 | BY ELANA SCHOR | With help from Myah Ward
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Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell speaks to reporters following a lunch meeting with Senate Republicans on Capitol Hill. | Drew Angerer/Getty Images | THE SHOW GOES ON — You might think there’s a power struggle at hand for the heart and soul of the GOP, with Donald Trump representing one pole and Mitch McConnell the other. Heck, your Nightly host even posited such a divide last summer, christening the former president as the party’s Chaos Muppet and the Senate minority leader as its Order Muppet. You’d be wrong. The Republican tug-of-war isn’t actually materializing. The anti-Trump forces, McConnell included, aren’t picking the type of fight that some of the ex-president’s critics might hope for. Trump vowed today that “MAGA will never accept” Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey as the GOP’s nominee to challenge Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly this fall — but Ducey was already widely seen as prepared to pass up a bid. The courtship of Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) to challenge Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen also fell short. And Gov. Chris Sununu (R-N.H.) passed up a chance to get the national party’s backing for a race against Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.). All three Republicans, who hold varying degrees of Trump skepticism, were pursued by McConnell or his network as The New York Times’ Jonathan Martin noted. On the Hill, McConnell and his GOP conference leapt to decry the Republican National Committee’s censure of Reps. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) for their work with House Democrats on the Jan. 6 select committee. McConnell himself has also subtly but pointedly remarked that “it will be interesting” to see what the Democrat-led Capitol riot probe turns up. Yet offering a bit of rhetorical support for investigating last year’s violent insurrection doesn’t amount to much of a slap at Trump. Senate Republicans, led by McConnell, blocked creation of a bipartisan Jan. 6 commission with their first filibuster of this Congress. Their right flank is poised to stand in the way of cross-aisle efforts at even a modest reform of the 135-year-old Electoral Count Act, which Trump allies used to give oxygen to attempted subversion of the 2020 election. So for all of the so-called GOP establishment’s talk of a party bigger than Trump and his 2020 grievances — “the more we dwell on what happened in the past, people are going to find a ceiling,” Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) told us earlier this year — there are few tangible signs of a real effort to sap the ex-president’s influence. McConnell’s top priority is winning back the Senate majority this fall, and where he feels like Trump’s preferred candidates can help him achieve that goal, he’s willing to get on board. For proof of that, look no further than the Kentucky Republican’s endorsement of Trump-picked Herschel Walker in this fall’s Georgia Senate race. Here’s where your Nightly author has to eat some (Old?) crow, because McConnell said as much one year ago today. “My goal is, in every way possible, to have nominees representing the Republican Party who can win in November,” McConnell told POLITICO co-congressional bureau chief Burgess Everett soon after a scorching speech at the conclusion of Trump’s second impeachment trial — after which he voted to acquit. “Some of them may be people the former president likes. Some of them may not be,” McConnell added. “The only thing I care about is electability.” It’s tempting to think that McConnell might care about diminishing Trump’s hold on the GOP more than he does electing more Republican senators. At times, correlation might look like causation — and his moves might appear to be empowering the party’s small but dedicated anti-Trump wing. But the reality is that the GOP’s Chaos and Order Muppets aren’t quite at odds. They still play in the same show. The real opportunity for conflict won’t come until 2023, when Trump decides whether to seek the White House again … and McConnell may be Senate majority leader, with the help of some Trump-backed candidates. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com. Or contact tonight’s author at eschor@politico.com, or on Twitter at @eschor.
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Members of the Ukrainian State Border Guard stand watch at the border crossing between Ukraine and Belarus in Vilcha, Ukraine. | Chris McGrath/Getty Images | DIPLOMACY SHUTTLE DRIVES ON — Russian President Vladimir Putin suggested today he was still open to diplomacy. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who is scheduled to sit down with Putin on Tuesday, met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky today, where the two leaders sought to ease tension with Moscow by suggesting NATO membership for Ukraine was not on their agenda. And President Joe Biden and U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson agreed that not all hope is lost — even as the U.S. relocates its remaining Kyiv embassy staff further west to Lviv. Today saw a bevy of chatter among leaders trying to make diplomacy over Ukraine work, even as dire assessments lurked in the background. To help assess the current, and confusing, moment, Nightly’s Myah Ward talked with William Taylor, a former ambassador to Ukraine and the vice president of Russia and Europe at the U.S. Institute of Peace. This conversation has been edited. You said this morning you felt Putin was leaning more toward negotiation, rather than invasion. Do you still feel that way this afternoon? It’s hard to say of course, because we have to get inside of President Putin’s head. But there have been some indications — there was that kind of staged TV shot, where foreign minister Sergey Lavrov and President Putin had this conversation about going to negotiations, but you have to be a little skeptical of that. That could be a feint or something to throw us off. However, there are some other indications, other reports that would reinforce the idea that going to negotiations is the direction they may be going in. The other reports are things like Russian officials talking about how they’ve already succeeded in getting the United States and the West to take their security concerns seriously. And several of them have indicated they’ve been frustrated over the years that despite President Putin’s and others’ demands, expressions of concern and requests for ways to address these concerns, these had not been taken seriously. And they say now they’re taking us seriously. The short answer is yes, I still think that it’s 55-45 against a big invasion and for going to negotiations. Your numbers suggest your assessment here is very fragile and could probably change at any moment. That’s why it’s a little dangerous to make these kinds of predictions. That’s why you put percentages on it, you know 55-45, there is still a 45 percent chance he could invade. But the costs of an invasion are very high and somewhat uncertain when you attack someone. It’s definitely risky for him, and he might do it. But he might not, and even if he decides to negotiate this time, we still have to be concerned and prepared for him to continue to try to undermine Ukraine one way or the other. We’ve been hearing from Western allies about there being a “crucial window” for diplomacy? How much time is there in that window, in your view? The window could stay open for a long time. The four different negotiating tables will have different timeframes and could go for different periods of time. There’s U.S.-Russia, where constraints on intermediate range nuclear weapons might take place. Then there are discussions at NATO in Brussels, where there could be some discussion of exercises, NATO exercises and Russian exercises. There could be some discussions at the OSCE in Vienna on an overall European security architecture they call it. And the fourth table is what used to be Minsk, and now it’s the Normandy four for negotiations with the Germans, French, Russians and Ukrainians on Donbass. And those four are distinct, but overlapping and they’re complicated. So the window for diplomacy, if that’s the route they take, could stay open for a while.
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A woman walks underneath a military plane set as a monument to a former military base at a town on the outskirts of the Three Sisters border crossing between, Ukraine, Russia and Belarus in Senkivka, Ukraine. | Chris McGrath/Getty Images | You mentioned the televised moment with Lavrov and Putin today. Do you see this as another sign Putin is using this intense moment to get concessions from the West? That’s been the purpose all along. This military buildup and all the associated drama, including the press conference today, has been to try to get Zelensky and Biden to back down, to concede, to try to accommodate the Russians. Who knows what’s going on in Putin’s head, but I imagine he would like to have gotten some concession from Zelensky and Biden even before having to pull the trigger and start this invasion. He’s taken this buildup all the way to the brink in an attempt to intimidate President Zelensky and President Biden, and so far they’ve not been intimidated. They have not blinked. Zelensky has maintained an interesting posture through all of this. A lot of Ukrainians are surprised at Zelensky’s firmness, on his resolve. He’s been calm. Some people say calm to a fault. And I think we will see this is a test but so far, he seems to have passed this test and has kind of risen, has grown into it. He’s still got economic and political problems, but so far, he has been a good leader for Ukraine. This is obviously a fast-moving situation. What are you looking for as you determine the state of play? We’re all looking to see if some of these troops, maybe a lot of these troops that are arranged on the other Ukrainian border will start going back to their bases. And President Biden in his conversation with Shoygu, the Russian defense minister, seemed to indicate that they will start going back. There is the big exercise in Belarus that we know is supposed to end on Feb. 20, so we would expect those troops to start going back. You can’t really have any of these foreign negotiations going on while they’re all these troops arrayed on the border. There’s no serious negotiation. I mean, Ukrainians know this because that’s how they were forced to sign a very bad deal in Minsk in 2015. The Russians had the Russian army there, and they were ready to annihilate a big portion of the Ukrainian army. The negotiations were not free and fair.
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| | DON’T MISS CONGRESS MINUTES: Need to follow the action on Capitol Hill blow-by-blow? Check out Minutes, POLITICO’s new platform that delivers the latest exclusives, twists and much more in real time. Get it on your desktop or download the POLITICO mobile app for iOS or Android. CHECK OUT CONGRESS MINUTES HERE. | | | | | | | — Easter SCOTUS confirmation in doubt as Biden deliberates: Senate Democratic leaders are racing to confirm Biden’s Supreme Court pick before Easter. That timeline could get murky, particularly if Biden picks a nominee who has never been through the Judiciary Committee. Biden may begin interviews with potential candidates as early as this week, though senators are not anticipating him to announce his choice imminently. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer disclosed plans to retire nearly three weeks ago, and Democrats are eager to begin reviewing his replacement. — Trudeau expected to use last-resort Emergencies Act in bid to end trucker protests: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoked powerful, never-used-before legislation to crack down on trucker protests that are blockading border crossings , paralyzing downtown Ottawa and shaking Canadians’ faith in their institutions. The last-resort federal Emergencies Act gives authorities temporary powers during a crisis to restrict the movement of individuals and impose harsher penalties for some forms of public assembly. — SEC, states hit crypto lender BlockFi with $100M penalty: The Securities and Exchange Commission and 32 states said that cryptocurrency startup BlockFi will pay $100 million to settle charges that it operated an illegal lending business , in what officials called a first-of-its-kind crackdown in digital asset trading. The SEC said its $50 million piece of the settlement was the agency’s biggest penalty yet against the fast-growing cryptocurrency industry, which is the subject of growing scrutiny from lawmakers and regulators. The SEC announced the settlement the morning after a Super Bowl broadcast that was chockablock with expensive ads for crypto exchanges and trading platforms. — Judge throws out Palin libel case against New York Times: A judge has ruled that a libel lawsuit former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin filed against the New York Times over a 2017 editorial should be thrown out because her lawyers failed to produce evidence that the newspaper knew what it wrote about her was false or acted recklessly towards indications it was false. The ruling from U.S. District Court Judge Jed Rakoff came as a Manhattan jury was deliberating on Palin’s suit, which claimed the Times defamed her by unfairly linking her to a 2011 shooting spree in Arizona that killed six people and gravely wounded then-Rep. Gabby Giffords. — Maryland man pleads guilty to trying to sell nuclear secrets to foreign government: A Maryland man charged with attempting to sell nuclear secrets to a foreign government pleaded guilty to espionage today . Jonathan Toebbe, a nuclear engineer, pleaded not guilty in October and was detained pending trial. In today’s binding plea deal, Toebbe will be sentenced to between about 12 and a half and 17 and a half years in prison, and is required to turn over and provide access to all electronic devices, accounts and any other files he might have. He also consented to assisting federal officials with locating all classified information he possesses, as well as the money the undercover FBI agent gave him while the government gathered evidence.
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15 days The number of days until Washington, D.C.’s indoor mask mandate is lifted on March 1, according to an announcement by Mayor Muriel Bowser today. Tuesday will see the lifting of the city’s Covid-19 vaccination entry requirements for business such as gyms and restaurants. Even after March 1, masks will still be required in some places, including schools, libraries and nursing care facilities. |
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First lady Jill Biden visits Valentine’s Day decorations on the North Lawn at the White House with second graders from local Aiton Elementary School. Biden hosted the students, who had helped to create heart-shaped art pieces as part of the Valentine’s Day decorations at the East Wing of the White House, for a tour to celebrate the holiday. | Alex Wong/Getty Images | Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here. | |
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