Comment on Esper is sworn in as defense secretary to succeed Mattis

Ankush Khardori: “Put simply, Trump’s legal team has made several considerable, and at times baffling, missteps over the course of the trial that have increased the odds of a conviction.” “Why? Most likely it’s not them, but him. Trump is the client, and he gets the final word on major decisions.

“President Biden doesn’t believe his bad poll numbers, and neither do many of his closest advisers,“ Axios reports. “The dismissiveness of the poor polling is sincere, not public spin, according to Democrats who have spoken privately with the president and his team.” “That bedrock belief has informed Biden’s largely steady-as-she-goes campaign — even as many Democrats outside the White House are agitating for the campaign to change direction, given that Biden is polling well behind where he was four years ago.” “The public polling simply doesn’t reflect the president’s support, they say.”

“Robert F. Kennedy Jr. campaign is beating ballot access expectations,” Politico reports. “The campaign turned in more than twice the signatures needed to qualify for the ballot in Texas, which requires more than 100,000 signatures from registered voters.” “Kennedy and his rookie campaign team’s ability to reach the requirement is an organizational feat — one they’re repeating in state after state.”

“One day after news broke that President Biden was planning to raise tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles to roughly 100%, Donald Trump moved to one-up his rival for the White House,” the Wall Street Journal reports. said Trump: “I will put a 200% tax on every car that comes in from those plants… Biden finally listened to me.

New York Times: “There are many reasons to believe that former President Donald Trump will not be going to trial in Georgia anytime soon. A controversy involving sex, money and the district attorney has slowed down the election interference case. Dozens of pretrial motions have yet to be resolved, and the United States Supreme Court and the Georgia Court of Appeals must still weigh in on key legal questions.” “While it may not create nearly as much drag on the proceedings, there is also the fact that the presiding judge is busy running for election.”

“Lawyers for Donald Trump on Tuesday will most likely begin to cross-examine the prosecution’s key witness, Michael D. Cohen, getting their chance to suggest holes in his account of a $130,000 hush-money payment and to chip at the credibility and composure of a historically combative New Yorker,” the New York Times reports. “In even-keeled testimony on Monday about his payout to a porn star, Mr.