Comment on Howard Schultz Has No Good Explanation for Why He’s Mulling an Independent Presidential Bid

“Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners raised an additional $1.5 billion from the Qatar Investment Authority and Abu Dhabi-based asset manager Lunate, and extended the investment period of its debut fund to 2029,” Bloomberg reports.

“It’s not a happy Friday morning for Speaker Mike Johnson. This has been an absolutely disastrous week for the speaker, President-elect Donald Trump and Republicans on Capitol Hill,” Punchbowl News reports. “It got so bad that during a meeting with lawmakers in his office Thursday, Johnson said ‘If anyone else can get 218 votes, God bless them,’ according to three lawmakers present.

“The collapse of Speaker Mike Johnson’s spending plan illustrates a painful lesson that other politicians have already learned: Absolute loyalty to Donald Trump is a one-way street,” Politico reports. “As the U. S. teeters on the edge of a government shutdown, bitterly divided Republicans are struggling to find a way forward and Johnson’s hold on his job is in Trump’s mercurial hands.” Washington Post: With speakership on the line, Johnson is ever more reliant on Trump. CNN: 24 hours that exposed a schism between Trump and Johnson and sent the government hurtling toward a shutdown.

Playbook: “In every single shutdown we can remember, the party that makes the demands not only pays politically, but never gets what it wants. Never.” “Trump didn’t get a dollar for his wall during the 35-day shutdown in 2018-2019, and he paid a political price for it. Democrats didn’t get protections for Dreamers during the shutdown fight they stoked when Trump was in office, either.” “So what makes Republicans think that once in a shutdown, that Democrats will give them what they want and that the GOP won’t get politically crushed?”

“Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that he was ready to compromise over Ukraine in possible talks with U. S. President-elect Donald Trump on ending the war and had no conditions for starting talks with the Ukrainian authorities,” Reuters reports.

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