Washington Secrets's White House report card: Bombs, ballots, and a welcome jobs boost

WASHINGTON SECRETS

BY ROB CRILLY

Welcome to Friday’s edition of Washington Secrets. If a friend sent you this and you’d like to sign up, CLICK HERE. Today, we bring you the usual roundup of the White House week, plus we get the lowdown on who was present and who was missing from the U.S.-Venezuela oil deal ceremony. Have a great holiday weekend, and Secrets will be back at it on Tuesday.

Donald Trump’s week was marked by bombs, ballots, and a ballroom, as he addressed more foreign challenges and questions about whether he cared enough about the midterm elections.

Weeks after pivoting to a sanctions and blockade offense against Iran, Sunday brought the first U.S. strikes in a month. American forces hit rocket launchers on Larak Island in the Strait of Hormuz that U.S. Central Command said were positioned to deploy naval mines.

A day later, the president seemed to downplay the idea of an intensified war.

“Their navy is gone. Their air force is gone. Their surveillance equipment is almost entirely gone,” he said in the Oval Office. “That doesn’t mean we won’t smack them. We’ll see what happens.”

At the same time, Trump announced a sweeping new oil deal with Venezuela that gives the United States effective control of 65 billion barrels of proven reserves through a new company, NABEP, which will receive Pentagon investment. It marked a dramatic assertion of U.S. geopolitical control over the resource-rich nation.

At home, the Supreme Court handed him a 5-4 victory, allowing construction to proceed on his $400 million White House ballroom project. But there was fresh turbulence at the Pentagon with news that Army Secretary Dan Driscoll was steppingdown after months of friction with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Tuesday saw fresh exchanges with Iran. The U.S. hit air-defense systems, radar, maritime assets, mine-laying capabilities, and communications sites. Iran retaliated with missiles and drones aimed at American forces in Jordan.

A day later, Trump addressed the midterm elections, amid fears among some Republicans that MAGA Inc, an allied Super PAC, is not spending enough cash yet. He said he would go to “every one” of 35 competitive races.

“I’ll be with you 100%,” he said at a Rose Garden dinner. “We’re going to do something like I did for myself in the last presidential election. Four months out, I said, ‘OK, no days off.'”

There is still no sign of a new White House press secretary. So on Thursday, Vice President JD Vance took on the role.

“Good morning,” he said as he arrived on the podium at 1:45 p.m., sounding for all the world like a man with a six-week-old baby at home. But he recovered easily and put in a strong performance, praising Trump and slamming the legacy media, all peppered with knockabout moments and in-depth answers about bond markets.

Trump has no public events scheduled at the White House on Friday before he is due to depart to spend the weekend at his New Jersey golf course. His plans to hit the campaign trail will have to wait, it seems.

So what did our two strategists make of it all?

John Zogby: C-

The week began with a deepfake from the White House: an AI-generated video of a US attack on Kharg Island. The Defense Department and the military were forced to scramble and come up with a denial that it had really happened.

Trump continues to say that “Iran is dead,” but the country’s leadership has resumed strikes against U.S. allies and threatens to attack in the U.S. Oil prices are still at or around $90 billion per barrel, and a new poll from the University of Massachusetts shows Mr. Trump with an overall approval rating of 32%.

An analysis of polling in eight battleground states shows that the Republican Party is down in all eight: Alaska, Georgia, Maine, Michigan, Ohio, New Hampshire, North Carolina, and Texas. If these hold, that could mean enough for the Democrats to take control of both houses of Congress. (Cautionary note: The election is two months away.)

The President did get a 5-4 Supreme Court decision saying he has the authority to complete the new White House ballroomwithout congressional approval, and construction on a new 250-foot arch is expected to begin in two weeks. Add in a very healthy jobs report on Friday, with 162,000 added to payrolls in August, and the result is that the F-key on my keyboard is taking a well-deserved vacation (but could be back in action soon).

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: D-

The week wasn’t a great one for Trump and his team, but there were good points, such as the fact that the foreign-born population of the U.S. has shrunk by more than 3 million since Trump took office. But then there were a few other things.

Vice President JD Vance doesn’t think that the Iran war is really a war because, at this moment, there isn’t a lot of fighting going on. He should look at the rate at which we’re expending our military lives. The lives of some 18 US servicemen have been sacrificed to the Iran war. If that doesn’t make it a war, what does? We have also lost aircraft and expended a lot of missiles and other ammunition. That makes it a war by anyone’s definition.

The “Economic D-Day” that the president announced last week has gained some non-essential nations’ agreement. The European Union wants to shatter Iran’s economy, but it isn’t in any position to do so. Better it should stop buying Russian natural gas, which is funding Putin’s war in Ukraine. Russia is raising the stakes in Ukraine, but the EU doesn’t notice.

Trump lost another one in court this week. His effort to slide around the Supreme Court’s decision in the birthright citizenship case was shut down by another court.

There were about 162,000 new jobs created in August, which is far better than the usual summer job slump. Despite the economy’s rise and fall because of gasoline prices, it seems to be doing pretty well.

Jed Babbin (@jedbabbin) is a Washington Examiner contributor and former deputy undersecretary of defense in the administration of President George H.W. Bush.

So why did Trump’s Venezuelan oilman stay out of sight?

When Energy Secretary Chris Wright traveled to Venezuela this week, our energy and environment reporter, Callie Patteson, was right there. She was one of a handful of American reporters to make the trip on the official plane.

Patteson offered Secrets this ringside view of what went down. And, perhaps most interestingly, she has details of who stayed out of sight.

“Wright met with Venezuelan acting president Delcy Rodriguez at the Miraflores Palace in Caracas, overseeing the signing of several agreements with five energy companies to rapidly expand the production of Venezuelan oil and bolster the country’s electricity grid.

The event attracted a flurry of local media, which meant the few U.S. reporters that traveled down for the event were packed in like sardines. Dozens of high-level U.S. and Venezuelan officials were also in attendance, as well as executives from Chevron, GE Vernona, Eni, Primavera, and Aspect Holdings.“What was perhaps more interesting, however, was who wasn’t in the room.

“What was perhaps more interesting, however, was who wasn’t in the room.

Alejandro Betancourt, the apparent architect for the Trump administration’s deal to secure 65 billion barrels of Venezuelan oil reserves, was nowhere to be seen. However as it turns out, Betancourt was at the palace, just out of view of both the U.S. press pool and local media.

“Just before boarding a plane to travel back to Washington D.C. last night, Wright confirmed to reporters that Betancourt was at the palace, and attended a lunch with high-level officials.”

Secrets declines to speculate on why Betancourt, who couldn’t join meetings about the deal in the spring because he was fighting extradition to Switzerland and who has fought off multiple investigations, both in Spain and the U.S., into alleged money laundering, and whose career is generally described as “colorful,” might have stayed out of the way of the press …

You can read more of Patteson’s reporting here.

You are reading Washington Secrets, a guide to power and politics in D.C. and beyond. It is written by Rob Crilly, who you can reach at secrets@washingtonexaminer.com with your comments, story tips, and suggestions.

Quote of the day

Secrets apologizes for missing this at the time. But is this really the line that Rep. Max Miller (R-OH) is going with to explain his absence from next week’s midterm convention (as he continues to fight domestic abuse allegations)?

“I was invited, but staying home to campaign and spend time with family,” is what he told the New York Times.

One might be inclined to wonder: Whose family?

Catch up with the rest of his unorthodox PR strategy with this piece from the Secrets archives.

Lunchtime reading

So it’s gonna be Ohio? This tiny village is ready for Taylor and Travis: Consider this your holiday reading. Locals are excited at news that Travis Kelce has bought a Lake Erie mansion.

For Ted Cruz, 2028 is about the future and what might have been: The Texas senator is the first important Republican outside the Trump administration to tease a presidential run.