The Morning Dispatch: Can the White House Block John Bolton’s Book?

Plus: Senators finally get to speak at the impeachment trial, and the Republican rift in Georgia widens.

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Happy Thursday! The actual biggest news of the day was an independent arbitrator ruling in favor of the Cubs in the Kris Bryant service-time grievance, but we’ve been told that’s “too niche” of a newsletter topic. So here’s a couple thousand words on impeachment, John Bolton, and Doug Collins instead.

Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

  • At a ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House, President Trump officially signed the USMCA trade agreement into law.

  • The Federal Reserve announced it would continue holding interest rates steady in an effort to boost inflation toward its 2 percent targets.

  • Life expectancy in the United States increased in 2018 for the first time in four years, according to CDC data.

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  1. Jade Allen

    It's obviously for *chef's kiss* meaning "perfection"

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    Pat Riot

    To paraphrase Paul Ryan, "That's the textbook definition of a dictator".

    And the terrible thing here is that Dershowitz's legal theory will etched into our constitutional precedent when the Republican senators acquit Trump. Future presidents will know that they can do absolutely, positively anything because there is no more law, only presidential whim.

    If the future history of the United States goes totalitarian, yesterday's declaration in the Senate by Trump's lawyer and the forthcoming ratification of that declaration by the Republican Senate will be remembered as our version of the dissolution of the Reichstag.

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      JohnF

      I see that someone else is feeling as fatalistic as I am today. Personally, I think that Dershowitz could have spent the entire three days squealing like a pig on the Senate Floor and Mitch McConnell would still have been able to gather up the votes needed to acquit Trump. We all knew what the end result would be from this process, I'm not sure we fully understood though how cynical and disillusioning it would feel.

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        Pat Riot

        That's the sad, sad part of this. Dershowitz didn't need to be there. The Trump lawyers didn't need to even present a defense and they shouldn't have--the outcome would have been exactly the same.

        And for me, I actually didn't anticipate this outcome. I presumed the Republican Senate would listen for a while and just vote in the way everybody is expecting them to. I expected they would just say in effect, "Whatever. I vote to acquit".

        Instead they said in effect, "The President of the United States cannot be impeached for any reason whatsoever, now and forever, and *therefore* I will vote for Trump's exoneration".

        Senate Republicans will be voting for the *idea* of a lawless dictator president, not just Trump. Democrats will be fools not to use this power should they win the White House at some point, as will every Republican after Trump leaves.

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    Naomi

    Regarding the new emoji... The Argentines have co-opted this gesture from the Italians but put their own twist on it. When you combine it with a skeptical face, it means, "Oh, come on now!" and when combined with an incredulous one (and a little extra wrist action) it communicates, "You really don't expect me to believe that, do you?" I found it very useful when listening to futbol (soccer) fans talking about their favorite player or recounting highlights from the latest match. Not so useful when talking politics in Argentina - you would only use it if someone claimed to have encountered an uncorrupted public employee or elected official. (I always assumed that such people did exist, but I never had any evidence to support my assumption.)

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    Kevin Durant?

    That new “pinched fingers” emoji is going to prove incredibly helpful once it hits our phones later this year. Which of the below do you view as its proper use?
    ————————————
    Wait.......I thought it was the ‘chef’s kiss’ where you pinch your fingers next to your lips and then do an explosive flourish where you spread germs throughout the kitchen.

    Well anyways they need to do that one.

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    Shimshon Kaplan

    In Israel the pinched fingers symbol usually means “Have Patience” or “Wait for a second”. I am not sure if it has that meaning in other countries.

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    Tele

    I thought the emoji was “playing the world’s smallest violin...for you.”

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    Dave IL

    "Which of the below do you view as its proper use?"
    To signal that unicode should have stuck to its original purpose of covering all modern languages in 16 bits.

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      Declan Garvey staff-badge Staff

      But then how could we do this: 🙃?

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    CynthiaW

    Very interesting stuff about the legal situation regarding John Bolton's book. I don't plan to buy it, just get on the library's waiting list.

    I hope he testifies.

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