Scott Walker said Monday he would be willing to campaign alongside President Trump in the run-up to the 2018 midterm elections. The Wisconsin governor, who is running for a third term this fall, spoke at THE WEEKLY STANDARD’s Midwest Conservative Summit in Milwaukee and told my colleague Charlie Sykes he would campaign with Trump if the president was in the state.
“Are you likely to campaign with President Trump?” Sykes asked. “If he’s here, I would imagine he’s probably going to be here for a U.S. Senate candidate, sure, I’d be with him,” responded Walker. The two-term Republican tried to push back on a recent New York Times report that included this nugget: “Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, for example, has told associates he is unlikely to campaign with the president . . .”
Walker claimed he denied this in an email with the Times reporter, Jonathan Martin. Reading from that email, which his campaign later distributed to the media, Walker said, “[Vice President] Pence was with me on April 25, the president did an event for me last June, beyond that, election will come down to what people think of me and our plans for the future. As for me, I’m not likely to campaign with anyone on the national level.”
But in Milwaukee Monday, Walker did say he would “welcome” President Trump to Wisconsin. “I certainly would welcome the fact when you talk about Foxconn and other big employers coming in. He played a role in that,” the governor said. “I think it’s a good thing for him to come to the state and talk about it.”
One More Thing—Walker spoke about the “challenge” with the current culture’s fostering of different sets of facts for different political tribes. “The left has their facts, the right has their facts, nobody concedes what the facts are,” he said.
“Do you think that the president has contributed to a culture of truth?” Sykes asked.
Walker paused slightly before answering: “I think he is a reflection of where the culture is across the board.”
After months of rumors, could White House chief of staff John Kelly truly be on his way out? A Monday report from NBC cites administration sources who say that Kelly’s contemptuous attitude toward Trump has undermined West Wing morale and expect Kelly to be gone from the administration by July.
According to the report, Kelly has come to style himself as “the lone bulwark against catastrophe” in the White House, with four officials saying they’ve heard him call President Trump “an idiot.” The sources further allege that Kelly has made patronizing remarks about women, such as telling aides that women are “more emotional than men.”
The White House pushed back strongly against the report, with Kelly issuing a statement calling it “total BS” and championing his “incredibly candid and strong relationship” with the president.
“I am committed to the president, his agenda, and our country,” Kelly said. “This is another pathetic attempt to smear people close to President Trump and distract from the administration’s many successes.”
Rumors of Kelly’s imminent departure have cropped up repeatedly for months. In February, it was reported that Kelly was considering leaving the administration over tensions with Jared Kushner related to the president’s son-in-law’s struggle to obtain a security clearance. President Trump defused that situation by publicly affirming that Kelly would retain final authority over West Wing security clearances.
Gitmo Watch—The Pentagon appears to have missed a presidentially-mandated deadline to provide the White House with a policy recommendation on detaining terrorists and on the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. In a January executive order, President Trump requested the Defense secretary deliver its recommended policy by April 30.
“I’ve not seen anything come in to me today,” Secretary James Mattis told reporters at the Pentagon Monday. “Right now I’m not working that issue. I’m not sure why. I’ll go back and look at it.”
A spokesperson for the Pentagon confirmed that the policy recommendation was still in the works. “The Department of Defense is in the final stages of providing a recommendation to the White House on policies regarding the disposition of individuals captured in connection with an armed conflict,” said Sarah Higgins. “This includes policies governing transfer of individuals to the detention facility at U.S. Naval Station Guantánamo Bay.”
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
Mark It Down—“We believe if the election were held today, we would keep the House of Representatives.” —House speaker Paul Ryan, April 30, 2018
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Monday that his country’s intelligence community had obtained Iranian documents related to a former “comprehensive program to design, build, and test nuclear weapons,” arguing they constituted proof that Iran had lied “brazenly” about its past nuclear activities when it signed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action nuclear deal in 2015.
“Iran planned, at the highest levels, to continue work related to nuclear weapons under different guises, and using the same personnel,” Netanyahu said.
Netanyahu’s announcement, which was deployed as a primetime media event in Israel, comes as President Trump is pondering whether or not to pull out of the deal later this month. European leaders such as France’s Emmanuel Macron have urged him to work to improve the deal from within. The White House released a statement in response to Israel’s announcement, saying that “this information provides new and compelling details about Iran’s efforts to develop missile-deliverable nuclear weapons.”
“These facts are consistent with what the United States has long known: Iran has a robust, clandestine nuclear weapons program that it has tried and failed to hide from the world and from its own people,” the statement said. (Asked by confused reporters to clarify—Iran has a nuclear program?—the White House corrected their statement to say that Iran had such a program, as the Israeli intelligence indicated.)
Iranian officials have ratcheted up their rhetoric about the nuclear deal in recent days. On Monday, the head of Iran’s state atomic program, Ali Akbar Salehi, said that Iran was “fully prepared to enrich uranium higher than we used to produce before the deal was reached.”
“I hope Trump comes to his senses and stays in the deal,” Salehi said.
Song of the Day—“Head Over Heels” by Tears For Fears
