Seemingly out of options after House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) unexpectedly dropped out of the race for House speaker Thursday, Republicans have been loudly urging Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) to run, calling him the only potential candidate who would be able to unite the increasingly divided House. Though he politely turned down the offer Thursday, Ryan was forced to double down on his refusal Friday as the pleas for his candidacy reached a fever pitch.
"Chairman Ryan appreciates the support he's getting from his colleagues but is still not running for speaker," a spokesman for Ryan told NBC News Friday. Becca Stanek
Democratic presidential contenders will face off for the fifth time on Wednesday at 9 p.m. ET in a debate co-hosted by MSNBC and The Washington Post. The primary debate will feature 10 candidates fielding questions from four woman moderators and comes just 100 days before the first primary contest in Iowa.
Wednesday night's stage will feature former Vice President Joe Biden; Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.); South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg; Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii); Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.); Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.); Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.); billionaire Tom Steyer; Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.); and entrepreneur Andrew Yang. That's the same lineup as October minus former Rep. Beto O'Rourke, who has since dropped out of the race, and former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro, who failed to qualify.
Expect Buttigieg to be a major focus in this debate, as he's surprisingly risen to the top of recent primary polls in Iowa but failed to replicate that performance among black voters in the early primary state of South Carolina. Meanwhile, Biden's post-debate email mistakenly sent earlier in the day suggests he'll be focusing his attacks on Warren.
You can find the debate on both MSNBC's and the Post's websites starting at 9 p.m. ET. Kathryn Krawczyk
When his testimony before the House Intelligence Committee started to run long, U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland was worried he might miss his Wednesday night flight to Brussels, but he made it to the airport with enough time to get on the plane, put his luggage in the wrong place, and then make a wry observation about his life.
Fellow passenger Karen-Marie Hyland told CNN she watched as Sondland, who only hours earlier gave bombshell testimony implicating President Trump in a quid pro quo with Ukraine, put his carry-on bag in the wrong overhead compartment. Realizing his mistake, Sondland said, "My whole day has been like this."
Hyland also snapped a picture of the incident, since the public now knows if you deal with any member of the Trump administration, you need to make sure you have receipts. Catherine Garcia
A lawyer for Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman sent a letter to Fox News on Wednesday, requesting that the network either retract or correct a "deeply flawed and erroneous" segment that aired during the Oct. 28 episode of The Ingraham Angle.
Vindman is the National Security Council's Ukraine expert, and the segment aired prior to his closed-door testimony as part of the House impeachment inquiry. Host Laura Ingraham said it was "kind of an interesting angle" that Vindman "is advising Ukraine, while working inside the White House, apparently against the president's interest, and usually, they spoke in English." Yoo replied, "I found that astounding. Some people might call that espionage."
In his letter, lawyer David Pressman wrote that Vindman "had never in his 20-year career of service to his country been accused of having dual loyalties or committing espionage," which is a felony punishable by death. This falsehood was repeated by others, Pressman said, and Vindman, a Purple Heart recipient who served in Iraq, and his family "have been forced to examine options, including potentially moving onto a military base, in order to ensure their physical security in the face of threats rooted in the falsehood that Fox News originated."
In a statement, Fox News said that "as a guest on Fox News, John Yoo was responsible for his own statements, and he has subsequently done interviews to clarify what he meant." Yoo told The New York Times in an email that he "didn't say that Lt. Col. was a spy or that he had committed espionage. I had no reason to question that he was doing his duty as an officer. But I think the Ukrainians are engaged in espionage against us." That argument, Pressman said, is "as legally irrelevant as it is factually incredible." Catherine Garcia
Impeachment testimony changes are turning out to be game changers.
In the second of Wednesday's back-to-back impeachment hearings, Defense Department official Laura Cooper had something to revise from her closed-door testimony right off the bat. While Cooper originally testified Ukrainian officials started asking about withheld security aid on Sept. 5, she said Wednesday she's since heard from aides that Ukrainians had inquired months earlier.
The withholding of aid to Ukraine is a major part of the impeachment inquiry into President Trump. It's one half of the quid pro quo Trump has denied, allegedly withheld by the Trump administration until the Ukrainian government agreed to announce an investigation into the Bidens. Several officials have testified the aid was held up for this reason, but one major point made by Republicans has been that the aid was eventually released, and that the Ukrainians didn't even know it was missing until after Trump's infamous July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky where he requested the Biden investigation.
Cooper's testimony undercuts that narrative. She said Wednesday she'd since seen emails provided by staffers showing Ukrainian officials asked about the aid on July 25, the day of the call where Trump asked Zelensky to "do me a favor." If that's true, it would be much harder to claim the Ukrainians didn't feel pressured by Trump's request. Kathryn Krawczyk
At least one person is happy about everything that's going on in Washington, D.C.
As everything that went down between President Trump and Ukraine comes to the surface, Russian President Vladimir Putin is literally saying "thank God" that eyes aren't on him anymore. "No one is accusing us of interfering in the U.S. elections anymore," he said at a Wednesday economic forum in Moscow, per NBC News. "Now they're accusing Ukraine."
Intelligence officials have concluded Russia meddled in the 2016 election and will try to do so again, but Trump has ignored that and instead pushed the idea that Ukraine is somehow even more to blame. He explicitly told Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky that he'd like to see Ukraine investigate the 2016 election and baselessly claimed the country has a physical server holding the hacked Democratic National Committee emails. These unfounded claims have led to the ongoing impeachment inquiry into Trump and apparently left Putin thrilled that he's out of the conversation.
Just because Russia is out of the spotlight doesn't mean the country isn't still attempting to interfere in the 2020 presidential elections. Special Counsel Robert Mueller relayed a warning about Russian election interference during his congressional hearing back in April, saying it was likely happening as he testified. Putin himself seemingly joked last month that he's going to get meddling soon, though if we're being honest, that's probably not a joke. Kathryn Krawczyk
As Bolivia's political situation intensifies, the country's interim government Wednesday produced audio it says consists of former exiled President Evo Morales ordering a blockade to prevent food from entering Bolivian cities. But Morales' supporters have dismissed the recording as fraudulent.
"Brother, don't led food into the cities, we are going to do a blockade, a true siege," someone whom the government says is Morales is heard saying in what is allegedly a phone call he made from exile in Mexico. "From now it is going to be fight, fight, fight."
The audio was released by Interior Minister Arturo Murillo one day after the military clashed violently with Morales' supporters who were reportedly blocking fuel from reaching the capital, La Paz, which along with several other cities throughout the country has been facing a food and fuel shortage since the standoff between the protesters and interim government began, per The Wall Street Journal.
Morales' backers, who have accused the military of orchestrating a right wing coup to remove the socialist Morales from power, argue that the government released the video in an attempt to distract the country as it conducts a crackdown on protesters who are demanding Morales' return.
Meanwhile, morales activists have reportedly shared videos showing soldiers firing live rounds at protesters. Morales called upon the interim government Wednesday to "stop this massacre of indigenous brothers who ask for peace, democracy, and respect of life in the streets." Read more at The Wall Street Journal. Tim O'Donnell