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Trump caved, Trump caved, Trump caved. That’s the incantation, and if you repeat it long enough, the words begin to feel right. The president’s capitulation was ‘total’, say the media heads. He has been ‘humiliated.’ Nancy Pelosi ‘took him to the cleaners’ and ‘kicked his behind.’ This, apparently, qualifies as high-level political analysis. The trouble is, it isn’t true. Trump didn’t cave. He backed off. He may have folded, temporarily, but what journalists and many Democrats struggle to understand is that elections are not won and lost in news cycles. The irony is that many of Trump’s opponents accuse him of having ADD, of being a Twitter addict who watches too much 24-hour rolling news.

Block after block, thousands queued to enter Oakland’s Frank H. Ogawa Plaza to hear Sen. Kamala Harris announce her campaign for president. As police and security fielded anxious questions – ‘Will we get in? Will we see her?’ – the guard by me repeated: ‘I’m not sure, but don’t lose hope’. Hope was in the air. It was an atmosphere of a home crowd waiting to see a hometown team: here, the junior senator from California, a ‘daughter of Oakland,’ raised by immigrants in the East Bay, who served as District Attorney and California’s Attorney-General before becoming the second black female senator and first Indian American senator. As I spoke to people on the rope line, they told me why they came.

President Trump, to use his favorite canine terminology, choked like a dog today. In acceding to a three-week continuing resolution to fund the government, he rolled over for Nancy Pelosi and she didn’t even throw him a bone. Pelosi may not be able to muzzle the voluble Trump but she has figured out how to bring him to heel.His failure to procure a single cent for a border wall is already enraging his erstwhile supporters on the right. Ann Coulter: ‘Good news for George Herbert Walker Bush: As of today, he is no longer the biggest wimp ever to serve as President of the United States.’ Having prompted him to fight an unwinnable battle, they’re now denouncing him for fleeing his personal Alamo.

Now that he has been indicted and arrested on seven counts by the Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Roger Stone’s biggest concern today may be what suit to wear to his arraignment at a federal courthouse in Fort Lauderdale at 11 a.m. Double-breasted? Single-breasted with peak or notch lapel? Unlike his former partner Paul Manafort, who veered into some rather outré fashion choices, Stone is a fastidious dresser who has maintained a menswear blog for years and over a decade of service in the field as the men’s style correspondent for the Daily Caller.

In the history of the Republic, no president has ever been barred by the Speaker of the House from delivering the State of the Union. Until now. The conventional wisdom is that Speaker Pelosi has scored a point against the president. In fact, she has handed him a weapon. But will he use it? My proposal is simple. Trump must speak directly to the American people. He must be presidential. And he must use his constitutional power to protect the nation. The president should submit his report to Congress in writing following Jefferson’s tradition and simultaneously deliver it as a live speech to the nation on television. He should make the case that Congress has failed to fulfill its obligations.

If Kamala Harris, who announced her candidacy on Martin Luther King Day, wins the presidency, she would not only be the first black woman to ascend to the Oval Office but also the first Democrat from California to accomplish that feat. The last two politicians to emerge from the Golden State and prove that they had the right stuff were both Republicans, Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon. Reagan personified the optimism of California Dreamin’; Nixon, a kind of grapes of wrath resentment that he reverse engineered to condemn liberal elites. Like Nixon, a red hunter par excellence, Harris has tried to play the Russia card to rise to prominence. Today it is Democrats who decry Moscow gold, while Republicans play kissy face with the Kremlin.

Love her or hate her, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has proven that she can command a news cycle and use it to her advantage. She has an astute understanding of how not just to capture the attention of audiences, but to keep it. But she wasn’t the first candidate to lean on a knack for getting noticed – and she certainly won’t be the last. Being an ‘attention candidate’ isn’t necessarily a good thing, however. Consider Aaron Schock, the former Republican congressman . His story should stand as a cautionary tale for what happens when a candidate or elected official relies too heavily on attention as a political currency.

Nancy Pelosi made a major move this week when she rescinded her State of the Union invitation to President Trump as long as the government remains shut down. In all likelihood, Pelosi thought this would provide Democrats with a strategic advantage in future negotiations over border wall funding. In response, President Trump canceled Pelosi’s government-funded overseas trip.The petty political blows can continue back and forth, but there is an actual strategic play President Trump can make that will be much more powerful – he needs to address the nation, as scheduled, on January 29, 2019.With Pelosi considered a political tactician within the Democratic party, it is no surprise to see her cancel the State of the Union address.

On Thursday CNN reported that Donald Trump was taken aback that his nominee for attorney general William Barr and special counsel Robert Mueller are old chums. ‘I have known Bob Mueller for 30 years,’ Barr said during Senate testimony on Tuesday. ‘And I have the utmost respect for Bob and his distinguished record of service.’ Now Barr’s statements are about to create much bigger problems for him. Barr unequivocally affirmed, in response to a question from Sen. Lindsey Graham, that it would be a crime if the president sought to tamper with the testimony of a witness: ‘yes, under an obstruction statute. Yes.

Six years ago, Julián Castro was a rising star in the national Democratic party. But by the end of 2018, his star had fallen. Last week Castro formally began his climb back toward national prominence, via his 2020 presidential campaign. In 2012, Castro: 1. Gave the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte 2. Was in his second-term as San Antonio’s mayor having won re-election in 2011 with 81 percent of the vote, more than 74 percentage points ahead of his closest rival 3. Secured the passage by voters of a sales tax increase to fund high quality Pre-K for a group of lower-income children 4. Received an offer to become President Obama’s Secretary of Transportation (which he declined).

It wasn’t quite the Cena Trimalchionis, but the robust, non-sissy feast that the President of the United States laid on for the Clemson Tigers — the college football team that just won the national championship — would in its own way have been the envy of Petronius’s diners. No larks’ tongues, but plenty of Big Macs, Whoppers, French fries, and pizza, all served up on gleaming White House china with the condiment proffered from silver bowls. Donald Trump paid for the repast himself — 1,000 hamburgers he said at one point, though fact checkers at the publicity arm of the Democratic National Committee said that there were probably no more than 300.

Kirsten Gillibrand has always been a woman of the moment. But has her moment passed? She obviously doesn’t think so, and the New York senator was riding high in one poll on Tuesday night — she was trending on Twitter across the country. Gillibrand appeared on the top-rated late-night talk show, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, on which the host asked the Democrat the question no one has been asking. ‘I’m just curious — do you have anything you would like to announce?’ She grabbed Colbert’s hands, holding them hokily on his desk for a few moments before answering. ‘I’m filing [pause] an exploratory committee [pause] for president of the United States [pause] TONIGHT!’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?