The Morning Briefing: A Second Caravan Approaches and Much, Much More

Good Wednesday morning.

Here is what’s on the president’s agenda today:

The president delivers remarks on a year of historic progress and action to combat the opioid crisis
President Trump hosts a Make America Great Again rally in Wisconsin

So who is in the caravan?

The caravan of love continues its march ~~toward the U.S. border~~ through the U.S. media’s headlines and newsrooms. Mexico has offered all these caravan folks asylum but most are continuing on to the U.S. If you aren’t sure what the motives are here, passing on Mexico’s offer gives an indication that the caravan travelers aren’t just looking for asylum. So far Mexico has processed 1,699 applications for asylum while 7,000+ people are on the move toward the U.S. border.

And what do you know, here comes a second caravan!

A group of over a thousand Central Americans in Guatemala headed toward the Mexican border on Tuesday, as a larger caravan of migrants that has angered U.S. President Donald Trump paused in southern Mexico on its planned journey toward the U.S. border.

From the Wall Street Journal:

Even as a caravan of thousands of Honduran migrants makes its way across southern Mexico, another caravan is forming in its wake.

Thousands of Honduran migrants gathered in a Guatemalan city near the border with Honduras Tuesday to prepare for a new caravan that would follow in the footsteps of a larger group currently marching to the U.S.-Mexico border, posing a fresh challenge to Guatemalan and Mexican authorities seeking to contain a surge in mass migration.
Church-run charities assisting migrants and activists say as many as 2,500 Hondurans who crossed into Guatemala in recent days have gathered in the city of Chiquimula, near the border with Honduras. But estimates of the size of the new group vary widely, from that number down to a few hundred, according to Francesca Fontanini, spokeswoman for the Americas region for the United Nations office on refugees.

U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley wonders what the political game being played here is: “Honduran politicians allied with Venezuelan & Cuban socialist dictators are encouraging the caravan to undermine US-friendly gov’t of (President Juan Orlando) Hernandez,” tweeted Haley, who visited Honduras and Guatemala this year.

Meanwhile, the media is in a frenzy because President Trump has said that there are terrorists and people from countries that are not in South America in the caravan. His exact words were “unknown Middle Easterners.” CNN wants you to know that those remarks are unsubstantiated. How would CNN know exactly who is in that caravan? That’s the problem, so to say that this is just a large group of our pleasant, law-abiding South American neighbors is a bunch of garbage.

In fact:

.@DHSgov can confirm that there are individuals within the caravan who are gang members or have significant criminal histories.

— Heather Swift, DHS spokesperson (@SpoxDHS) October 23, 2018

“Gang members or have significant criminal histories” sounds fantastic!

The caravan could be weeks away from the US border

Gov. Greg Abbott: George Soros ‘is trying to turn Texas into California’

Rosenstein meeting with House leaders postponed

It’s not really clear what happened here, but the meeting between Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and the House Judiciary Committee and Oversight Committee has been postponed.

“The Committees are unable to ask all questions of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein within the time allotted for tomorrow’s transcribed interview, therefore, the interview will be postponed,” Goodlatte and Gowdy said in a statement. “Mr. Rosenstein has indicated his willingness to testify before the Judiciary and Oversight Committees in the coming weeks in either a transcribed interview or a public setting. We appreciate his willingness to appear and will announce further details once it has been rescheduled.”

Very sketchy.

For several weeks, Reps. Mark Meadows of North Carolina and Jim Jordan of Ohio have been demanding a chance to interview Rosenstein. They pointed to a New York Times report that Rosenstein proposed wearing a wire to record Trump and that he also suggested invoking the 25th Amendment, a Constitutional provision that can be used to suspend or remove a president suffering from physical or mental problems.

Under the terms of the deal for the House interview, Meadows and Jordan would not have been able to attend and would have had to seek to ask questions through the committee chairmen, both of whom are retiring from Congress at the end of the year.

We will hear more about this soon, I bet.

Saudi assassination/alleged bone saw roundup

Saudi prince to give first speech since Khashoggi’s slaying

US vows to revoke visas and consider sanctions in response to Jamal Khashoggi’s death

Silicon Valley silent on Saudi money amid Khashoggi scandal

Your daily WTF:

Wait…eat? Man allegedly plotted on dark web to kill, eat underage girl

Other morsels:

Trump invites young black conservatives to White House

It’s the season for Halloween outrage! Vogue apologizes for Kendall Jenner photo with ‘afro’: We ‘did not mean to offend’

Megyn Kelly apologizes for defending blackface Halloween costumes

Red Sox beat Dodgers 8-4 at Fenway in World Series opener