The week began with a Billy Bush editorial in the New York Times reminding everyone that yes Trump did indeed admit to sexual assault on the Access Hollywood tape. This is happening now because 1) the report last week that Trump is privately denying it is his voice on the tape, and 2) now that politicians are resigning for sexual misconduct allegations, many in politics and media are trying to return the focus to the many women (up to 20 by some counts) who claim Trump harassed or assaulted them.
After three weeks of equivocating, Democrats finally take a hard line on sexual harassment claims against Conyers and Franken, both of whom announce resignation.
Alabama Senate Race
Monday both Trump and the Republican National Committee gave full support to Roy Moore despite the fact he has been accused of child molestation. Despite having initially pulled support, the RNC, headed by Ronna Romney McDaniel, reversed course and began funding Moore’s campaign again. (In a bizarre side story, McDaniel, who is Mitt Romney’s niece, stopped using the name Romney joined with her married name because Trump did not approve of her keeping the name of his former and current rival.)
New York Times reports that Trump’s turnabout endorsement of Roy Moore is indicative of a wider problem for the 2018 midterms: the White House and RNC lack a top-down strategic structure in place to direct and support GOP candidates–it’s all Trump and his Twitter account.
Tax Bill
Republicans who have spent the Obama years calling for “dynamic scoring” of tax bills to show how tax cuts pay for themselves trashed the Joint Committee for Taxation’s report, which uses “dynamic scoring” because it shows the tax bill would still add a trillion dollars to the deficit.
Here is Ramesh Ponnuru on how all independent analyses of the tax bill show it will reduce revenue not increase it as the GOP claims.
Jerusalem Decision
Trump’s decision to claim Jerusalem is Israel’s capital city and the lack of serious backlash shows how Middle East geopolitics has become less focused around the fate of Palestinians.
Here is Robert Fisk on the wording of Trump’s Jerusalem announcement.
On the Russian Front
Trump’s personal lawyer John Dowd to the credit (or blame) for writing Trump’s Saturday tweet that he knew Flynn had lied to the FBI before he was fired and asked Comey to go easy on him. We learn in this reporting that Trump knew (or suspected) that Trump gave the same lie to the FBI as he did Mike Pence about not having discussed sanctions with the Russian ambassador. There is lack of clarity over whether Sally Yates told the White House counsel that Flynn had lied to the FBI. Yates’s supporters are saying she never discussed the FBI investigation with the White House, but the White House says that she gave them the strong impression Flynn had told the FBI the same thing he told Pence.
Also this week, John Dowd begins to make the argument that a president cannot obstruct justice, while another Trump lawyer says that is not the White House’s legal strategy.
Eugene Robinson draws a line from the return of official RNC support for Roy Moore to the potential that the GOP will stand by Trump no matter what the Meuller investigation concludes. The question: if you support an accused pedophile for partisan gain, you will support just about anything.