Just dropped · Trial Balloon · Ep. 194
What Just Happened?
President Trump told NBC News that he had planned to fire FBI Director James Comey regardless of the recommendation from his deputy attorney general, contrary to earlier statements from the White House.
He said he had made up his mind to dismiss Comey before he met Monday with Attorney General Jeff Sessions and deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.
Trump also claimed Comey told him three times, once over dinner and twice on phone calls, that he was not under investigation.
A new Quinnipiac poll finds just 21% of American voters approve of the Republican health care plan passed by the U.S. House of Representatives last week.
“Except for an anemic 48% to 16% support among Republicans, every listed party, gender, educational, age and racial group opposes the plan.”
Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe told the Senate Intelligence Committee that James Comey had not, as the White House said, lost the broad confidence of the bureau’s employees, Axios reports.
Said McCabe: “No sir, that is not accurate… I can tell you that I hold Director Comey in the absolute highest regard… It has been the greatest privilege and honor of my professional life to work with him… I can confidently tell you that the vast majority of FBI employees enjoyed a deep and positive connection to him.”
He also said the Russia investigation is “highly significant,” contradicting White House spokesperson Sarah Sanders who said it is, “one of the smallest things that they’ve got going on their plate.”
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Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R) will not enter the 2018 race for the U.S. Senate seat now held by Sen. Angus King (I-ME), the Portland Press Herald reports.
“LePage started talking publicly as early as 2015 about mounting a challenge to King, an independent who was Maine’s governor from 1995 to 2003. But in a statement issued late Wednesday, his political adviser, Washington, D.C.- based Brent Littlefield, said the Republican governor, who will turn 69 in October, feels he could better serve his constituents by remaining focused on the duties of governor.”
“At some point, the fever will break.”
— Gov. John Kasich, in an interview with Matt Bai.
Rick Klein: “The images speak louder than the angry words exchanged inside the Trump White House. Among U.S. officials, the wake of James Comey’s firing has brought accusations, recriminations and even threats of resignations. On the Russian side, the Russian foreign minister and ambassador to the United States were all smiles and laughs in the Oval Office, in pictures with President Trump that were released by the Russians. Back home, Vladimir Putin bemusedly answered questions about U.S. political turmoil, while in full hockey gear (he scored seven goals in the charity event).”
“The big picture here – what this was all about from the start – is the Russians and their attempts to influence U.S. politics. Could they possibly have succeeded more fully? Every day brings more dividends, and new reminders of the true stakes in these extraordinary times. Trump finds himself at war with his own agencies and own Congress, in something close to a constitutional crisis. Putin finds himself scoring, again and again.”
British Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn “will lay out plans to take parts of Britain’s energy industry back into public ownership alongside the railways and the Royal Mail in a radical manifesto,” The Guardian reports.
“A draft version of the document, drawn up by the leadership team and seen by the Guardian, pledges the phased abolition of tuition fees, a dramatic boost in finance for childcare, a review of sweeping cuts to universal credit and a promise to scrap the bedroom tax.”
Meanwhile, The Sun notes Corbyn’s car ran over a journalist’s foot as he tried to evade the press.
Ousted FBI Director James Comey told associates that President Trump was “outside the realm of normal,” even “crazy,” according to the New York Times.
ABC News has amazing video of a constituent losing his temper over Rep. Tom McArthur’s (R-NJ) support for the GOP health care bill.
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s spokesman “has hit back at critics who accuse him of falling asleep at public events, saying the 93 year old is in fact closing his eyes to protect them from bright lights,” the BBC reports.
Said the spokesman: “At 93, there is something that happens to the eyes and the president cannot suffer bright lights. If you look at his poise, he looks down, avoids direct lighting.”
“It could be my fault. I don’t want to necessarily blame, but there’s a great meanness out there that I’m surprised at.”
— President Trump, in an interview with Time.
From the Washington Post:
This story has been updated to more precisely describe White House press secretary Sean Spicer’s location late Tuesday night in the minutes before he briefed reporters. Spicer huddled with his staff among bushes near television sets on the White House grounds, not ‘in the bushes,’ as the story originally stated.
Time: “The waiters know well Trump’s personal preferences. As he settles down, they bring him a Diet Coke … With the salad course, Trump is served what appears to be Thousand Island dressing instead of the creamy vinaigrette for his guests. When the chicken arrives, he is the only one given an extra dish of sauce. At the dessert course, he gets two scoops of vanilla ice cream with his chocolate cream pie, instead of the single scoop for everyone else.”
“Few rooms have changed so much so fast as his dining room, where he often eats his lunch amid stacks of newspapers and briefing sheets. A few weeks back, the President ordered a gutting of the room… He watches the TV screen like a coach going over game tape, studying the opposition, plotting next week’s plays. “This is one of the great inventions of all time— TiVo,” he says as he fast-forwards.”
“But the thing he wants to show is on the opposite wall, above the replace, a new 60-plus-inch at-screen television that he has cued up with clips from the day’s Senate hearing on Russia. Since at least as far back as Richard Nixon, Presidents have kept televisions in this room, usually small ones, no larger than a bread box, tucked away on a sideboard shelf. That’s not the Trump way.”
The Economist interviewed President Trump, who claimed he came up with a new phrase:
ECONOMIST: But beyond that it’s OK if the tax plan increases the deficit?
TRUMP: It is OK, because it won’t increase it for long. You may have two years where you’ll… you understand the expression “prime the pump”?
ECONOMIST: Yes.
TRUMP: We have to prime the pump.
ECONOMIST: It’s very Keynesian.
TRUMP: We’re the highest-taxed nation in the world. Have you heard that expression before, for this particular type of an event?
ECONOMIST: Priming the pump?
TRUMP: Yeah, have you heard it?
ECONOMIST: Yes.
TRUMP: Have you heard that expression used before? Because I haven’t heard it. I mean, I just… I came up with it a couple of days ago and I thought it was good. It’s what you have to do.
“In firing FBI Director James Comey, President Trump may have hoped to bring the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election under control. Instead, as reaction in Washington spread on Wednesday, the move seemed to carry a large risk of making his troubles worse,” the Los Angeles Times reports.
“In an email lament circulated among prominent Republicans, A.B. Culvahouse Jr., former Reagan White House counsel and head of Trump’s vice presidential search effort, said the firing ‘both prolongs the FBI/DOJ investigation and undermines the credibility of the Trump campaign’s denials of no conspiracy with Putin.'”
He added: “We could be talking about Russian hacking in the mid-terms at this rate.”
Washington Post: “Within the Justice Department and the FBI, the firing of Comey has left raw anger, and some fear … Trump had ‘essentially declared war on a lot of people at the FBI’ one official said. ‘I think there will be a concerted effort to respond over time in kind.'”
President Trump “is expected to sign an executive order today establishing a commission to review alleged voter fraud and voter suppression in the American election system,” ABC News reports.
The officials say Vice President Mike Pence and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach will be announced as Chair and Vice Chair of the “Presidential Commission on Election Integrity” in a press release today.
Taegan Goddard
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire -- which for more than two decades has been one of the nation's most influential political news sites.
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