Author: Juan Williams

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Trump’s GOP

On midterm election night, I looked into the camera and told President Trump — who watches a lot of Fox News — that his success in keeping a Republican Senate majority was the dagger that destroyed the old Republican Party. He is now the sole proprietor of what I call the Trump Party.

Juan Williams

Brit Hume, my conservative colleague, disagreed. He said Trump is fulfilling longstanding GOP priorities by nominating right-wing judges, lessening government regulation on business, opposing abortion, opposing gun control, and more.

But the GOP before Trump stood for free trade, not tariffs. They supported legal immigration. They fought high deficits. They backed NATO allies and opposed Russian aggression. And they did not embrace the politics of put-downs — including lying, nasty comments about women — while emboldening racists and anti-Semites.

It is hard for me to believe that so many people who once called themselves Republicans, specifically in Indiana, Missouri, and Florida, decided to vote for Trump’s candidates, despite the president’s daily words and actions debasing honest political debate. Those voters had no problem with a political ad so racist that Fox, NBC, and Facebook eventually pulled it. They had no issue with his fear-mongering over a caravan of desperate immigrants. They saw nothing wrong with him demonizing Democrats who stand up to him as a “mob.”

It is hard to understand how close to 40 percent of the country and 90 percent of Republicans approve of this man.

To choke off dissent from the old GOP, the day after the midterms Trump dumped on Republicans who did not embrace him. He named candidates who lost to shame them. He cut down proud Republican lawmakers including Representatives Peter Roskam of Illinois, Barbara Comstock of Virginia, and Mia Love of Utah.

As retiring Representative Ryan Costello (R-Pa.) tweeted, it is tough enough that so many House Republicans lost their seats but then to “have him piss on [you] — angers me to my core.”

In fact, of the 75 candidates endorsed by Trump, only 21 won. That is 28 percent, a losing record. Even in the Senate, where Republicans retained their majority, the party saw Democrats win the popular vote by more than 9 million votes. Somehow, Trump described those results as “very close to complete victory.”

He must be talking about the party of Trump, because the election results in the House, in governors’ races, and state legislature races were good news for Democrats.

But Trump was sending a message to Republicans. Like a mob boss, he demands absolute loyalty and will turn his back on any Republican who fails to fall in line. With Trump critics in the GOP like Ohio Governor John Kasich, Senator Jeff Flake, and Senator Bob Corker now leaving office, there will be few Republicans left to challenge Trump, further consolidating his rebranding of the GOP as his personal vehicle.

When the House GOP conference chooses its leaders next week, it will be a contest among zealous Trump acolytes. Freedom Caucus member Jim Jordan announced his bid for Minority Leader last week, saying it is House Republicans’ job to defend the president from Democratic investigation. He is challenging an incumbent, Kevin McCarthy, who is a longtime Trump apologist who brags about his personal relationship with the president. Forget House Republicans. 

The Republican resistance — such as it is — could find new voices among kinder, moderate GOP governors in blue states who eschewed the Trump brand of politics. Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker was reelected with 67 percent of the vote. Maryland Governor Larry Hogan was reelected with 56 percent of the vote. Neither man has shown an appetite to take the fight directly to Trump. Mitt Romney, who once stood with the anti-Trump resistance, just won a Senate seat in Utah. But in 2018 Romney praised Trump, saying his policies are “pretty effective.” Trump then endorsed Romney.

Sticking with Trump cost Republicans the House majority and over 300 state legislative seats this time around. How many more seats in Congress and statehouses across the country are they willing to sacrifice on the altar of Trumpism? Will any Republicans step forward to try to reclaim the soul of their party before Trump further corrupts it? 

Juan Williams is an author and a political analyst for Fox News Channel.

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Putin Trumps U.S. — With our President’s Help

On Monday, President Trump met one-on-one with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki. On the prior Friday, 12 Russian intelligence operatives were indicted by a U.S. grand jury for a conspiracy to interfere with Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign and help Trump win the White House.

Juan Williams

Right now, the Russians are already busy hacking into the 2018 midterms. “With the U.S. midterms approaching, Russian trolls found ways to remain active on Twitter well into 2018, trying to rile up the American electorate with tweets on everything from Roseanne Barr’s firing to Donald Trump Jr.’s divorce,” the Wall Street Journal wrote last week.

Senate Intelligence Committee member James Lankford of Oklahoma recently explained the Russian interference as an ongoing successful propaganda effort intended to “create instability and doubt in governments, because they believe they benefit from the chaos and loss of confidence in U.S. Institutions.”

Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, a former Republican senator, said on Friday that “the warning lights are blinking red again” when it comes to the danger from Russian cyberattacks.

But President Trump doesn’t see a problem. “Russia continues to say they had nothing to do with Meddling in our Election,” the president tweeted. Last week in London, Trump was pushed to say he will bring up Russian interference in U.S. politics but he predicted little would come of it.

“I don’t think you’ll have any ‘Gee, I did it, I did it, you got me,'” Trump said. “There won’t be a Perry Mason here … But I will absolutely firmly ask the question. And hopefully we’ll have a very good relationship with Russia.”

Democrats are pointed in explaining why Trump sees no problem. Putin “supported President Trump over Hillary Clinton,” said Eliot Engel, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Engel added, “If we allow foreign interference in our elections so long as it supports our political objectives, then we’ve put party before country and put our democracy in crisis.”

That didn’t stop a delegation of seven Republican senators from going to Russia recently on what looked like a water-carrying mission for Trump’s alternative reality. Senator Ron Johnson, the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, came back to say that Russian interference in U.S. elections is “not the greatest threat to our democracy,” and “we’ve blown it way out of proportion.”

Senator Richard Shelby, who led the delegation to Russia over the Independence Day break, offered a Trump-like view of U.S.-Russian relations: “The United States does not want, nor does it need, to resume a Cold War posture with Russia, and our delegation trip was a small step towards trying to ensure that does not happen.”

And last week the president distanced himself from U.S. NATO allies. A translated clip from Russian state-run television has gone viral. It shows a Russian commentator marveling at Trump’s trashing of NATO: “I never thought I’d live to see this!” the Russian commentator exclaims. “Neither the USSR nor Russia, who tried many times to drive the wedge between transatlantic allies, but the main player, Washington, and President Trump himself is doing everything to break down the foundations of transatlantic alliance and unity.”

Trump falsely claimed that Germany was a “captive” to Putin because “60 to 70 percent of their energy comes from Russia.” The insulting mischaracterization drew a sharp rebuke from German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

“I myself experienced a part of Germany that was controlled by the Soviet Union, and I am very happy today that we are united in freedom as the Federal Republic of Germany,” Merkel said.
But Trump never misses an opportunity to say nice things about Putin. And despite pleas from his aides, Trump congratulated Putin on his election victory earlier this year — legitimizing what international observers believe to be a sham election.

Meanwhile, Trump’s campaign manager awaits trial for illicit ties to Russia and his former national security adviser is now a felon for lying about his contacts with Russia.

Trump is banking on Soviet-style propaganda in the U.S. to make Russian hacking and the Mueller investigation into a partisan issue. The winner in all of this is Putin, who is dividing Americans against themselves and America against her allies. Only the American voters can stop it.

Juan Williams is an author, and a political analyst for Fox News Channel.

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The Acid of Trump’s Racism

“If you look at the policies of Donald Trump, anybody — Martin Luther King — would be proud of him,” former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon told the BBC’s Newsnight recently. “You don’t think Martin Luther King would sit there and go, ‘Yes, you’re putting young black men and women to work?'”

Juan Williams

No, Steve, Dr. King would not be proud of Trump for shamelessly taking credit for the economic policies of his predecessor, the first black president of the United States. As FactCheck.org reported in January, black unemployment reached nearly 17 percent in 2010, in the wake of the financial crisis that began in 2008, precipitated by President George W. Bush’s financial policies. By 2016, it had dropped under Obama to 7.8 percent — “the lowest it had been in nearly 10 years” — before Trump took office. The rate has dropped another point since then. These facts fit with the damaging reality of the Trump tax cuts. They disproportionately benefit the overwhelmingly white, wealthiest one percent of Americans at the expense of the poorest half of Americans, who are disproportionately brown and black.

Trump’s sabotage of the Affordable Care Act will raise premiums on — and strip health insurance coverage from — those same black and brown people, along with working-class whites. Invoking Dr. King to excuse away the naked racism of this president plays to ignorance of the fight for racial equality in America. 

But Bannon is the man who said at a conference of the racist National Front party in France earlier this year, “Let them call you racist. … Let them call you xenophobes. Wear it as a badge of honor. Because every day, we get stronger and they get weaker.”

I’ve been thinking a lot about Trump and racism as I put the final touches on my new book (What the Hell Do You Have to Lose? — Trump’s War on Civil Rights, to be published in September). 

Since Trump emerged as a national political figure hawking racist conspiracy theories about Obama’s birth certificate, people have asked me whether I think Trump is a racist. My answer is “Yes.” But it’s not up to me. The facts of his life are all the evidence anyone should need.

The federal government sued the Trump family’s real estate business for racism, and Trump had to settle. Years later, Speaker Paul Ryan said Trump’s claim that a federal judge with Mexican heritage could not be fair fit the textbook definition of racism. As president, Trump has stirred racism, as evidenced by the spike in racial and anti-Semitic hate crimes. The hateful behavior includes his shamefully equivocal response to the neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville, Virginia, last summer, in which a woman was killed. It also includes his decision to focus not on last week’s racist tweet from Roseanne Barr, but on ABC’s failure to apologize for comments that he contends were unfair to him.  

As New York Times columnist Charles Blow put it: “It is not a stretch to understand that Donald Trump’s words and deeds over the course of his life have demonstrated a pattern of expressing racial prejudices that demean people who are black and brown and that play to the racial hostilities of other white people.”

Trump’s racist behavior has continued in the past few weeks. “You have to stand proudly for the national anthem or you shouldn’t be playing. … Maybe you shouldn’t be in the country,” Trump recently said about black NFL players kneeling during the national anthem to protest police brutality. Sadly, the NFL buckled to Trump and set a new policy last month requiring players on the field to stand during the anthem. 

It is remarkable how Trump’s racism has even corroded the NFL — one of America’s most racially inclusive institutions — to the point it feels free to tell black men to shut up about racial injustice.

Trump’s NFL rant came shortly after he described some illegal immigrants as “animals.” Trump and his allies tried to walk back his comments, saying he was talking only about MS-13 gang members. Even if critics are generous to the president, his words called to mind his smearing Mexican immigrants as rapists and drug mules. 

As if all that wasn’t clearly racist, the Washington Post reported last week that Trump once laughed it up in the Oval Office with Jared Kushner and Stephen Miller as he made up fictitious Hispanic names and crimes while editing an immigration speech. 

If you want more proof of how Trump’s racism is tearing apart the fragile fabric of racial comity woven by Dr. King and civil rights activists over the last five decades, just note that racist Louis Farrakhan praised Trump for “destroying every enemy that was an enemy of our rise.”

Case closed.

Juan Williams is an author, and a political analyst for Fox News Channel.

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GOP Schism Over Whether to Protect Mueller

What are we to make of arch-conservative Republican Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina taking a stand against President Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell?

Tillis is among a surprising group of Senate Republicans backing a bill to protect Special Counsel Robert Mueller in case Trump fires him. Here is Tillis, who votes with Trump 96 percent of the time, sending the message to his fellow Trump backers: “The same people who would criticize me for filing this bill would be absolutely angry if I wasn’t pounding the table for this bill if we were dealing with Hillary Clinton,” he said last week. “So, spare me your righteous indignation.”

Well, that’s a first — one of the president’s strongest supporters telling other Trump supporters they are wrong to blindly back Trump. The key here is that Tillis isn’t up for reelection until 2020. I suspect that Tillis is getting a jump on distancing himself from the president in 2020. That is when Tillis’ name will appear below Trump’s name on the ballot (or if Trump is gone, below the name of Trump’s tainted-by-proximity vice president, Mike Pence).

With less than seven months until the midterm elections, the most politically savvy Republicans are drawing the obvious conclusion from current polls: If the election were held today, they would lose the House and possibly the Senate because of Trump. The latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll last week found Trump underwater, with a 39 percent approval and 57 percent disapproval rating. Trump’s approval rating is down 4 points since last month.

A Quinnipiac poll — taken before the raid on Trump attorney Michael Cohen’s office this month — found that 69 percent of Americans oppose Trump firing Mueller. Just 13 percent think Trump should fire him. Even with those strong poll numbers backing Mueller, the top Republicans in the Senate and House remain protective of Trump. They are politically paralyzed, displaying a “deer-in-the-headlights” inability to stand up to Trump for fear of angering the president’s small but fevered base of supporters. Trump calls the probe a “hoax.”

Speaker Paul Ryan has said he does not think legislation to protect Mueller is necessary because he does not believe Trump will fire the special counsel. McConnell is taking the same stand in opposition to a bill that would give Mueller a 10-day period for judicial review of any dismissal.

“I don’t think [Trump] should [fire Mueller] and I don’t think he will,” McConnell told my Fox News colleague Neil Cavuto. But McConnell remains opposed to even bringing any legislation to insulate Mueller to the Senate floor for a vote. That imperious position is responsible for the first cracks in the GOP congressional stonewall defense of Trump.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, a strong Trump supporter until now, is splitting from McConnell by scheduling a vote on the measure later this week in the committee. “Obviously, the majority leader’s views are important to consider, but they do not govern what happens here in the Judiciary Committee,” Grassley told reporters.

Two Republicans on Grassley’s Committee are spearheading the bipartisan legislative push to protect Mueller. In addition to Tillis, South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, is also a sponsor of the measure. He is on record as saying that if Trump fires Mueller, it will “be the beginning of the end of his presidency.” 

There is also the argument that Trump will veto any law protecting Mueller, so why bother? But Senator Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) has countered that, even if Trump vetoes the bill, the purpose of putting it on his desk is “to send a message to the president … the message needs to be that we take this very seriously.”

McConnell and Ryan don’t have an answer to the obvious flaw in their logic. If there is no danger of Trump firing Mueller, then what is the harm in passing legislation to protect him? If McConnell and Ryan are right that Trump won’t fire Mueller, they have nothing to lose and everything to gain by protecting fellow Republicans and shutting down critical Democrats.

The reality is that if Trump fires Mueller, the midterms could be even worse than the most pessimistic prognosticators imagine. The harsh reality of extensive political turmoil leading to riots if Mueller is fired is already of concern to police. The Pittsburgh police chief told his officers to be prepared for just that scenario in a department-wide memo last week.

How far we have come since the Republican National Convention that nominated Trump in 2016 adopted a party platform that read “the next president must restore the public’s trust in law enforcement and civil order by first adhering to the rule of law himself.”

Juan Williams is an author and a political analyst for Fox News Channel.

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Swing Time for the GOP in Upcoming Mid-terms

So far, 24 Republicans have announced their retirements from Congress this cycle. This number is the highest of any congressional cycle since 1973.

What was happening in 1973?

The Watergate scandal. It exposed the lies and cover-ups of Republican President Richard Nixon and forced his resignation. In the 1974 midterm elections, 49 Democrats took House seats away from the Republicans, giving them more than a 2-1 majority in the lower chamber. Democrats also gained four Senate seats, bringing them up to a total of 60 seats.

Democrats are praying for history to repeat itself with President Trump in the Nixon role.

Incredibly, Republicans seem to agree that 2018 will be a lot like 1974. In addition to all the other retirements by House Republicans, there is now talk of Speaker Paul Ryan possibly quitting, too. Ryan’s spokesman has denied he is considering resigning. But Nevada Congressman Mark Amodei, a very vulnerable Republican in the coming midterms, is on the record telling reporters that is what he is hearing from party colleagues.

Talk of Ryan’s departure is significant because lesser-known House Republicans have no reason to think they will survive if Ryan isn’t inclined to try to hold on. Take a moderate Republican congressman like Pennsylvania’s Ryan Costello. He told MSNBC he is not running for reelection because Trump is making it impossible for House Republicans to do their jobs:”It’s very difficult for me to get [any] message out because we’re talking about Stormy Daniels or it was [fired FBI deputy director Andrew] McCabe. Before that, it was [fired secretary of State] Rex Tillerson and where he heard the news that he was fired, and just one thing after another.”

Then there is Trump’s budget deal. It explodes the deficit he pledged to reduce. Also, there is still no funding for any wall on the Mexican border. And don’t forget, Trump’s flip-flop on his promise to push for stronger background checks for gun purchases and to stop the sale of guns to people under 21.

Oh, and keep in mind that Trump’s approval ratings are historically low for a president who has only been in the White House a little more than a year. Such bad numbers are usually reliable signs that the president’s party is in trouble in the midterms.

And who can ignore the resignation of Trump’s chief personal lawyer in the Russia probe, John Dowd? He announced he was resigning just before The New York Times reported he discussed presidential pardons with lawyers for Michael Flynn and Paul Manafort — potentially proof of a conspiracy to obstruct justice. That led George Conway, another top Republican legal mind and the husband of Trump aide Kellyanne Conway, to tweet: “This is flabbergasting.”

Trump’s White House counsel Don McGahn has had to obtain his own high-priced D.C. lawyer to defend him in the Russia probe. This is the dark reality facing congressional Republicans with the midterms now seven months away. The heart of their peril is fear of energized Democrats producing a big turnout. That fits with the big turnout for recent student-led marches for gun control.

The Democrats will be marching out to punish Trump, but it is Congressional Republicans who will get trampled. And what about swing voters?

GOP losses in a special House race in Pennsylvania and the governor’s race in Virginia show support falling for GOP candidates among independent voters and suburban Republican women. Republicans as well as Democrats see no end of talk about extramarital affairs, hush money, and the tightening noose of the Mueller probe.

It is no secret that top Republican lawyer Ted Olson and other experienced DC legal powerbrokers have declined requests to represent Trump. Michael Cohen, Trump’s personal pit bull lawyer, is radioactive over his role in the Stormy Daniels affair and may face legal exposure of his own.

Cohen paid Daniels $130,000 in the closing stretch of the 2016 election campaign — money Daniels says was meant to keep her quiet about an affair with Trump. The Stormy Daniels lawsuit is a game-changer because Trump could be forced to give her lawyers a deposition about his sexual past — something that has the potential to set off more scandals.
The 2018 elections will be a referendum on Donald Trump. This is not about the Trump presidency but the man himself. Without Hillary Clinton to demonize, Trump now faces one opponent he can’t beat: Himself.

Juan Williams is an author, and a political analyst for Fox News Channel.

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Three Black Women Could Challenge Trump

Currently, the three strongest Democratic challengers to President Trump’s reelection are all black women: talk show queen Oprah Winfrey, former first lady Michelle Obama, and Senator Kamala Harris of California.

Juan Williams

Former White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon has said Oprah and the #MeToo movement pose an “existential threat” to the Trump presidency. Michelle Obama left the White House with a 68 percent approval rating, and got a new wave of positive attention this month when record crowds showed up to see her newly unveiled official portrait at the National Gallery of Art. As for Harris, conservative columnist and Trump booster Ann Coulter confidently predicted last fall that if she ran, she would be the Democratic nominee.

A black female candidate would attract a lot of attention with a challenge to Trump. Ninety-four percent of black women voted against Trump in 2016, as did 69 percent of Latina women and 43 percent of white women. Women of all races have led the biggest anti-Trump marches.

April Reign, an activist who founded the #OscarsSoWhite campaign, worried during a recent NBC interview that the clamor for a black female presidential candidate could be a trap. “Stop begging strong black women to be president: Michelle, Oprah, whatever,” Reign said. “It’s weird. And Lord knows when black women try to lead, y’all attempt to silence and erase us. So how would that work, exactly?”

Well, black women are already thriving at the top of the political ladder in lots of places. For example, black women are in charge as mayor of at least seven big cities: Atlanta; Baltimore; Charlotte, N.C.; Flint, Michigan; New Orleans; Toledo, Ohio; and Washington, D.C. In addition, a record 21 black women are serving in Congress, including Harris. All but one — Representative Mia Love of Utah — are Democrats.

Winfrey and Obama stand out among these black women because their political strength is only a subset of their power as cultural icons. They have fans among Republicans and Democrats. They attract people of all races. Their broad appeal, including among suburban white women, crosses the nation’s deep political divide.

Trump is already attuned to a potential challenge from Winfrey. After Winfrey conducted a focus group on Trump for CBS’s 60 Minutes, the president quickly lashed out at her via Twitter.

“Just watched a very insecure Oprah Winfrey, who at one point I knew very well, interview a panel of people on 60 Minutes,” he tweeted. “The questions were biased and slanted, the facts incorrect. Hope Oprah runs so she can be exposed and defeated just like all of the others!”

Oprah responded last week by telling Ellen DeGeneres: “I woke up, and I just thought — I don’t like giving negativity power. I just thought, ‘What?'”

Oprah said that she asked CBS to add a response from a pro-Trump member of the focus group to give the piece more balance. “So I was working very hard to do the opposite of what I was hate-tweeted about,” she told DeGeneres.

Longtime Trump political adviser Roger Stone recently told the Oxford Union that Michelle Obama would be the strongest Democratic candidate. The then-first lady’s “When they go low, we go high” speech was one of the most memorable of the 2016 Democratic National Convention. The big question with Obama is whether she is willing to go low and put her family through another brutal presidential campaign.

Harris lacks the name identification of Winfrey or Obama, but California’s junior senator comes from the most influential state in Democratic politics. Harris would have a strong claim to the deep-pocketed donors in Hollywood and Silicon Valley who helped fund her Senate election in 2016. The former state attorney general’s unflinching television interviews and TV grilling of Trump administration witnesses at congressional hearings have given her national visibility.

Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said in an interview last August, “She’s going to be knocking on doors in Iowa.”

In 1968, New York’s Shirley Chisholm became the first black woman elected to Congress. Four years later, she became the first black candidate to run for a major party’s presidential nomination. “I am not the candidate of black America, although I am black and proud,” Chisholm told supporters at her announcement.

It’s looking more and more likely that 2020 might be the year that a woman finishes the journey — and shatters not one but two glass ceilings.

Juan Williams is an author, and a political analyst for Fox News Channel.

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How Russian Bots Are Using You

Did you see #SchumerShutdown trending on Twitter two weeks ago?

You got used.

Fake Twitter accounts linked to Russia — hundreds of fake accounts — pushed the #SchumerShutdown, according to a group monitoring foreign internet activity.

Juan Williams

President Trump and Congressional Republicans reaped the political benefits of this Russian intelligence offensive. Schumer and congressional Democrats backed down out of fear that they were losing public support based on social media activity.

In fact, subsequent polling showed most Americans blamed the shutdown on Trump as well as the Republican majorities who control the Senate and the House, but still cannot pass a budget or immigration reform.

Russia’s backing for Trump and the Republicans who support him on Capitol Hill gives the GOP no incentive to investigate, punish, or disrupt the Russian interference. And the Russian social media attacks continue with shameless regularity.

Around the same time they pushed #SchumerShutdown, armies of Russian bots and trolls on social media were also pumping up the #ReleaseTheMemo hashtag, in support of the right-wing conspiracy theory that a classified memo on usage of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) reveals a shadowy “Deep State” cabal against President Trump.

The #ReleaseTheMemo offensive, pushed in part by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s operatives, is the latest effort to help Trump by disparaging the FBI and Special Counsel Robert Mueller with bogus political narratives.

This was the same type of cyber-warfare used by Russia during the 2016 election to elect Trump and defeat Hillary Clinton, according to U.S. intelligence agencies. Russia paid little price for that brazen interference in a presidential election. In fact, their intrusion achieved their desired outcome — Trump was elected. It worked. They got away with it.

They have no reason to stop doing it and every reason to keep doing it.

In addition, congressional Republican leaders have continued to conveniently close their eyes to the Russian meddling with American democracy while Trump benefits from it. As the midterm elections approach, with control of Congress at stake, Russia can be expected to make a push to keep Trump-friendly Republicans in power.This is already taking place, as the Russians have picked up the pace of their internet attacks by pitting Americans against Americans on race, religion, and immigration. The Russian goal is to polarize public opinion, undermine trust in elections, and weaken the U.S. as a world power.

Last week, Congress offered more proof of Russia’s success in damaging America by releasing documents from Facebook showing Russian agents behind 129 “phony event announcements during the 2016 presidential campaign, drawing the attention of nearly 340,000 users — many of whom said they were planning to attend,” according to The Washington Post.

In a December report, a former deputy director of the CIA and the former Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee wrote that there is “a perception among the media and general public that Russia ended its social media operations following last year’s election. … Wrong.” Michael Morell and Mike Rogers said the Russian attacks on American politics “continue to this day.”

It is no surprise that, in the last year, the Russians smeared the FBI, according to Morell and Rogers, as well as lashing out at ABC News, and stirring fevered anti-immigrant passions by highlighting all violent acts by illegal immigrants.

The Russians even went after Congressional Republicans who dared to criticize Trump. The Russian social media attacks, Morell and Rogers wrote, targeted Senator John McCain after he voted down a Trump-backed bill to kill ObamaCare. The Russians also targeted GOP Senators Bob Corker, Lindsey Graham, and Jeff Flake whenever they expressed concern about Trump’s actions.

The Russian social media effort in support of Trump now enters a perilous stretch as Mueller readies for an interview with the president regarding his campaign’s ties to the Russians, and questions of possible subsequent obstruction of justice. Public opinion, so ably influenced by the Russians, will play an important role. Last week, a CNN poll found 78 percent of Americans believe Trump should testify under oath as part of Mueller’s probe. Just 18 percent said he should not.

If Trump refuses to cooperate with the investigation, creating a clash over constitutional powers, public opinions, and support for the rule of law — across political lines — will be critical.

But those opinions will be under the influence of a hostile foreign power: Russia.

Juan Williams is an author and a political analyst for Fox News Channel.

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Trump: A Useful Distraction for the GOP

As we begin 2018, President Donald Trump claims he is picking up speed after the late December passage of tax cut legislation. But the tax cut is even less popular than the 

Juan WIlliams

president. And his approval rating is the lowest in history for any first-year president.

The real problem is that tax cuts for the rich are not what candidate Trump promised his populist supporters. Trump said he was going to raise taxes on the rich and eliminate deductions that favored the investor class, while cutting taxes on the middle class. He also said he was going to end the carried interest deduction that allows hedge fund millionaires to pay at a lower tax rate than working-class Americans.

The bill Trump signed does the exact opposite. It gives a big tax cut to the rich and allows the carried interest deduction to remain.

Trump has distracted the nation with his clown show while the “too big to fail” crowd of corporate lobbyists, the Chamber of Commerce, and the Koch brothers passed a tax bill to make themselves even richer. This is a triumph for establishment Republicans.

For most of 2017, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Speaker Paul Ryan were ridiculed on right-wing talk radio and conservative websites for not advancing the Trump agenda. The Republican Congress’s approval ratings sank lower than Trump’s. But in retrospect, it looks as if McConnell and Ryan never cared about their low ratings. They wanted the president to fill up the front pages with his attacks on them, as well as bluster, bullying, and scandal. It allowed them to work without the glare of public scrutiny for a rushed tax bill that gives small, temporary breaks to Trump’s “forgotten” working people while the wealthiest 1 percent of taxpayers get 83 percent of the benefit.

Establishment Republicans also let Trump have the spotlight while working in the dark to advance three other long-held agenda items. Firstly, allowing drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve; secondly, repealing the individual mandate in the Affordable Care Act; and thirdly, pushing poorly qualified but pro-business and anti-regulation judges onto federal courts.

Establishment Republicans plan to use Trump as a distraction once again in 2018. While Trump is caught up battling the special counsel probe into alleged collusion between his 2016 campaign and Russia, McConnell and Ryan plan to cut federal spending on social safety net programs, including welfare, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. These are politically popular programs. Trump promised during the 2016 campaign not to cut Social Security. But now the populist politician will again be reneging on a pledge.

He is being repositioned by the GOP establishment into demanding smaller government and making their case that starving big government begins by cutting spending on domestic programs. Trump and the Republican majority in Congress will not mention their 2017 tax cuts that drove up the deficit by more than $1 trillion. These Republican bait-and-switch games are urgent with the midterm elections approaching. Democrats are likely to make gains that could halt the GOP establishment agenda. A Quinnipiac poll taken before Christmas found Democrats with a 15-point advantage on the 2018 generic Congressional ballot question, 52 to 37.

Charlie Cook wrote recently in the Cook Political Report that the GOP is facing “enormous” problems heading into the new year. “The odds of them losing the House are now at least 50-50, and the Senate is in real doubt.”

Democrats need a net gain of 24 House seats to wrest back control. Twenty-three districts currently represented by GOP congressmen voted for Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election. Seven of them are in deep-blue California.

When control of the House flipped from Democrats to Republicans in 1994, the GOP picked up 54 seats. In 2006, the Democrats won control of the House by picking up 31 seats. In 2010, control switched again with the GOP netting 63 seats.

The GOP has something of a “red wall” in the House through years of gerrymandered districts by Republican governors and state legislatures. But as the 2016 election proved with Hillary Clinton’s fabled “blue wall” in the electoral college, walls work great — until they are breached.

One of the most underreported stories of 2017 was the failure of Republicans to recruit top-tier candidates with name recognition and fund-raising prowess to run for these seats. Democrats are growing in confidence as they see the second and third-rate Republican contenders. And Democrats need a confidence boost. They are defending an unenviable 26 Senate seats — one more than expected, because there will be a special election in Minnesota as a result of Senator Al Franken‘s resignation — while the GOP is defending only eight.

Trump gave his conservative supporters heartburn earlier this year when he struck a temporary spending deal with Congressional Democrats.
It is good that Trump appears to get along so well with “Chuck and Nancy” — Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.

The smart money says he will be spending a lot more time with them when they are Senate Majority Leader and Speaker this time next year. By then, the Republican Establishment will be done with the Trump show.
Juan Williams is an author, and a political analyst for Fox News Channel. Jackson Baker’s regular Politics column will return next week.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

The Trump Effect

CREDIT: John Poltrack | Dreamstime

President Trump, with his low approval ratings, chaotic White House, and health-care failure, might as well be on the ballot in three elections before the end of the year.

In Alabama, Republicans running to fill the Senate seat vacated by Attorney General Jeff Sessions are staging a red-state referendum on Trump, who won the state by almost 30 points last November. But the president is dividing his Alabama supporters with steady attacks on one of the state’s favorite sons: Sessions.

Trump is also at the center of two gubernatorial races — in Virginia and New Jersey. Trump lost both states in the presidential election. Democrats now delight in stirring up their base by putting Trump’s face on every Republican opponent.

John Poltrack | Dreamstime

Chris Christie

The question in Alabama, however, is which candidate for the GOP nomination is the most pro-Trump.

Luther Strange, the Republican appointed to hold the seat until the December general election, is running as a GOP primary candidate who “strongly supported our president from Day 1.”

He is attacking one opponent, Mo Brooks, for saying during the presidential campaign that Trump voters would come to “regret” backing the billionaire. Brooks supported Senator Ted Cruz and blasted Trump as a “serial adulterer.”

A poll made public last week found Strange leading the race with 33 percent of the vote; another pro-Trump candidate, former judge Roy Moore, with 26 percent; and Brooks in last place with 16 percent.

Brooks has offered to drop out of the race if Sessions wants to resign his post and run for his old seat again. The primary will be held August 15th, with a possible run-off in September.

In the Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial races, the polarizing dynamic around Trump is different: Democrats are stigmatizing their GOP opponents as Trump acolytes.  

Virginia’s Lieutenant Governor Ralph Northam, the Democrats’ nominee, is running an advertisement calling Trump a “narcissistic maniac.”

“I stand by what I said,” Northam said at a debate held earlier this month. “I believe our president is a dangerous man. I think he lacks empathy. And he also has difficulty telling the truth, and it happens again and again.”

The Republican candidate, former RNC chairman Ed Gillespie, who is roughly tied with Northam at 44 percent support in the polls, countered that the Democrat’s attack would make it more difficult to work with Trump on behalf of Virginia.

Gillespie has already been torched by Trump politics. Despite a big money advantage, he came within 1.2 percentage points of losing the GOP primary to Corey Stewart, a diehard Trump supporter who accused Gillespie of not being loyal to the president. Now Gillespie needs to make sure Stewart’s Trump-loving voters turn out for him in November. But he also has to appeal to moderates and independents in a state Hillary Clinton won by five points.

Trump is also a major factor in New Jersey’s gubernatorial race, where Clinton won by 14 points. The difficulties Republicans face there are ratcheted up due to incumbent Governor Chris Christie’s rapid fall in the polls. Christie was also a strong, public voice for Trump.

Those factors are hurting GOP nominee Kim Guadagno.

A July Monmouth University poll found Democrat Phil Murphy leading Guadagno, 53 percent to 26 percent, with 14 percent undecided. Guadagno has tried to distance herself from Trump. After the infamous tape where he was heard bragging about being able to grab women by their genitals, Guadagno declared she would not vote for Trump.

“No apology can excuse away Mr. Trump’s reprehensible comments degrading women,” Guadagno wrote on Twitter. “We’re raising my 3 boys to be better than that.”

Democrat Murphy has turned his campaign into part of the “Resist” Trump movement. He promises that when he is governor, New Jersey will be “a state where we draw a line against Donald Trump.” Murphy, President Obama’s ambassador to Germany, has suggested there are parallels between Trump’s rise and the rise of Adolf Hitler in 1920s Germany.

“I’m a modest student of German history,” Murphy told voters at a town hall earlier this year. “And I know what was being said about somebody else in the 1920s. And you could unfortunately drop in names from today into those observations from the 1920s.”

Elections in odd-numbered years are often a harbinger of the following years’ midterm elections. When Republicans Christie and Bob McDonnell won the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial races in 2009, it foreshadowed the Tea Party-wave election of 2010. When Democrats Jon Corzine and Tim Kaine won those races in 2005, it foreshadowed the Democrats’ takeover of Congress in 2006.

Currently, Democrats hold a 48-39 percent lead over Republicans in the Real Clear Politics polling average when voters are presented with a generic choice for congressional elections.

As Virginia and New Jersey go, so goes the nation?

Juan Williams is a FOX News political analyst. He writes for The Hill, where a version of this column first appeared.

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

Poverty: A State of Mind?

CREDIT: Dreamstime | Richard Koele

Representative Maxine Waters stirred up a big crowd in New Orleans recently by using extreme language to critique Ben Carson, the secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Waters, the top Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, said Carson “knows nothing” about the housing agency’s mission and “doesn’t care about people in public housing,” adding that she would not be polite if and when Secretary Carson came before her to testify. “If he thinks … I am going to give him a pass,” she said, “I am going to take his ass apart!”

Waters also said that an earlier comment from Carson, in which he drew a parallel between the aspirations of black slaves and the hopes of people who voluntarily immigrated to America, was evidence that he “doesn’t know the difference between an immigrant and a slave.”

Yes, Waters was throwing around strong words to stir up laughter at the expense of President Trump’s only black cabinet secretary. But beyond the trash talk there is an important political debate for black America.

The heart of Waters’ anger at Carson goes to what he said about poverty in a May radio interview with Armstrong Williams. Carson said: “I think poverty, to a large extent, is also a state of mind.”

Given the high poverty rate among black Americans (24 percent), especially black children (near 40 percent), Waters reacted with alarm. Poverty is not just a mental state to her. She knows the horrid reality of poverty in her Los Angeles district.

Overall, more than 43 million Americans lived in poverty in 2015 — about 13.5 percent of the population, according to the Census Bureau. That number includes over 14 million children — about 20 percent of all American children.

Dreamstime | Richard Koele

Ben Carson

But Carson was not putting down the poor. He grew up in poverty in Detroit with a single mother. He cares about poor people and speaks with evangelical passion about the power of personal responsibility to push young people out of poverty. Carson’s belief in personal responsibility puts him at odds with people who point at the capacity of “systemic poverty” to defeat even the smartest, most ambitious young person.

Those voices say that a combination of broken families, bad neighborhoods, bad schools, and the persistence of racism can snare anyone and keep them on the margins of society, regardless of their personal character.

But the critics are missing a key point. Liberal or conservative, we can all agree it is important to encourage anyone living in poverty to look for a way out, to find the path to a better life. If the poor wait on the government to end their poverty, they will be waiting a long time.

I have known Carson for several years. My son Raffi is his press secretary. But my view, which is sympathetic to Carson’s description of poverty as a “state of mind,” is not a result of loyalty to him. I grew up in Section 8 housing and have experienced being poor. Social science data confirms that the best ways for people of all colors to avoid poverty is to stay in school and graduate, take even a menial job to build a resumé and connections, don’t marry until you have a career on track, and don’t have a child until you are married. People who follow that prescription have close to zero chance of living in poverty.

I think major black voices should join Carson in stating that there are steps individuals can take — and advise their children to take — to win their personal fight against poverty. Conservatives who favor small government are currently intent on limiting federal entitlement programs. Trump’s budget includes harsh cuts that would make poverty worse for many — including the $6.2 billion proposed cuts to HUD. Those conservatives are deluding themselves if they think big cuts are going to help the poor. But liberals are deluding themselves if they don’t see the good in Carson offering hope to people in need of inspiration.

Republicans and Democrats need to support the inspiring message that fired up the growth of the black middle class a generation ago: We shall overcome.

Juan Williams is an author and a political analyst for Fox News Channel.