A new Public Policy Polling survey finds 49% of voters support impeaching President Trump, as compared to 41% who are opposed to doing so.
Also interesting: Trump’s approval rating has declined by a net 7 points in the last month.
A new Public Policy Polling survey finds 49% of voters support impeaching President Trump, as compared to 41% who are opposed to doing so.
Also interesting: Trump’s approval rating has declined by a net 7 points in the last month.
Peter Dreier: “Anyone who feels compelled to boast how smart he is clearly suffers from a profound insecurity about his intelligence and accomplishments. In Trump’s case, he has good reason to have doubts.”
“A linguistic analysis by Politico found that Trump speaks at a third-grade level. A study by researchers at Carnegie-Mellon University compared last year’s Republican and Democratic presidential candidates in terms of their vocabulary and grammar. Trump scored at a fifth-grade level, the lowest of all the candidates.”
BuzzFeed News: “The threat of serving hard time for failing to disclose foreign lobbying work is rattling Washington’s multi-billion dollar influence industry following Monday’s 12-count indictment against Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his deputy, Rick Gates.”
“And although the charges have largely been seen as a blow to the White House, Monday’s actions by special prosecutor Robert Mueller also sent shivers down the spines of Washington’s lobbyists, both Democrats and Repulicans.”
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First Read: “Yesterday’s news was about witness squeezing — either through the indictments against Manafort and Gates, or letting Trump World know that they’ve flipped Papadopoulos.”
“Mueller is sending the message that he hasn’t received a lot of cooperation in his probe, and that he’s going to get that cooperation — one way or another.”
For members: Mueller Wants Manafort for Someone Bigger
David Frum: “You need to wonder whether the avoidance of blowback from Fox News in November 2017 is worth the risks hurtling at you in the weeks ahead. The Trump administration’s authoritarian moment is on the verge of materializing. The president seems likely to openly stake a claim to use his position as head of the executive branch to exempt himself from all law enforcement. If the president can never obstruct justice, he can use the pardon power to protect himself and his associates from any investigation into criminal wrongdoing.”
“By speaking out today, you may dissuade the White House from staking the whole Republican Party to an authoritarian, anticonstitutional position. At a minimum, you protect yourself from answering for it. Nobody’s asking you to be a hero. Just think ahead beyond the next 10 minutes and 10 days to your own interests and future.”
Ezra Klein: The cowardice of Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell.
President Trump lashed out on Twitter at special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russia’s election meddling:
The Fake News is working overtime. As Paul Manafort’s lawyer said, there was “no collusion” and events mentioned took place long before he came to the campaign. Few people knew the young, low level volunteer named George, who has already proven to be a liar. Check the DEMS!
TPM: “Thanks to an indictment unsealed Monday morning, we now know former campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos lied about the extent of his Russian contacts in an interview with FBI agents on Jan. 27, exactly one week after the inauguration. Papadopoulos has pleaded guilty to making false statements in that interview about his Russian contacts.”
“Mueller’s appointment didn’t come until May, after Trump fired former FBI Director James Comey, who had been overseeing the bureau’s probe into Russian interference in the U.S. election—and the collection of evidence for that investigation had already begun before Trump had even taken his hand off the Bible.”
David Drucker: “The current debate over Confederate symbols cuts to the central, existential question hanging over the G.O.P. The Republican Party today is an amalgam of upscale white suburbanites who are moderate on social issues but conservative on fiscal and national-security issues, and exurban and rural populist working-class whites, who are quasi-liberal on economic matters and foreign policy, but conservative on politically charged social issues.”
“But the key demographic in this coalition is ‘white.'”
“The Republicans becoming the guardians of the Confederacy is a function of the G.O.P. becoming so predominantly white, and yes, the predominant party in the South. The Republican project to take over the South was completed in 2010, when the red wave that swept Republicans into power in Congress and state capitals across the country ejected the last remnants of white Democratic authority. So by the time Trump responded to Charlottesville with vows to protect ‘our culture’ and ‘our history,’ and protect Confederate monuments from being relegated to some museum’s dusty storeroom, there were few sympathetic voters left in the Democratic Party to cheer him on. But there were plenty of Republicans.”
Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon is pushing President Trump “to take action against Mueller, urging him in particular to defund the investigation… a move that would defang Mueller without the president formally firing him,” Politico reports.
Playbook: “There’s next to no way this will happen. Bannon can pressure Trump until he’s blue in the face. It is much more likely Congress will shield Mueller from being fired than strip funding from his effort.”
“Carter Page, a foreign policy adviser to Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, said he might have exchanged emails about Russia with a fellow adviser who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the president’s campaign and possible collusion with the Russian government,” Politico reports.
“As he has in the past, Page repeatedly declined to provide direct answer to questions about his role on Trump’s campaign.”
White House chief of staff John Kelly said that the Civil War was “caused by a lack of an ability compromise” and that Confederate general Robert E. Lee was “an honorable man,” Politico reports.
Said Kelly: “I would tell you that Robert E. Lee was an honorable man. He was a man that gave up his country to fight for his state which in 150 years ago was more important than country. It was always loyalty to state first back in those days. Now it’s different today. But the lack of an ability to compromise led to the Civil War. And men and women of good faith on both sides made their stand where their conscience had to make their stand.”
Pressure mounted on British Prime Minister Theresa May after her defense secretary “admitted to inappropriately touching a journalist, bringing the sex scandal swirling around Westminster to the heart of her government,” Bloomberg reports.
“The escalation of allegations about sexual harassment in the British Parliament to include May’s inner circle could not have come at a worse time for the prime minister. She is seeking to navigate a path out of the European Union and struggling to claw back credibility after a catastrophic election result in June. She sat grim faced in the House of Commons on Monday as lawmakers debated extra action needed to protect staff.”
Trump campaign pollster Tony Fabrizio said that Sen. Bernie Sanders could have prevailed where Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton did not, The Hill reports.
Said Fabrizio: “There’s no question that if it had been anybody other than Clinton or anybody other than Trump, that race would not have been as close as it was either way. It would not have been.”
When asked what would happen during a Sanders-Trump match-up, Fabrizio replied, “I think Sanders beats Trump.”
New York Times: “The guilty plea of a 30-year-old campaign aide — so green that he listed Model United Nations in his qualifications — shifted the narrative on Monday of the Trump campaign’s interactions with Russia: Court documents revealed that Russian officials alerted the campaign, through an intermediary in April 2016, that they possessed thousands of Democratic emails and other “dirt” on Hillary Clinton.”
“That was two months before the Russian hacking of the Democratic National Committee was publicly revealed and the stolen emails began to appear online. The new court filings provided the first clear evidence that Trump campaign aides had early knowledge that Russia had stolen confidential documents on Mrs. Clinton and the committee, a tempting trove in a close presidential contest.”
“President Trump woke before dawn on Monday and burrowed in at the White House residence to wait for the Russia bombshell he knew was coming,” the Washington Post reports.
“Separated from most of his West Wing staff — who fretted over why he was late getting to the Oval Office — Trump clicked on the television and spent the morning playing fuming media critic, legal analyst and crisis communications strategist.”
“The president digested the news of the first indictments in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe with exasperation and disgust… He called his lawyers repeatedly. He listened intently to cable news commentary. And, with rising irritation, he watched live footage of his onetime campaign adviser and confidant, Paul Manafort, turning himself in to the FBI.”
CNN: “Watching the developments unfold on the large television screens installed in his private residence, Trump was ‘seething,’ according to a Republican close to the White House.”
Washington Post: “Facebook plans to tell lawmakers on Tuesday that 126 million of its users may have seen content produced and circulated by Russian operatives, many times more than what the company previously disclosed about the reach of the disinformation campaign during the 2016 presidential election.”
“Previously, Facebook had focused its disclosures on Russian ads. The company has said that 470 accounts and pages run by a Russian troll farm had purchased roughly 3,000 ads, which the company said reached an estimated 10 million users. But the troll farm, known as the Internet Research Agency, also published free content. Researchers estimated that the spread of free content was far greater than that of ads and that Facebook has been under pressure to share more about those posts.”
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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