5 DECEMBER

No jail for Flynn sins, says Mueller

A memo filed by special counsel Robert Mueller in the sentencing of former Trump national security advisor Michael Flynn has recommended that he serve no jail time. The memo states that Flynn, a retired army lieutenant, has given "substantial assistance" to the Russia probe, including "first-hand" details of contacts between President Donald Trump's transition team and Russian government officials. Flynn pleaded guilty last year to lying to the FBI.

Mueller's probe is also poised to make court filings for the sentencing of former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen and former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort this week. The memos in these filings will be the strongest indication yet of the progress of the Russia investigation.

Earlier in the week, President Trump tweeted support for a “full and complete [prison] sentence” for Cohen, accusing him of making up stories for the Mueller probe to get a reduced prison sentence after pleading guilty to lying to Congress.

NEWS WRAP

Stone cold

• Longtime Trump advisor Roger Stone has invoked the 5th amendment as he declined to share documents and testimony with members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Earlier in the week the president tweeted praise for his former associate for having "guts" and refusing to testify against him. Stone is under investigation by the Mueller probe and told ABC he will not, under any circumstances, testify against the president. READ MORE HERE.
   
• The United States and China have agreed to a ceasefire on new tariffs and trade measures after a meeting between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the G20 Summit in Buenos Aires. Senior fellow Charles Edel writes in The Australian Financial Review that the deal between China and the United States appears to be a temporary accommodation, rather than an agreement to address fundamental differences. READ MORE HERE.
   
• Getting tough on China economically is perhaps Trump's only main policy for which there is broad Democratic support – significant as the latter has won control of the House in the recent midterms. But senior fellow John Lee writes for CNN that the problem remains lack of clarity with respect to Trump's objectives: is it going after Chinese intellectual property violations, greater access for American firms in China, disentangling critical American supply chains from reliance on China, or simply reducing the trade deficit? READ MORE HERE.
   
• The world risks sliding into another nuclear arms race if the United States doesn't extend the New START Treaty with Russia, Alliance 21 fellow and former Obama security official Madelyn Creedon says. Creedon, the former second-in-charge of the National Nuclear Security Administration, warns that given the recent pullout of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, if the Trump administration opts out of an extension of the 2010 New START agreement, the United States will not be covered by any nuclear treaty for the first time in half a century. READ MORE HERE.
   

• The National Rifle Association's (NRA) income plummeted by US$55 million in 2017, as memberships and contributions dried up. And while the NRA has not been reduced to pauperdom – its budget still topped $300 million – honorary affiliate Nicole Hemmer notes in The Sydney Morning Herald that its fortunes seem to be changing, just as a national gun-control movement has been taking shape. READ MORE HERE.

We had the opportunity to work together during the era of great changes ... it was a dramatic period, which required everyone to be tremendously responsible. Its outcome was the end of the Cold War and the nuclear arms race. I pay tribute to George Bush’s contribution to this historical achievement. He was a true partner.

Mikhail S. Gorbachev
Former president of the Soviet Union on the passing of George H.W. Bush
3 December 2018

ANALYSIS

The 41st, the 45th and the future of the Republican Party

Bruce Wolpe
Visiting fellow

This week, Washington is funereal. Today, the city halts, the National Cathedral in repose as a pulpit of mourning. Partisanship ebbs from Capitol Hill. A White House muted. These are the traditions, pageantry and rhythms of the death of a president.

The 41st president did not really understand 45th. Early in the 2016 campaign, Bush’s former chief of staff John Sununu, a former governor of New Hampshire, was trying to grapple with the Trump ascendancy he was witnessing – the continued progress of this unconventional disruptor who was upending all the norms of Republican philosophy to seize control of the party, Trump was remaking the party in his own image as he proceeded. Sununu said Trump was demeaning of the office he was seeking and that he had trouble comprehending Trump’s defiance of the laws of political physics that were thought to apply. How could the Republican Party nominate for president a man who insulted and pilloried all his opponents, and the party’s previous nominees, and the Pope?

Taking it all in, the 41st’s disdain for Trump was crystal clear. For the Bushes, Trump obliged in kind. In 2016, he attacked Jeb Bush mercilessly, and accused him of bringing his “mummy” in to help him. Trump has been scathing of the presidency of George W. Bush. The family barred Trump from its matriarch’s funeral in April. 

The tectonic issue here is Trump’s strategic intent to divorce the Republican Party from its internationalism and its capitalism: its historic support for free trade and open markets abroad, and opposition to state capitalism at home. Its commitment to a global presence, undergirded with multilateral strategic and defence alliances for the United States across the world; for confronting authoritarian leaders and regimes, especially Russia. For Trump, that is history.

At this high affair of state that is today’s funeral, the not so subtle subtext will be: are the 41st and 43rd the last true Republican presidents? Will their mantle survive the 45th’s deviancy? Or will the party continue to be remade in Trump’s image no less in scope and reach than what Reagan did beginning 40 years ago? 

Today will be a more muted replay of what we witnessed when Senator John McCain died, with the jagged and jarring rebukes delivered over his casket to Trump – his character, what he stands for, and where he is leading the country. 

The 43rd did not invite 45th to speak a eulogy for 41st.

As one president is laid to rest, the launch of the next presidential campaign is imminent.  One of the most telling markers of how Trump will fare in 2020 will be whether, with all the disquiet in Republican ranks on what Trump means for the GOP and the country, Trump must grapple with a serious primary challenger. Because LBJ (Gene McCarthy), Ford (Reagan), Carter (Ted Kennedy), and the 41st himself (Pat Buchanan) did not survive theirs. The unchallenged – Reagan, Clinton, Bush 43, Obama – all enjoyed re-election.

DIARY

The week ahead

• Wednesday, 5 December: Funeral held for George H.W. Bush at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC.
   

• Thursday, 6 December: Bush's remains to be flown to Houston for a funeral service at St. Martin's Episcopal Church.
   

• Thursday, 6 December: US House and Senate will resume business.
   

• Thursday, 6 December: Final 2018 sitting day for Australian Parliament.

EVENT

Energy report | Sydney launch

VIDEO

Sen. Bob Dole rises from wheelchair to salute President George H.W. Bush

THE WEEK IN TWEETS

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University of Sydney NSW 2006

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