“With all due respect, I don’t get confused,” Haley said in a statement.
.. The situation was fraught from the beginning, with Haley making an ironclad and unmistakable announcement of new sanctions. And there was no correction for more than 24 hours, even though it was a major story for that whole time.
From the outside, it looked a lot as if the notoriously fickle Trump had simply changed his mind, but the White House tried to play it off as a mix-up and even Haley’s fault. Haley clearly was not having it — especially when Kudlow publicly called her out.
But to be clear, her comment Tuesday is a pretty big repudiation of both Kudlow and what the White House has been saying anonymously.
.. It also means Haley is effectively saying Trump and/or the White House did change their minds — that their increasingly tough posture on Russia has at least momentarily been arrested.
.. The exact reason for that is up for debate. The Kremlin complained about the new sanctions, calling them “international economic raiding.” And in what seems like possibly the tipping point for Trump, The Washington Post reported Sunday night that Trump “has battled his top aides on Russia and lost.” I argued Monday that perhaps Trump just decided to exert his authority, even if it made his administration look unmoored.
Whatever the reasons, though, Haley made clear this was not handled well by the administration, and that it was not her fault. It will be interesting to see what lies ahead for her relationship with the White House — and Kudlow.
Right and Left React to Senator Bob Corker’s Rebuke of Trump
“He has calibrated his retirement announcement to encourage speculation about a 2020 bid, for which his recent comments are clearly useful in positioning him as an establishment primary challenge to Trump. What is it, exactly, that anyone should respect here?”
.. Republicans must honestly face the president’s mental health, admit that the president often tells falsehoods and recognize that the real power lies in the Senate — not with the executive branch.
.. “That Corker is the only Republican openly remarking on the irresponsibility of this behavior is, frankly, an indictment of the rest of the party.”
Mr. Shepp does not think that the president’s critics should give Mr. Corker and others like him too much credit. “They had enough evidence to know exactly what kind of erratic person they were hitching their wagons to last year, and went ahead and endorsed him anyway,” he writes.
.. “Corker is saying out loud what I hear privately from sources throughout the military and the U.S. government, and from both foreign ambassadors and visiting foreign diplomats.”
.. Perhaps he can subpoena executive branch witnesses, or draft legislation “about the procedure, the grounds, and the justifications before the U.S. commits troops to war.”
.. After Mr. Trump’s surprise victory in 2016, many pundits ascribed a strategic genius to him and his team that everyone missed. The shorthand for this was saying that he was playing three-dimensional chess while everyone else was playing a more traditional game. According to Mr. Cillizza, however, this latest spat between the president and the senator shows that there is really no strategy at play. Mr. Trump, if he cared about getting tax reform accomplished, Mr. Cillizza writes, would not attack an important and respected member of the Senate. “Hitting everyone who hits you, of course, isn’t a strategy. It’s a tactic. And, not a very good one at that.”
.. “For perhaps the Republican senator with the strongest reputation on foreign affairs to say that the president was risking ‘World War III’ isn’t just talk; in politics, talk often is action.”
Trudeau ‘Not Pleased’ With Bombardier Executive Pay Packages
Transport-equipment maker, recipient of over $1 billion in recent government aid, offers to defer partial 2016 compensation for executives after public rebuke
.. Mr. Trudeau said his Liberal government was “not pleased” with pay raises ranging from 36% to 93% that Bombardier’s board approved for the six top executives of the ailing Montreal transportation-equipment maker, which has gotten more than $1 billion in government funding over the course of 16 months from both the federal and the Quebec provincial governments.
Acting Attorney General Orders Justice Dept. Not to Defend Refugee Ban
The decision by the acting attorney general is a remarkable rebuke by a government official to a sitting president that recalls the dramatic “Saturday Night Massacre” in 1973, when President Richard M. Nixon fired his attorney general and deputy attorney general for refusing to dismiss the special prosecutor in the Watergate case.
That case prompted a constitutional crisis that ended when Robert Bork, the solicitor general, acceded to Mr. Nixon’s order and fired Archibald Cox, the special prosecutor.
.. Aides to the president backtracked on Sunday, saying that lawful, permanent residents of the United States would not be barred by the order. But White House officials said the president had no intention of backing down from the order, which continues to shut the borders to refugees and others.