Category Archives: Donald Trump

NEW YORK President Donald Trump renewed his trade attack on China, calling the nation "cheaters" though he blamed the situation on past U.S. leaders.

Trump spoke Tuesday at the Economic Club of New York.

"Since China's entrance into the World Trade Organization in 2001, no one has manipulated better or taken advantage of the United States more," Trump said. "I will not say the word 'cheated,' but nobody's cheated better than China, I will say that."

The remarks break a period of relative peace between the two sides, who have been looking to hammer out the first phase of an agreement that would ease some tariffs. Details of a potential deal remain in flux, with the U.S. pushing for more open markets and an elimination of intellectual property theft, while China wants Washington to drop some $250 billion in tariffs imposed since the impasse began.

Rather than lay the blame on China, though, Trump said that previous leaders who negotiated trade deals allowed manipulation of the agreements, with results that hurt American workers, particularly those in the manufacturing industry.

The president recalled a speech he gave during which he was criticizing the country for its economic practices.

"I said, 'This is not going over well.' It was in Beijing, this massive hall," Trump said. "But I said I don't blame China, I blame China. Then I realized it's true."

China was not alone in taking heat from the president. Trump also singled out the European Union for unfair trade practices.

"Many countries charge us extraordinarily high tariffs or create impossible trade barriers," he said. "And I'll be honest, the European Union, very, very difficult. The barriers they have up are terrible, in many ways worse than China."

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Trump says China cheated America on trade, but he blames US leaders for letting it happen - CNBC

Once every 20 to 100 years or so, a US president gets impeached. This is the formal federal process wherein Congress investigates claims of wrongdoing against the sitting leader of the free world. Now its Donald Trump in the hot seat. Public hearings begin on Wednesday, November 13.

The trouble began when a whistleblowers complaint revealed a phone call in which President Trump appeared to ask Ukranian president Volodymyr Zelensky for help investigating the son of former vice president Joe Biden, Trumps most prominent political rival. Gobs of messy details have spilled out since then, culminating in the launch of official impeachment proceedings in the House of Representatives.

As with the impeachments of former presidents Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon, this one will be broadcast live across major news networks. But this is also the first impeachment of the smartphone era, which means a couple things: (1) You can watch it from anywhere, and (2) Many, many, eyeballs will be on this thing.

Heres how to follow along:

Good news! You can watch the whole thing right here in this post. Weve embedded a livestream by PBS Newshour below. Just refresh the page starting at 10 am ET on Wednesday and the video player will be right under this sentence.

Of course, well also be active on social platforms. Well have a live Reuters feed on our Facebook page and on Twitter @WIRED. In the meantime, you can catch our national affairs coverage for the latest news.

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How to Watch the Donald Trump Impeachment Hearings - WIRED

Theyre ruining the game, Mr. Trump told a rally crowd in Alabama in 2017, describing the players protests as a total disrespect of our heritage, and urging team owners to fire them.

Even in the White House, professional sports has never been far away. Mr. Trump has outpaced other modern presidents in his recognition of athletes who like him with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. When he bestowed one in September on the former basketball player Jerry West, he reflected on Mr. Wests home state of West Virginia and his own 2016 election victory.

I shouldnt say this, Mr. Trump said, but I won it by 43 points.

On Monday, several players for the Washington Nationals made political statements when they visited the White House to celebrate their World Series win. Kurt Suzuki, the teams catcher, donned a Make America Great Again hat and was embraced by the president, who reacted ecstatically to the public gesture of support. When video surfaced on Twitter of the pitcher Stephen Strasburg appearing to avoid shaking Mr. Trumps hand, the athlete retorted with one of the presidents favorite insults: #FakeNews. Several other players skipped the visit, but only one, Sean Doolittle, publicly attributed his decision to his antipathy for the president.

Mr. Trump and his supporters have been more sensitive to his reception at events on the road. Mr. Trumps World Series appearance was internally seen as the sort of dutiful presidential event he should attend. Trump allies said little about the booing at Nationals Park compared with the reception he received at the New York City bout, which was expected to be more friendly territory: He has been interested in the sport for years. But when Mr. Trump made a split-second decision to go less than two weeks before the event, even the U.F.C. president, Dana White, believed it was short notice.

We had dinner last Thursday at the White House, and he said Im coming. Im coming to New York, Mr. White told reporters in recent days. And I was like Oh, my God! Thats going to be a rough one! Why dont we do Vegas on the 14th? And New York was the only one that he could do, so he came tonight.

In the end, the social media fight over whether Mr. Trump had drawn more boos than applause at the event went on much longer than the actual U.F.C. match. The president plays close attention to news coverage of how he is received at those events. Mr. Trumps elder sons, Eric and Donald Trump Jr., quickly jumped in to attack the presidents critics who posted video suggesting that he had been booed en masse. Other footage, including that shared by the Trumps, showed the crowd cheering.

Both the substance of the fight and what it meant that a sitting president attended a sport known for its brutal violence was overshadowed.

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On the Scoreboard: The Home Team, the Visitors and Trump - The New York Times

John Dean, the White House counsel to President Richard M. Nixon once dubbed the master manipulator of the Watergate scandal, said President Donald Trump had a rough day on Capitol Hill during the first public impeachment hearing.

What struck me today in listening to these two witnesses is they already have more than they had against Richard Nixon to impeach him, Dean said on CNN on Wednesday. Just on all accounts because the evidence is there.

Earlier in the day, two witnesses corroborated accounts that Trump withheld U.S. aid to Ukraine to pressure the country into investigating a political rival.Bill Taylor, the acting U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, also provided bombshell new testimony about a phone call between Trump and Gordon Sondland, ambassador to the European Union.Taylor said a staff member who was with Sondland witnessed the call and told him about it.

Following the call with President Trump, the member of my staff asked Ambassador Sondland what President Trump thought about Ukraine, Taylor testified. Ambassador Sondland responded that President Trump cares more about the investigations of [Joe] Biden, which [Trump attorney Rudy] Giuliani was pressing for.

Dean, who ultimately turned on Nixon and cooperated with prosecutors, said thats the kind of evidence that didnt come out until much later in the Watergate proceedings.Early on, he said, it was my testimony, a few people that were lower in the pecking order than me, and it happened before the tapes.

The infamous Watergate tapes werent released until more than a year after Deans June 1973 testimony.The smoking gun tape a 1972 conversation in which Nixon spoke with his chief of staff about trying to stop the FBI from investigating the Watergate break-in was made public on Aug. 5, 1974.

Nixon announced his resignation three days later as Republican lawmakers abandoned him in wake of the revelation.

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John Dean Reveals Just How Bad This Week's Been For Trump - HuffPost

This coming Wednesday marks the official start of the impeachment hearings against Donald Trump in the House Intelligence Committee, the public beginning of what the historian Jon Meacham rightfully calls a test for the country. The allegations of abuse of power are striking and unprecedented: a President seeking to privatize American foreign policy for his personal political benefit. The hearings on Trumps extortionate Ukraine scheme will be quickly followed by the drawing up of articles of impeachment, a House vote, a Senate trialthe mechanisms of the constitutional process. All the indications are, however, that we already know the outcome of this test. For Trump and his defenders, it is a coup, a show trial, a witch hunt. When that is the starting point, there is no place for the facts, no process that can satisfy, no way to split the difference. Its the reason why a key Trump ally in the Senate, Lindsey Graham, introduced a resolution condemning the Houses proceedings for lacking transparency, and then refused to read the evidence from closed-door depositions this week now that it is being made public. The impeachment investigation is a joke and a political vendetta, Graham told reporters, so why bother?

In such a politically divided moment, Graham is merely saying out loud what has become increasingly obvious: the President has successfully rendered the investigation irrelevant, at least for his most fervent supporters (and that apparently includes virtually all of the Republican elected officials in both the House and the Senate). There is no evidence, no testimony, no revelatory text message, that can sway them. There is a justification for anything that has come out, and for anything that might still be revealed. Trump has framed the impeachment case, as with all the other challenges to his controversial actions over the past few years, as a purely partisan matter of loyalty and legitimacy.

It is not just Trump-loving Republicans who may react to the actual details of the investigation with indifference. Polls suggest that there is now nearly a complete partisan gulf between how Americans view the impeachment matter, with Democrats and independents in favor and Republicans against, in a way that makes the inquiry itself almost beside the point. How much does anyoneon either side of this yawning national dividecare about the evidence if they know in advance how they plan to interpret it? And, of course, the sense of constant crisis is overwhelming. How can Americans bother to keep track of who said what to whom about Ukraine when there will soon be another scandal, another cast of characters, another alarming development to monitor? On Tuesday, Trumps longtime friend Roger Stone went on trial for lying to Congress, and prosecutors said that he did so to protect the President. On Thursday, a New York court ordered Trump to pay two million dollars in damages for illegally misusing his Trump Foundation to help his 2016 campaign. Who knows what tomorrow will bring? There is already a Trump-era precedent that shows that engagement with the facts revealed by impeachment may be less than robust. After the release, this spring, of the four-hundred-and-forty-eight-page Mueller report, even many members of Congress confessed to not having read it, but that did not stop them from pronouncing their opinion on what it did or did not say regarding President Trumps culpability.

Nonetheless, there is an actual investigation, with actual testimony. There are facts and even, in this post-truth age, truths. Since Monday, the House Intelligence Committee has released more than a thousand pages of transcripts from its private depositions with six of the diplomats who were caught up in Trumps scheme to pressure the Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, to open investigations into a political rival of Trumps, former Vice-President Joe Biden, and into the debunked conspiracy theory that Ukraine, not Russia, interfered in the 2016 U.S. election. The depositions both confirm and expand upon what is known about the Ukraine affair, and how directly it points back to actions undertaken by Trump himself and by his private attorney Rudy Giuliani.

The most significant new information of the week comes from the revised testimony of Trumps Ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland, released by the committee. After press reports of other witnesses testimony contradicted him, Sondland told the panel that I now recall two vital points differently. Not only was there an explicit quid pro quo between the withholding of nearly four hundred million dollars in U.S. military assistance to Ukraine and Ukraines willingness to publicly investigate Biden, but Sondland himself had made the linkage, in a September 1st conversation with a top Ukrainian official. Somehow, he failed to remember this in his initial testimony.

Sondland is a key witness not easily dismissed by the White House: a Trump appointee who gave a million dollars to the Trump Inauguration and was rewarded with the E.U. ambassadorship, he was seen by the other witnesses as a direct conduit to the President. He had a relationship with President Trump I did not have, Kurt Volker, the former special envoy for Ukraine, testified. He felt he could call the President and that they could have conversations. The depositions released this week make clear why Sondland had little choice but to change his testimony. William Taylor, the top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine, testified about Sondlands September 1st meeting with the Ukrainians and the ultimatum it contained. George Kent, the State Department Deputy Assistant Secretary responsible for Ukraine, also pointed a finger at Sondland, saying that he had talked to the President, POTUS in sort of shorthand, and POTUS wanted nothing less than President Zelensky to go to the microphone and say investigations, Biden, and Clinton.

I learned these and other notable details from reading the transcripts. They make for gripping reading, documenting the ways, large and small, that the irregular channel of Trump and Giuliani, as Taylor calls it, took over from the regular foreign-policy work of the Administration. There is Ambassador Marie Yovanovitchs dawning realization that she is under attack from factions in Ukraine and Washington that she is barely aware of. Watch my back, a Ukrainian minister tells her at one point. When Giuliani and Donald Trump, Jr., publicly attack her, State Department intermediaries try to get Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to help by calling the Fox News host and Trump confidant Sean Hannity. (Hannity, for his part, has denied discussing Ukraine with Pompeo.) But soon enough Yovanovitch is fired anyway, ordered in a late-night phone call to take the next plane back to Washington and removed from her post without cause on Trumps order. Although she served decades in the Foreign Service, Pompeo refuses to speak with her or issue a statement in her defense. Kent calls her ouster the result of a campaign of lies by Giuliani. Taylor, who reluctantly agrees to temporarily succeed Yovanovitch at the U.S. Embassy in Kiev, picks up the story of the Washington snake pit, as he terms it, in his deposition, a detailed accounting of facts made all the more powerful by his testimony to the committee that he is a compulsive note-taker, who brings his small, spiral-bound notebook to key meetings at which the Presidents Ukraine quid pro quos were discussed.

On Wednesday, Taylor and Kent will be the two lead witnesses at the impeachment hearings. Reading their sharp, compelling testimony, it is clear why Democrats have chosen them for this role. They come across as patriotic, nonpartisan, and alternately stunned and appalled by events as they unfold over the spring and summer of 2019. But will it matter?

As Trump awaited the opening of what he called next weeks Fake Hearing, the President attacked Taylor and Kent as Never Trumpers and held a series of rallies in bedrock-Republican parts of America, appearing alongside would-be Senate jurors who, like Graham, have made it clear that they do not need to see or hear more evidence to establish their view of the case against Trump. On Wednesday night, in Louisiana, Trump stood onstage with one of the states Republican senators, John Kennedy, who, in Trumpian fashion, used his turn at the microphone to mock House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for opening the impeachment probe in the first place. I dont mean any disrespect, he shouted into the microphone, to cheers from the audience and a grin from the President, but it must suck to be that dumb.

Earlier in the day, at the Capitol, Kennedy had weighed in on the impeachment inquiry, telling reporters, The quid pro quo is a red herring unless you make a distinction between a legal quid pro quo and an illegal quid pro quo, Kennedy said. This did not seem like legal brilliance on the part of Kennedy, or even to make much sense at all. But it was revealing as an example of the latest form of political self-preservation being offered by Senate Republicans, who seem to be responding to the emergence of inconvenient impeachment facts even if they deny that they are doing so. Given that the evidence so strongly shows that Trump withheld U.S. aid and an Oval Office meeting unless the Ukrainians agreed to make a public statement about the investigations that the President wanted, Kennedy and other Senate Republicans have been publicly floating the idea that its perfectly within the Presidents power to do so and, even if improper, hardly rises to the level of an impeachable offense.

Graham offered a slightly different variant this week: while insisting that he would not read the evidence, he also told reporters that the whole mess was a matter of Trump Administration incompetence and incoherence in its Ukraine policy. They seem to be incapable of forming a quid pro quo, he said. Neither of these rationales for Trumps behavior is the robust defense of the Presidents perfect dealings with Ukraine that Trump has demanded of his allies. But both speak to the willingness to endlessly accommodate a President who has convinced his supporters to make even nonsensical arguments on his behalf. The stupid defense; the yeah, so what? defense; the Democrats are bad, so never mind defense. There will be more. Trump has defined winning impeachment as keeping it partisan, so for him this is what winning looks like.

On Wednesday, a few hours after Taylors deposition was released, Trump appeared at the Louisiana rally with Kennedy. He did not address the revelations from the nine hours of testimony, or even bother with an explanation of his actions. He simply told the crowd that corrupt politicians, Nancy Pelosi and Shifty Adam Schiff and the crooked media have launched the deranged, delusional, destructive, and hyper-partisan impeachment witch hunt. The crowd cheered. The defense, at least for that night, had rested its case.

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Is Trump Already Winning on Impeachment? - The New Yorker

U.S. President Donald Trump on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, November 2, 2019. (Yuri Gripas/Reuters)

Making the click-through worthwhile: slogging through the predictable arguments of impeachment; speculation about a coming epic betrayal in the Democratic primary; and some long-delayed auditory fun.

Impeachment Moves Along Like a Kidney Stone

I realize those of us in the news business arent supposed to admit this, but impeachment bores me. We know the basic facts; we all decided whether we thought the presidents acts were worthy of impeachment and removal a long while ago; we know almost all the Democrats are going to vote for impeachment and remove; we know almost all the Republicans will vote against impeaching and removal. The only question is how slowly and painfully this process moves towards a resolution. Right now, its got all the momentum of a kidney stone.

As suggested in yesterdays Corner post, I think Trumps actions are pretty darn shady and an abuse of his powers, and there needs to be some consequence to deter him and future presidents from using the powers of the office to encourage foreign governments from getting into partisan American politics. But the established precedent is that the bar to remove a president from office is high much higher than I thought it ought to be, back in 1998 and theres no getting around the fact that many of the presidents foes have sought to impeach him since he took office, on any reason they can find. On February 10, about three weeks into Trumps presidency, the Democratic polling firm Public Policy Pollingoffered a survey, finding that 46 percent of all respondents supported the impeachment of President Trump, and 80 percent of all self-identified Democrats did. Representative Maxine Waters (D., Calif.) tweeted, get ready for impeachment on March 21, 2017, and Ted Lieu announced he was reading up on it. Way back on May 21, 2017, Ben Domenech predicted, Democrats will impeach Trump if they win the House regardless of what the investigation finds and the investigation he was referring to was one about collusion with the Russians. I hope he bet a lot of money on that outcome.

The House voted on resolutions that included articles of impeachment on December 6, 2017; January 19, 2018; July 16, 2019, and finally voted to begin the current inquiry on October 31. The coup rhetoric from Trump and his defenders is hyperbolic and overwrought there are no tanks in the streets, no martial law, no suspension of the Constitution but its not difficult to see their point: Large swaths of the Democratic opposition never accepted Trumps election, never recognized him as a legitimate president, and have sought to un-do Election Night 2016 with all the obsessive determination of a Terminator trying to prevent the birth of John Connor. Some Democrats want to impeach Trump, also impeach Pence, impeach Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh, and impeach Supreme Court Justice Gorsuch. Kamala Harris pledged that if elected, her Department of Justice would pursue criminal charges against Trump. We heard the lock him up chant at the Washington Nationals game. It is not hyperbolic to state that many Democrats have started with their preferred verdict and are now working backwards to find the justification for it.

Andy McCarthy is correct that the impeachment process can be unpredictable once it gets started. But barring some new revelation, this thing is going to end in a few months with Trump getting impeached by the House and acquitted by the Senate probably the appropriate ignoble legacy the president deserves, putting him alongside Bill Clinton and Andrew Johnson.

Judging from the morning headlines, Im not the only one whos noticed that the live gavel-to-gavel coverage is mostly bringing us information we already know.

NBC News: Plenty of substance but little drama on first day of impeachment hearings

Reuters: Consequential, but dull: Trump impeachment hearings begin without a bang.

New York magazine: The Impeachment Hearings Get Off to a Subdued Start.

One other note: last night, Chris Hayes tweeted, Just to be clear: Hunter Biden in no way, shape or form should have accepted that board appointment. I dont even really think thats in dispute. The Biden campaign sure has heck disputes this! In the October debate, Biden said, my son did nothing wrong. I did nothing wrong. I carried out the policy of the United States government in rooting out corruption in Ukraine . . . My son made a judgment. Im proud of the judgment he made.

Based upon what we know now and dont tell me I dont know about this, Im the one who put together that gargantuan timeline Hunter Biden and Joe Biden accepted a situation that was a glaring conflict of interest, but as far as we can tell, did not violate any U.S. or Ukrainian laws. Theres no law in Ukraine that bars putting an American officials idiot son on your board and paying him gobs of money so that you have a highly placed friend in Washington if you need it. And U.S. bribery laws do not bar presidential relatives from working on corporate boards, even corporations that have business before the American government. (We should have a law barring that.)

CNN reports routinely include statements like, There is no evidence of wrongdoing by either Joe or Hunter Biden in Ukraine which is technically true in the legal sense but represents something of a whitewash. Again, Hunter Bidens gig with Burisma was a conflict of interest that unnerved other officials in the Obama administration and received criticism from the day his board appointment was announced.

But if we can point to an action by Vice President Biden regarding Ukraine that was provably and specifically taken in order to protect Burisma . . . this whole thing looks completely different. A lot of Trump fans believe the pressure to fire state prosecutor Viktor Shokin was brought by Biden in order to protect Burisma. If someone can prove that and keep in mind, Shokin isnt the most reliable witness then this isnt merely Trump looking for dirt on a political opponent, but a genuine case of exactly what Trump is accused of manipulation of U.S. foreign policy for personal benefit. Of course, this should have been handled through more appropriate avenues like the Department of Justice, and not the presidents personal lawyer. But if Burismas appointment of Hunter Biden was a bribe to affect U.S. policy, then Trumps repeated desire to investigate this is much more legitimate.

In this light, Hunter Biden absolutely should be a witness in this proceeding; hes at the heart of what motivated Trump and Giuliani. If Hunter hadnt been on that board, none of this would have happened. Unsurprisingly, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff has made clear he has no interest in calling Hunter Biden as a witness, telling panel Republicans, the impeachment inquiry will not serve as vehicles for any member to carry out the same sham investigations into the Bidens or debunked conspiracies.

Over in Politicos newsletter this morning, Anna Palmer and Jake Sherman write, One surprising thing we heard a few times from people of both parties:that the American public simply believes politics and government are dirty and is not surprised that the president held up military aid to force an investigation into a political rival. In fact, theres a theory that this is seen as business as usual. Is this surprising? Joe Biden insists his son getting an $80,000-per-month gig on a foreign companys board is perfectly fine, Schiff refuses to even look into it, and CNN writes theres nothing wrong with it, and anyone is surprised that American public simply believes politics and government are dirty?

A Shakespearean Betrayal in the Works?

Deval Patrick, a longtime friend of Barack Obama, is running for president. Over at Hot Air, Allahpundit predicts a scenario that would be jaw-dropping: Obama publicly endorsing his longtime buddy Patrick over his vice president, Joe Biden. Pick your comparison: Benedict Arnold, Brutus, Judas. Biden played the loyal good soldier for eight years. Alone in the Democratic field, Biden has defended Obamas record against criticism from the left. Sure, the relationship between Obama and Biden was a little less rosy and more complicated than either man wanted to portray it. But right now, Biden is still the safest bet to be the nominee. Hes held his lead in most polls despite a lot of bumps along the road. All the alternatives have other glaring flaws, and Biden can still plausibly argue hes the candidate most likely to beat Trump.

And now Obama could torpedo his chances, just to roll the dice with Deval Patrick? This is the sort of decision that would spur a bit of a reevaluation of Obama by historians. Hes the man who ran on hope and change, and who showed far too much loyalty to stumblebum cabinet appointees below him like Kathleen Sebelius and Eric Shinseki. Obama never fired anybody.

ADDENDA: A much-delayed edition of the pop culture podcast is coming today! We discuss the launch of Disney Plus and the new Star Wars television series, The Mandalorian, the absolute insanity of the Jets announcing head coach Adam Gase is safe through 2020, the allegedly stabbing-worthy Popeyes chicken sandwich and how it compares to Chik-fil-A, visiting film locations, and a particular figure who didnt kill himself. Watch this space.

Jon Huntsman is running for governor again. Say, when a guy retires as U.S. ambassador to Russia, wouldnt you think he would take some time to write a book? You just wonder if he might have A Warning or something he would like to share.

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Everyones Already Decided If They Want Trump to Be Impeached - National Review

JACKSON, Miss. The South is continuing to stick with President Donald Trump, though 47 percent disapprove of how hes handling his job, according to results from a new NBC News|SurveyMonkey poll.

That's a slight uptick from the 45 percent who disapproved of the president in the July poll. The new poll found that 52 percent approve of the president's work.

But support for impeachment in the region does not mirror that disapproval number. Only 44 percent said Trump should be impeached and removed from office, while 54 percent opposed it.

NBC News|SurveyMonkey polled voters and residents in 11 states across the South, but the data comes during a particularly interesting time for Mississippi, which is in the midst of a hotly contested governors race.

The president is expected to visit the state on Friday to help campaign for the Republican nominee, Tate Reeves, the state's lieutenant governor. Donald Trump Jr. also joined Reeves at several events over the weekend.

Reeves who has closely tied his campaign to Trump and his family has struggled against the Democratic nominee, state Attorney General Jim Hood, in a race that would be a layup for most Republicans in the deeply red state.

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Its particularly noteworthy as the current governor, Phil Bryant, a Republican, maintains an approval rating of 69 percent.

Nevertheless, polls throughout the race have shown Hood, the only statewide elected Democrat in Mississippi, remaining close to Reeves.

The new poll comes two weeks before the Nov. 5 election. Reeves has outspent his opponent $8.3 million to $3.1 million and holds a single-digit lead, 47 percent to Hoods 40 percent, well outside the nearly 2-percentage-point margin of error.

The Reeves campaign did not respond to requests for comment. The Hood campaign declined to comment.

Trumps presence could give Reeves a needed boost: Forty-one percent of Mississippians said the presidents endorsement would play an important factor in who they decide to vote for in November.

Reeves campaign is banking on that.

Theres no doubt that conservatives are rallying behind our efforts, Reeves said at a press event NBC News attended on Wednesday.

Obviously, President Trump [and] Vice President Pences involvement in our campaign is helpful. With respect to that, were honored to have the president coming to Mississippi in the next 10 days.

But Mississippians also hunger for policy answers at a time when the state has seen its economic growth sputter and stop at or below about 2 percent every year since the recession, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

As the state faces major questions on whether it should take federal assistance and expand Medicaid, how to fund necessary fixes to its faltering infrastructure and how to increase teacher pay and retain talent, 54 percent of Mississippians said those three issues should be the next governor's top priorities, and more than 60 percent said they would be willing to pay more taxes to support public schools and fund infrastructure improvements.

On Wednesday, however, Reeves insisted that taxes were not the answer but provided few proposed solutions himself.

We believe you know how to spend your money better than any government entity ever will, he said next to a sign that listed the cost of Hoods policy proposals, which includes expanding Medicaid, providing statewide pre-K and increasing teacher pay and education funding.

The NBC News|SurveyMonkey Southern Regional Poll was conducted online from Oct. 8 to Oct. 22, 2019. Results are among a regional sample of 9,050 adults aged 18 and over, including 7,905 registered voters. The regional sample includes respondents who live in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas or Virginia. The error estimate for registered voters is plus or minus 1.9 percentage points.

Phil McCausland is an NBC News reporter focused on the rural-urban divide.

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South still supports Trump, but base of disapproval is also steady - NBC News

President TrumpDonald John Trump Comey: Mueller 'didn't succeed in his mission because there was inadequate transparency' During deposition, official says he made several efforts to advocate for Marie Yovanovitch Bolton looms large as impeachment inquiry accelerates MORE has attacked ambassadorWilliam Taylor, a very experienced and respected professional member of the U.S. foreign service, for presenting the facts as he saw them in Ukraine to the House committee conducting the preliminary impeachment investigation.

Trump accepted Taylor as acting ambassador to Ukraine but is now smearing him as a "Never Trumper"without providing any evidence to support his claim.

I know Taylor, a Vietnam veteran. He is anything but a political hack, as the president claims. I do not know ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, whom Trump earlier ousted as ambassador to Ukraine, but I do know that she is a respected, experienced and capable American diplomat. Taylor and Yovanovitch understand vastly more about U.S. diplomacy and national security than this president, who appears to know much more about stiff hairspray options than foreign policy.

These attacks on professional career members of the federal government are an outrage and a real threat to rule of law in the nation. These professionals have shown the courage to see wrongdoing and expose it. They raised their concerns inside the government without effect and then reported them through a legal process of congressional testimony and whistleblower reports. Those accused of improper behavior hate credible whistleblowers; those who oppose corruption and mismanagement in government see great value in them.

The presidents personal attack on a career professional falls in line with the wacky right-wing theory again without evidence that a "deep state" opposition to Trump exists among career federal employees.

Career government employees are restricted by law and regulation in the participation in many political activities. Like every American, they have personal political views, but a career civil service employee will destroy his or her career if he or she becomes an active political zealot for one political party at the expense of responsibilities to support the legal policies of the elected officials. Can an individual employee go politically rogue? Sure, but a broad conspiracy against the president is a fantasy. Unfortunately, many Americans believe the conspiracy nonsense being promoted by Republicans in Congress, right-wing television and radio pundits, and Russian internet trolls.

Career federal employees are sworn to uphold the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. They are responsible for implementing the legal policies of the political authorities elected or appointed over them. When they cannot support the policies of those above them, they have institutional means to raise their objections within their chain of supervision or as a whistleblower. They also can resign from government in protest and go public, as many experienced professionals have done.

In the case of Taylor, he made his objections well known in a cable to the secretary of State and to others involved in Ukraine policy within the government.

Trumps frantic concern with the ongoing impeachment inquiry caused him to appeal to Republicans to get tough and fight. Shortly thereafter, two dozen Republican members of Congress stormed the secure impeachment investigation hearing room to disrupt the procedures. They should have been wearing jack boots in their tawdry stunt to block what is essentially a grand jury hearing with Republicans present to participate. The hearing procedure is established in precedent and procedure approved, and used, by the former Republican House majority.

Allies of the president criticize process and attack witnesses without evidence to refute what is being revealed in public by the written testimony and transcripts.

Trump apparently developed his tactics of deny, deceive, deflect and attack at the knee of his legal mentor, notorious New York attorneyRoy Cohn. Wheres my Roy Cohn? Trump famously asked after Jeff SessionsJefferson (Jeff) Beauregard SessionsTruth and competence clearly terrify Donald Trump Feud by Alabama Democrats threatens Doug Jones's reelection Sanctuary city policies are a threat to decent people MORE recused himself from the Russia probe, according to The New York Times. Cohn is famous as chief counsel to former Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-Wis.) during the red-baiting Army-McCarthy hearings in 1954. After McCarthy was discredited, Cohn became a lawyer in Manhattan known for his aggressive intimidation of opponents. For Trump, Cohn was a lawyer and adviser. Cohn was disbarred by the New York Supreme Court for unethical behavior and died of AIDS in 1986.

With Cohn in the grave, Trump turned to Rudy GiulianiRudy GiulianiDuring deposition, official says he made several efforts to advocate for Marie Yovanovitch Bolton looms large as impeachment inquiry accelerates Giuliani associate used small town in Ukraine to gain influence with American figures: report MORE to help with his Washington adventures.

Now that Trump has severely damaged American leadership in the world with his unilateralist and incoherent foreign and national security policy, he is moving to destroy public confidence in the civil service. Putin and other enemies of the United States must be ecstatic with the chaos created by Trumps frantic domestic fury.

The desperate attacks by an increasingly unstable president to stop investigations into his potential abuse of power and illegal activities will continue and probably increase.

The one thing Trump has not been able to stop is the credible information provided to investigators by courageous career professionals who saw wrongdoing and reported it. In doing so, these professionals are placing their oath to the Constitution and the rule of law in the United States above some shallow personal loyalty to a flawed president.

Taylor and others like him who see abuse and expose what they see within the existing federal laws and procedures are American heroes. Hopefully, more of them have the courage to come forward.

James W. Pardew is a former US ambassador to Bulgaria and career Army intelligence officer.He has served as Deputy Assistant Secretary General of NATO and is the author ofPeacemakers: American Leadership and the End of Genocide in the Balkans.

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Truth and competence clearly terrify Donald Trump | TheHill - The Hill

There is no evidence to support President Donald Trump's claim, made repeatedly this past week, that top US diplomat to Ukraine Bill Taylor is a "Never Trumper."

The low-key diplomat rose to global attention after testifying on Capitol Hill in the impeachment inquiry. He provided a damning account of how Trump told his appointees to establish a quid pro quo, trading much-needed US military aid for political favors from Ukraine.

Trump first made the unfounded accusation against Taylor in a tweet on Wednesday, and repeated it twice on Friday to a gaggle of reporters on the White House lawn.

"Here's the problem," Trump said, referring to Taylor. "He's a Never Trumper and his lawyer's a Never Trumper."

Facts First: There is zero public evidence that Taylor is a Never Trumper. All available information paints him as respected and apolitical public servant. But Trump is correct when it comes to Taylor's attorney John Bellinger, who helped lead the charge of Republicans against Trump in 2016.

Taylor's career

There is no indication that Taylor has ever donated to political candidates for federal office, according to Federal Election Commission data. Taylor has a relatively common name, but there are no records matching his name, home state of Virginia and employment history.

After he was appointed by then-President George W. Bush to be the US ambassador to Ukraine in 2006, he told lawmakers that he never contributed to any political campaigns, according to the congressional record. He was confirmed by voice vote by the Republican-controlled Senate.

At that time, Taylor disclosed that his wife made one political donation before: She gave $150 in 2003 to 21st Century Democrats, a political action committee that backs "genuinely progressive" and "populist" Democrats. The group endorsed Barack Obama's campaign for Senate in 2004.

In the Senate disclosures, Taylor detailed a slew of donations his parents gave to Republicans over the years. This included money to Arizona Sen. John McCain, Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar, the Republican National Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

"I've known Bill Taylor for 26 years, and he doesn't take positions based on politics," said former US Ambassador to Ukraine Carlos Pascual, who was appointed by President Bill Clinton and stayed on during the Bush administration. "Bill Taylor is a guy who volunteered for Vietnam. He isn't a radical. Anyone who starts barking up that tree has got to get their facts straight."

Nine additional former State Department officials who previously spoke to CNN described Taylor as a person of high character who was more likely to put sound foreign policy before politics.

He was so respected that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo asked him to come out of retirement to lead the US embassy in Kiev this year, a position he first held during the Bush administration.

Trump's disdain for Taylor apparently isn't shared by Pompeo, one of the President's closest allies. In an interview on Friday with The Sunflower, the student-run newspaper at Wichita State University, Pompeo voiced some subdued approval of Taylor's performance since taking over in Ukraine.

"He and I both share this vision for how American interests in Ukraine can properly be represented. I have every reason to think that he's still out there, banging away at that problem set," Pompeo said.

What about Taylor's lawyer?

Unlike Trump's claims against Taylor, his criticism of Taylor's lawyer John Bellinger is accurate.

Someone as outspoken as Bellinger is surely an interesting choice of attorney for Taylor, who has been described as a "quiet guy" by people who know him well. But associating with Bellinger does not make Taylor a Never Trumper himself. He may have just wanted an attorney with strong credentials in DC.

A registered Republican, Bellinger served under the Bush administration first as senior associate counsel to the President and later as legal adviser to the State Department.

In August 2016, months before the general election, Bellinger drafted a letter that was co-signed by 50 senior Republican national security and foreign policy experts and stated that Trump was "not qualified" to be President and "would put at risk our country's national security and well-being."

"(Trump) weakens U.S. moral authority as the leader of the free world," the letter said. "He appears to lack basic knowledge about and belief in the U.S. Constitution, U.S. laws, and U.S. institutions, including religious tolerance, freedom of the press, and an independent judiciary."

After Trump was elected, Bellinger joined "Checks and Balances," a group of conservative lawyers formed to speak out against Trump. The group also includes George Conway, husband of White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, who supports impeachment and rails against Trump almost daily on Twitter.

Bellinger told The New York Times that the group came together because they felt "conservative lawyers are not doing enough to protect constitutional principles that are being undermined by the statements and actions of this president."

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The latest on the Trump impeachment inquiry: Live updates - CNN International

President Donald Trump will stick with presidential tradition and attend the World Series, but he will not throw out the first pitch. He is also afraid he would look too fat with the bullet proof vest. When reporters asked him if he would throw out the pitch, like George W. Bush did in the Yankee Stadium in 2001, he said he wasnt sure. I dont know, he told reporters, according to the Associated Press. Theyre going to have to dress me up in a lot of heavy armor. Ill look too heavy. I dont like that. The Washington Nationals, who will decide the such matters, had already said that the president was never asked to throw out the ceremonial pitch, which will be thrown by Trump critic Jose Andres, a celebrity chef and humanitarian. The Associated Press also reports that the president will arrive after the first inning and leave before the last out in the fifth game to be held on Sunday to avoid disrupting the game for fans.

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Donald Trump Will Stick With Tradition and Attend World Series on Sunday - The Daily Beast