WHITE HOUSE & ADMINISTRATION: Trump and his advisers like to see him on the hustings – at rallies, on TV, conducting interviews, on social media – based on the theory that the president is the GOP’s biggest asset to mobilize the Republican base to vote on Nov. 6. The assumption is that he will hammer home the Republican Party’s accomplishments (The Hill). But Trump talks about a lot of topics in any 24-hour period. With 20 days to go until Election Day, and every GOP political analyst biting their nails about the all-important verdict by women voters this fall, Trump took to Twitter on Tuesday to bash Stormy Daniels, to whom he paid hush money after an alleged affair, calling her “Horseface.” He took more shots at Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who says she’s thinking about a run for the White House in 2020. And on immigration, the president paused to lean on Twitter on Tuesday to warn the Honduran government that if it did not halt a caravan of migrants from reaching the U.S. border, his administration would cut off international aid (The Wall Street Journal). The president did not add clarity on Tuesday to the fate of missing Saudi journalist Khashoggi at a time when Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was in Riyadh and Ankara to press for information. Reuters: Pompeo meets with Turkish president, Saudi Arabia’s king and crown prince about Khashoggi disappearance. The Associated Press: Trump’s Saudi bet has become much riskier. On Monday, Trump suggested Khashoggi was slain by “rogue killers” inside the Saudi consulate. On Tuesday, he told The Associated Press it was another case of “guilty until proven innocent,” a reference to the recent GOP talking point about Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. His defense of Saudi Arabia runs up against his more general comments that Khashoggi’s reported murder and dismemberment would be “horrible,” if proven. Pompeo said after his meetings on Tuesday that the Saudis continued to profess ignorance about Khashoggi’s whereabouts, while showing a “serious commitment” to determining the facts (The Hill). © Getty Images After talking with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Trump said he “totally denied any knowledge of what took place in their Turkish consulate.” The crown prince “told me that he has already started, and will rapidly expand, a full and complete investigation into this matter. Answers will be forthcoming shortly,” Trump said in a tweet. Turkish officials, after examining the inside of the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, said they found evidence Khashoggi was killed, presumably on Oct. 2 when he disappeared (The Associated Press). The New York Times reports the suspects in the Khashoggi case have ties to Crown Prince Salman. Vice President Pence spoke up on behalf of the vanished journalist, who was an opinion contributor to The Washington Post. "We’re going to get to the bottom of it. It’s important that the world know the truth,” he said. "If in fact Mr. Khashoggi was murdered, we need to know who was responsible, we need to hold those responsible — and it’s even more important that he was a member of a free and independent press.” Attorney General Jeff Sessions followed Pence’s lead, while adding assurances that the president “feels strongly about it.” In fact, the president’s critics complained Trump spoke with more conviction this week about the importance of not rocking the boat over the Khashoggi matter, in deference to the value of U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia. "The world will be diminished if journalists aren’t able to go and travel and to report honestly conditions in differing countries,” Sessions added, “or people in their own country can’t report on corruption or crime or misconduct in their countries. So I think it can even separate countries from a civilized community." **** Oversight preparedness: Trump’s White House team is said by GOP allies and observers to be drastically ill-prepared and understaffed, should they encounter the inevitable result of divided government, which would be a barrage of congressional investigations (McClatchy). > `Pound of flesh club’: House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is clearly thinking about oversight. "It's very important we are not scattershot. I'm not having any pound-of-flesh club. ... What is important is for us not to be them. We are not going to be them. On the other hand, the American people deserve the truth and we have to have oversight over the agencies, the oversight of seeking the truth about the most fundamental action a person takes, [which] is voting" (Politico interview). > Trump says he’s settled on commercial litigator Pat Cipollone to be his next White House counsel (The Associated Press). If Democrats gain control of the House next year, Cipollone would steer a defense team confronted with congressional probes of the White House and executive agencies (The Hill). *** SPOTTED at last night’s party at Bobby Van’s restaurant in the nation’s capital honoring Chris Stirewalt of Fox News for his new book “Every Man A King”: Sara and Ron Bonjean, former Rep. Robert Hurt (R-Va.), Charles Hurt, Bill Sammon, Christina Robbins, Geoff Earle, Eliana Johnson, Daniel Lippman, Richard Fowler, Daniel Harper, Mike Emanuel and The Hill’s very own Niall Stanage and Bob Cusack. *** |