memeorandum: When Elizabeth Warren ducked and dodged on Medicare for All (Holly Otterbein/Politico)

12:20 PM ET, October 14, 2019

Top Items:

Macabre Video of Fake Trump Shooting Media and Critics Is Shown at His Resort — WASHINGTON — A video depicting a macabre scene of a fake President Trump shooting, stabbing and brutally assaulting members of the news media and his political opponents was shown at a conference for his supporters …

Eileen Sullivan / New York Times:
White House Says Trump ‘Strongly Condemns’ Violent Video Attacking Media

Discussion: TMZ.com, Mediaite and CNN

NBC News:
Report: Internet meme showing Trump shooting media, political opponents shown at president's resort

Discussion: RedState, The Daily Caller, Variety and The Hill

Allyson Chiu / Washington Post:
‘Vile and horrific’: Fake video of Trump massacring media shown at his Miami resort draws backlash

Discussion: Axios, Associated Press, The Guardian and The Hill

O. Kay Henderson / Radio Iowa:

Biden says if he's elected in 2020, he will not pardon Trump — Former Vice President Joe Biden today said if he's elected president, he will build on what he called “the squeaky clean...environment” of the Obama White House and have a policy for his family's work that's different than President Trump's.

Discussion: Political Wire, The Hill and twitchy.com

Nate Silver / FiveThirtyEight:

Warren's Rise Hasn't Come At Biden's Expense — We've been busy the past few weeks tracking public opinion on impeachment, launching our new NBA metric (RAPTOR!) and dealing with about a million breaking news alerts a day. So I'm not going to give you one of those grandiose overviews of the Democratic primary.

Discussion: Progress Pond and NBC News

FIREHOUSE Strategies:

Exclusive Survey: Big Moves among Early State Democrats — This year, Firehouse Strategies has been partnering with the data analytics team at 0ptimus to learn more about what early state primary voters think about their presidential candidates and key issues.

Discussion: Axios, The Hill and Political Wire

Jonathan Martin / New York Times:
Missing From Elizabeth Warren's 2020 Surge: Democratic Endorsements

Discussion: PJ Media Home

Alexi McCammond / Axios:
Focus group: These Ohio swing voters are outraged over impeachment

Discussion: The Week and Townhall

Axios:
Elizabeth Warren is still Trumpworld's dream candidate

Discussion: The Hill and Political Wire

David Siders / Politico:
‘Advantage Warren’ as Dems ready for pivotal debate

Discussion: The Daily Beast

David E. Sanger / New York Times:

Trump Followed His Gut on Syria. Calamity Came Fast. — All the warnings were there. But President Trump's reliance on his instincts, and his relationships, led him to ignore the consequences of a move that has emboldened Russia, Iran and the Islamic State.

Discussion: The Hill, Reuters, Vanity Fair, Slate and Daily Kos

Jonathan Swan / Axios:

Behind the scenes of the Trump bluff that kicked off Turkey's invasion — The big picture: Trump would tell Erdoğan that if he wanted to invade Syria he would have to own whatever mess ensued, according to these sources. Erdoğan would have to take care of ISIS …

Discussion: The Hill and The Week

Jackson Diehl / Washington Post:
In a month, Trump has destroyed ‘America First’

Discussion: Raw Story

Jonathan Chait / New York Magazine:

The (Full) Case for Impeachment A menu of high crimes and misdemeanors. — The crimes for which impeachment is the prescribed punishment are notoriously undefined. And that's for a reason: Presidential powers are vast, and it's impossible to design laws to cover every possible abuse of the office's authority.

Olivia Nuzzi / New York Magazine:

Among the Witches Inside the Republicans' bunker. — “It's hard to be worried when you don't really like the guy.” That's what one senior Republican Senate aide had to say when I asked how concerned conservatives are about Donald Trump's fate. — The truth is, Trump fatigue is a condition …

Peter Baker / New York Times:

Former Trump Aide to Testify on Pressure to Oust Ambassador to Ukraine — WASHINGTON — Fiona Hill, President Trump's former top Russia and Europe adviser, headed to Capitol Hill on Monday morning where she is prepared to testify that she and other officials objected strenuously to the removal …

Discussion: The Hill and Roll Call

Bobby Allyn / NPR:
Trump's Former Russia Adviser Testifies As Part of Impeachment Inquiry

Discussion: Washington Post, Political Wire, Axios, The Guardian, UPI, The Daily Caller and Breitbart

Alayna Treene / Axios:
Document request to Trump's ex-Russia adviser lays out impeachment roadmap

Discussion: Politico, National Review, Breitbart and The Hill

New York Times:

Inside Trump's Botched Attempt to Hire Trey Gowdy — For 24 hours last week, Trey Gowdy, the former South Carolina congressman best known for leading congressional investigations of Hillary Clinton, was the new face of President Trump's outside legal defense and a symbol of a streamlined effort …

Discussion: Fox News, The Daily Caller and Law & Crime

Telegraph:

Kurds agree to Russian-brokered plan to allow Assad into their territory — The West's Kurdish allies on Sunday night announced they had agreed to a Russian-brokered deal to allow the Assad regime into their territory in a bid to spare their cities from a Turkish assault after they were abandoned by Donald Trump.

Discussion: Reuters and Foreign Policy, more at Techmeme »

Julian Borger / The Guardian:
Trump and Syria: the worst week for US foreign policy since the Iraq invasion?

Discussion: Al-Monitor, Washington Post and Occupy Democrats

CNN:
Retired Marine Gen. John Allen: 'There is blood on Trump's hands for abandoning our Kurdish allies'

Discussion: The Atlantic, Shareblue Media, Mediaite, The Week, Power Line and New York Times

The Daily Beast:
The U.S. Spoiled a Deal That Might Have Saved the Kurds, Former Top Official Says

Discussion: NBC News, Associated Press, Townhall, National Review, VICE, Defense One, Military Times and Raw Story

Bloomberg:

China Wants More Talks Before Signing Trump's ‘Phase One’ Deal — China wants further talks as soon as the end of October to hammer out the details of the “phase one” trade deal touted by Donald Trump before Xi Jinping agrees to sign it, according to people familiar with the matter, Bloomberg News reports.

Discussion: Politico, Political Wire, Washington Post, Vanity Fair, CNBC, The Week and Mediaite

CNN:

Bill Barr's meeting with Fox News chairman should be investigated — Dean Obeidallah, a former attorney, is the host of SiriusXM radio's daily program “The Dean Obeidallah Show” and a columnist for The Daily Beast. Follow him @DeanObeidallah. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own.

Discussion: Mediaite

New York Times:
Fox News Is Trump's Chief TV Booster. So Why Is He Griping About It?

Discussion: AOL.com, Big League Politics, Slate, American Thinker, The Daily Caller, HuffPost, The Hill and Political Wire, more at Mediagazer »

BBC:

LIVEReaction after Queen outlines government's agenda — Follow us on Twitter @BBCPolitics and @BBCParliament - Read more: New laws on crime, health and environment planned and Brexit talks continue ahead of summit — Live Reporting — Queen's Speech in numbers

Discussion: The Atlantic and PinkNews

Eleni Courea / Politico:
Queen's speech: Brexit top priority for UK government

Discussion: GOV.UK, One America News Network and Outside the Beltway

Axios:

Voters aren't buying Trump's promises of a health care plan — New polling shows that most of the public does not think President Trump has or will have a health care plan. — Driving the news: The Kaiser Family Foundation's next tracking poll will show that most Republicans are sticking with Trump …

Discussion: Political Wire

Holly Otterbein / Politico:
When Elizabeth Warren ducked and dodged on Medicare for All

Discussion: CNN, Los Angeles Times and The Week

James Hohmann / Washington Post:

The Daily 202: Trump hands Putin another win with Syria pullout — THE BIG IDEA: Vladimir Putin has won so much these past three years that he may get tired of winning. — The U.S. intelligence community's January 2017 report on Russian interference in the previous year's presidential campaign sought …

Ross Douthat / National Review:

Joker: A Violent, Noxious Scorsese Rip-Off — There are pop-culture products that can't survive the current moment's agitations — young-adult novels canceled by the online mob, movies buried because they starred Louis C.K. or Kevin Spacey. But there are other products that successfully surf …

Richard Bernstein / RealClearInvestigations:

Why China's Brightest Abroad Show Team Spirit for Beijing's Hardball — Ocotber 14, 2019 — The appearance at Columbia University last month by two leading Hong Kong pro-democracy activists was drawing to a close when, suddenly, students from mainland China arose from their seats …

Discussion: Real Clear Politics

Sean Patrick Maloney / Wall Street Journal:
Beijing Tries To Bully Congress

Discussion: Bloomberg

Michael McGovern / Innovation Ohio:

New Poll Finds Trump Underwater in Ohio, Trailing Generic Democrat — Columbus, OH - A new poll from Public Policy Polling and Innovation Ohio shows that Ohio is set to return to its traditional status as a battleground state in 2020. — A memo on the results and the cross tabs can be found on Innovation Ohio's website.

Discussion: Political Wire

William J. Burns / Foreign Affairs:

The Demolition of U.S. Diplomacy — Not Since Joe McCarthy Has the State Department Suffered Such a Devastating Blow — In my three and a half decades as a U.S. Foreign Service officer, proudly serving five presidents and ten secretaries of state from both parties, I've never seen an attack …