Welcome to Friday’s edition of Washington Secrets. As usual, we will review the president’s week with the help of our two top political strategists. Plus, has peace broken out between two election forecasters? And make sure you scroll down for the correction of the day.
Sunday brought a fresh immigration controversy when 60 Minutes aired its interview with Donald Trump. He admitted his deportation crackdown “might be too tough” and went on to hint at what conservative allies worried might amount to amnesty.
“Get the killers out, get the rapists out, get all the rough ones out, get the drug dealers out,” Trump said. “But let the people that are here — and in some cases here for 10 and 15 years — work a deal for them.”
Meanwhile, Trump also put to bed the idea that he was about to appoint Dana White, head of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, as White House press secretary. Having distracted the nation’s finest reporters with the wild idea for a full 24 hours, he finally admitted it was just a joke.
Without a press secretary, it was up to Trump himself to do the honors. He appeared in the briefing room with only two minutes’ notice to field questions for about half an hour. White took the lectern himself for a short time to insist that he did not want the job.
Then after dark, he called into C-Span’s new Washington Journal Primetime unannounced. He chatted for about eight minutes, talking about elections, immigration and embattled Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
Hegseth was the story on Tuesday. The House voted 211-204 to send Rep. Thomas Massie’s impeachment resolution against the defense secretary to committee, effectively killing it for this Congress. You can expect Democrats to revive the idea in January when they will have greater numbers. Trump stayed out of sight all day but took a victory lap on Truth Social, calling Massie “a major LOSER.”
On Veterans Day, Trump laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier with Vice President JD Vance and then gave a roughly 35-minute speech in Arlington’s amphitheater that turned into a defense of his wars. With it being a federal holiday, the president continued on to his Virginia golf club.
Of course, the day could not pass without Hegseth getting into more hot water. Hegseth, his wife, Jennifer, and some of his top aides were taking pictures, talking and laughing in front of the memorial, prompting an Army sentinel to loudly chastise the group, ordering them to maintain an atmosphere of “silence and respect.”
The president was up early on Thursday, posting about a slew of issues on Truth Social. He managed to upend his own messaging on Iran, announcing that there was no need for a deal with Tehran, despite a day earlier promising that the war would end “soon.” And he ordered Vance not to engage in possible peace talks with Iran, saying his time would be better spent tackling fraud in Democratic-run cities and states.
Again on Friday, the president is not scheduled to have any public events and will stay in Washington for the weekend.
Hanging over him will be the resignation of Jensen Huang as chief executive of Nvidia. Trump spent the week defending his ally even as questions mounted about how much he and his administration knew about Huang’s relationship with a Chinese citizen known as Alice Huang, who is believed to have been a spy. Why did he take the Nvidia chief with him to China this year, for example, despite Marco Rubio’s warnings?
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick might have the most questions to answer. Did exports of Nvidia’s advanced chips to China get enough scrutiny? And how much did Lutnick know about the allegations?
With congressional hearings already scheduled, this story won’t be going away any time soon.
So what did our two strategists make of it all?
You are reading Washington Secrets, a guide to power and politics in D.C. and beyond. It is written by Rob Crilly. You can reach him at [email protected] with your comments, story tips, and suggestions.
John Zogby: Grade F
The president did a 60 Minutes interview and appeared to be chastened by the election results and conciliatory for about two of those minutes.
He had already given his chief of staff, Susie Wiles, her walking papers and replaced her with Stephen Miller, the architect of evil. Miller is an ideological fanatic, a cruel person, and a street fighter — none of which is meant to be a compliment.
It was a clear message to Congress that Trump, in the words of Tom Petty, “Well, I won’t back down. No, I won’t back down.”
One bright spot for Trump is that the Democrats in Congress don’t know how to count. Why try to impeach the secretary of defense if you don’t have the votes in the bag? If the point of the impeachment vote was to embarrass Pete Hegseth enough to force him to resign, then it didn’t work.
READ MORE: Stephen Miller’s first job will be to end the blood feuds
Voters didn’t give Democrats a majority to make a point. That is what social media and talk radio are for. Congress is supposed to do something, not lose.
While the Democrats prepare for investigations, the president has ordered his veep to stop negotiating for a settlement with Iran and, instead, investigate corruption in Democratic-controlled cities and states. This is what we call “the pot calling the kettle black”, or simply another day at the office in D.C.
We learned this week that Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned the president about Nvidia’s (now-former) CEO, Jensen Huang, months ago, and still Trump invited him to join him on a trip to China. (We also learned that the brain was not the only organ that Huang was working on to achieve super status. But that is for another time).
Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is being investigated for perjury. And both the attorney general and secretary of the Treasury have been moved to military bases for security purposes.
I suppose I can go on, but that’s enough for this week.
John Zogby (@ZogbyStrategies) is the founder of the Zogby Survey and senior partner at John Zogby Strategies. His latest book is Beyond the Horse Race: How to Read Polls and Why We Should. His podcast with son, managing partner, and pollster Jeremy Zogby, can be heard here.
Jed Babbin: Grade D
This wasn’t a great week for Trump and his team. They’re still feeling the shocks of the midterm elections where they were almost, but not quite, wiped out.
It wasn’t a good week for Vance either. After the experience of handling the June “memorandum of understanding” with Iran, Trump pulled Vance back from the VP’s plan for further negotiations with Iran. In fact, the president said that the U.S. had already won the conflict with Iran, describing it as “just a question of when we want to end it” during a Veterans Day event at Arlington National Cemetery.
Vance’s presidential prospects in 2028 are fading, as you should expect for someone from the Tucker Carlson antisemitic wing of the Republican Party. He has only himself to blame.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth survived an impeachment challenge in the House. It wasn’t much of a challenge. Hegseth also survived a scolding from a soldier at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, which was well deserved. Hegseth later decorated the scolding soldier, which was a nice touch.
Obviously, we haven’t won the war with Iran, and the president is way off base saying that we had. The simplest proof of that is the growing number of Trump cabinet officials who have taken residence at military bases around Washington, D.C., for fear of Iranian assassination attempts.
Trump reportedly had a shouting contest with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week. They argued, apparently at high volume, about the Iran war and how to deal with it. There is nothing more important on either man’s plate. They have to deal with Iran successfully, or it will deal with them.
Jed Babbin (@jedbabbin) is a Washington Examiner contributor and former deputy undersecretary of defense in the administration of President George H.W. Bush.
What are the chances?
Prediction market Kalshi had a good midterm election. Founder Tarek Mansour took a lap of honor on X, pointing out just how accurate its users had been in forecasting results.
Cue irritation from the big beasts of the polling and election modeling world, as Secrets flagged last week.
“Give me a break, the polls and models provided the direction in contast [sic] to vibes and dumb insiders. And yes it’s good that traders were smart enough to trust them. But the better election models were more confident about the outcome than the markets and got there more quickly,” Nate Silver wrote on X.
Well, there is good news in election nerd world: Peace seems to be breaking out.
In a follow-up blog post, Silver grudgingly admitted that Kalshi had been able to call results fast on election night. And now Mansour is hinting that a rapprochement could be close at hand.
Secrets asked Mansour about the feud during a private lunch on Thursday, and with the benefit of those impressive election night results, he suggested he was prepared to let the whole thing wash over him rather than ratchet up tensions further.
“I’m going to send Nate a nice note,” he told Secrets over steak, creamed spinach and mashed potatoes.
Correction of the day
A corker in the New York Times (as ever).
“A review on Friday about the film ‘I Play Rocky’ made an imprecise comparison between the muscular arms of Rocky and Popeye. Rocky has bulging biceps; Popeye has muscular forearms.“
Secrets is wondering whether it was Sylvester Stallone or Popeye who demanded the correction.
Lunchtime reading
I wrote Jensen Huang’s biography. Here’s what led to his downfall: Stephen Witt saw all the signs, even if he couldn’t quite get it all confirmed for his book. But this piece is full of great nuggets. Not least of which is the likely absence of a prenup…
What the Logan Circle shooter told me: And another example here of interviews that weren’t published at the time, but become relevant later. Plus, it emphasizes the importance of local news organizations.