Bob Bernick and Bryan Schott discuss a week chock full of political news.
This week:
- Sen. Orrin Hatch ended his long 42-year career with an incredibly tone-deaf speech decrying the disintegration of regular order in the Senate. That came shortly after he said he didn’t care that court filings implicated President Trump in the commission of two felonies that sent his personal lawyer, Michael Cohen to prison.
- We’ve heard more from Mia Love in the past two weeks than we did in the previous 4 years. She went on national TV to claim Democrats are racists because they didn’t let her win and to claim she didn’t march in lock-step with President Trump.
- Speaking of Love, she spent $2.2 million more than Ben McAdams to try and hang on to an R+13 seat, and still lost by 694 votes. Utah Republicans think they can re-capture that seat in 2020 if they can find a good candidate who can run a better campaign than Love.
- Sen. Mike Lee defends President Trump’s vow to shut down the government to secure funding for his border wall. Lee has experience with that sort of thing, helping to shut down the government in 2010 to help Sen. Ted Cruz run for president.
- Former Rep. Jason Chaffetz gets embarrassed by a fellow Fox News host for trying to peddle conspiracy theories on the air.
- Jim Dabakis jumps into the Salt Lake City mayoral race to the surprise of absolutely nobody.
- Former Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson files a lawsuit claiming the Utah Legislature overstepped their bounds when they passed an alternative medical cannabis bill over the top of voter-approved Prop. 2.
- Even though Utah has a $1.3 billion budget surplus, lawmakers are trying to tamp down expectations of a spending bonanza as a hedge against a future economic downturn.
- President Trump has a political brawl with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer on live TV.
- Trump says he’s worried Democrats will impeach him when they take control of Congress next year.
