President Trump said in a statement the Treasury Department will be able to impose penalties against “current and former officials of the Government of Turkey and any persons contributing to Turkey’s destabilizing actions in northeast Syria,” the Washington Post reports.
He added that he plans to raise steel tariffs “back up to 50 percent, the level prior to reduction in May,” and that the Commerce Department will immediately cease its trade negotiations with Turkey.
President Trump’s campaign manager Brad Parscale called the impeachment inquiry a “seditious conspiracy” to overthrow the president.
Said Parscale: “Nancy Pelosi should step down for betraying her oath of office and attempting to overthrow our great Republic.”
A new Quinnipiac poll finds Elizabeth Warren leading the Democratic presidential field nationally with 30%, followed by Joe Biden at 27%, Bernie Sanders at 11%, Pete Buttigieg at 8% and Kamala Harris at 4%.
No other candidate tops 2%.
Reuters: “In a joint declaration, climate scientists, physicists, biologists, engineers and others from at least 20 countries broke with the caution traditionally associated with academia to side with peaceful protesters courting arrest from Amsterdam to Melbourne… The declaration was coordinated by a group of scientists who support Extinction Rebellion, a civil disobedience campaign that formed in Britain a year ago and has since sparked offshoots in dozens of countries.”
“Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) spoke Monday to discuss bipartisan efforts to overturn President Trump’s decision to withdraw U.S. troops from northern Syria and sanction Turkey for its military offensive against Syrian Kurdish forces,” Axios reports.
“Michael Bloomberg has indicated to associates in recent weeks that Joe Biden’s recent struggles against Sen. Elizabeth Warren are making him rethink his decision to stay out of the 2020 Democratic primary,” CNBC reports.
“Bloomberg has signaled he’s ‘still looking at’ running for president, but people close him say that the only way he could even go down that path is if Biden’s fortunes suffer so much that he drops out before or during the early stages of the primary. Bloomberg could then enter the race as one of the rare moderates with enough name recognition and campaign funding to make a run.”
Said one Bloomberg ally: “I think it’s something he wants. He has not been shy about that. Nothing can happen unless Biden drops out, and that’s not happening anytime soon.”
“On Dec. 19, 2016, a little more than a month after the presidential election, members of the Electoral College gathered around the nation to cast their votes. Ten of them went rogue,” the New York Times reports.
“A swing by that number of electors would have been enough to change the outcomes in five of the previous 58 presidential elections, according to a petition filed last week in the Supreme Court. In the 2000 election, after an assist from the Supreme Court, George W. Bush beat Al Gore by just five electoral votes.”
“The petition asked the justices to decide whether ‘faithless electors‘ were free to disregard pledges they made to vote for their own parties’ candidates. It urged the court to act quickly.”
Out next month: Crime in Progress: Inside the Steele Dossier and the Fusion GPS Investigation of Donald Trump by Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch.
“What began as a march through a mind-boggling trove of lawsuits, bankruptcies, and sketchy overseas projects soon took a darker turn: The deeper Fusion dug, the more it began to notice names that Simpson and Fritsch had come across during their days covering Russian corruption—and the clearer it became that the focus of Fusion’s research going forward would be Trump’s entanglements with Russia.”
“Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been hosting informal talks and small, off-the-record dinners with conservative journalists, commentators and at least one Republican lawmaker in recent months to discuss issues like free speech and discuss partnerships,” Politico reports.
“The dinners, which began in July, are part of Zuckerberg’s broader effort to cultivate friends on the right amid outrage by President Trump and his allies over alleged ‘bias’ against conservatives at Facebook and other major social media companies.”
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A new Monmouth poll finds 69% of America is greatly divided when it comes to our most important values. Just 27% say Americans are united and in agreement on these values.
The sense that the country is divided is fairly similar among Democrats (74%), Republicans (68%), and independents (66%).
A new ALG Research (D) poll in Louisiana finds Gov. John Bel Edwards (D) leading challenger Eddie Rispone (R) in the November 16 gubernatorial runoff election, 52% to 36%.
Inside Elections: Key takeaways from the primary election.
A new Public Policy Polling survey shows that Ohio is set to return to its traditional status as a battleground state in 2020.
After winning the state by 8 points in 2016, President Trump now trails a generic Democratic 47% to 48% and holds an underwater 47% to 51% favorable rating. Given that state’s swing from 2012 to 2016, it is especially notable that Trump trails a generic Democrat 37% to 51% with independent voters.
Fiona Hill, the former Trump adviser testifying in the impeachment probe today was subpoenaed, CNN reports, because of “attempts by the White House and the Administration to direct witnesses not to cooperate with the House’s impeachment inquiry and efforts by the White House to limit any testimony that does occur.”
Joe Biden told Radio Iowa that if he is elected president, he would not pardon President Trump from any possible charges he might face after leaving office.
Said Biden: “It wouldn’t unite the country. You’d say: ‘Wait a minute. I get a parking ticket and I’ve got to pay it. This happens to me and I’ve got to go to jail. This guy does all these things that put us jeopardy and he gets off?’ I think this is of a different nature.”
He added: “I think President Ford… had to do it over again he wouldn’t have done it… because he didn’t get reelected.”
In the week before Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) launched an impeachment probe, President Trump was tweeting an average of 18 times per day. But the start of the inquiry has led Trump to double that to an average of 36 tweets a day, the Washington Post reports.
Trump set his single-day tweeting record of his presidency just five days after the impeachment inquiry began with 48 tweets. He then set another record last Friday, “hitting 59 total tweets, including 33 in just 20 minutes.”
New Firehouse Strategies/Optimus polls finds Elizabeth Warren ahead in Iowa and New Hampshire, Joe Biden leading in South Carolina and Pete Buttigieg surging in Iowa:
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.