Sunday, February 2, 2020

Trump Calls Bernie Sanders ‘A Communist,’ Blasts Other Democrats In Super Bowl Pregame Interview

  Image result for picture of trump and sean hannity 
Article by David Krayden in "The Daily Caller":

President Donald Trump called Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders “a communist” and blasted other Democrats in an interview that aired Sunday before Super Bowl LIV.

Speaking with Fox News’ Sean Hannity, Trump was asked to respond to some of the names of Democrats who are seeking their party’s presidential nomination. When asked about Sanders, Trump replied, “Well, I think he’s a communist. I mean you know, look. I think of communism when I think of Bernie. Now you could say socialist, but didn’t he get married in Moscow?”
Hannity reminded the president that Sanders and his wife honeymooned in Moscow.

“I’m not knocking it, but I think of Bernie sort of as a socialist but far beyond a socialist.”

But Trump allowed that Sanders is “true to what he believes,” which is more than the president could say about Democratic Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

“You mention now, Elizabeth Warren. She’s not true to it. I call her fairy tale because everything is a fairy tale. That’s how Pocahontas got started. Everything is a fairy tale. This woman can’t tell the truth.”

at

More Proof Globalization Is A Bad Idea.

Friday the Dow dropped 600+ points.

 Now we are expecting a bloodbath when markets open tomorrow (late Sunday evening in the US), Chinese financial regulators have already announced a massive $173 billion (Rmb1.2 trillion) support package. 

 According to the FT, China’s central bank said on Sunday that it would provide the lending facilities to money markets as stock markets reopen following the LNY extended holiday, during which western markets logged heavy selling. 

 Hong Kong markets also took a beating when they reopened for the second half of the week. BBG noted that the sum will come to $21 billion on a net basis, practically nothing, after covering the roll of previous liquidity injections.

 Welcome to Globalization.

 https://www.bing.com/search?q=stockmarke+t+drop&PC=U316&FORM=CHROMN

This folks is why President Trump is right.
at

President Trump and Melania to attend Super Bowl watch party

OAN Newsroom
UPDATED 9:45 AM PT — Sunday, February 2, 2020
The president is set to host a Super Bowl gathering and attend a variety of events on Sunday. President Trump and First Lady Melania traveled to Florida this weekend, where they will visit Trump International Golf Club before attending Florida Atlantic University’s special marching band performance.
After that, they will watch the big game with loved ones back at the president’s golf club. There was speculation President Trump would attend the game in person, but the commander in chief elected to watch from a remote location.
When asked who he would be rooting for during the game, the president reportedly said he said he loved both teams and their players.
“Well, I love them both…two very interesting teams and some really great players,” said President Trump. “It’s going to be, hopefully, a great Super Bowl.”
 Two of his new reelection ads are set to air during the big game. The Trump campaign has secured two 30 second spots at a price tag of $5.6 million dollars each. One of those ads was released prior to Sunday’s game and highlighted the promises he’s kept over the last three years.
https://www.oann.com/president-trump-and-melania-to-attend-super-bowl-watch-party/
at

PalindromeDay: Geeks around the world celebrate 02/02/2020

Maths geeks around the world are celebrating a day so rare that - unless they're very, very young - it's certain to happen only once in their lifetimes.
This is, of course, palindrome day, when the date - in this case 02/02/2020 - reads the same way back to front.
But while palindrome days come and go - 20/02/2002 is another example - this one is special.
Unlike the date in 2002, this one reads the same in North America, where dates are written as month-day-year instead of day-month-year as in much of the rest of the world.
It also works for China and a handful of other countries which put the year first.

The last time a palindrome like this happened was 11 November 1111. (Which is really beside the point, because no-one was using Arabic numerals in North America then.)
In that year:
  • Crusaders led by Baldwin I of Jerusalem were fighting the Turks in what is now northern Syria
  • Henry I, fourth son of William the Conqueror, was king of England
  • Afonso I, founder of the kingdom of Portugal, was born
We don't have to wait quite so long for the next international palindrome day, though - it's 12 December 2121. Who knows? Some of us may even live to see it.

Those who are super-engaged with dates and numbers will have pointed out another anomaly.
Sunday 2 February is number 33 in days of the year - 33 being another palindrome. And as this is a leap year, it's also 333 days from the end of the year - a third palindrome.

Meanwhile, many social media users have been pointing out that this palindrome day coincides with another major event in the North American calendar.
As the dawn came up over the US state of Pennsylvania, the world's most famous groundhog, Punxsutawney Phil, predicted an early spring.

International palindrome dates:

  • 01/01/1010
  • 11/11/1111
  • 02/02/2020
  • 12/12/2121
  • 03/03/3030
  • 04/04/4040
  • 05/05/5050
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-51349158
at

Theft Near White House of Investigative Reporter John Solomon's Laptop


On the night before the Senate impeachment trial began, someone broke into veteran Washington investigative journalist John Solomon’s car parked near the White House and stole his laptop, according to a D.C. Metropolitan Police Department report obtained by RealClearInvestigations.

The computer contained notes on Ukraine and former Vice President Joe Biden and other sensitive information, Solomon, 52, said in an interview. He said he was preparing to launch a new podcast and news site at the time.

John Solomon: Laptop stolen then recovered, but mystery remains.
Though the laptop has since been recovered, the investigation is still open. “The case has been assigned a detective and is under investigation,” MPD spokesman Sean Hickman told RCI.

The Secret Service is also involved in the matter, which appears suspicious. Break-ins are rare in the high-security area where the crime occurred, just outside the White House perimeter, and a sophisticated device appears to have been used to get into the vehicle.

In the early evening of Jan. 20, the police report states, Solomon’s Apple MacBook laptop and computer bag, valued at around $1,800, were stolen from his 2019 Toyota SUV parked at 1776 F St. NW, across from the White House’s Eisenhower Executive Office Building. No windows were broken, and there were no other signs of forced entry. Authorities suspect the thief or thieves used an electronic jamming device to open the car door lock.

Solomon said that, other than the bag, nothing else was stolen from his car, including cash he used for the Metro.

The computer and bag, which also contained his U.S. Capitol press security badge, were discovered the next day nearly a block away from where his car had been parked. The contents of the bag had been dumped out on a picnic bench near the FDIC building. The location had no security cameras, so there is no known video surveillance footage that can be reviewed. Authorities described it as one of the few “dark spots” in the area.

 Solomon, who noted an iPod was missing from his bag, says he is working with computer forensics experts to determine if any of his laptop information was exploited or if his hard drive was scanned within the period the laptop went missing.

“It's a pretty professional job,” he said of the break-in, "but it's probably just a coincidence.”

“It was probably just a street criminal searching for pass codes,” he added. "Or it could be someone searching for my Ukraine stuff, we don’t know at this point.”

An award-winning investigative reporter, Solomon has been a political target in recent months.

In December, House impeachment manager Adam Schiff released a report that published Solomon’s phone records. The Democratic leader cited Solomon no fewer than 35 times in his impeachment report. He added Solomon’s phone call history in a spreadsheet he compiled in the footnotes section of his report, which claimed Solomon reported “conspiracy theories” in The Hill newspaper to help President Trump “push false narratives” about Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election in favor of Hillary Clinton, as well as Biden’s attempts as Vice President that year to fire a Ukrainian prosecutor investigating a gas industry oligarch whose company paid his son millions of dollars.
Solomon, who previously worked for the Associated Press and Washington Post, suspects Schiff was singling him out as part of a political smear campaign.

“I’m the only [reporter] who ends up having his records released,” Solomon said in a recent interview with Fox Business News anchor Lou Dobbs.

“It makes me wonder whether it’s a political payback, because a few months ago, I wrote a story exposing the fact that Chairman Schiff had met with Glenn Simpson at the sidelines of the Aspen Institute at a time when he shouldn’t have been having contact with Glenn Simpson,” he added. "It feels like a political payback.”

Congress had been investigating Simpson, whose opposition research firm Fusion GPS was hired by the Clinton campaign to dig up dirt on Trump in 2016. Simpson, in turn, hired former British intelligence officer and FBI informant Christopher Steele to compile the discredited Trump-Russia “dossier” the Obama administration used to spy on a Trump campaign adviser. Some of the spy warrants were declared invalid earlier this month because the government made “material misstatements” in obtaining them, according to a new court order.

In early 2019, moreover, Solomon reportedly was put on a list of U.S. journalists whom then-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch sought to have “monitored.”
An Obama holdover, Yovanovitch was ousted as ambassador last May after Solomon reported that she tried to block investigations into Ukrainian meddling and corruption tied to the previous administration. She subsequently testified before Schiff’s impeachment committee. On Friday it was reported that she had retired from the State Department.

at

When Liberalism Succeeds.

Toronto police vehicles are parked outside the condo where the shooting occurred on Friday night. (Martin Trainor/CBC)
Toronto police have identified the victims of a fatal shooting at a rented Airbnb in a downtown Toronto condo building on Friday night.
The shooting began in a unit on the 32nd floor of a condo on Queens Wharf Road, near Bathurst Street and Fort York Boulevard, before spilling into the hallway. Police received several 911 calls at 10:21 p.m. reporting the sound of gunshots.
The victims have been identified as Jalen Colley, 21, of Brampton, Ont., Joshua Gibson-Skeir, 20, of Brampton and Tyronne Noseworthy, 19, of Toronto.
Two of the men were pronounced dead at the scene, a third in hospital. A fourth man, 20, was taken to hospital with serious injuries. A fifth sustained a minor cut and is cooperating with police. 
Police say they are not looking for any outstanding suspects in the shooting. "Preliminary investigation indicates that the shooters involved are now deceased," they said in a release Saturday evening. 
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/three-dead-shooting-cityplace-1.5448788

Toronto Canada has strict gun control laws. They love to profess how much more civilized they are then their Southern Neighbors in America!

BWHAHAHA!!!  One has to love when Liberals and their policies prove how smart they are.

No doubt they will double down on their failed policies and laws.
at

Manuel Quezon: Little-known savior of Jews


  Image result for picture of michael quezon president of the philippines
 Article by Michael Curtis in "The American Thinker":

  A new film debuted around the world last month, an account of events during World War II in Manila: Quezon’s Game directed by Matthew Rosen, a filmmaker who began in London and lives in the Philippines.
 
The film provides, using three languages, a version of a little- known story, of which there is no definite official statement and a lack of historical manuscripts, of the rescue organized by President Manuel L. Quezon starting in 1938 of 1200 German and Austrian Jews, coincidentally the same number of Jews saved by the well-known Oskar Schindler, who found shelter from the Holocaust in the Philippines.  Quezon had proposed an “Open Door policy,” one that would admit up to 10,000 Jews, but only 1280 made it. The ambitious and generous plan failed because of events in World War II and the Japanese invasion of the Philippines.

The context of the story is that the country, which by the Treaty of Paris 1898 that ended the Spanish-American war was ceded to the U.S as a territory, was trying to get full independence from the U.S. which it finally obtained on July 4, 1946. Until then the country was a protectorate of the U.S.  The Commonwealth of the Philippines from 1935 to 1946 was the administrative body governing the country, preparing for a transition to full independence, controlled visas for entry. 

Manuel Quezon in October 1935 won the first national presidential election, gaining 68% of the vote. As president he was determined to allow Jewish immigrants from Europe into the country but has to contend with internal critics and American policy on the issue.  Suffering from tuberculosis, he was fluent in English, a gifted pianist, brilliant lawyer, card player of poker and bridge, and had been a playboy who shaved off his moustache because it tickled the girls too much.  Quezon was a compassionate individual, a light of morality, and his story deserved to be better known. 

That story is the effort to rescue European Jews. Quezon’s plan emerged over nights playing poker and smoking cigars with two helpers, while Colonel Dwight Eisenhower, then chief assistant to General Douglas Macarthur, was sometimes present but had no role in the events.  One helper was Paul McNutt, former governor of Indiana and U.S. High Commissioner for the Philippines, who risked his career and defied the U.S State Department in trying to convince the U.S. government officials to issue more visas.  He was an unsuccessful presidential candidate when FDR decided to run for a third term in 1940. McNutt had early been a critic of the Nazi regime, a regime that failed to guarantee to its people the right to live as human beings.  In March 1933 he had asked, “Are we to join with the traitors of brotherhood, or to enlist in the war of justice.”

The other, probably more significant helper was Herbert Frieder, a Jewish businessman originally from Cincinnati, owner of the Cigar and Cigarette Factory which he moved from NYC to Manila, who with his three sons was active finding jobs, raising money, and setting up housing and schools for the refugees.  His relationship with and advice to Quezon is reminiscent of that between President Harry Truman and Eddie Jacobson, his former business partner who influenced the President to support the creation of the State of Israel.

The U.S. sent immigration officials to the Philippines, supposedly to assist in the revision of immigration policy in the country. This suggested national quotas for immigration, in effect limits on Jewish refugees, in a way similar to the 1924 U.S. Immigration Act that limited Chinese and other persons. To counter this, Quezon struggled to exercise executive power that allowed the president to disregard quotas for humanitarian reasons.

Quezon’s plan, the “Mindano plan,” was to admit Jews as settlers, 10,000 and allow 1,000 Jews to enter annually, and to admit non-quota immigrants. He also had offered his own lands for a large Jewish resettlement.  The plan was criticized both internally on the grounds it would add to the unemployment situation and soon flood the country with more foreigners than could be absorbed, and externally.  Quezon countered that the Jews would be as asset because of their knowledge and expertise in the professions. The plan was opposed by Francis B. Sayre who had succeeded McNutt as U.S. High Commissioner. 

Quezon also in April 1940 donated 7.5 hectares of his own country estate in Marikina as a working farm for Jews.  In it was Mariquina Hall that housed 40 refugees.  This generosity was repaid in November 2013 when the Jews in the population helped raise funds for those affected by Yolanda typhoon. In recent years, trees have been placed in the area by the Israeli ambassador.

The Philippines remained friendly to the Jewish cause, and links exist between the two countries. It was only Asian country to vote for the UN partition resolution in 1947, leading to the creation of Israel in 1948. Now, the State of Israel grants visa-free travel for Philippine tourists since 1969.  One non-political link is that one of the descendants of the refugees is the former wife of president Rodrigo Duterte.

A monument, the Open Doors Monument, to Quezon was unveiled in Israel in the Rishon LeZion Memorial Park in 2009. Ten years later, the Philippine Embassy opened the Bala Quezon, the Philippine cultural center in Tel Aviv, that is also a museum about Quezon’s efforts to save Jews. In August 2015 a posthumous award of the Raoul Wallenberg medal was given to Quezon and presented by the Israeli Ambassador to the Philippines.

Quezon, a Catholic, saw that Filipinos were subjected to racial discrimination and bigotry, and understood the parallel of Jews suffering from Nazi discrimination. Filmgoers may remember the end of Schindler’s List when the protagonist ponders whether he could have rescued more Jews than he did. Similarly, the compassionate Manuel Quezon, at the end of his life, asked “Could I have done more?”  This is still a question for the international community.  

By coincidence in the same month of January, a play titled Leopoldstadt by the 81-year-old Tom Stoppard, arguably the greatest living playwright, opened in London. Born in 1937 in Czechoslovakia the then-named Tomas Straussler moved, to escape the Nazis, with his family to Singapore, then India, and finally Britain. Stoppard’s previous plays, intelligent and witty, have often discussed the collision of ideas and themes; his play Arcadia dealt with tension between classicism and romanticism, art and nature, the 19th and the 20th centuries. In these plays and screen and TV plays he wrote Stoppard never used or explored his Jewish background.  Latterly, he said that his mother who had no religion never talked about the past until she was 80 and only then informed him that all his four Jewish grandparents and her sisters had been murdered in the Holocaust.

This revelation changed the way he saw himself and led him to think about the Holocaust. His new play is not autobiographical, but its subject was suggested by the experience of the Jewish people. The play Leopoldstadt, the name is that of the former Viennese Jewish ghetto, is set in the first half of 20th century vibrant Vienna. It deals with a number of generations of two intermarried Jewish families, coping with what it meant to be Jewish and living in a culture where ten percent of the population was Jewish, that was destroyed by the Nazis. Stoppard expresses the progress of Viennese Jews through a character: “My grandfather wore a caftan, my father went to the opera in a top hat, and I, a factory owner, have the singers to dinner.” The Jews in Vienna, as elsewhere in Europe, were successful but they were doomed.  Stoppard’s personal feelings of grief and horror of the Holocaust made him sadly wonder if “ordinary people would be capable of the same genocidal actions of which we are all capable.”

The question has been considered by many writers, of whom three may be mentioned: Christopher Browning in Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland; Daniel Goldhagen in Hitler’s Willing Executioners, and in the Milgram experiment on obedience to authority figures. No categorical answer to the question is possible, but it is welcoming to reply to Stoppard by illustrating the goodness and heroism of people in some situations.
at

Trump Supporters Score Higher on Verbal Ability Tests


 archives
  Article by Jim Lindgren in "reason":

The fracas over Don Lemon of CNN laughing at his panel's insults about the intelligence of Trump supporters raises a larger issue: the ignorant belief that Trump supporters are much dumber than the general public and much dumber than those who supported Clinton in 2016.  Don Lemon and his guests specifically ridiculed Trump supporters for supposed problems with "readin'" and "geography" (e.g., picking out Ukraine on a map).

Even without looking at the data, it would be surprising if there were any VERY LARGE differences in intelligence between the average Trump supporter and the rest of the general public.

INTELLIGENCE OF TRUMP SUPPORTERS

We don't have great data on the intelligence of Trump supporters, but the best available is in the 2018 General Social Survey. For those unfamiliar with the GSS, it is usually regarded as the leading omnibus academic survey in the US; it usually achieves response rates about 10 to 20 times higher than the typical public opinion poll.

In 1974, the GSS adopted a 10-question vocabulary test (WORDSUM) that was extracted from a standard, widely used IQ test. The National Science Foundation (NSF), in its 2018 report on science knowledge, refers to this battery of GSS items as a "verbal ability" test.

In the 2018 GSS, respondents were asked for whom they voted in 2016 (PRES16) or for whom they would have voted if they had voted (IF16WHO): Clinton, Trump, someone else, or no one.

On the verbal ability test (WORDSUM), not surprisingly the median number of vocabulary questions correct was the same for both Clinton and Trump supporters: 6 out of 10 words correct.  The mean verbal ability score for Trump supporters was 6.15 words correct, while the mean verbal ability score for Clinton supporters was 5.69 correct, a difference of nearly a half a question on a 10-question test.  This moderate difference is statistically significant at p<.0005.

Further, Trump supporters score significantly higher on verbal ability (6.15 correct) than the rest of the public combined (5.70 correct), whereas Clinton supporters score significantly lower on verbal ability (5.69 correct) than the rest of the public combined (5.98 correct).

This should not be too surprising. On the 22 General Social Surveys using the verbal ability scale since 1974, for every single one, conservative Republicans score significantly higher than the rest of the public combined. As for Republicans overall, they score significantly higher in verbal ability than Democrats in all five decades, including for the 2010s combined.

But the Trump era is helping Democrats to catch up: the Republican advantage dropped to insignificance in 2016, and in 2018 Democrats (6.03 correct) actually scored slightly (but insignificantly) higher than Republicans (5.98 correct).

In 199[4], the GSS employed another module lifted from a standard IQ test, one testing analogical reasoning.  Again, Republicans and conservative Republicans in 199[4] performed significantly better on analogical reasoning than the rest of the public and significantly better than Democrats.

TRUMP SUPPORTERS' KNOWLEDGE OF SCIENCE
 
These results on verbal ability are also consistent with the results of most (but not all) of the National Science Foundation's science knowledge questions on the GSS.

Testing the hypothesis that Trump supporters have greater science knowledge than those who supported Clinton in 2016, on six questions Trump supporters offer the correct answer significantly more often than Clinton supporters: those about lasers, radioactivity, viruses, the father's contribution to the biological sex of the child (BOYORGRL), whether "according to astronomers" the universe began with a huge explosion (BIGBANG1), and that the earth goes around the sun and that it takes a year to do so (combined EARTHSUN and SOLARREV).

On one science knowledge question—whether the center of the earth is hot (HOTCORE)—the superior performance of Trump supporters over Clinton supporters is borderline significant (1-sided Fisher's Exact Test p=.05-.10).

On two questions, the structure of atoms (ELECTRON) and continental drift (CONDRIFT), Trump supporters score slightly, but insignificantly, better than Clinton supporters. On none of these nine science questions do Trump supporters score worse than Clinton supporters.

When one compares Clinton supporters to the rest of the public combined, Clinton supporters perform significantly worse than the rest of the public on the same six science questions on which Trump supporters perform better than Clinton supporters.

Indeed, less than half of 2016 Clinton supporters (49.6%) are able to answer correctly both of two related questions: whether the earth goes around the sun or the sun goes around the earth (EARTHSUN) and whether that takes a day, a month, or a year (SOLARREV).  Remember these two questions are multiple choice! You would have a 50-50 chance of guessing correctly on the first part: whether the earth goes around the sun or vice versa. Sadly, the general public didn't do hugely better than Clinton supporters, with only 57.1% (compared to 49.6%) knowing that the earth goes around the sun and that it takes a year to do so.

When one compares Trump supporters to all the rest of the public combined (rather than just to Clinton supporters), the pattern for these nine science questions is roughly similar (though weaker).

Overall, on most science knowledge questions Trump supporters score significantly higher than Clinton supporters and significantly higher than the combined non-Trump supporting public. If, however, you asked about beliefs, rather than knowledge, on evolution and the origins of the universe you would get substantially better answers on individual science questions from Clinton supporters than Trump supporters.

MAP-READING

As for reading maps and picking out countries, which the CNN segment raised, I searched quickly and found two Pew surveys from 2013 that asked respondents to pick out Egypt or Syria on a map of the Middle East. Testing the hypothesis that Republicans were significantly better at finding an unlabeled country on a map than Democrats, one 2013 Pew study supported that hypothesis (Republicans were indeed significantly more likely to pick out Syria on a map), while the other 2013 Pew study reported that Democrats were insignificantly better at picking out Egypt on a map.

Thus, neither of these two studies supports the CNN's panel's ridicule of right-wing map reading, and there is some weak evidence pointing in the other direction. Of course, this was a test of Republicans, not Trump supporters, but Trump supporters did better on the 2018 GSS verbal ability test and on 2018 science knowledge questions, so there is no strong reason to suppose that the results would be radically different if one were to test Trump supporters today rather than Republicans in 2013.  In 2013 the differences were not large either way, and it's unwarranted to suppose that (in a study of the quality of the GSS) any differences in map-reading would be large today.

IGNORANCE LEADS TO BIGOTRY

Don Lemon laughed uncontrollably at his guests insulting the intelligence and knowledge of Trump supporters. The best evidence we have suggests that, compared to the general public, Trump supporters score significantly better than the rest of the public—and Clinton supporters score significantly worse—on a standard verbal ability test. Likewise,  Trump supporters score significantly better on most science knowledge questions than Clinton supporters or the general public.

In this essay, I analyzed the results of over 30 questions from 22 different representative national surveys, involving over 20,000 respondents. Not one of the questions I examined here supports the idea that Trump supporters are significantly less knowledgeable than Clinton supporters, and some of them point to small or moderate differences in the opposite direction. The idea that there are very large differences in intelligence or knowledge here is implausible without strong evidence.

In short, Don Lemon is a bigot—and like most bigots, he's an ignorant one as well.

https://reason.com/2020/01/30/trump-supporters-verbal-ability/ 

 [Research Note: General Social Survey data were downloaded from NORC. GSS data are weighted by WTSALL. On science questions, I coded the correct answers v. those who gave wrong answers, said they don't know, or failed to answer.  The Pew data were downloaded from the IPOLL database at the Roper Center, and the WEIGHT variable was used. For 2x2 tables, significance was determined by 1-tailed Fisher Exact tests. For differences of means, 1-sided independent T-Tests were used without assuming equal variances.]
at

Dem Sen. Mazie Hirono: I Don’t Care About Trump’s Pesky Little Constitutional Defense


There’s a constant battle going on in the Senate for who is the most vapid member. More often than not, Mazie Hirono seems to come out on top. How someone of her inability ever made it to such a high elected office is proof of the power of political parties. There’s just no way she gained her position via dogged work and intellect.

For example, here’s Hirono pronouncing that constitutional citations against impeachment are not worth her time.



This is probably a good sign that the Democrats have lost the argument. To dismiss constitutional arguments as “stupid” and “little” while at the same time proclaiming oneself to be following said constitution makes no sense on any level.

Yet, Hirono is so eaten up with partisanship and wanting to simply “get Trump” that she’s literally willing to handwave away the document that forms the basis of our government system. Not a good look at all, but one that’s become more and more common.

Republicans managed to not go this insane during the Obama years, despite numerous impeachable offenses taking place. The left can’t help themselves though.

at

Abbas: Palestinians “cutting all relations” with Israel and US

 Article by Ed Morrissey in "HotAir":

So … that would be a no on the peace plan, we assume? At an Arab League meeting in Cairo earlier today, Mahmoud Abbas announced that the Palestinian Authority would be “cutting all relations” with both the Israel and the US over Donald Trump’s peace plan.. Abbas has made similar threats in the past, but this time might be different — perhaps even more than Abbas thinks:

At a meeting of Arab foreign ministers in Cairo, Abbas reiterated his “complete” rejection of Trump’s peace plan, which calls for creating a demilitarized Palestinian state with borders drawn to meet Israeli security needs.
“We’ve informed the Israeli side…that there will be no relations at all with them and the United States including security ties,” Abbas told the one-day extraordinary session to discuss Trump’s plan. Israeli officials had no immediate comment on his remarks.
Israel and the Palestinian Authority’s security forces have long cooperated in policing areas of the occupied West Bank that are under Palestinian control. The PA also has intelligence cooperation agreements with the CIA, which continued even after the Palestinians began boycotting the Trump administration’s peace efforts in 2017.

Abbas told the ministers that he’d been refusing to take Trump’s calls lest anyone believe any later claims that Abbas had been consulted. That may not go down as well as Abbas thinks, either:

The Palestinian leader said he refused to take U.S. President Donald Trump’s phone calls and messages “because I know that he would use that to say he consulted us.”
“I will never accept this solution,” Abbas said. “I will not have it recorded in my history that I have sold Jerusalem.”

On one level, Abbas has some reason for complaint. Take a look at the map from the Trump plan, and see if you notice one key detail (via Jeff Dunetz):

Other than the existing Gaza border with Egypt, the Palestinians get trapped within Israel. They have no border with the outside world at all, not even with Jordan, their closest cultural connection. Only three sovereign states in the world live entirely within the borders of another sovereign state, and two of them are in Italy — the Vatican and republic of San Marino. The third is Lesotho within South Africa, which with it hasn’t waged war for domination or territory in the way the Palestinians and Israelis have. The Trump plan replaces that land in the Jordan Valley with land near the Egyptian border in which Trump pledges to fund technological and manufacturing industries, but once again leaves a corridor locking the Palestinians within Israel and leaving them dependent on Israel for outside access.

The other complaint is just as obvious. Previous administrations left the question of Jerusalem out of their peace plans, taking the position that the Israelis and Palestinians had to negotiate its status. This time, Trump has settled it himself, with Israel getting Jerusalem and the Palestinians getting East Jerusalem for their capital. That was as good as Abbas would have gotten in any negotiation, but now it’s a diktat, and Abbas likely wouldn’t survive three days if he accepted it. And everybody knows that, even as much as everybody knows Abbas would never have negotiated in good faith on any of this under any circumstances.

That brings us to his audience today. Usually the Arab nations rush to line up behind the Palestinians when it comes to relations with Israel, but that’s changed — significantly. While few of the Sunni nations actually endorsed this plan outright, none of them outright opposed it, either. Instead, they urged the Palestinians to use it as the basis of real negotiations, so much so that Turkey’s Recep Erdogan accused them of treachery in doing so.

This is the clearest signal yet that the Sunni Arab nations in the region no longer view Israel as their biggest concern. They may not be thrilled with their presence in the region, but they have much more grave issues with the rise of Iran as a hegemonic power. Abbas and the Palestinian Authority — and especially Hamas in Gaza — have been getting succor from Iran for many years now, and the Sunni nations are starting to realize that it’s part of an Iranian encirclement campaign that includes Syria, Lebanon, Oman, and Yemen.

If Abbas wants to play footsie with Tehran, then the Sunni states don’t need the headache of his cause any longer. They’d rather quietly align with a powerful state that has every reason to oppose Iranian hegemony than an old terrorist who wants to extend it all the way into Jerusalem. That’s why Abbas is likely to get a chillier reception this time at the Arab League, and why his threats to cut off relations will likely fall on deaf ears.

Meanwhile, Abbas might want to think twice about cutting off security ties. We seem to be getting a lot more effective lately. Or does Abbas think these are coincidences?


Jim Sciutto
@jimsciutto
·
New: US has conducted a strike recently targeting Qassim Al-Raimi, the leader of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) which has repeatedly expressed interest in conducting terror attacks on US, @barbarastarrcnn and I reporting.
 
Jim Sciutto
@jimsciutto
If his death is confirmed, this would be significant - and the third in a series of significant decapitation strikes after al-Baghdadi/ISIS and Suleimani/Quds Force.
 
 Update: One other point on the map is the issue of water. One of the Palestinian’s biggest day-to-day complaints is a lack of access to water, as Israel has largely commanded the high ground throughout the West Bank, including in its settlements. Without access to the Jordan River south of Galilee (even as polluted as it is), the Palestinians will have no redress on water access. It’s very interesting, in that context, that the other Arab nations aren’t raising many objections to this plan, at least not in public. That’s a legitimate concern for the Palestinians in the West Bank.
 
https://hotair.com/archives/ed-morrissey/2020/02/01/abbas-palestinians-cutting-relations-israel-us/ 
at

Breaking Streatham terror attack: Two stabbed and man shot dead in London

Several people have been stabbed in Streatham, south London, and a man has been shot dead by police - in what they describe as a "terrorist-related" incident.
Images on social media show a person face down and apparently motionless on the ground outside Boots, with a police officer holding a gun.

Sky's home affairs correspondent Mark White said other photos appear to show him wearing something resembling a suicide vest.
Video also shows plain-clothed armed officers approaching the body on Streatham High Road, before quickly pulling back

The force tweeted: "A man has been shot by armed officers in #Streatham... The circumstances are being assessed; the incident has been declared as terrorist-related."
"We believe there are two injured victims. We await updates on their conditions," the force added.

A witness described seeing a man with a machete and silver canisters being chased before he was shot dead.
Gulled Bulhan, 19, said: "I was crossing the road when I saw a man with a machete and silver canisters on his chest being chased by what I assume was an undercover police officer - as they were in civilian clothing.
"The man was then shot. I think I heard three gun shots but I can't quite remember.
"After that I ran into the library to get to safety. From the library I saw a load of ambulances and armed police officers arrive on the scene."

Metropolitan Police have urged people to avoid the area and London Ambulance Service said they had a "number of resources" at the scene.
More follows...
https://news.sky.com/story/live-police-shoot-dead-terrorist-after-london-attack-11924845
at

CNN’s Chief Legal Analyst Waves the White Flag



If you watched CNN at all the past few days, you’ve probably noticed the tendency for it to resemble a funeral procession, and not like one of those in New Orleans. I’m talking the most depressing, white bread funeral procession you can imagine.

As if they had had the scales lifted off their eyes, many of the anchors and anaylsts realized it was over. Donald Trump wasn’t getting impeached, and despite claims to the contrary, his legal team had actually done a very good job. All the bluster, proclamations of Nancy Pelosi being a genius, and teeth gnashing prime time hits were all for naught, and that’s left Democrats and their media allies only one last gasp to take.

That gasp is to insist that though Trump may have won, history is going to punish him greatly with nasty write ups and an asterisk next to the result. CNN’s Jeffrey Toobin does some of that in the following clip, but the overall point is clear: It’s time to wave the white flag because Trump has won.



In 50 years, no one outside of the beltway is going to remember that someone named John Bolton didn’t testify. No one will care that we “only” heard from 17 different witnesses or that Adam Schiff cried. The end result is the end result. You know what people remember about Andrew Johnson’s impeachment? That he was acquitted. You know what people remember about Clinton’s impeachment? That he was acquitted. Democrats badly miscalculated, despite being warned from the beginning not to go down this road. That miscalculation will only grow more stark if Trump is re-elected.

Meanwhile, those on the left and in the media (but I repeat myself) will desperately try to save face by pretending to be able to read deep into the annals of history, seeing doom for Trump’s legacy. But the truth is that they’ve lost and they’ve lost big. Despite near 100% negative coverage and more breathless “bombshell” reports than any normal person can keep track of, Trump’s approval is up and he’s actually more competitive today going into 2020 than he was four months ago.

If you look up the defintion of backfire, Nancy Pelosi will be pictured. A few weeks ago she was laughing it up and handing out pens to mark the occasion of impeaching the President. She’s not laughing anymore.

at

In Trump impeachment trial, Senate right..

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/andrew-mccarthy-in-trump-impeachment-trial-senate-right-to-block-new-witness-testimony

Andrew McCarthy: 

In Trump impeachment trial, Senate right to block new witness testimony

Andrew McCarthy

Senate plots path for impeachment trial after witness vote fails

Senators reject motion calling for witnesses in President Donald Trump's impeachment trial; chief congressional correspondent Mike Emanuel reports from Capitol Hill.

The Senate was right to vote Friday against hearing new witness testimony at President Trump’s impeachment trial. The Democrats’ demand for new witnesses at the trial was a red herring – a talking point that had some surface appeal but, upon scrutiny, was nonsense.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and the other impeachment managers claim that there have been no witnesses in the trial. They said before the Senate voted 51-49 Friday to block more witnesses that if Republicans did note vote to approve subpoenas for former National Security Adviser John Bolton, among other top current and former administration officials, that the trial will be a “sham” – an exercise in “cover-up.” You can’t have a real trial, was their refrain, unless witnesses are called.

It is nonsense. There have been plenty of witnesses. Schiff’s problem is that the additional witnesses he wanted to call would not change what has already been proved in any meaningful way.

Obviously, what’s happening in the Senate is not a trial in any familiar sense. We are used to judicial trials. Impeachment presents something completely different, a Senate trial. The Senate is a political body, not a law court.

In the Senate, there are no trial procedures like those that govern judicial trials. The federal rules of evidence do not apply. Neither do the rules of criminal or civil procedure. You could not have a judicial trial without these rules.

In stark contrast, the Senate trial has featured a mountain of hearsay, press reports read into the record, witnesses testifying about their opinions on subjects they are utterly unqualified to opine on, and so on. None of that would be permitted in a judicial trial.

Even Chief Justice John Roberts – though he is a federal judge, is wearing his robe, and occupies a desk raised above the well – is not sitting as a judge in the usual sense. Under the Constitution, the Senate has the sole power over impeachment trials. The chief justice does not have power over the proceedings as he would in a court.

The Democrats’ problem is not that they’ve been stopped from proving their case. They did prove their case … but their case is, at best, a petty crime, while impeachment is akin to capital punishment

In the impeachment trial, Roberts is the presiding officer, not the judge. The Senate is the judge. For the sake of moving things along, the chief justice is ostensibly permitted to make rulings (for example, his refusal to allow a question from Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., relating to the so-called “whistleblower”). But any ruling Roberts makes can be overruled by the Senate.

Remember, ordinarily the vice president is the presiding officer in Senate proceedings. But the framers realized that it would be inappropriate for the vice president to preside over an impeachment trial of the president. To avoid the obvious conflicts of interest, the chief justice was substituted for that purpose. But the task is ministerial, not judicial.

Just as the role of the judge and the governing rules in a Senate impeachment trial are night-and-day different from what takes places in a judicial trial, so too is the manner of presenting witness testimony.

In point of fact, there have been over a dozen witnesses at the impeachment trial. They have not physically come into the Senate and testified. Rather, they testified in the House investigation. Their testimony is all in the record of the Senate trial, and both the House managers and the president’s counsel relied on it in making their arguments.

That is actually not much of a departure from judicial trials. Routinely, in an effort to complete a trial expeditiously, opposing parties enter witness stipulations. These are agreements that, “if X were to be called as a witness, X would testify as follows” – with the two sides then summarizing what they mutually agree with witness would say.

The lawyers do not have to agree on why the testimony is relevant or whether it is true; just that their summary accurately reflects what the witness’ testimony would be if he or she came to court.

In effect, that is what has happened in the impeachment trial. Both sides are assuming that the many witnesses who testified before the House would give exactly the same testimony in the Senate that they gave in the House.

Another salient difference between judicial trials and the Senate impeachment trial is motion practice. In a normal criminal case, for example, there is no guarantee that any witnesses will testify. Instead, the defendant is permitted to make pretrial motions seeking dismissal of the charges – including on the ground that the indictment fails to state a cognizable offense.

When such a motion is made, the judge assumes for argument’s sake that all of the factual claims the prosecutors have made are true.

If the judge grants the motion, it means that even if all the testimony and documentary evidence came out precisely the way the prosecutors have alleged they would come out, the case still has to be dismissed because the charges are legally insufficient. There is thus no need to call witnesses – end of story.

If that procedure had been available in the Senate trial, the case would have been thrown out without any witnesses.

The consensus position of Republican senators is what Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., announced as his conclusion on Thursday night: The Democratic House managers proved their case that the president pressured Ukraine to conduct investigations that might help him politically; but the allegation does not rise to the level of an impeachable offense – because there ultimately were no investigations, because Ukraine got its U.S. aid and was not harmed, because it was lawful (even if unwise) for Trump to ask Ukraine to look into the activities of former Vice President Joe Biden and his son for purposes of rooting out corruption, and so on.

Republicans have drawn that conclusion based on hundreds of hours of witness testimony set forth in thousands of pages of transcripts and available for viewing on video recordings. There has been plenty of witness testimony.

The important consideration when it came to Bolton is not whether he would physically show up in the Senate chamber, take the oath, and give testimony. It was whether his testimony would change anything. It wouldn’t. If he testified in a manner that is consistent with press reporting about his soon-to-be-published memoir, it would prove that the president pressured Ukraine for investigations.

The House managers have already proved that.

There is no need to belabor the point. The Democrats’ problem is not that they’ve been stopped from proving their case. They did prove their case … but their case is, at best, a petty crime, while impeachment is akin to capital punishment. It’s not that we approve of petty crime; it’s that petty crime is not a capital case. And even if Bolton testified, it wouldn’t become one.

Andrew C. McCarthy is a senior fellow at the National Review Institute and a contributing editor of National Review. @andrewcmccarthy

at

Man Arrested in Arizona Accused of Being a Leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq

 
Article by Rick Moran in "PJMedia":
 
Information is sketchy, but what we know so far is that a man was arrested in Arizona on Friday at the request of the Iraqi government which claims he is a leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq and is being accused of murdering two Iraqi policemen in Fallujah in 2006.

Ali Yousif Ahmed Al-Nouri, 42, was arrested in the Phoenix area after a warrant was issued by the Justice Department on Thursday.
Fox News:

“According to the information provided by the Government of Iraq in support of its extradition request, Ahmed served as the leader of a group of Al-Qaeda terrorists in Al-Fallujah, Iraq, which planned operations targeting Iraqi police,” Arizona federal prosecutors said in a news release.
“Ahmed and other members of the Al-Qaeda group allegedly shot and killed a first lieutenant in the Fallujah Police Directorate and a police officer in the Fallujah Police Directorate, on or about June 1, 2006, and October 3, 2006, respectively.”

It's unknown how long Ahmed al-Nouri has been in the U.S. or how he got here. Nor is it known how long he lived in Arizona -- a state not unfamiliar with terrorists being infiltrated into the U.S.

Al-Nouri is apparently a significant catch.

According to the Iraqi government, al-Nouri was the leader of an al Qaeda group in the Iraqi city of Al-Fallujah which planned operations targeting Iraqi police.
He and other members of al-Qaida allegedly shot and killed a lieutenant on June 1, 2006, and an officer with the Fallujah Police Directorate on October 3, 2006.
An Iraqi judge issued a warrant for Al-Nouri's arrest and the government there issued an extradition request to the U.S. Justice Department.

The FBI probably knows how long he's been here and has tracked any of his known associates by now. If he had been a threat, he would have likely been arrested already, along with anyone else in his network.

But the arrest warrant was issued only after the Iraqi government requested extradition. Is it possible they knew where al-Nouri was and the FBI didn't?

https://pjmedia.com/trending/man-arrested-in-arizona-accused-of-being-a-leader-of-al-qaeda-in-iraq/ 
at

... Trump Will Emerge From Trial Triumphant and Unshackled



While Stained in History, Trump Will Emerge From Trial Triumphant and Unshackled


His acquittal in the Senate assured, the emboldened president will take his victory and grievance to the campaign trail, no longer worried about congressional constraint.

WASHINGTON — Ralph Waldo Emerson seemed to foresee the lesson of the Senate impeachment trial of President Trump. “When you strike at a king,” Emerson famously said, “you must kill him.”

Mr. Trump’s foes struck at him but did not take him down.

With the end of the impeachment trial now in sight and acquittal assured, a triumphant Mr. Trump emerges from the biggest test of his presidency emboldened, ready to claim exoneration and take his case of grievance, persecution and resentment to the campaign trail.

The president’s Democratic adversaries rolled out the biggest constitutional weapon they had and failed to defeat him, or even to force a full trial with witnesses testifying to the allegations against him. Now Mr. Trump, who has said that the Constitution “allows me to do whatever I want” and pushed so many boundaries that curtailed past presidents, has little reason to fear the legislative branch nor any inclination to reach out in conciliation.

“I don’t think in any way Trump is willing to move on,” said Mickey Edwards, a former Republican congressman who teaches at Princeton University. “I think he will just have been given a green light and he will claim not just acquittal but vindication and he can do those things and they can’t impeach him again. I think this is going to empower him to be much bolder. I would expect to see him even more let loose.”

Impeachment will always be a stain on Mr. Trump’s historical record, a reality that has stung him in private, according to some close to him. But he will be the first president in American history to face voters after an impeachment trial and that will give him the chance to argue for the next nine months that his enemies have spent his entire presidency plotting against him to undo the 2016 election.

“This was clearly a political coup d’état carried out by a group of people who were amazingly, openly dishonest and I think it’s going to be repudiated,” said former Speaker Newt Gingrich, a strong ally of the president’s. “He’s been beaten up for three solid years and he’s still standing. That’s an amazing achievement if you think about it.”

Even before a final vote on the impeachment charges on Wednesday, Mr. Trump has several high-profile opportunities in the next few days to begin framing the new post-trial environment to his advantage.

On Sunday, he will be interviewed by Sean Hannity of Fox News during the pregame of the Super Bowl, one of the most watched television events of the year. Then on Tuesday, he will deliver his State of the Union address from the dais in the House chamber where he was impeached in December.

A senior administration official briefing reporters on Friday said the president will use his State of the Union address to celebrate “the great American comeback” and present “a vision of relentless optimism” encouraging Congress to work with him. Mr. Trump plans to pursue an agenda of cutting taxes again, bringing down prescription drug prices, completing his trade negotiations with China and further restricting immigration.

From there, Mr. Trump will head back to the campaign trail, starting with a rally in New Hampshire on Feb. 10, the night before the state’s first-in-the-nation primary race, an effort to upstage the Democrats as they try to pick a nominee to face him in the fall.

Democrats insist that Mr. Trump has been damaged by the evidence presented to the public that he sought to use the power of his office to illicitly benefit his own re-election chances. Even as they line up to acquit him, some Senate Republicans have acknowledged that the House managers prosecuting the case proved that Mr. Trump withheld $391 million in security aid to Ukraine as part of an effort to pressure it to announce political investigations into his domestic rivals.

But the public comes out of the impeachment trial pretty close to where it was when it started, divided starkly down the middle with somewhat more Americans against Mr. Trump than for him.

When the House impeached him in December, 47.4 percent supported the move and 46.5 percent opposed it, according to an analysis of multiple surveys by the polling analysis site FiveThirtyEight. Now as the trial wraps up, 49.5 percent favor impeachment versus 46.4 percent who do not.

Those numbers are strikingly close to the popular vote results from 2016, when Mr. Trump trailed Hillary Clinton 46 percent to 48 percent even as he prevailed in the Electoral College. That means that the public today is roughly where it was three years ago; few seem to have changed their minds. And the president has done nothing to expand his base and by traditional measures is a weak candidate for a second term, forcing him to try to pull the same Electoral College inside straight he did last time.

Mr. Trump is the only president in the history of Gallup polling who has never had the support of a majority of Americans for even a single day, a troubling indicator for re-election. Nine months is an eternity in American politics these days and, given his history, Mr. Trump could easily create another furor that will change the campaign dynamics, the economy could become an issue, and with all the accumulated allegations some analysts anticipate a certain scandal fatigue could weigh him down.

But Mr. Trump is gambling that he can rally his most fervent supporters by making the case that he was the victim and not the villain of impeachment while keeping disenchanted supporters on board with steady economic growth, rising military spending and conservative judicial appointments. He has made clear he will paint former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. as corrupt if he faces him in the fall and will assail other possible Democratic challengers as socialists.

If Mr. Trump does win a second term, it would be the first time an impeached president had the opportunity to serve five years after his trial and Mr. Trump’s critics worry that he would feel unbound. He has already used his power in ways that presidents since Richard M. Nixon considered out of line, like firing an F.B.I. director who was investigating him and browbeating the Justice Department to investigate his political foes.

While in theory nothing in the Constitution would prevent the House from impeaching him again, as a political matter that seems implausible given that he has demonstrated his complete command over congressional Republicans led by Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, leaving the president less to fear from a Democratic House. Some House managers warned that acquittal would lower the bar for presidential misconduct, meaning that Mr. Trump would feel even freer to use his power for his own benefit because he got away with it.

“He is going to ratchet it up to another level now,” said Anthony Scaramucci, the onetime White House communications director who has broken with Mr. Trump. “He’s going to be Trump to the third power now. He’s not going to be exponential Trump because that’s not enough Trump. It’s going to be Trump to the third power.”

But in that, Mr. Scaramucci said, are the seeds of Mr. Trump’s own downfall because he could go so far that he finally alienates enough of the public to lose. “The one person who absolutely can beat Trump is Trump,” he said.

No other impeached president had the opportunity or challenge that Mr. Trump does. President Andrew Johnson, who was acquitted in 1868, was a man without a party, a Democrat who had joined the Republican Abraham Lincoln’s ticket, and was so disliked that both parties nominated other candidates shortly after his Senate trial, leaving him to finish his last 10 months in office a lame duck.

Indeed, while Johnson was not removed from office, impeachment reduced him to a shadow president, said Brenda Wineapple, author of “The Impeachers,” an account of his trial.

“The Republicans still had a majority in Congress so they could reject some of his appointments, which they did, and override his vetoes of their legislation — and they could allow the states that conformed to the Reconstruction Acts to re-enter the Union,” she said. “So in that sense, Johnson was hamstrung, if not powerless.”

President Bill Clinton was in his second term when he was impeached and acquitted, never to be on a ballot again. With nearly two years left in office, he tried to move on from his impeachment, all but pretending it had not happened. On the day of his acquittal in 1999, he appeared in the Rose Garden alone and expressed regret rather than vindication.

“I want to say again to the American people how profoundly sorry I am for what I said and did to trigger these events and the great burden they have imposed on the Congress and on the American people,” Mr. Clinton said, calling for “a time of reconciliation and renewal.”

As he turned to leave, a reporter called after him. “In your heart, sir, can you forgive and forget?”

Mr. Clinton paused as if deciding whether to take the bait, then turned and answered, “I believe any person who asks for forgiveness has to be prepared to give it.”

Mr. Clinton, who unlike Mr. Trump admitted wrongdoing without agreeing that he committed felonies, never truly forgave his opponents, or reconciled with them, but for the most part he avoided expressing those feelings publicly.

“Clinton saw the acquittal as a humbling end to that chapter and I think Trump sees it as a way to start his re-elect,” said Jennifer Palmieri, who was a top aide to Mr. Clinton. “He just wanted to shut the door on that and move on and have a fresh start. And Trump sees it as a jump start — ‘this is what I’m going to run on.’”

Mr. Clinton had some help in that Republicans themselves emerged from his trial feeling bruised by their failure to remove him and the clear public repudiation of the impeachment in polls and the midterm elections. Unlike Mr. Trump, whose approval ratings remain mired in the mid-40s, Mr. Clinton’s popularity reached its highest level during impeachment, with 73 percent of the public backing him just days after the House charged him with high crimes.

“I don’t think Clinton was emboldened. I think he was embarrassed about the mess he caused and he wanted to somehow move on and fix his own reputation,” said John Feehery, a Republican strategist who was a top adviser to Speaker J. Dennis Hastert at the time.

And so did the Republicans. “I think both the president and the speaker had a vested interest in moving past impeachment to getting things done,” he said. “We were very conscious about how polarizing impeachment was and we were dedicated to healing the country and repairing the G.O.P. brand.”

That does not seem like the likeliest path forward for Mr. Trump, more of a pugilist than a peacemaker. “He’s obviously legitimately pretty angry,” said Mr. Gingrich, who was forced out as speaker after Republicans lost the midterm elections during the drive to impeach Mr. Clinton. “Given that he’s a natural counterpuncher, he may decide to go after them.”

“That’s not his best strategy,” Mr. Gingrich said. “His best strategy is to assume that the Democrats are totally out of control, that they will not be able to keep fighting. If he appears conciliatory, they’re going to very badly damage themselves with average voters who are going to say these guys are pathological.”

“He has that option,” he added. “I’m not saying he’s going to take it.”

at