Daily Archives
19 posts · Sunday
President Trump denies calling Haiti and African nations “shithole countries” in an Oval Office meeting with lawmakers but conservative radio host Erick Erickson reports Trump himself called friends to brag about it afterwards.
Said Erickson: “I spoke to one of those friends. The President thought it would play well with the base.”
Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) “is planning to slam President Trump’s attacks on the press on the Senate floor this week in a speech that will compare the president’s use of the term ‘enemy of the people’ to describe the media to Soviet dictator Josef Stalin,” NBC News reports.
From excerpts: “When a figure in power reflexively calls any press that doesn’t suit him ‘fake news,’ it is that person who should be the figure of suspicion, not the press.”
“I do want to see an immigration compromise, and you can’t have an immigration compromise if everybody’s out there calling the president a racist.”
— Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), in an interview on Meet the Press.
A new Minnesota Poll finds voters are sharply divided on President Trump’s job performance, 45% to 47%, even as a majority believe he lacks the right temperament for the office and is not always truthful.
“Just 36% said he has the right temperament for the presidency while 58% said he does not, slightly higher than what the Minnesota poll found last April. Meanwhile, 53% of voters said they don’t think Trump generally speaks the truth.”
Stan Collender: “McConnell said his plan not to do a fiscal 2019 budget was based on a soulless political calculation that his new 51-49 majority will make it hard, very hard or impossible for the Senate GOP to pass its own budget resolution this year, let alone to adopt one that will be acceptable to the House.”
“But what McConnell didn’t say was that the fiscal 2019 budget resolution will be the first that will show the bottom line impact of all the GOP policies: a $1 trillion or higher annual deficit every year of the Trump administration and beyond. Even if Congress and the Office of Management and Budget again choose to ignore the facts, the Congressional Budget Office, Wall Street and other private sector analyses will project annual trillion dollar deficits. McConnell doesn’t want his Republican members to face the political repercussions of having to vote for that.”
Bret Stephens: “I’m not alone. America is a nation of holers. It is an improbable yet wildly successful experiment in the transformation — by means of hope, opportunity and ambition — of holers into doers, makers, thinkers and givers. Are you of Irish descent? Italian? Polish? Scottish? Chinese? Chances are, your ancestors did not get on a boat because life in the old country was placid and prosperous and grandpa owned a bank. With few exceptions, Americans are the dregs of the wine, the chaff of the wheat. If you don’t know this by now, it makes you the wax in the ear.”
Sen. David Perdue (R-GA), who was in the meeting with President Trump when he made his “shithole countries” comment, “made a course correction,” the Atlanta Journal Constitution reports.
“On Friday, the senator put out a joint statement with Senate colleague Tom Cotton (R-AR) Both said they couldn’t remember the president comparing Third World nations to latrines.”
This morning on This Week, Perdue said it never happened: “I’m telling you he did not use that word, George. And I’m telling you it’s a gross misrepresentation. How many times do you want me to say that?”
“While Utah Gov. Gary Herbert (R) has said he will not seek re-election in 2020, he still raked in nearly $630,000 in political contributions last year,” the Salt Lake Tribune reports.
“Herbert wasn’t just letting money flow in, he actively sought it — including spending at least $158,000 to host his annual fundraising gala, and another $15,500 to stage a fundraising golf event.”
NBC News interviewed political scientist Brendan Nyhan about his new study on the spread of fake news.
Said Nyhan: “The group that visited fake news websites the most frequently was the 10% of Americans with the most conservative information diets. These are people who are visiting a lot of websites that are disproportionately consumed and shared by conservatives relative to liberals. It’s not that fake news is a substitute for political news, it’s being added on to a diet of like-minded political news of a more conventional variety.”
He added: “They’re a subset of Americans who follow politics extremely closely. For all the saturation coverage that politics receives, its still a pretty small part of the news diet for most people.”
Also interesting: “Facebook stands out in our data as the site people visited most disproportionately prior to visiting a fake news website. We don’t observe the same pattern with Google, Twitter, or web mail platforms. Journalists love to talk about Twitter, but it just doesn’t compare in reach to Facebook.”
“Even the stuff that’s not true, it’s true.”
Mike Allen: “Hill sources tell us that a House Democratic takeover is now likely.”
“One strategist close to Republican leaders believes that a loss of the House is ‘baked in,’ and said top Republicans don’t see a way to avoid it.”
“It would take a flip of 24 seats for Dems to take over. The average loss for the president’s party in his first midterm is about 32 seats, and we’re hearing forecasts of 40+ losses.”
President Trump tweeted that the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that he terminated last year is “probably dead” because he claims Democrats aren’t negotiating in good faith.
Said Trump: “DACA is probably dead because the Democrats don’t really want it, they just want to talk and take desperately needed money away from our military.”
However, the Wall Street Journal reports the Trump administration said that it would “resume accepting renewal applications for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, bowing for now to a federal court ruling that blocked an effort to end the Obama-era policy.”
The New York Times reports Mitt Romney sent word to Utah Gary Herbert (R) about the state’s open Senate seat in November’s elections: “I’m running.”
“His yet-to-be-declared candidacy is already highlighting the enduring fractures over President Trump in this heavily Mormon state, where voters have long been uneasy with Mr. Trump’s conduct. At issue is whether Mr. Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, should be an overt check on the president, and even use a Senate platform to mount his own White House comeback, or act as an ally and retain access to Mr. Trump the way Mr. Hatch has done.”
“When the wave comes, it’s always underestimated in the polls. That is the reason that Republicans are ducking for cover.”
— A conservative political strategist, quoted by the Washington Post.
Politico: “The GOP is forced to defend 13 states that former President Obama won — from Maine to New Mexico to Wisconsin — while Democrats are protecting just one — Pennsylvania — that fell to Trump.”
“Republicans now admit that a handful of once-competitive battlegrounds are nearly out of reach for them in 2018. Meanwhile, Democratic hopes are rising in a handful of conservative strongholds.”
The word “shithole” along with a “poop” emoji was projected onto President Trump’s hotel in Washington, D.C. last night.
The White House disputed that President Trump told the Wall Street Journal in an interview that “I probably have a very good relationship with Kim Jong Un of North Korea,” with press secretary Sarah Sanders calling it “fake news.”
The Journal then decided to release the relevant portion of the audio and had a third party transcription service also confirm the quote.
“A raft of retirements, difficulty recruiting candidates and President Trump’s continuing pattern of throwing his party off message have prompted new alarm among Republicans that they could be facing a Democratic electoral wave in November,” the Washington Post reports.
“The concern has grown so acute that Trump received what one congressional aide described as a ‘sobering’ slide presentation about the difficult midterm landscape at Camp David last weekend, leading the president to pledge a robust schedule of fundraising and campaign travel in the coming months.”
“But the trends have continued, and perhaps worsened, since that briefing, with two more prominent Republican House members announcing plans to retire from vulnerable seats and a would-be recruit begging off a Senate challenge to Democrat Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota despite pressure from Trump to run.”
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.