Daily Archives
22 posts · Friday
A new Rutgers-Eagleton poll finds New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s (R) approval rate at just 16%.
“The governor has long lost the support of the state’s Democrats and unaffiliated voters, which make up a majority of New Jersey’s voting bloc. But making matters worse for the Republican governor, 50 percent of the state’s GOP residents have an unfavorable view of him.”
Mediaite: “So, remember that one time when President Donald Trump held a Cabinet meeting and everyone at the table outdid themselves when it came to heaping praise on POTUS? Well, we got a similar situation today during a signing ceremony in the Oval Office in which Trump had a bunch of religious leaders surround him and profusely thank the president for his response to Hurricane Harvey.”
“With the president proclaiming that this coming Sunday will be a day of prayer for Harvey victims, he began going around the room and calling on different faith leaders to give remarks. And, wouldn’t you know, they all tripped over each other to express their gratitude for all the president had done so far.”
“After he was finished going around the room to get his praise, Trump turned it over to Pastor (and Fox News contributor) Robert Jeffress to lead the room in prayer, with some placing their hands on the president.”
New York Times: “After a presidential campaign scarred by Russian meddling, local, state and federal agencies have conducted little of the type of digital forensic investigation required to assess the impact, if any, on voting in at least 21 states whose election systems were targeted by Russian hackers, according to interviews with nearly two dozen national security and state officials and election technology specialists.”
“The assaults on the vast back-end election apparatus — voter-registration operations, state and local election databases, e-poll books and other equipment — have received far less attention than other aspects of the Russian interference, such as the hacking of Democratic emails and spreading of false or damaging information about Mrs. Clinton. Yet the hacking of electoral systems was more extensive than previously disclosed.”
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Presiden Trump’s longtime aide and current director of Oval Office operations Keith Schiller has told people he intends to leave the White House, CNN reports.
“Schiller has told associates within the last two weeks that he plans to leave the White House at the end of September or in early October, the sources said. Schiller has told people his primary reason for leaving was financial, the sources said. Schiller earns a $165,000 annual salary at the White House — a downgrade from his annual earnings before he followed Trump to the White House.”
Shane Savistky: “If Schiller departs, Trump would lose a decades-long confidant — and one of the few remaining Trump Organization holdovers — at one of the most tumultuous times in his presidency.”
A new Fox News poll finds that 53% of those surveyed think President Trump is a “bully” while 43% say he’s “unstable.”
Fewer voters, about one-third, assign the clearly positive terms “competent” (35%), “strong leader” (35%), and “problem solver” (32%).
White House budget director Mick Mulvaney admits to Politico that no one in this administration “is more of a right-wing conservative than I am.”
Mulvaney has an amusing way of announcing his extremism. His first words to Trump’s top economic adviser, Gary Cohn, were: “Hi, I’m a right-wing nutjob!” (Cohn’s deadpan reply: “Hi, I’m Gary.”) At a meeting with budget analysts, Mulvaney wryly described himself as a crazy reactionary. But he bristles a bit at stereotypes of Southern conservatives as knuckle-dragging backwoods Neanderthals, because he’s not that kind of reactionary. He comes off more like a 50-year-old Rotary Club suburbanite with triplets, a standing desk, and an eight handicap, which he is. He studied abroad in Madrid. He drives a Miata.
The Gallup daily tracking poll finds President Trump’s approval rate at 34% to 61%, for a new low net approval rate of -27 points.
Asked by WVNN radio host Dale Jackson about President Trump’s push to end DACA protection for so-called Dreamers, Alabama U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore (R) was clearly confused:
JACKSON: “You’re not aware of what Dreamers are?”
MOORE: “No.”
JACKSON: “This is a big issue in the immigration debate…”
MOORE: “Why don’t you tell me what it is Dale and quit beating around and tell me what it is.”
JACKSON: “I’m in the process of doing that Judge Moore.”
MOORE: “OK.”
Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) writes in the Washington Post that Congress must return to “regular order” and compromise.
“That has never been truer than today, when Congress must govern with a president who has no experience of public office, is often poorly informed and can be impulsive in his speech and conduct.”
He adds: “We must respect his authority and constitutional responsibilities. We must, where we can, cooperate with him. But we are not his subordinates. We don’t answer to him. We answer to the American people. We must be diligent in discharging our responsibility to serve as a check on his power. And we should value our identity as members of Congress more than our partisan affiliation.”
Special counsel Robert Mueller “has obtained a letter that President Trump and a top political aide drafted in the days before Mr. Trump fired FBI director James Comey which explains the president’s rationale for why he planned to dismiss the director,” the New York Times reports.
“The May letter had been met with opposition from Donald McGahn, the White House counsel, who believed that some of its contents were problematic… Mr. McGahn successfully blocked the president from sending Mr. Comey the letter, which Mr. Trump had composed with Stephen Miller, one of the president’s top political advisers.”
“A different letter, written by the deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, and focused on Mr. Comey’s handling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server, was ultimately sent to the FBI director on the day he was fired.”
“The White House has signaled to congressional Republicans that it will not shut down the government in October if money isn’t appropriated to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, potentially clearing a path for lawmakers to reach a short-term budget deal,” the Washington Post reports.
“Everyone takes money in this town; everyone fights someone here. They’re just like me; like mercenaries. I spend other people’s money here to achieve other people’s goals.”
— Rinat Akhmetshin, quoted by the Financial Times, explaining his attendance at a controversial meeting at Trump Tower in June 2016 with Donald Trump Jr, Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort and a Russian lawyer.
Speaker Paul Ryan “gave a major boost to legislative efforts to preserve protections for young undocumented immigrants — and urged President Trump to not tear up the program,” CNN reports.
“The popular Obama administration program — which gives protections from deportation to undocumented immigrants that were brought to the US as children to work or study — has long been targeted by Republicans as an overreach of executive authority. Nevertheless, a number of moderate Republicans alongside Democrats support the program and have offered legislation that would make the protections permanent.”
New York Times: “Gone are the confrontational talk of a government shutdown and the brinkmanship over the debt limit. Instead, both Mr. Trump and his putative allies in Congress — many of them professed fiscal hawks — are promising an outpouring of federal aid to begin a recovery and rebuilding effort that will last for years and require tens of billions of dollars, if not substantially more, from Washington.”
“The Trump administration is sending mixed signals on how far along negotiators are on a tax reform plan,” Politico reports.
“National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn said on CNBC Friday that only outlines have been set so far. That seemed to contradict Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who told CNBC Thursday “we have a very detailed plan” that would come out later in September.”
“Lawyers for Donald Trump have met several times with special counsel Robert Mueller in recent months and submitted memos arguing that the president didn’t obstruct justice by firing former FBI chief James Comey,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“One memo submitted to Mr. Mueller by the president’s legal team laid out the case that Mr. Trump has the inherent authority under the constitution to hire and fire as he sees fit and therefore didn’t obstruct justice when he fired James Comey as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Another memo outlined why Mr. Comey would make an unsuitable witness, calling him prone to exaggeration, unreliable in congressional testimony and the source of leaks to the news media.”
Mike Allen: “A quiet but consequential battle for staff and cash has begun among ambitious Democrats with their eyes on the 2020 presidential race. The party is likely to start with a bigger field — perhaps much bigger — than the unwieldy Republican batch that produced Donald Trump as the nominee.”
“Our conversations with well-wired Democrats produced a list of three dozen names that range from possible to plausible to probable. Other potential candidates seem certain to emerge, based on who looks strong after the 2018 midterms.”
“Several have begun to actively talk to potential staff members, and a few more have put out feelers, according to Democrats familiar with the conversations.”
Politico: “As soon as Hurricane Harvey hit, Mexico — a country described by President Trump as a source of rapists and drugs — stepped up to offer boats, food and other aid to the United States. Another offer of help came from Venezuela, a country in severe political and economic crisis that has been repeatedly sanctioned by the Trump administration; it said it could give $5 million in aid. The European Union has proudly noted that it is sharing its satellite mapping with U.S. emergency responders dealing the Harvey’s devastation. This despite Trump’s chastisement of European countries he views as overly dependent on the U.S. military. Then there’s tiny Taiwan, which has reportedly offered $800,000 in aid — a number likely calculated to annoy China as much as to curry favor with Trump.”
“But compared to past crises, the list of foreign governments lining up to help the United States this time is relatively short for the time being. And the few countries that have raised their hand may get more out of it – politically, at least – than the U.S. The relative dearth of global goodwill, some analysts say, may stem from anger at Trump over his ‘America First’ approach to the world, which has irked even staunch U.S. allies.”
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.
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