Daily Archives
30 posts · Thursday
Politico: “Mark Corallo, the spokesman, had grown frustrated with the operation and the warring factions and lawyers, these people said. Corallo also was concerned about whether he was being told the truth about various matters.”
“Corallo has been close to special counsel Robert Mueller, who is leading the Russia investigation, and has praised him publicly. He didn’t like the strategy to attack his credibility.”
The Senate Judiciary Committee will subpoena President Trump’s son Donald Jr. and former campaign manager Paul Manafort if they do not agree to testify next week, the committee’s chairman told RealClearPolitics.
“President Trump is expected to announce that Wall Street financier Anthony Scaramucci will be White House communications director,” Axios reports.
“Trump has left the role open since Mike Dubke resigned in May, and the President has vented frequently to his friends about the performance of his press operation… Trump’s plans to appoint Scaramucci came as a surprise to Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, who found out after the plans had already been made.”
Washington Post: “Some of President Trump’s lawyers are exploring ways to limit or undercut special counsel Robert S. Mueller’s Russia investigation, building a case against what they allege are his conflicts of interest and discussing the president’s authority to grant pardons, according to people familiar with the effort.”
“Trump has asked his advisers about his power to pardon aides, family members and even himself in connection with the probe, according to one of those people. A second person said Trump’s lawyers have been discussing the president’s pardoning powers among themselves.”
New York Times: “President Trump’s lawyers and aides are scouring the professional and political backgrounds of investigators hired by the special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, looking for conflicts of interest they could use to discredit the investigation — or even build a case to fire Mr. Mueller or get some members of his team recused.”
“Special Counsel Robert Mueller is investigating possible money laundering by Paul Manafort, Donald Trump’s former campaign manager, as part of his criminal investigation into what U.S. intelligence agencies say was a Kremlin-backed campaign to meddle in the 2016 presidential election,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“The inquiry into the issue by Mr. Mueller, a former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and his team began several weeks ago.”
“President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida has asked permission to hire 70 foreign workers this fall, attesting — in the middle of the White House’s ‘Made in America Week’ — that it cannot find qualified Americans to serve as cooks, waiters and housekeepers,” the Washington Post reports.
“Those requests were made to the Department of Labor in recent days and posted online Thursday.”
“Things are starting to feel incoherent.”
— Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN), quoted by the New York Times.
Gov. Chris Christie (R) “is the most unpopular governor in the country, but in his last days in office he may get to exercise enormous influence nationally: Choosing a successor to embattled Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), which could result in a Republican senator, at least temporarily, from deep-blue New Jersey,” Politico reports.
Menendez “goes on trial for corruption in September, and there are two scenarios that could see him leave Washington before Christie is term-limited out of office in January: If Menendez is convicted and the Senate acts quickly to expel him, or if he cuts a plea deal and leaves office even earlier.”
Billionaire and GOP megadonor Mike Fernandez says he can’t give to Republicans who don’t stand up to President Trump, Politico reports.
Said Fernandez: “All the Republicans who hide behind the flag and hide the church, they don’t have the fucking balls to do what it takes… It is demoralizing to me to see adults worshipping a false idol. I can’t continue to write checks for anyone.”
He also called Trump an “abortion of a human being,” while adding, “If I was the doctor and knew what that baby would do, I’d have made sure it never would have seen the light of day.”
A group of Republican senators criticized President Trump after he rebuked top law enforcement officials in an interview with The New York Times, CNN reports.
Said one GOP senator: “One gets the impression that the President doesn’t understand or he willfully disregards the fact that the attorney general and law enforcement in general — they are not his personal lawyers to defend and protect him.”
Said another: “Any thought of firing the special counsel is chilling. It’s chilling. That’s all you can say.”
“I have no real desire to talk to him anymore. I think he made such an obviously reckless and indefensible decision.”
— Al Gore, in an interview with Business Insider, on discussions with President Trump since he pulled out of the Paris climate change accord.
Pew Research: “Nearly six-in-ten women (58%) say they are paying increased attention to politics since Trump’s election, compared with 46% of men. Overall, more Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents than Republicans and Republican leaners say they have become more attentive to politics. But there are similarly wide gender gaps in heightened interest to politics among members of both parties.”
Also interesting: “Most people (59%) say it is ‘stressful and frustrating’ to talk about politics with people who have a different opinion of Trump than they do; just 35% find such conversations ‘interesting and informative.'”
HuffPost: “A day after just about everyone on Capitol Hill declared the Senate health care bill dead, the legislation once again seemed to have the tiniest bit of life, with Republicans staying late into the night Wednesday to discuss whether there was a path forward.”
“If Collins is a no vote on any form of the legislation and Paul won’t support a replacement, and Capito and Murkowski won’t support the repeal-only approach, and Lee and Moran won’t support the replacement, and it’s unclear if McCain will be back next week … Republicans simply don’t have the votes throughout all the confusing scenarios. And that’s to say nothing of Dean Heller (R-Nev.), who has been cagey all along on any form of the legislation.”
Politico: “A harsh reality is setting in among Senate Republicans: they’re extremely unlikely to repeal Obamacare in the coming days.”
First Read: “The reason why so many were aghast at Bill Clinton’s meeting with Lynch was because it appeared that a person of influence (a former president) was butting into an investigation that Lynch’s Justice Department was leading (into Hillary Clinton’s emails), even if they never discussed the matter.”
“But in this New York Times interview, you have the current president criticizing his own attorney general for recusing himself; questioning the political motivations of the deputy attorney general; and warning the special counsel what he may or may not investigate — all while there is a federal investigation into his campaign’s ties/contacts/interactions with Russian entities. And it raises this question: If Trump has nothing to hide in this Russia investigation, why is he so concerned about it?”
Time: “On Nov. 1, the White House went so far as to war-game an Election Day attack. Over the course of five hours, the National Security Council ran a fictionalized sequence of events to rehearse how federal agencies would communicate and respond in a real attack. Some of the scenarios dealt with actual vote meddling, while others focused on disinformation efforts to undermine the election. As the nightmare scenarios unfolded—from voters turned away to violence at polling places—the team went over what actions each agency would take and what the legal constraints were on what they could do.”
Ron Klain: “He not only put Neil M. Gorsuch in the Supreme Court vacancy created by Merrick Garland’s blocked confirmation, but he also selected 27 lower-court judges as of mid-July. Twenty-seven! That’s three times Obama’s total and more than double the totals of Reagan, Bush 41 and Clinton — combined. For the Courts of Appeals — the final authority for 95 percent of federal cases — no president before Trump named more than three judges whose nominations were processed in his first six months; Trump has named nine. Trump is on pace to more than double the number of federal judges nominated by any president in his first year.”
“Moreover, Trump’s picks are astoundingly young. Obama’s early Court of Appeals nominees averaged age 55; Trump’s nine picks average 48. That means, on average, Trump’s appellate court nominees will sit through nearly two more presidential terms than Obama’s.”
At his six-month mark in office, the Washington Post reports President Trump has made 836 false or misleading claims. That’s an average of 4.6 claims a day.
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.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.