the Newseum media museum in Washington on Wednesday.

He has done everything he can to undercut the media, to try and delegitimize us, and I think his purpose is clear: to raise doubts when we report critically about him and his administration that we can be trusted, Wallace continued, per The Guardian.

Wallace also reportedly said this tweet from Trump in February 2017 said far more about him than it did about us.

Wallaces pointed criticism of Trump is in stark contrast to the praise his prime time colleagues on the widely watched conservative network including Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham often shower on the president.

On Monday, Wallace rejected the claim that the case for the impeachment of Trump over the Ukraine scandal is narrow.

The allegation that President Trump conditioned support for a key foreign policy ally on political benefit to him, strikes me as not narrow but far broader than the Clinton impeachment, he said.

Wallace last month explained why he believed it would be a terrible idea for Trump to testify in the House impeachment inquiry with an analogy about Prince Andrew and his friendship with the late financier pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

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Fox News' Chris Wallace Torches Donald Trump's Attacks On The Press - HuffPost

While much is unpredictable about the attempt to impeach Donald Trump, one thing can be anticipated with certainty. The US president will show no respect for the process and no contrition if found guilty.

Mr Trumps approach will be consistent with his already familiar political style: deceit, cronyism, distraction and bullying. It is the success of that technique that makes impeachment necessary and also difficult. A president who is so obviously unworthy of the office must be held accountable and yet, because Mr Trumps methods have corrupted American public discourse, the unworthiness is not at all obvious to a large swathe of voters.

Democrats have their work cut out persuading many US citizens that there is even a case to answer. They must overcome a conservative propaganda machine that presents impeachment as a crooked enterprise in itself. Facts that should be beyond dispute battle for attention with an army of lies. Partly to overcome that challenge, Democrats have kept the draft articles of impeachment, published this week, succinct. They set out a streamlined version of Mr Trumps offences, focusing on abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. At the heart of the matter is the alleged attempt to use US military aid to induce Ukraines president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, to collude in discrediting Joe Biden, the former US vice-president. Mr Trump denies any such scheme.

The longer trail of misdeeds dating back to the 2016 election campaign is not explicitly cited in the articles. Many Democratic supporters would have preferred a wider-ranging account of corruption, racism, deception, interference with the judiciary and reckless dereliction of duty. The defence of a narrower focus is both legal and political. The charges have to stick. Democrats in Congress felt that the Ukraine affair contained the vital ingredients of judicable crime and misdemeanour the constitutional threshold for impeachment. Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, also had to contend with qualms from colleagues who feel constrained by undecided voters who are not viscerally hostile to Mr Trump. Much though it would be gratifying to scoop up everything appalling about the current White House regime and land it on the president with a cathartic knockout blow, that is not available in the climate of US politics. A perception of indiscriminate assault on the commander-in-chief could backfire on Democrats who, for now, just about have the balance of public opinion on their side.

Whether the president deserves to be removed from office should not be decided by opinion polls. But next Novembers ballot creates a febrile environment in which gravitation towards polarised positions is more powerful than any bipartisan instinct. To complete an impeachment will require a two-thirds Senate majority, which depends on Republican votes. Those senators must either believe that their president is so toxic that electoral interest requires abandoning him, or they must value the resilience of the constitutional order above popularity with the voters who propelled Mr Trump to office. Neither seems likely. If there were a limit to what most Republicans can tolerate in aberrant behaviour, the president would have found it by now. He has crossed every line that might have been drawn. He cannot clear a bar set at the lowest conceivable threshold of decency, competence or integrity.

But the impeachment process serves a function that goes beyond next years electoral tests. It asserts the supremacy of law in a political system imperilled by a leader who believes with despotic certainty in his own immunity from criticism or sanction. It is not a partisan move against the president but a defence of the foundational principles of the American republic. To declare Mr Trump unfit for office is to anchor US democracy in a self-evident truth when it is dangerously adrift on a sea of lies.

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The Guardian view on Trumps impeachment: the integrity of US democracy is at stake - The Guardian

President Donald Trump will travel to Austin on Wednesday to tour an Apple Inc. manufacturing plant and tout the companys recent expansion in Central Texas, a White House official told the American-Statesman on Saturday.

Trump, Apple CEO Tim Cook and senior administration officials on Wednesday will hear from employees about how the products are assembled at the Austin facility, the White House official said.

Apple announced in September it would keep manufacturing its Mac Pro computers in Austin, after it received exemptions from some proposed federal tariffs.

The Mac Pro has been manufactured in the Flextronics Americas factory in Northwest Austin, which Cook confirmed in 2013.

In June, the Wall Street Journal reported that Apple planned to move Mac Pro manufacturing to China. The newspaper cited a number of challenges, including declining demand and manufacturing capacity.

But three months later, Apple said it would be able to continue manufacturing the Mac Pro in the United States after trade officials approved exemptions that allow it to import key Mac Pro parts from China without being subject to tariffs.

The company said in September it would begin production soon at the same Austin facility where Mac Pro has been made since 2013.

Were building the Mac Pro Apples most powerful computer ever right here in Austin because we believe in the power of American innovation, Cook said in a statement. Like every product we make, the Mac Pro is designed and engineered in the U.S., and were proud to support 2.4 million jobs across the nation.

Apple recently redesigned the product for a re-release this year, with initial pricing starting at $5,999.

Austin is Apples largest hub outside of its Cupertino, Calif., headquarters. The tech company has more than 6,000 employees at its Austin main campus, and last year announced plans for a new, nearby 133-acre corporate campus that will initially employ up to 5,000 people.

Last year, Apple signed the presidents pledge to Americas workers, committing to create 10,000 training opportunities for American workers and students over the next five years. Cook is also a member of the Trump administrations American workforce policy advisory board.

Apples $1 billion facility which will be less than a mile from its Parmer Lane campus eventually could expand to accommodate up to 15,000 workers. The company employs roughly 6,200 people in Austin, and, counting contractors, its Austin workforce numbers are about 7,000.

Meanwhile, the company has continued to expand in the metro area ahead of the opening of its new campus.

This year, the company confirmed it has a short-term lease for the entire Riata Corporate Park 8 building, less than a mile from Apples existing campus. Apple also confirmed that it has leased a building at North Austins Parmer Innovation Center.

Trump will travel to Austin with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Director of the National Economic Council Larry Kudlow, son-in-law Jared Kushner and daughter Ivanka Trump.

Trumps Austin visit comes one month after he toured French luxury brand Louis Vuittons new leather workshop in Johnson County near Fort Worth.

By Nicole Cobler

Austin American-Statesman

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Donald Trump to visit Apple plant in Austin next week - The Dallas Morning News

President Donald Trump told reporters Friday that he shouldn't be impeached and called the impeachment proceedings underway in the House of Representatives "a disgrace." (Nov. 15) AP

Anyone who posts as many tweets as President Donald Trump is bound to have some typos here and there, but the president's typing errors tend to get more attention than those committed by the average user.

That was the case on Sunday, when "womem" became a trending term on the social media site after the president sent out that misspelling in a retweet praising former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi.

Trump later deleted the tweet and posted a new one with the correct spelling.

"I agree Katrina, Pam Bondi is a great womem!" Trump wrote in his tweet, which shared a post from Katrina Campins, a former contestant on "The Apprentice."

Campins said she had the "utmost respect" for Bondi.

"Not only did she serve as the first woman Attorney General for Florida but she is a class act who is kind to other women regardless of her undeniable success. True strength," she wrote.

A screengrab of a tweet posted by President Donald Trump on Nov. 17, 2019.(Photo: Donald Trump via Twitter)

Earlier this month, the White House announced Bondi was joining the administration in a temporary role to handle"proactive impeachment messaging and other special projects as they arise."

As attorney general, Bondi was criticized by Democratsfor not conducting a fraud investigation into Trump University after a review of consumer complaints against the for-profit real estate program. Critics pointed out the decision not to investigate the school came around the time Bondi received a $25,000 campaign contributionfrom Trump, though both denied wrongdoing.

Although the "womem" typo was not on the level of some Trump's other spelling gaffes such as the mysterious covfefe tweetand it's easy to see how one could mistakenly hit the "m" instead of the adjacent "n" key, Twitter users were quick to mock the president's mistake. And several had not forgotten Bondi's Trump University decision.

'Covfefe': Donald Trump revives the mystery of his strange, new word

More: Trump accidentally refers to Defense Secretary Esper as 'Mark Esperanto' in tweet defending Syria withdrawal

More: Pam Bondi doesn't regret taking Trump donations

Contributing: David Jackson

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'Pam Bondi is a great womem!': Another Trump typo mocked by Twitter users - USA TODAY

It would be interesting to know what Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward thought of the opening words of the Washington Post coverage of the Watergate impeachment hearings in 1973. If you like to watch grass grow you would have loved the opening yesterday of the Senate select committees hearings on the Watergate and related campaign misdeeds, wrote Jules Witcover.

The correspondent writing in the paper that owned the story and ultimately brought down the presidency of Richard Nixon continued: The investigation doesnt intend to sacrifice thoroughness or when necessary, even boredom for sensationalism, just to hold the TV audience. Forty eight years and two impeachments later, this process and perhaps journalism have not moved on very much. But the expectation and environment for both politics and reporting is radically changed.

It is entirely possible that when unfolding their copies of the Post half a century ago, readers spat coffee across the table with indignation that a dramatic moment in the countrys democracy was being criticised for lack of media appeal but there was no Twitter and no live feedback loop to let Witcover know that. It is also possible that the unimpeachable authority of the press at the time meant this framing of the hearings was accepted without controversy.

The presidency of Donald Trump has been one defined by persistent spectacle and dramatic acts of transgression and rule-breaking. The most dramatic passage of any presidency is however when it is put under existential threat, either by the ballot box or by the process of impeachment. It would not be quite true to say that America held its breath last week at the outset of the first internet impeachment, because that would imply a sense of shared anticipation and expectation. Not only was Trump under close official scrutiny, so was the hectic coverage which has accompanied every second of the administration.

Editors at Reuters and NBC News were not shielded by the barriers of time and distance enjoyed by the Post when it delivered similar verdicts on the first day of impeachment hearings. Reuters headline: Consequential, but dull: Trump hearings begin without a bang, was matched in its lack of self-awareness by NBC News correspondent Jonathan Allen, who wrote that the witnesses lacked the pizzazz necessary to capture public attention. The ensuing critique was savage: Twitter, which sometimes feels like the whole of journalism, lit up with condemnation pizzazz was not the point.

The extended and exhaustingly dystopian media operation of Trumps presidency has been run by the main protagonist like a particularly nightmarish version of the Apprentice. But it is not entertainment. It has caused real pain, danger and death to citizens as many presidencies do, but it has been carried out with a naked agenda of self-interest and constitutional disregard which has shocked all but the elected Republican representatives.

In last weeks hearings, the first witnesses on the stand, William Taylor and George Kent, were serious but their testimony was far from boring. Taylor dropped new evidence, not previously known about, during his sober testimony. The potential effect of coverage that then tells audiences nothing to see here, is interpreted not just as opinion but as irresponsible reporting and editing.

The imperative for journalists now is to not only report events as they happen, but frame them with an awareness of what happens as a result of their reporting. There is no such thing as just a headline, or an incautiously deployed adjective, that will go unnoticed halfway down your copy. Without wanting to criticise already hard-pressed journalists, it is clear that many newsrooms, even the most well-resourced, do not have a strategy for coping with this world of reporting, publishing and amplifying.

At the other end of the journalistic spectrum in America last week, the humble student newspaper, there was another example of how rapidly ethical ground shifts and why the field needs to adapt more quickly.

The Daily Northwestern, a newspaper produced principally by undergraduates, posted an unusual apology for their coverage of a student protest during a visit by former attorney general Jeff Sessions to campus. Following the coverage, students protestors who were photographed and contacted for interviews complained about violations to their privacy from what is completely normal practice in reporting public events. Instead of standing firm, the editorial board of the paper apologised for failing to consider the impact of our reporting, adding: We know we hurt students that night particularly those in marginalised communities.

The ugly again Twitter pile-on that ensued from professional journalists criticising students for failing to uphold the tenets of journalism was as unseemly as it was unnecessary. While by any normal standards of journalism, the paper should not have apologised for constructing the important public record of what happened with perfectly ethical practices the context of this situation made it understandable why they might regret their reporting. These are students who might feel that in Trumps America, being associated with such a protest would endanger their status as residents, risk future job opportunities and even perhaps lead to attacks and harassment. They are perhaps better placed to understand the importance of a piece even in a student paper better than highly experienced journalists who learned their craft outside a hostile media environment.

The dignity of Troy Closson, editor of the Daily Northwestern, in tweeting a thread of explanation and clarification was an object lesson to the much more prominent journalists who had criticised his leadership. Closson, an African American undergraduate, explained (though he should not have had to): Being in this role and balancing our coverage and the role of this paper on campus with my racial identity and knowing how our paper has historically failed students of colour, and particularly black students, has been incredibly challenging to navigate.

The most experienced and the least experienced journalists make mistakes the former should be judged far more harshly than the latter. But we need to take notice of the altered media environment too, and understand what needs to be flexible and what has to remain unbending in the face of hostility.

The discussions that make us more aware of what impact and consequence means for journalism are healthy and will, it is hoped, make the accountability functions of the modern press a better fit for the current environment.

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Reporting is on trial in Trump coverage as Twitter mob savages errors - The Guardian

As a candidate, President Donald Trump boasted that he would hire the best and most serious people. But as impeachment bears down on his presidency, a lot of his problems may be because he has hired a very bad lawyer.

That man, of course, is Rudolph Giuliani.

Trump brought Giuliania former federal prosecutor, New York City mayor, and Republican presidential candidateonto his legal defense team in April 2018, when special counsel Robert Mueller was actively investigating contacts between Russian operatives and the Trump campaign. Its unclear if Giuliani did any practical legal work related to that investigation, but he was a public face of the presidents defense, active on television, Twitter, and regularly texting back and forth with reporters.

But as recent revelations have made clear, Giuliani also took on a side portfolio: pushing for the ouster of the US ambassador in Ukraine and trying to get Ukraine to launch investigations into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, as well as into a conspiracy theory about Ukrainian interference in the 2016 elections.

That project has proven a disaster for his client: A lawyer who sets out to defend a president and instead helps create the basis for his impeachment has not been an effective counsel. If that werent enough, here are three other ways Giuliani is not helping.

Giuliani is failing his most basic task of publicly defending his client. With little evidence that Giuliani is carrying out actual legal work for the president, that public role would seem to be his one job. This week he attempted to do so in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, describing the July 25th phone call during which Trump asked Ukraines president to do him a favor:

Allegations of Burisma-Biden corruption werent even a major part of the conversation. The focus was on Ukrainian corruption broadly speaking and out of a five-page transcript Mr. Trump spent only six lines on Joe Biden.

The line quickly drew derision on Twitter. There is no word-count threshold for crimes or abuses of power.

Whereas a good attorney will distance their client from criminal exposure, Giuliani has invited alleged criminals into Trumps orbit. For help with his Ukraine mission, Giuliani turned to Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, two Florida businessmen born in the former Soviet Union. Both men were charged last month by federal prosecutors in New York with funneling money from a Russian oligarch into US elections. Giuliani himself is reportedly under federal criminal investigation for his related activities in Ukraine. Prosecutors believe he may have been seeking to profit from a gas deal there brokered by Parnas and Fruman, and violated lobbying disclosure laws intended to prevent covert foreign influence by pushing for the ouster of the US Ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch. Trump did ultimately remove the ambassador, who has become a key witness in the impeachment inquiry, publicly testifying on Friday.

The mere fact that the president is continuing to retain a personal attorney who is at least reportedly under criminal investigation by the federal government is itself a pretty stunning and unique set of circumstances, says John Bies, an attorney at the watchdog group American Oversight, pointing to reports this week that the federal probe into Giuliani may also include breaches of campaign finance and conspiracy laws.

The legal mess that Giuliani has gotten himselfand his clientinto leads to perhaps the most important way that Giuliani is failing as a lawyer.

Giuliani has created an ethically compromised situation. At this point, it might be more legally advantageous for Giuliani to maintain Trump as a client than it is for Trump to keep Giuliani as an attorney. That the opposite of how its supposed to be.

He cant be the star witness and the lawyer in the same case, says Laurie Levinson, a criminal law expert at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. Most people dont have a lawyer representing them in a case when their lawyer also has counsel in the same case.

But this is precisely the hangup Giuliani has put Trump in, and it puts Giuliani in a position where he might be tempted to protect himself by throwing his client under the bus. The lobbying disclosure laws that prosecutors believe Giuliani may have broken contain an exception for legal work. While the Wall Street Journal reported Friday that US prosecutors are examining whether Giuliani was seeking business deals in Ukraine, it is in his interest to portray his work in the country as entirely on behalf of the presidents defensea claim he has reiterated.

But this stance is unhelpful to Trump. As George Conway, a Republican anti-Trump lawyer, has pointed out, this tweet is actually very bad for the president as he faces impeachment. The case against Trump is that he used the powers of his office to advance his own personal interestsa textbook definition of abuse of power. Trump, in response, claims he was simply furthering America foreign policy and rooting out Ukrainian corruption. For Giuliani, Trumps defense attorney, to insist all the work pushing for investigations was actually in service of his clients defense undercuts the presidents claims of having been acting on behalf of the national interest.

This tweet by itself establishes that [Trump] committed an impeachable offense, Conway wrote, retweeting Giuliani. To say that Giulianis and Trumps pursuit of Ukrainiancorruption was done solely to protect Trumps interests establishes that Trump was not acting for the country.

Youre supposed to zealously advance your clients interests, says Bies, warning that is harder for an attorney to do once their interests diverge from the clients.

Giuliani also has an incentive to reveal things that might be covered by the duty of confidentiality, said Ken White, a former prosecutor, while predicting how Giulianis severe conflict of interest might harm his client in an appearance on the podcast All the Presidents Lawyers.

The legal profession is supposed to guard people against unscrupulous lawyers through its bar associations professional accreditation process. While warning hes not personally an expert on when a lawyers conflicts of interest risk formal sanction, Bies says at minimum there are significant questions about whether or not he has comported himself consistent with his bar obligations. And a bar counselor should consider that question seriously.

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Donald Trump Has Had a Lot of Terrible Lawyers. Rudy Giuliani Might Be the Worst. - Mother Jones

The third and most relevant instance took place 112 years later. One month after he took office in 1974, Gerald Ford shocked the country by granting a full pardon to his predecessor Richard Nixon for any crimes committed during the Watergate crisis. In a televised address, Ford said that Nixon and his family had suffered enough during the national ordeal, and that he wanted to provide a sense of closure to the scandal. My conscience tells me it is my duty, not merely to proclaim domestic tranquility but to use every means that I have to insure it, he said. I do believe that the buck stops here, that I cannot rely upon public opinion polls to tell me what is right.

Fords decision to not rely on polls cost him dearly. In the days before his announcement, a Gallup poll for Newsweek magazine found that 58 percent of Americans opposed any pardon for Nixon. Fords approval rating plunged from a lofty 71 percent shortly after taking office to 49 percent immediately after the decision. Public speculation quickly arose as to whether Ford had struck some kind of corrupt bargain with Nixon, implicitly or explicitly bartering a pardon in exchange for the presidency. Ford unequivocally denied that any such deal had been made in a news conference the following week.

Congress also grew cold towards Ford, who had been House Minority Leader less than a year earlier. Two Democratic representatives, New Yorks Bella Abzug and Michigans John Conyers, filed resolutions in the House demanding more information about the circumstances surrounding Fords decision to pardon Nixon. The House Judiciary Committee also asked the president to send a representative who could explain his actions. Ford responded to the request by saying he would appear himself because he felt, according to the White House, as president the power of pardon is solely his. He ultimately appeared before a House Judiciary subcommittee on October 17.

It was an unusual hearing, to say the least. The committee did not place the president under oath and members treated him with a heightened level of respect and deference compared with normal witnesses. I assure you that there never was at any time any agreement whatsoever concerning a pardon to Mr. Nixon if he were to resign and I were to become president, he assured lawmakers. Ford also reiterated his original reason for issuing the pardon. I wanted to do all I could, he testified, to shift our attention from the pursuit of a fallen president to the pursuit of the urgent needs of a rising nation. Though the public furor largely abated after his testimony, Ford and most others believed the pardon contributed to his defeat in 1976.

House investigators today have little reason to believe that Trump would obey a formal congressional subpoena for his testimony. The White Houses official stance is that the impeachment inquiry is an unconstitutional and illegitimate attempt by Democrats to illicitly overturn the results of the 2016 election. Trumps lawyers have instructed the executive branch not to comply with House subpoenas and document requests with mixed success. And Trump himself would almost certainly challenge such a subpoena all the way to the Supreme Court, which could deliver a ruling that further weakens Congress.

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Come on Down and Testify, Donald Trump! - The New Republic

As Republicans head toward the 2020 election, questions have arisen over what the party will look after President TrumpDonald John TrumpGOP divided over impeachment trial strategy Official testifies that Bolton had 'one-on-one meeting' with Trump over Ukraine aid Louisiana governor wins re-election MORE leaves office. Whether Republicans win and secure another four years in control of the White House or suffer a humiliating defeat at the hands of Democrats, one thing is certain. Donald Trump will not be around in politics forever. At some point, his grip on Republicans will be relinquished, and members of the Grand Old Party will be left to figure out what comes next.

What was once the party of Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan now appears to be a shell of its former self. What is undeniable is that the Trump takeover of the Republican Party has been nothing short of historic. Gone are challenges to his inflammatory rhetoric. Lost are the voices of reason who could disagree with party leadership without finding themselves devoid of political support. What is left is a party in shambles unsure of what it will look like after the chaos of the Trump era.

Trump is a reflection of the Republican desire to win at all costs. This mentality may have afforded them the ability to appoint judges and pass massive tax cuts, but at what costs in the long term? Is winning really winning if it costs the soul of your party? Make no mistake, the Republican Party bowing to Trump is not without consequence. As demographics shift and lawmakers attempt to connect with a new generation of voters, Republicans will find themselves on the brink of a crisis. While Trump may be a short term solution, he has created a long term problem.

Republicans need to bring in minorities to avoid becoming a regional party, but these voters are completely turned off by the racist language emanating from the White House. What works on cable news does not translate to those who do not regularly consume conservative media. Polls also show millennial support for the president is low, which is not sustainable for the party. While Reagan may have ushered in a new generation of Republicans, Trump is bringing out a new generation of Democrats that may turn states like Texas blue for decades.

If Republicans have any hope of rebuilding their party and figuring out a path forward, it begins with abandoning Trump, not continuing their acts of surrender. Republicans like Jeff Sessions and Ted Cruz cannot allow themselves to be humiliated by his vicious taunts then seek support from those who allow them. A neutered Republican Party cannot be rebirthed if it lacks the political courage to find its backbone. Republicans must instead follow the path of principled public servants like Justin Amash. While I may disagree with him on policy substance, I have nothing but respect for his consistency in the face of political expediency.

The party of small government has now been overcome by nationalism and devoid of any guiding principles. That is not just bad for the future of the Republican Party, it is bad for the future of our democracy. Our democracy requires two strong parties built upon a foundation of ideas and principles. At this moment in history, the Republican Party has found itself strangled by a president who threatens its existence. As Herbert George Wells declared, Once you lose yourself, you have two choices. Find the person you used to be, or lose that person completely.

There are not many guarantees in politics, but Trump will not be president forever. For the sake of our democracy and the stability of our country, it is time for Republicans to consider what the world will look like after he leaves office. If the Republican Party wants to stand the test of time, it must avoid turning inward and instead become more inclusive. It must reflect our diversity of ideas and demographics. Should it choose to continue down this path, it will lose itself forever. The country will move on, with or without Republicans in power. The choice is theirs.

Michael Starr Hopkins is the founding partner of Northern Starr Strategies. He served on the Democratic presidential campaigns for Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John Delaney. Follow him on Twitter @TheOnlyHonest.

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What are Republicans going to do after Donald Trump leaves office? | TheHill - The Hill

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"Saturday Night Live" combined the Trump impeachment hearings and "Days of Our Lives" hiatus in a drama-filled opening with surprise guest Jon Hamm.

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'Saturday Night Live' portrays the President Trump impeachment hearings as a drama-filled soap opera called "Days of Our Impeachment." USA TODAY

Forget the Trump impeachment hearings "Days of Our Impeachment" is where the real action is.

With President Donald Trump's impeachment hearings well underway and thefuture of NBC's "Days of Our Lives" in question, it only made sense for "Saturday Night Live" to combine the two in a drama-filled opening sketch."The first soap where you can't imagine any of the people in it having sex," one tease of the new "show" read.

The cast of characters included U.S. Rep Adam Schiff (Alex Moffat), U.S. Rep Jim Jordan (Mikey Day) and Ukraine ambassadors Marie Yovanovitch (Cecily Strong) andBill Taylor (surprise guest Jon Hamm). "I don't just kiss and tell," Hamm's Taylor said. "I kiss and tell and I take notes."

Kate McKinnon also made an appearance as Rudy Giuliani:"Mercury's in retrograde, so my powers are at an all-time high."

More 'SNL':Harry Styles debuts new song 'Watermelon Sugar' and rocks painted nails, stuns fans

Some of the other high jinks included U.S. Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez(Melissa Villasenor) making out with Taylor and European Union diplomat Gordon Sondland (Kyle Mooney) revealing hehad amnesia.

Kenan Thompson later showed up as Cleveland Browns defensive endMyles Garrett (spoofingthe helmet-swinging incident that sidelined him for the season), whothe fictional Trump pardoned.

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'SNL' gives Trump impeachment hearings the 'Days of Our Lives' treatment - USA TODAY