The Mike Hosking Breakfast

Donald Trump took in the win at Mar-a-Lago, surrounded by friends and family. His lawyers celebrated with hugs and smiles. One joked, "We're going to Disney World!"
Now acquitted in his second Senate impeachment trial, Trump is preparing for the next phase of his post-presidency life. Feeling emboldened by the trial's outcome, he is expected to reemerge from a self-imposed hibernation at his club in Palm Beach, Florida, and is eyeing ways to reassert his power.
But after being barred from Twitter, the former president lacks the social media bullhorn that fueled his political rise. And he's confronting a Republican Party deeply divided over the legacy of his jarring final days in office, culminating in the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol. Searing video images of the day played on loop during his impeachment trial, which ended Saturday.
Trump remains popular among the GOP base, but many Republicans in Washington have cooled to him. Never before have so many members of a president's party — seven GOP senators, in his case — voted for his removal in a Senate trial.
Some may work to counter efforts by Trump to support extreme candidates in next year's congressional primaries.
Undeterred, friends and allies expect Trump to resume friendly media interviews after weeks of silence. He has met with political aides to discuss efforts to help Republicans try to take control of the House and Senate in the 2022 midterms elections. He remains fixated on exacting revenge on Republicans who supported his impeachment or resisted his efforts to overturn the results of the November election won by Democrat Joe Biden.
"I imagine you'll probably be hearing a lot more from him in the coming days," senior adviser Jason Miller said.
In a statement after the vote, Trump offered few clues, but was defiant as he told supporters their movement "has only just begun."
"In the months ahead I have much to share with you, and I look forward to continuing our incredible journey together to achieve American greatness for all of our people," he said.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, who spoke with Trump on Saturday night, acknowledged that Trump is "mad at some folks," but also "ready to move on and rebuild the Republican Party" and "excited about 2022."
In their conversations, Graham has stressed to Trump, who has threatened to start his own party to punish disloyal Republicans, that the GOP needs him to win.
"I said, 'Mr. President, this MAGA movement needs to continue. We need to unite the party. Trump-plus is the way back in 2022,'" Graham, R-S.C., told "Fox News Sunday."
"My goal is to win in 2022 to stop the most radical agenda I've seen coming out of the Democratic presidency of Joe Biden. We can't do that without Donald Trump, so he's ready to hit the trail and I'm ready to work with him," Graham said.
Graham said Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, who vote to acquit but then delivered a scalding denunciation of Trump, "got a load off a chest, obviously." Graham said later in the interview: "If you want to get something off your chest, fine, but I'm into winning."
At his Palm Beach club on Saturday night, Trump was in a joyous mood as he enjoyed dinner on a patio packed with people. After a mellow last several weeks, one member described a party atmosphere not felt since before the election.
Still, Trump isn't in the clear yet. No longer protected by a Justice Department opinion against the prosecution of sitting presidents, he now faces multiple, ongoing criminal investigations.
In Georgia, the Fulton County district attorney has opened a criminal investigation into "attempts to influence" the election, including Trump's call to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger demanding that the official find enough votes to overturn Biden's victory.
In New York, Attorney General Letitia James is investigating whether Trump and his company improperly inflated the value of his assets...

The re-emergence of lockdown measures could sap over $150 million out of the economy - and an Auckland business leader says firms need to know the Government will look after them.
Based on cost estimates developed by ASB during the previous lockdown, having Auckland at alert level 3 and the rest of the country at alert level 2 costs the economy about $440 million per week - or 0.15 per cent of GDP.
With the current lockdown set to last three days, the cost of the lockdown will be around $188 million lost to the economy.
This will only increase should the lockdown be extended beyond the initial three-day precautionary measures.
The fact that firms have been through this before should prepare us for this latest lockdown development, says Auckland Business Chamber chief executive Michael Barnett.
"Businesses should have had a plan in place, they should have been expecting that at some point we were going to come back here."
However, he said some businesses were still facing economic hardship from the last round of lockdown and was calling for a fresh subsidy to weather this latest situation.
"I think government should send a signal to business that they're going to look after them."
Barnett said hospitality and food and beverage firms were running "close to the line" and this latest snap lockdown wasn't going to help.
He said businesses should have a plan to manage this and focus on their digital platforms to bring money in.
He expected the cost to be "heavy" for some.
"Many businesses took out loans last year, they were in a process of meeting obligations of those loans and they're going to have no income but they're going to have the cost of staff. The quicker the Government send a signal that there's going to be a subsidy or there's going to be support, the greater the confidence that business can get through."
Barnett said it was now a matter of holding out for the vaccine.
"What business has to do is not see this as a disaster but make the three days work. They should have a plan to manage this and they should be looking at how can they use the digital platforms that they've probably created over the last six to 12 months, communicate well with their customers and keep their businesses alive."
How much a lockdown costs
Last August, ASB modelled a range of costs based on different alert levels.
They range from a weekly economic cost of $1.6 billion (or 0.54 per cent of GDP) if the whole country went back into level 4 lockdown, to $166m (or 0.06 per cent of GDP) per week with the whole country at level 2.
The return to higher alert levels would have uneven impacts throughout the economy, Smith said.
"New Zealand was operating at about 95 per cent of capacity at level 1, with the shift to alert level 2 and 3 seeing capacity utilisation fall to anywhere from 80 per cent to 92 per cent of economy-wide capacity," ASB senior economist Mark Smith said at the time.
Sectors that would be particularly affected by a shift back up alert levels included accommodation and food services.
Having Auckland in level 3 carries enormous economic weight.
According to official estimates, Auckland accounts for broadly 38 per cent of NZ's GDP and around 33 per cent of employment and one-third of the nationwide population.
Brad Olsen, senior economist at Infometrics, previously told the Herald that the restrictions placed on Auckland would disrupt much of its workforce.
"By our estimate, around about 28 per cent of Auckland's workforce cannot operate under level 3, that's about 250,000 jobs. We're likely to see that number of people not operating," Olsen said.
In August Olsen estimated the cost of level 3 in Auckland at around $60m to $69 million over a three-day period.
While economies do take a short-term hit from lockdowns, numerous studies have shown that stricter conditions pay off in the longer run.
An IMF study...

Locals around Taranaki are on edge after it was revealed two confirmed Covid-19 community cases visited New Plymouth over Waitangi weekend, and some are unhappy that the region has remained at alert level 2.
The Ministry of Health has confirmed that the positive cases visited nine locations in the city last weekend including Te Rewarewa Bridge, Sumela Kebab, Amber Court Hotel, Pukekura Park, Egmont National Park, Cycle Inn, Puke Ariki Library and Museum, Pizza Hut and Back Beach.
Around the city on Sunday night, supermarket carparks were full as residents stocked up on essentials.
Outside Pak'nSave, one local who asked not to be named said that they decided to come down to the supermarket to ensure they had enough supplies in case of another lockdown.
"Me and my husband thought we better stock up on flour and yeast and things. We got caught out last time," the woman said.
"We probably should really be in level 3. The cases have been all over the city."
Some locations of interest still open
Meanwhile, Puke Ariki Library and Museum remained open on Sunday, with staff urging visitors to follow government advice.
"We are currently open as normal here but we encourage people to sanitise and scan in when they enter," a staff member at the Puke Ariki Museum told the Herald, prior to the museum's confirmation as a possible exposure location.
The museum confirmed at the time that they had not yet been contacted by the Ministry of Health and were awaiting the confirmed locations the positive cases visited.
"We'll wait and see what we're told and then act on that."
Also open was Pizza Hut New Plymouth, which chose to remain open despite being visited by a positive case.

Pizza Hut in New Plymouth was still open on Sunday evening, despite being visited by a positive Covid-19 case. Photo / Ethan Griffiths
The manager at the store said at 6pm he had not yet been provided with any information, and could not say if any staff who were working on February 8 were currently working at the store at the time of the Herald's visit.
He did confirm however that the store's owner was contacted by the Ministry of Health.
At the 35-unit Amber Court Motel in New Plymouth, two cleaners have been told to have a Covid test at Taranaki Base Hospital after two of the Covid cases, a mother and a daughter stayed at the motel for two nights between February 6 and February 8.
The manager, who only wanted to be known as Raewyn, said she was informed about the motel being a location of interest by the Taranaki District Health Board.
Since the name of the motel had been listed as location of interest for the latest cases, the phone hasn't stopped from every Tom, Dick and Harry who has stayed here since February 6, she said.
Raewyn said she had been given information about cleaning the motel room where the pair stayed, but said the motel had already been deep cleaning the units after guests left as a matter of practice for some time.
She said two cleaners who had contact with the unit had been advised to get a test and would not be returning to work until February 24.
Raewyn said she would not be tested, saying she was behind a glass barrier and more than 1m away when she checked the pair in and out of the motel.
Asked how she felt about the situation, Raewyn said: "It's going to happen no matter where you go. I did a tour of the South Island for 14 days with my friend. It was something we were aware of. It's something we now have to live with."
Mayor reacts
New Plymouth's mayor is lamenting the poor usage of the Covid-19 tracing app.
New Plymouth mayor Neil Holdom told Mike Hosking New Zealanders are doing a below average job in tracing their movements.
"The whole country needs to wake up to that. The issue is that people know this is our primary line of defence once this stuff gets in."
And while some in the city are questioning...

Australia will stop quarantine-free travel for New Zealanders, after three Covid-19 cases were recorded in Auckland.
The trans-Tasman bubble was set up so people could fly from New Zealand to Australia without needing to spend 14 days in a hotel.
However, Australia's expert medical panel made a decision late on Sunday night to change the system.
It means any New Zealanders who fly into Australia from Monday will have to spend a fortnight in hotel quarantine.
The new rule will remain in place for the next three days before the situation is reassessed.
A statement on the Department of Health website said the pause on quarantine-free travel was decided after a meeting with the chief health officers of Queensland, NSW and Victoria and Australia's chief medical officer, Professor Paul Kelly.
"All people arriving on such flights originating within this three-day period will need to go into 14 days of supervised hotel quarantine," the statement read.
"The Australian Health Protection Principal Committee will consider further updates from New Zealand tomorrow and provide advice."
Kelly had said earlier on Sunday that travel arrangements with New Zealand would not change.
Auckland went into level 3 restrictions from 11.59pm on Sunday while the rest of New Zealand is in alert level 2 for three days until midnight Wednesday, February 17.
The move was announced by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern after three members of a family living in the South Auckland suburb of Papatoetoe tested positive for Covid-19.
The new cases, a couple and their daughter, are the country's first community transmission since late January when a returned traveller in Northland tested positive after leaving quarantine.
The mother works for laundry and catering company LSG Skychefs, which services planes at the airport. Her main duties at the company involved laundry tasks.
As a precaution, food and beverage on Air New Zealand flights will be suspended for domestic routes.
Text from RNZ

The country has been praised for taking a hard and early approach to going back into lockdown. 
Auckland has moved to Alert Level 3, and the rest of the country at Level 2, after three new community cases popped up in South Auckland. 
One of the three new community cases of COVID-19 is a woman who works at at LSG Sky Chefs - employed in laundry and sometimes catering work for airlines.
Otago University epidemiologist Michael Baker told Mike Hosking that he doubts that Covid could be spread through laundry.
"It would be very unusual this virus was transmitted on a surface like that. And in fact, I don't think it's been documented anywhere. And we're still really looking at transmission from, you know, via droplets or aerosols from contact with someone."
Asked if it would be international crew or transit, Baker says: "It's really hard to know. I mean this is what the next few days are going to tell us and that's why, obviously we're going for a lockdown because we don't know about the other potential cases in the community."
He says that the virus could have been transmitted for two or three weeks, and it makes sense the country is all in lockdown. 
He supported the Government's approach this week and said the vaccine rollout - frontline workers will be the first to start getting jabs this weekend but most of the population won't be vaccinated until the second half of 2021 - would help sustain the elimination approach.
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Papatoetoe High School principal Vaughan Couillault says the Year 9 student confirmed as one of three new Covid-19 cases was in school for one or two days while infected.
Couillault told Mike Hosking on Newstalk ZB that the reaction to the community was one of "anxiety and a little bit of worry".
"The infectious period she was at school for a very short period of time...we are essentially talking about one or two days," he said.
Couillault revealed 1411 students, 152 staff and about 50 close contacts and their families have been asked to isolate and get tested.
Casual contacts, such as students who were not in the same class as the infected girl, have also been asked to get tested and isolate but the families they live with are not required to at this stage.
Others, such as visitors who were at the school last week are also asked to get a Covid-19 test.
The other two cases are the student's mother and father.
Health officials have confirmed the girl was infectious while she was at school earlier in the week and her classmates and teachers are now being asked to get tested and self-isolate until February 24.
Relatives of those classmates and teachers are also being asked to get tested and stay at home until receiving a negative result.
The school will be closed today and tomorrow.
The infected student stayed at home on Thursday and Friday after her mother, an employee at airline catering provider LSG Sky Chefs, became unwell.
Couillault said yesterday that the student did not attend "any assemblies or anything like that" on Wednesday.
"So in terms of identification, we have probably the smallest numbers of teachers and students that we could have for a Year 9 student."
He said five teachers and 28 students are considered close contacts of the infected student and all other students and staff at the school are "casual" contacts.
Couillault has notified all staff and parents by text and email.
An Auckland Regional Public Health spokesperson said letters have been sent to all staff members and to families with students with advice on what to do.
The letters advised staff and parents of students whether the student or staff member was a "close contact" or a "casual contact".
Auckland Regional Public Health Service defines "close contact" as someone who has been in the same class or room as the infected student.
"Casual contact" means the person is at a lower risk of developing the disease because they have not been in the same class or room as the student.
Casual contacts are being asked to get tested and remain at home until they get a negative test result while close contacts are asked to get tested and stay home until February 24.
People at the school have been told to look out for Covid-19 symptoms, such as new or worsening cough, fever, sore throat, temporary loss of smell or taste, difficulty breathingand runny nose.
A mobile testing centre will be set up at the school on Monday and a list of testing sites is available on the Auckland Regional Public Health Service website.
The girl and her parents have been moved into quarantine after testing positive on Saturday night.
The father is a self-employed tradesman.

New Zealand's three new community Covid cases have identified as the UK variant of the virus and they have not been linked to any managed isolation or quarantine case, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said today.
But she said it was too soon to say whether Auckland would come out of level-3 lockdown - or New Zealand out of alert level 2 - as early as Wednesday night.
Auckland moved to level 3 for at least three days at 11.59 last night, with employees asked to work from home, students urged to stay away from school and police setting up checkpoints at eight locations at the region's border overnight.
Officers are checking all vehicles arriving and leaving Auckland to ensure there is no non-essential travel. Alert level 2 is less restrictive. (The full list of rules are detailed below).
Ardern told Newstalk ZB's Mike Hosking today that the link to the British variant had led officials to think the virus might have come through airport transit or it had stemmed from an international airline crew member.
There are three new Auckland community cases - a mother, father and daughter from Papatoetoe. The mother works at LSG Sky Chefs, where she handles laundry from international flights.
"We do still have people who transit through New Zealand and fly on to other destinations. They stay airside but of course, it means they are using the things that go through the laundry at this individual's place of work," Ardern told Newstalk ZB.
"The other possibility is that it's international airline crew... they also do the laundry of a couple of international airline crew. And so, that is also one of the possibilities."
It was still possible - but unlikely - the new cases had come from an MIQ case which hadn't been sequenced, said Ardern.
She told MediaWorks that the "worst-case scenario" was that the outbreak was linked to a case which had come through MIQ three or four weeks ago. That would imply a long chain of transmission - the genomic testing results this morning ruled that out.
She told Newstalk ZB that the news of the UK variant didn't necessarily mean Auckland would spend longer in level 3.
Health officials were looking into cases in Australia to see if there was a link there and she told RNZ that officials would also be contacting international airlines to check their crews' infections to try to trace the source.
Ardern said the most likely scenario was always human to human but it was important to rule out as many avenues as possible - even if they never found the source.
The key to the decision whether to shift alert levels would be whether it appeared there would be limited community spread. She said Cabinet opted for the three-day lockdown in a "very genuine way".
Ardern told Newstalk ZB that officials would look to ramp up testing up today. As soon as negatives started coming through they could start to have some confidence the virus had been contained.
She said sewage testing in south Auckland on February 10 had not shown up any Covid in wastewater, "so that gives us another bit of a layer" in a decision.
Ardern said she didn't think the latest cases were another failure to test border workers. Even if the woman was tested on February 1 as part of her fortnightly cycle - she was instead tested on February 5 after taking annual leave - her case might not have been picked up. The testing ran hand in hand with education programmes and the key was getting tested as soon as they were symptomatic.
It was "too soon to make a judgement" either way about what decision would come Wednesday but it was the right decision to lockdown Auckland because it was confirmed the family had the UK variant, said Ardern.
Police set up road-blocks
Meanwhile, police have already set up road-blocks at eight locations on Auckland's border and are checking vehicles coming into and leaving the region this morning.
Cars on the Southern Motorway were...

THE BEST BITS IN A SILLIER PACKAGE (from Monday's Mike Hosking Breakfast) The Overreaction Precedent/Six Sax Songs

Every Friday morning, Mike Hosking is joined by Tim Wilson and Kate Hawkesby to wrap the week in news. 
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Michael Scott is at peace with his decision to leave his role as chief executive at High Performance Sport New Zealand.
He has spent three years at the helm and has not seen through an Olympic cycle.
Scott will leave the position in April to move home to Australia.
Scott has earned a taxpayer-funded salary between $390,000 and $400,000, as documented in the most recent annual report.
Sport New Zealand chief executive Raelene Castle will step into the role at the end of April in an acting capacity.
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