Can Donald Trump flip Minnesota back to the GOP in a presidential election for the first time in nearly 50 years? Alas, as Hot Air’s resident Land-of-Ten-Thousand-Lakes observer, the task falls upon me to cast a little cold water on the idea, although perhaps not quite as much as today’s Star-Tribune poll suggests. Despite his

This is probably going to go down as one of the shortest-lived “scandals” in the history of the Trump presidency. On Thursday, the White House Chief of Staff announced that next year’s G-7 summit would be held at President Trump’s Doral resort in Florida. That led to the usual screeching and rending of clothing from

James Mattis doesn’t get mad, and he doesn’t get even — he just plays to win. As a guest at last night’s Al Smith Dinner in New York City, a traditionally irreverent affair, Mattis joked about Donald Trump’s reported comment on Wednesday that Mattis was the “world’s most overrated general.” Mattis, who had been very

Turns out that Rick Perry won’t be sticking around as long as the Wall Street Journal thought. As the focus of the Ukraine-Gate probe falls on the so-called “Three Amigos” — Perry, Kurt Volker, and Gordon Sondland — Perry has decided to say adios to Trump. Bloomberg suspects that Trump’s attempt to shift blame to Perry

Both House Democrats and the national news media have tried selling impeachment as the nation’s highest priority. According to the latest Emerson poll in Iowa, not even their fellow Democrats are buying that. Only six percent of voters in the key Midwestern swing state see impeachment as the most important issue, and a majority would

Earlier Ed wrote about Hillary Clinton’s claim that the Russians are preparing Tulsi Gabbard for a third-party run to ensure Trump is reelected. That was certainly a highlight of Hillary’s appearance on the podcast hosted by David Plouffe, but it wasn’t the only truly paranoid thing she said. A bit earlier in the same interview,

If so, according to Byron York’s sources, it didn’t work. House Intelligence chair Adam Schiff pressed Ukraine ‘Amigo’ Kurt Volker to admit knowledge of an explicit quid pro quo demand from Donald Trump for dirt on the Bidens in exchange for suspended military aid. The State Department’s special envoy to Ukraine insisted that it didn’t happen,

Mitch McConnell has one message for his Senate Republican caucus on impeachment: This is no dream — this is really happening!* In fact, the Senate Majority Leader has begun briefing his colleagues on the process of a presidential  impeachment trial and the strategies needed to defend Donald Trump. The Washington Post reports that McConnell envisions

Did Gordon Sondland throw Donald Trump “under the bus” in his opening statement to House investigators this morning, or just point out the obvious? The ambassador didn’t spare Rudy Giuliani, at any rate, in expressing his “disappointment” over Trump’s decision to delegate Ukrainian diplomacy to his personal attorney. That’s not quite connecting any dots, however,

Last week’s resignation of Michael McKinley from the State Department turns out to have been a big red flag for the White House. The former senior adviser to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has a lot to say to the House of Representatives, and none of it will make the Trump administration look good. The

Our colleague Hugh Hewitt has a particularly hot take at the Washington Post this week having to do with the debates. But he’s not talking about the ongoing Democratic clown car shows like the one last night. Hugh is looking to the future and the general election debates between President Trump and whoever the Democrats

Did Donald Trump’s attempt at a rapprochement in a difficult diplomatic jam backfire? The parents of a teen killed in a road accident involving the wife of an American diplomat in the UK met with Trump to urge him to withdraw Anne Sacoolas’ immunity and send her back to face criminal charges. Trump declined to do

This should prove interesting. Now that Turkey is in the middle of an invasion of Syria and trying to wipe out the Kurds, President Trump is saying that he’s preparing to hit them with sanctions. Meanwhile, our troops are scrambling to safely get out of the affected areas and the Kurds have signed on to

No regrets at all? Well, perhaps, Hunter Biden allows during his no-holds-barred interview with ABC News. “However, was it poor judgment to be in the middle of something that is — it’s a swamp, in many ways? Yeah,” Biden says, while also admitting that he isn’t sure whether he got appointed to the Burisma board because of

Do Rudy Giuliani and Donald Trump want John Bolton to offer a deposition to House Democrats? One might think that, under the circumstances, the president and his attorney might want to lower the temperature with Trump’s former national security adviser after Fiona Hill’s testimony. Instead, Giuliani wasted no time in trolling Bolton over Hill’s reports about

While House Democrats consider their version of a presidential whodunit, Donald Trump has another mystery on his mind. An American tourist finds himself indicted for manslaughter in the British territory of Anguilla after a bizarre set of events on a family vacation. Scott Hapgood claims self-defense but authorities there seem intent on trying him. “I’ve

And vice-versa, one would imagine. Joe Biden tried dancing away from the ethics controversies involving son Hunter Biden while doing radio interviews in Iowa yesterday by focusing attention on Donald Trump’s alleged crimes. If Biden gets elected, he told one host, Trump had better not expect a pardon in 2021: Five days ago, Biden for

Last week, Donald Trump announced that China had already agreed to terms on a a first-step trade deal with the US. According to Bloomberg, either Trump spoke prematurely or Xi Jinping has tried to play games once again. China won’t sign the “phase one” deal without more negotiations, Bloomberg reports this morning, leaving the status

This one’s getting down to the wire. Marie Yovanovitch, the former ambassador to Ukraine, has agreed to meet with three House committees to discuss what she knows about Donald Trump’s actions regarding aid and the push to get the Bidens investigated. Thus far the White House has moved to block any administration officials from testifying

This all sounds naggingly familiar. The President’s team works on reallocating funding to continue construction work on the southern border wall by the military. Someone gets angry about this and goes to court. They find a sympathetic judge who rules against the President. I thought summer was the season for reruns? (National Review) Another federal

Does this sound like a Tom Hanks movie? If so, let me ruin it for readers with this spoiler: Nothing actually happened in the end. The New York Times reports on an argument in the Oval Office between Rudy Giuliani and former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in which Giuliani proposed a prisoner swap with Turkey.

Update: The New York Times offers the first look at Marie Yovanovitch’s testimony, and it’s not at all complimentary to the Trump administration. Her opening statement accused the White House and State Department as operating US diplomacy in service to personal interests rather than national interests, and called her removal a result of “totally fictitious”

This hasn’t been a good week for Donald Trump in court when it comes to keeping his income tax returns private. On Monday, a federal judge rejected Trump’s challenge to a Manhattan DA’s subpoena for his tax records, blasting Trump’s “repugnant” claim of absolute immunity while in office. The DC Court of Appeals bookended Trump’s

“Hunter, you’re a loser,” taunted Donald Trump at his rally in Minneapolis last night to the delight of his supporters gathered at the Target Center. Trump got personal in his attacks on the Bidens, going after Hunter’s drug use and sudden transformation into an energy expert, while disdaining Joe Biden’s reputation as an eminence grise among

It’s an interesting question that’s generated a lot of debate lately. Is there really any such thing as a formal “impeachment inquiry” and can it be initiated by way of the Speaker of the House holding a press conference? Keith E. Whittington at Lawfare digs into the matter and comes up with a surprisingly simple

Could an end to the trade war with China be near? The highest level negotiations thus far since the two countries started lobbing full-scale tariffs at each other will take place tomorrow. Donald Trump announced a meeting with China’s Vice Premier Liu He on Twitter, but suggested he might not be all that eager to

Did Donald Trump demand a quid pro quo for US aid by intimidating the new Ukrainian president into digging up dirt on Hunter Biden? Democrats in the House are convinced the answer is yes, but Volodymyr Zelensky says no. In a lengthy press avail earlier in Kyiv, Zelensky told reporters that his July 25 conversation with Trump

“Again”? Forget it, she’s rolling. Or trolling. Take your pick, but Hillary Clinton isn’t going to get a rematch now even if she wanted it. And especially since Donald Trump wants it: Hillary Clinton coming down with a strong case of Stacey Abrams Syndrome and claiming she won the 2016 election. pic.twitter.com/uTSj72IMN0 — Zach Parkinson (@AZachParkinson)

Lindsey Graham won’t let the Syria withdrawal proceed without a fight — and on Donald Trump’s favorite morning-show turf. Trump’s key ally in the upcoming impeachment fight appeared earlier on Fox & Friends, telling an equally unhappy Brian Kilmeade that Trump had a “pre-9/11 mentality” similar to Barack Obama’s, and just like Obama, Trump would end

Backfire potential: Yuuuuge. As Senate Judiciary Committee chair, Lindsey Graham has played it safe on the Democrats’ push for impeachment, preferring to criticize their efforts while carefully calculating his criticisms of Donald Trump. Today, however, Graham appears to want to roll the dice on perhaps the loosest cannon of Ukraine-Gate by inviting Rudy Giuliani to explain