Sunday School 10/27/19

Today's classrooms were all abuzz with the announcement from the president that ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed (well, committed suicide) last night during a raid in Idlib province in northwest Syria.

We'll get to that, but as always, I look first to see if any of the 2020 presidential candidates are making the rounds. Andrew Yang was supposed to have been on with Chuck Todd, but that's been postponed until next week, but Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar was on with Margaret Brennan on Face the Nation. Let's look in.

They started the conversation with the takedown of al-Baghdadi, and Klobuchar was grateful for the  folks who "put themselves in danger" in the mission, and that it was a good decision to go after him. She reminded us, however, that this doesn't mean that ISIS is dead. First of all, there are 100 or so of them who escaped during Turkey's raid on the Kurds, and that it's unclear who's going to be guarding the ones who are still being held. And she noted that the Kurds helped with this, even though we left them "for slaughter."

Calling the raid a political win for the president, Brennan wondered, "Isn't this going to make it harder to run against him when he can say he's the guy who got Baghdadi?"

Look, I have in the past, for instance, when the president made the decision to respond to Assad's use of Sarin gas, I commended him for that decision. But just because you make some decisions for the security of this country doesn't - doesn't mean that his foreign policy overall hasn't been a disaster.  

Mentioning as examples of Trump's disastrous policies the decision to get out of the Iranian nuclear agreement, the Russian nuclear weapons agreement, and the climate change agreement, Klobuchar said those were "very bad decisions." Brennan asked if Klobuchar, "unlike other Democratic candidates," would pledge to keep the US military in Syria. The Senator would not have removed them, she would have kept them there. And now, she said, we have to use whatever leverage we have left to continue the fight against ISIS, for humanitarian aid, and to help the Kurds.

Next question: should the ISIS leaders be extradited here for prosecution? Yes, she said, we should go after them,

But the point of this is not really exactly what we're going to do now. The question is what do we do going forward when the American people have a decision to make? Do they want to keep a president in that has been so divisive in this moment - where this morning, we are unified behind getting rid of terrorists, that's for sure, but every morning, probably tomorrow and the next day he wakes up and he starts...dividing people... So I think the American people can come together say, "yes we want to defeat a terrorist," but then they look at what he does every single day to this country and they want new leadership.

They moved to education and paying for stuff like her plan for free two-year college and technical schools, which will cost $500B. She's focused on those issues specifically because "those are the fastest rising degrees right now in terms of number of jobs we're gonna have," citing a need for 74K electricians and similar numbers for plumbers, med techs, home care workers and so on.

Here's how she'd pay for it (and yes, she admitted, taxes are going to go up for folks making around $400K a year).

...by taking the capital gains rate, which (has) been a ripoff for average Americans, and changing that to the personal income rate. I have shown everything, Margaret, how I'm going to pay for it...I want to make college more affordable. Double the Pell Grants, and do this in a smart way, instead of paying for rich kids to go to college, which is sadly what my opponents' plans do. 

They shifted gears to impeachment, with Brennan questioning whether Klobuchar thinks the whistleblower should testify. It would be good, she said, but maybe not necessary, because people with first-hand knowledge are testifying.

I think what's most important, is to keep getting the testimony of people that were actually there on the scene. That Ambassador Taylor testimony was devastating. It showed that this was not just one phone call, that this had been a plan for a long time, for the president to put the interests of America behind his own personal interests to get dirt on an opponent. It's a pattern. He does it for his business. He does it for his partisan interests. He does it every single day.

And that's where they left it, as they were out of time.


Since we won't have Andrew Yang until next week, we have a little time for Trey (BENGHAZI!!!) Gowdy, former South Carolina Congressman and almost-once-but-maybe-never a member of Trump's impeachment legal team.

Here are a few snippets from their conversation,  with Brennan starting off by trying to get an answer on whether or not he'll join the president's team once his one-year ban on "communicating with an intent to influence" is up.

I have no idea... My sense is the president needs folks that can- that can represent him now before the House, the Senate and - and indirectly through television shows and print media. For one year I can't talk to the House or Senate and my reading of that statute, and it's a restrictive reading I'll grant you, but my reading is I can't even communicate indirectly on behalf of a person with the intent to persuade...

So, I don't even know if I'm going to be alive in January. If Dallas doesn't start playing better, I won't be alive in January. So, I don't know what - who I'll be representing.

He described his potential return as something he looked at from a lawyer's perspective, calling impeachment "the political death penalty" and noted

There's a reason our country has never removed anyone from office. So, I look at it as a lawyer. What process is entitled - is someone entitled to if you are seeking to remove him or her from office-- And assign to them a stigma that will echo through the halls of history? How much process is due? 

He said he believes 100% in the benefit of private hearings and depositions, just as he did before, and pointing out that he had someone out of one who was not a member of the committee. He also said there were no leaks from several executive branch investigations, including Mueller's.

But, he continued, that's in sharp contrast to what we're seeing now, noting that "Adam Schiff has had more press conferences this weekend" than the investigators he mentioned had in their lifetimes, and, 

...I do understand the Republican frustration with the current investigation. My bias has always been towards investigations that wait until the end before they share their conclusions. It's just not fair to do it on an hour-by-hour basis.

The rest of their conversation centered on Gowdy's assertion that finding out what happened in the 2016 election should not be an impeachable offense. He never mentioned the issue of interference in the 2020 election, and neither did Brennan.

That's all that fits for now.  See you around campus.