The Note: Melania Trump speaks out, as anger animates midterms

The TAKE with Rick Klein

There’s anger out there — aimed outside, and also within.

First Lady Melania Trump’s revealing interview with ABC’s Tom Llamas includes an intriguing and potentially powerful assertion: that President Donald Trump’s White House continues to employ individuals who cannot be trusted.

“You always need to watch your back,” she said.

The president has positioned himself against voices inside his administration quite prominently in the past. It’s revving up the Trump army before the midterms, with the first lady now lending her voice to an extent.

Anger – both real and exaggerated — grows as the election approaches. Former Attorney General Eric Holder said this week that the motto of the “new Democratic Party” should be “when they go low, we kick them,” on the heels of Hillary Clinton saying that after Democrats take over Congress, “civility can start again.”

It’s rich for lectures on civility to come from those associated with the Trump White House, of course.

But anger, in many different forms, has a strong allure these days — as the stakes of the election grow.

The RUNDOWN with MaryAlice Parks

Democrats and (literally) millions of voters have been asking for an honest conversation on health care insurance markets and the possibility of a Medicare-for-All, single-payer system. The president's op-ed Wednesday was not that.

Yes, Democrats backing a Medicare-for-All plan are calling for huge changes in the country's health care system. But they don’t advocate abolishing Medicare benefits for seniors or outlawingprivate insurance plans. That's just false.

Plus, most Democratic candidates actually talk about a series of steps and a long — very long — term transition to help move the country toward universal coverage models.

What's telling though about the president's op-ed (as well the way Republican candidates are racing to say they support protecting people with pre-existing conditions) is that their party is playing defense here while Democrats are pushing ahead with their messaging on health care.

The GOP talks a good game about protections, but just Wednesday, Senate Republicans voted to let the Trump administration sell short-term plans, many of which do not cover basic care, including hospitalizations and maternity care, and which allow insurance companies to use discriminatory pricing or refuse coverage altogether to people who have had certain previous diagnoses.

Democrats on the trail point to Republican plans over and over and say: "We know health care isn't working right now, but, see what they're proposing? You just can't trust those guys."

The TIP with Alexander Mallin

With less than four weeks until the midterm elections and the stakes for his presidency reaching a fever pitch, President Trump is growing more aggressive in his efforts to paint his Democratic opposition not just as a political threat to America’s future, but as a mob of radicalized extremists.

Most recently, Trump described demonstrators protesting Judge Brett Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court as paid instruments of billionaire George Soros, motivated by a paycheck rather than genuine concern for the country.

Both the Republican National Committee and White House counselor Kellyanne Conway have recently sought to seize on a new Hillary Clinton interview in which she said, “You cannot be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you stand for, what you care about,” with Conway saying Wednesday, “it's one thing to disagree, but you oughta disagree civilly.”

When ABC News asked Conway whether the president has been civil in his own remarks, she answered that “evil is a perfectly fine word,” but was specifically referring to people who had threatened Kavanaugh’s wife and children, a distinction the president hasn’t made.

THE PLAYLIST

ABC News' "Start Here" Podcast. Thursday morning’s episode features ABC News Deputy Political Director MaryAlice Parks, who explains why health care will be such a big talking point in the upcoming midterm elections. Then, ABC News’s Conor Finnegan brings us the latest in the disappearance of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. https://bit.ly/2Ohkpz8

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