The 633-word statement of President Donald Trump on the Saudi royals' role in the grisly murder of Washington Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi is a remarkable document, not only for its ice-cold candor.

The president re-raises a question that has roiled the nation since Jimmy Carter: To what degree should we allow idealistic values trump vital interests in determining foreign policy?

On the matter of who ordered the killing of Khashoggi, Trump does not rule out the crown prince as prime suspect:

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After adding at least 37 seats and taking control of the House by running on change, congressional Democrats appear to be about to elect as their future leaders three of the oldest faces in the party.

Nancy Pelosi of California and Steny Hoyer of Maryland have led the House Democrats for 16 years. For 12 years, they have been joined in the leadership triumvirate by Jim Clyburn of South Carolina.

If these three emerge as speaker, majority leader and majority whip, all three Democratic leaders will be older than our oldest president, Ronald Reagan, was when he went home after two terms.

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In a rebuke bordering on national insult Sunday, Emmanuel Macron retorted to Donald Trump's calling himself a nationalist.

"Patriotism is the exact opposite of nationalism; nationalism is a betrayal of patriotism."

As for Trump's policy of "America first," Macron trashed such atavistic thinking in this new age: "By saying we put ourselves first and the others don't matter, we erase what a nation holds dearest, what gives it life, what makes it great and what is essential: its moral values."

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The war in Washington will not end until the presidency of Donald Trump ends. Everyone seems to sense that now.

This is a fight to the finish.

A postelection truce that began with Trump congratulating House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi -- "I give her a great deal of credit for what she's done and what she's accomplished" -- was ancient history by nightfall.

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Did former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg just take a page out of the playbook of Sen. Ed Muskie from half a century ago?

In his first off-year election in 1970, President Richard Nixon ran a tough attack campaign to hold the 52 House seats the GOP had added in '66 and '68, and to pick up a few more seats in the Senate.

The issue: law and order. The targets: the "radical liberals."

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