No Shutdown For Melania?

wapo’s Alexandra petri:
“I never said there was no collusion between the campaign! Or between the people in the campaign. … I said the president of the United States — there is not a single bit of evidence the president of the United States committed the only crime you could commit here: conspired with the Russians to hack the DNC.”
 
— Rudy Giuliani to CNN anchor Chris Cuomo

 “I represent only President Trump not the Trump campaign. There was no collusion by President Trump in any way, shape or form. Likewise, I have no knowledge of any collusion by any of the thousands of people who worked on the campaign.”
— Rudy Giuliani, in a clarifying statement

When I said there had been no collusion, I obviously did not mean that no one in the campaign was colluding.
When I said there was no collusion by the president, I meant the president AT THE TIME.

When I said nobody was colluding, I meant literally nobody was colluding at the moment you were asking.
 
When I said there was no collusion, I became temporarily confused and thought you were asking if I wanted hot water, and I didn’t, so I said no.
 
I thought you were asking if there was NOW collusion. There is NOW collusion, is what I said.
 
When I said there was no collusion, I meant there definitely wasn’t not not no collusion never!
 
When I said there was no collusion, I meant we did not collude in our hearts.
[…]
When I said there is no collusion, I was just being polite, you know sometimes you just want to be polite to get out of an unpleasant conversation.
 
I meant specifically that no one ever came up to the campaign and said, “Would you like to collude?,” although, to be fair, if that had happened, folks might have said yes, that was just the sort of campaign it was, in fact maybe that did happen and maybe they did say yes, but, uh, the point is, I forget the question.
 
When I said that there was no collusion, I meant there was some collusion.
 

flatus, they must know something we don’t
 
and no wonder.  here’s the current message on the NOAA web page:

Parts of the U.S. Government are closed. This site is being updated, however, only with furlough-related information to support NOAA employees; NOAA websites and social media channels necessary to protect lives and property are also being maintained.

See weather.gov for critical weather information

wapo:  Pelosi abandons Afghanistan trip, accuses Trump of imperiling lawmakers with disclosure
 
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi abandoned her plans to travel commercially to Afghanistan after President Trump canceled her military flight, while leveling the remarkable allegation that the commander in chief, with authority over security preparations, had imperiled the safety of lawmakers and troops when he disclosed the confidential plans.
 
“We had the prerogative to travel commercially, and we made plans to do that until the administration then leaked that we were traveling commercially,” Pelosi (D-Calif.) told reporters Friday. That disclosure “made the scene on the ground much more dangerous, because it’s just a signal to the bad actors that we were coming,” she said, citing State Department security reports.
 
The trip, originally scheduled to disembark Thursday afternoon, was set to include several other House Democrats, including the leaders of House committees involved in national security and government oversight, as well as newly elected members with military experience.
“You never give advance notice of going into a battle area — you just never do it,” Pelosi added. “Perhaps the president’s inexperience didn’t have him understand that protocol. The people around him, though, should have known that, because that’s very dangerous.”
 
Trump has not traveled to Afghanistan; a Dec. 26 trip to Iraq was his first and only trip to a war zone.
[…]
Members of Congress routinely travel around the world as part of their congressional business; that travel is frequently done on military planes and arranged by State Department protocol officers.
 
Such trips are typically kept secret for security reasons until lawmakers are safely back in the United States.
 
Asked how she was certain Trump had leaked her travel plans, Pelosi shrugged and said, “I rest my case.”
 
Asked if she considered it retaliation as part of an ongoing tit-for-tat amid the shutdown, she said, “I would hope not. I don’t think the president would be that petty, do you?”
 
Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill said earlier Friday that the trip to Afghanistan would be indefinitely postponed “so as not to further endanger our troops and security personnel, or the other travelers on the flights.” But he said that lawmakers would not be cowed in discharging their constitutional duties.
 
“The United States Congress is a coequal branch of government in our system of checks and balances,” he said. “The Congress has a constitutional responsibility to conduct oversight in the war zone where our men and women in uniform are risking their lives every day.”
 

the hill:
Four surveys released this week show Trump’s approval rating slipping substantially, thanks in large part to a drop in support among non-college educated white voters.
A Pew Research Center survey released Friday shows Trump’s job approval rating at 37 percent, near the lowest point that survey has ever found. 
Among non-college educated white respondents, 50 percent approve of Trump’s job performance, while 48 percent disapprove. That’s a net 15-point swing from a Pew poll conducted a year ago; in that survey, 54 percent of white respondents without a college degree approved of Trump’s job performance, while 37 percent disapproved.
“This obviously is a key group for the president,” said Carroll Doherty, the Pew Research Center’s director of political research. He said Trump’s ratings among those voters have fallen this far only once before, in the fall of 2017.
A survey conducted by SSRS for CNN found Trump’s job approval rating among white people without a college degree at  45 percent, down 9 points since early December. A Quinnipiac survey out this week showed Trump’s job rating among those voters slip from a net 19-point positive margin to a net 10-point positive margin.
And a survey conducted by the Marist Institute for Public Opinion for NPR and PBS NewsHour shows Trump’s approval rating slipping — and his disapproval rating rising — among Republicans, white evangelicals, suburban men and those without a college degree.
 
“It’s the first time that there’s been significant erosion in the base,” said Lee Miringoff, who runs the Marist poll. “An erosion of the base is the last thing he needs. His whole strategy has been base-focused.”
A stunning 57 percent of respondents said they would definitely vote against Trump in the 2020 elections, according to the Marist poll, while 30 percent said they would vote to reelect him. Among non-college educated whites, 42 percent said they would vote for Trump again, while 44 percent said they would vote for someone new. 
A majority of non-college educated white women, 53 percent, said they would definitely vote for someone else.
[…]
Trump’s overall approval rating is at or near its lowest ebb in many of the most recent surveys. His disapproval rating stands at 55 percent in the most recent RealClear Politics average of recent polls, its lowest point since March. His approval rating has never been higher than 46 percent in that average.
The question, Miringoff said, is whether Trump’s decline is a temporary reflection of shutdown politics or a more permanent schism between the president and his foundational supporters.
“Is it a crack that becomes long-lasting and worsening over time, or is this a temporary reaction to shutdowns?” Miringoff said.