The battle is open between Trump and his democrat enemies

The most serious potential development for Trump came with the expansion of the investigation of the House Intelligence Committee beyond Russia, which probably means that the report of the special advocate Robert Mueller will not put an end to the president's troubles with Russia.

This decision added an additional danger to a president who sees his campaign, his inauguration, his transition, his presidency and his career in the business community under the control of civil, political and criminal investigations.

Trump does not take advantage of the new Washington

It quickly became clear during the week that the Commander-in-Chief, who had had only the most superficial oversight when Republicans led both sides of Capitol Hill, had not tasted the new regime for the first time. democratic.–drive the house.

Trump was seeking to describe Schiff's move as the kind of "ridiculous and partisan inquiries" that he had decried in his State of the Union address Tuesday evening. He said in a tweet that the California Democrat was probing "every aspect of my life, both financial and personal, even if there was no reason to do it … Harbadment presidential election ".

Other Republicans are beginning to embrace the principle that Democrats are not motivated by the constitutional obligation to hold an administration accountable but by their personal animosity towards the president.

The Republican Representative of the House Judiciary Committee, Georgia's Representative Doug Collins, told acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker on Friday that he was simply a pawn in a democratic circus while he was presented to testify.

"No, we want to hurt the president.We want to talk about your private conversations," Collins said, paraphrasing what he termed a Democratic strategy.

"I think maybe we should just install a popcorn machine at the back, because that's what it gets in. It becomes a show," Collins said.

Whitaker's appearance was uncertain until Thursday night after the Democrats voted to give the Jerrold Nadler, New York Judicial Committee the power to summon Whitaker if he did not answer questions or show up. The confrontation was defused only when Nadler said he would not bring the summons to appear at Whitaker on Friday.

But reflecting deep animosity between the Democrats-led House and the executive, he threatened to send Whitaker back to the committee for an in camera hearing – though Whitaker may lose his job a few days later. days, with William Barr. should be confirmed as Attorney General next week.

The performance of the Acting Attorney General seems to illustrate an apparent disregard for supervision in the executive branch.

Whitaker often seemed to be playing for a president who was checking the number of appointees on television, rather than seriously trying to answer questions. At one point, in an intervention of a witness rarely seen before, he reminded Nadler that his speaking time had run out – that he was risking the wrath of the all-powerful president, who was laughing at the news. 39; impertinence.

Whitaker refused to say that the Mueller probe was not a "witch hunt" – Trump's favorite phrase – although he insisted that he did not intervene with the special council.

In another installment of Trump House Democrat inquiries, another committee has begun the process of forcing the President to reveal his tax returns, after defying the tradition of the 2016 campaign by refusing to do so.

Rep. Michael Waltz, a Florida Republican, complained to CNN that the investigation was a symptom of "dismal investigations of the president."

But the chairman of the Ways and Means Subcommittee, John Lewis of Georgia, said the Democrats were steeped in the meaning of the mission.

"We must do what is right, we are called to do what is right, we have been chosen, we have been chosen," said Lewis.

New York Democrat Representative Tom Suozzi told CNN's Erica Hill that Democrats must follow a "very delicate line" between true Congressional oversight and a glut of exuberance.

"You are on a good balance," said Suozzi.

"You can not go to the end here and you ignore your supervisory responsibilities.And you can not go all the way here to become political and chase down the president because it belongs to a different party. "

In Washington, the focus is on the fierce fighting about to unfold.

The battle of 2020 heats up

Outside the capital, Democratic activists look to the future with a different hope, as presidential candidates run the most intense campaign of their nascent race to date.

Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey was in Iowa Friday, while her colleague Senator Kirsten Gilibrand of New York went to South Carolina. Mayor Pete Buttigieg, of South Bend, in Indiana, was also in Iowa, while Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, who is thinking about a race, has headed to the first state of New Hampshire, the first state of the country.

Senator Elizabeth Warren of Mbadachusetts hopes to avoid controversy over her native heritage when she officially launches her campaign in her home country on Saturday.

On Sunday in Minneapolis, the overcrowded Democrat group could have another candidate with Senator Amy Klobuchar to announce her intentions towards her home country.

Whoever comes out of the pack is already waiting for Trump.

His speech on the state of the Union was a response to a political moment when he was besieged on many fronts, including a duel against his border wall and government funding before the deadline set for Friday. next.

But it was also a bold statement of his campaign strategy for 2020.

The president said his run for reelection, along with his 2016 strategy, would be rooted in inflammatory rhetoric about immigration targeting his base.

"No problem better illustrates the gap between the working clbad and the US political clbad than illegal immigration," Trump said in an appeal to his blue-collar voters in the South and Midwest industrialists.

The president said he was going to badociate his populist rhetoric with the claim of having achieved the most impressive economic renaissance of the last decades.

"Our economy is dynamic and our economy thrives as never before," he said in his speech, which also aimed to position Democrats as going to the far left: "Tonight we renew our determination to what America is never a socialist country. "

The President's attack on the Democrats for adopting "socialism" was a sign that the GOP would seize government programs on climate change, higher education and health care, advocated by rising stars such as representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, to try to scare the voters of the pivotal state.

The media and conservative opinion pages were full this week of criticism of Ocasio-Cortez's co-sponsored Green New Deal, which would require a fundamental remodeling of the economy to eliminate fossil fuels.

In his speech on the state of the Union, Trump was also careful to look after another sector of his 2016 coalition, evangelical voters, on another issue that the GOP hopes to use to depict Democrats as moving away from the American mainstream.

He accused the New York Democrats of having enacted national legislation allowing "that a baby be torn from his mother's womb a few moments before birth."

He was referring to a new law that relaxes restrictions on late abortions if the woman life or health is in danger.

The state of the Union was a new indication that after again refusing to expand its base, as many presidents do, Trump will seek to chart a path to the White House, similar to the one he had wrought in 2016, which challenged the experts who believed that could not be done.