Queen Nancy Pelosi wins reelection

SIXTY-TWO DAYS TO GO. Donald Trump doesn't like Nancy Pelosi. They have had words in the past. Now he must be staeming with rage to hear that she has won reelection as Speaker of the House. If she can do it, why couldn't he? Well, of course, he still doesn't accept that he failed to win reelection but eventually he will implicitly accept defeat when he leaves the White House for the last time in January and he will have to put up with seeing Nancy ruling the roost in the House of Representatives in her 80s and remaining third in line to the presidency. Very galling for him. Nancy meanwhile is unbelievable. She had originally said she would only stand for one term this time, partly because of her age I assume but also partly because of the firebrand younger generation Congresswomen who feel her time is up and that she needs to be replaced by a progressive Democrat. But she won some of them round and has sailed into another two years as Speaker. Good for her. She managed to sweet-talk her opponents who were angry at the relatively poor showing the Democrats made in the Congressional elections. But the anti-Pelosi brigade feel a lot more cheerful now of course because Joe Biden has become president-elect and Kamala Harris is vice president-elect. That has dramatically changed the atmosphere, even though a number of House Democrats lost their seats. Queen Nancy will continue to reign.

Joe Biden pushes on regardless as Trump thinks of 2024

SIXTY-THREE DAYS TO GO. Every day there is something new from Joe Biden. As president-elect and only nine weeks before he is inaugurated as the 46th president of the United States - 46th POTUS - he has a helluva lot of things to do and sort out, notably fix his cabinet and all the key officials he wants around him in the White House, in between taking calls from around the world from leaders desperate to get their spoke in before anyone else. It must be a non-stop time for Biden, giving him only an inkling of what he will face each day when he takes over. But while the Biden planning is getting to fever pitch, the incumbent president is carrying on as if nothing dramatic happened two weeks ago. It really is bizarre. Donald Trump will not, absolutely will not concede that he lost, let alone that Biden won. What is going to happen when we get really close to Inauguration Day? Will Trump refuse to participate? Will he demand a helicopter to take him to Florida? Will he go golfing? Or will he lock the door of his private bedroom in the White House and decline to come out? I think in the end Trump will do what's right but with huge reluctance. I believe he will be there at the January 20 inauguration and will try and look disinterested. He will probably never officially concede but he might use slighty concessionary language in a tweet or in a statement that vaguely embraces the idea that he will leave the White House and allow Biden in as caretaker president before he, Donald Trump, comes back in 2024 for his second four-year term. If he goes ahead and announces he is going to stand in 2024, there is no question that he will expect not only to be chosen as the Republican nominated candidate but that he will defeat Biden and Kamala Harris. So any concession he makes between now and January 20 will be marginalised as he promises to his millions of supporters: "I'll be back."

Trump's plans to pull out all US troops from Afghanistan by January 20

SIXTY-FOUR DAYS TO GO: A fuller version of the story I wrote for The Times today: President Trump is expected to order the withdrawal of all US troops from Afghanistan and Iraq before he leaves office in January. In a move to honour his longstanding pledge to bring all troops home and to stop American involvement in “endless wars”, his dramatic shake-up at the top echelons of the Pentagon is believed to be part of the plan to bring forward the military pull-out timetable. Christopher Miller, parachuted in a week ago by the president as the acting US defence secretary, was a special forces officer in the first phase of the toppling of the Taliban in 2001. He has given the strongest indication that total troop withdrawals are his top priority. “Now it’s time to come home,” he wrote in a memo to all Pentagon staff over the weekend. “This fight has been long, our sacrifices have been enormous and many are weary of war. I’m one of them,” he wrote. Former US national security and defence officials are expressing concern that, with a new team in the Pentagon, Mr Miller will be under pressure to wrap up Afghanistan and Iraq before Joe Biden becomes president on January 20. There are currently 4,500 US troops in Afghanistan and 3,000 in Iraq. Under White House plans revealed last month by Robert O’Brien, the national security adviser, the 4,500 troops in Afghanistan were set to be reduced to 2,500 by early 2021. The February 29 peace deal between the US and the Taliban in Qatar stipulated that all American and coalition troops would be withdrawn “within fourteen months following announcement of this agreement “, a timetable that underwrote a May 1, 2021 deadline. However, General Mark Milley, chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, has pushed against the 2,500 figure even though it was thought to be one of the options offered by the Pentagon earlier this year. He said that the timing of further cuts in the American troop presence between now and May 1 had to be based on conditions on the ground in Afghanistan. Mark Esper who was sacked by Mr Trump as defence secretary a week ago, supported the cautious approach towards further cuts in Afghanistan. He believed that Afghanistan was the prime cause of his firing. Before he was sacked, Mr Esper wrote a memo outlining half a dozen reasons why a precipitous withdrawal from Afghanistan was a bad idea. He included the importance of coordinating with allies, a former senior US defence official told The Times. Mr Trump had made clear to Mr Esper, through his national security adviser, that he intended to move ahead with withdrawal before January 20. But Mr Esper resisted saying that he and General Milley and the department of defence were "institutionally not on board" because the Taliban had failed to meet the conditions that US officials had agreed would be necessary to enable American troops to be withdrawn, the former official said. Acting defence secretary Christopher Miller has been warned by Senator Mitch McConnel, Republican majority leader of the Senate, and by Senator Jim Inhofe, chairman of the Senate armed services committee, that there would be considerable opposition to "an ill-considered" withdrawal among Congressional Rebublicans. "But Miller appears to be on board with merely doing Trump's bidding and is surrounded by a praetorian guard of Trumpists (Anthony Tata, Kash Patel, Douglas McGregor - all swept into influential Pentagon positions in the last week), who undoubtedly will be trying to pull this off", the former official said. There will be significant push back from General Milley and General Frank McKenzie, commander of Central Command. There would also be serious logistical obstacles to being able to accomplish a withdrawal in the timeframe the White House is talking about. There has been similar caution over Iraq. The 5,200 American troops in Iraq were reduced to 3,000 in September, reflecting growing US military confidence in the capabilities of the Iraqi security forces. However, there are concerns that the military presence in Iraq could also be up for grabs in the remaining nine weeks of Mr Trump’s presidency as a way of ensuring his foreign policy legacy. ReplyReply to allForward More metroops1 Sun, 15 Nov, 18:47 (22 hours ago) Before he was fired, Mr Esper wrote a memo to the White House outlining half a dozen reasons why a precipitous withdrawal from Afghanistan was a bad idea. He included the importance of coordinating with allies, a former senior US defence official told The Times. Mr Trump had made clear to Mr Esper that he intended to move ahead with withdrawal before January 20. But the Pentagon was "institutionally not on board", the former official said. Acting defence secretary Christopher Miller has been warned by Senator Mitch McConnell. Republican majority leader of the Senate, and by Senator Jim Inhofe, chairman of the Senate armed services committee, that there would be opposition to "an ill-considered" withdrawal. "But Miller appears to be on board with merely doing Trump's bidding," the former official said. to me

Trump says Biden won but refuses to concede

It looked like Donald Trump had finally given in when he tweeted that Joe Biden had won the election, although it was rigged. But the whole media world leapt on his words and pronounced that the president had at last accepted that his Democrat rival had beaten him. I can just hear Trump's reaction to the headlines. "No, I didn't accept anything of the sort. I never said that. How could they say I said that?" Because in very short order he had tweeted again, this time saying the election was totally rigged and it was fake media who had declared Biden the winner and that he would never concede. Not ever. So totally back to square one. That must have been a huge relief to his supporters who have been gathering in their thousands in Washington to demonstrate their faith in him. It just shows how risky it can be to tweet at all. Once you have thrown a few words together and pressed send, it can't be reversed. It's done, the damage is there for all to see. I'm sure Trump will be more cautious from now on. He knows that every word he utters whether verbally or by Tweet is read, interpreted, reinterpreted, analysed and retweeted by millions. He definitely said what he said and then definitely rowed back furiously. The next time he dares to mention the election we will all be watching and waiting and reading and wondering.

Trump will hang on until the very end

SIXTY-SIX DAYS TO GO. I have never seen such a sombre Donald Trump. No fire left, just an unstated acknowledgement that he might not be forming the next administration. His Rose Garden statement to the press was so unlike the Trump we have known for the last four years. Head down, no arm-waving. No pointing at members of the media, no slogans. He made his statement and then swivelled round and walked off in a very heavy sort of way, shoulders down. No Q and A. Not for the media who, he believes, campaigned against him from the moment he stepped into the White House in January 2017. But despite all that there is no question that he will fight to the end. He still believes that, for example, Wisconsin, Arizona, Pennsylvania and Georgia will be awarded to him eventually. And of course he won North Carolina, quite substantially. Everyone else in America knows that Joe Biden has won and will be president on January 20 2021. But Trump just will not accept the reality facing him. He looked a sorrowful figure. It was his first public appearance for about eight days. His closest aides had advised him to keep a low profile and he actually did as they suggested. Amazing. As it stands Biden is set to get 306 electoral college votes and so Trump has absolutely no chance of catching up let alone overtaking. His sombre look said everything but he still won't concede. Never, not in the proper traditional way.

Ageing Biden versus new feisty Democrat generation

SIXTY-SEVEN DAYS TO GO. Joe Biden still has more than nine weeks before he takes over the White House (Trump willing) but already he is facing up to the feisty set of young new-breed Democrats who are hoping for, no demanding, a radical and progressive programme which older Democrats, including Biden himself, are afraid the nation will view as socialism with a big S. Biden is by instinct and record a centrist who will seek the middle way with everything, probably even on climate-change although his ideas at the moment look to be pretty far-reaching. But the new generation of Congress members on the Democrat side are not going to put up with soft, soggy politics. They want radicalism to take over the country. I'm thinking here mainly about the Famous Four Congresswomen, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (New York), Rashida Tlaib (Michigan), Ilhan Omar (Minnesota) and Ayanna Pressley (Massachusetts) - the so-called AOC Squad. Ocasio-Cortez is the youngest of the four at 31. Omar is 38, Tlaib, 44, and Pressley, 46. Joe Biden will be 78 on November 20. These four and others who support their progressive views will cause endless trouble for Biden when he takes over from Trump. But from the moment they launched themselves on the political scene they have added a breath of fresh invigorating air into the Democratic party. They are radical, sure, but they are firebrands of visionary ambition for their country. They will not just keep Biden on his toes, they will force him to be radical himself, to think the impossible even if Congress, especially a Republican-driven Senate, treads heavily on any truly transformative policies. The Democratic party needs the AOC Squad to inject new ideas and inspirational dreams into future policy-making. Nancy Pelosi, an institution who dared to stand up to Trump, is 80 and will be more wary of these four than anyone in the party. But it will be up to Biden and Pelosi - combined age nearly 160 years - to gather in the freshness and enthusiasm of the AOC Squad and make it work for the good of the whole nation over the next four years. I refuse to believe that Biden's first term is going to be destroyed by divisions both within the country and within the Democratic party.

Trump wants all troops out of Afghanistan before he leaves

SIXTY-EIGHT DAYS TO GO: From the way the Pentagon is being reshaped with Trumpite loyalists being appointed, it's pretty clear what the president is up to. He wants to get all American troops out of Afghanistan before he leaves office on January 20. If he does leave by January 20 of course. It's one of the legacy achievements I am convinced he is determined to have placed in concrete and he's running out of time. So out goes Mark Esper, the defence secretary he had begun to dislike quite a lot, in goes an outsider to do as his master orders, and most of the top civilian jobs are suddenly filled by other Trumpites. And to add spice to the Afghanistan all-out theory, Chris Miller, the new acting defence secretary, has bizarrely appointed someone as his main adviser who I assume was Trump's choice: Colonel Douglas Macgregor, retired but a very opinionated commentator for Fox News, especially on Afghanistan. He agrees with Trump that America's involvement should be brought swiftly to an end with not a single US soldier left. Although this is part of the deal signed with the Taliban, the withdrawal of the remaining 4,500 or so troops is supposed to be, as the military love saying, conditions-based. That means that if violence is still at a high level and the Taliban are still attacking Afghan security forces by the time the deal is supposed to be fully implemented next year then the US reserves the right to keep some forces in Afghanistan until stability is firm and settled. For the military that would mean keeping at least 2,500 special operations troops in situ to remind the Taliban of their commitment to the peace deal. I think Trump is more interested in honouring his pledge to get all US troops out than play a quid pro quo brinkmanship game with the Taliban. He probably thinks that if he gets all the troops out by Christmas, the Taliban might offer in return a total ceasefire. But if all US troops are pulled out it's far more likely that the Taliban will push on hard militarily to get maximum advantage before agreeing a political sharing deal with the Kabul government. So, this is what it's all about. The Pentagon changes are about Afghanistan, and if General Mark Milley, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, tries to stop him from getting every soldier out by Christmas, Trump will just get him replaced. Watch this space.