“Democrats hate our President more than they love our country.”
— RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, on Twitter.
“Democrats hate our President more than they love our country.”
— RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, on Twitter.
Washington Post: “Nowhere to be seen was John F. Kelly, the beleaguered White House chief of staff and overall disciplinarian — nor were the handful of advisers regarded as moderating forces eager to restrain the president from acting impulsively, who have resigned or been fired.”
“The gatherings neatly illustrated an inflection point for the Trump presidency. Fourteen months into the job, Trump is increasingly defiant and singularly directing his administration with the same rapid and brutal style he honed leading his real estate and branding empire.”
“Trump is making hasty decisions that jolt markets and shock leaders and experts — including those on his own staff. Some confidants expressed concern about the situation, while others, unworried, characterized him as unleashed.”
The Hartford Courant called on Rep. Elizabeth Esty (D-CT) to resign after a report detailing how she did not act when she found out her chief of staff threatened to murder a woman who worked in the office.
[alert type=”general” dismiss=”no”]Esty’s seat is definitely vulnerable. Hillary Clinton only won the district by 4 points in 2016.[/alert]
You are reading the free version of Political Wire.
President Trump claimed in a tweet that the Washington Post is a “lobbyist” for Amazon.
The Washington Post and Amazon are both owned by Jeff Bezos.
Washington Post: “In a pair of morning tweets… the president argued that Amazon costs the U.S. Postal Service billions of dollars in potential revenue. Trump has repeatedly advanced this theory, even though officials have explained to him that Amazon’s contracts with the Postal Service are profitable.”
“The carefully maintained secrecy around President Trump’s finances is under unprecedented assault a year into his presidency, with three different legal teams with different agendas trying to pry open the Trump Organization’s books,” the Washington Post reports.
“On one side is special counsel Robert Mueller, who has subpoenaed Trump Organization documents as part of his wide-ranging investigation into the 2016 campaign. On another is Stormy Daniels, the adult-film actress seeking internal correspondence as part of her effort to be freed from a nondisclosure agreement centering on an alleged affair with Trump.”
“And in the most direct assault, the District and Maryland have sued Trump, alleging that he is improperly accepting gifts, or “emoluments,” from foreign or state governments through his businesses, including his hotels.”
Ralph Peters: “You could measure the decline of Fox News by the drop in the quality of guests waiting in the green room. A year and a half ago, you might have heard George Will discussing policy with a senator while a former Cabinet member listened in. Today, you would meet a Republican commissar with a steakhouse waistline and an eager young woman wearing too little fabric and too much makeup, immersed in memorizing her talking points.”
“This wasn’t a case of the rats leaving a sinking ship. The best sailors were driven overboard by the rodents.”
“As I wrote in an internal Fox memo, leaked and widely disseminated, I declined to renew my contract as Fox News’s strategic analyst because of the network’s propagandizing for the Trump administration. Today’s Fox prime-time lineup preaches paranoia, attacking processes and institutions vital to our republic and challenging the rule of law.”
“A controversial London-based academic with close ties to Nigel Farage has been detained by the FBI upon arrival in the US and issued a subpoena to testify before Robert Mueller, the special counsel who is investigating possible collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin,” the Guardian reports.
“Ted Malloch, an American touted last year as a possible candidate to serve as US ambassador to the EU, said he was interrogated by the FBI at Boston’s Logan airport on Wednesday following a flight from London and questioned about his involvement in the Trump campaign.”
A reader received an automated email that her credit card was about to expire:
Thank you for this reminder. I already had a note on my calendar for today to check my credit card so that I would not lose a moment of Political Wire. Your reminder was an extra push for me on one of my busy days to get it done!
Your website has been a huge godsend in the past year. Political Wire has allowed me to focus on key issues without wading through Apple News or individual news sites. But it gives me the links and resources to follow up on those details, should I want. Best of all, my husband has even become a huge fan — each morning he “snatches” my iPad and prefers drinking his coffee and reading through your site, before we chat.
So thank you for the short reminder to update our card. We look forward to utilizing your insights and assessments in the coming year. The best $50 we will spend in the next 12 months, I am sure.
It’s emails like this that keep me going. Thanks to everyone who supports the site!
If you’re not yet a member, join for just $5 a month or $50 year.
EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt’s protective detail “broke down the door at the Capitol Hill condo where he was living, believing he was unconscious and unresponsive and needed rescue, in a bizarre incident last year that the EPA has for months refused to discuss,” ABC News reports.
“The EPA eventually agreed to reimburse the condo owner for the damage to the door… Pruitt declined medical attention, and a police report was never filed.”
“Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau no longer looks invincible,” the Washington Post reports.
“CBC’s Poll Tracker reported in late March that the opposition Conservative Party is now in the lead, at 37.7% of voting intentions, compared with Trudeau’s Liberals, at 33.7%. The left-of-center New Democratic Party was third at 18.5%.”
“Some observers say it’s just a question of midterm blues, with a Canadian election not scheduled until the fall of 2019. But the real culprit seems to have been Trudeau’s visit to India in February. During the week-long trip, Trudeau was widely mocked for wearing traditional Indian garb as he crossed India with his wife and three children.”
[alert type=”general” dismiss=”no”]Barack Obama put it best: “You don’t put stuff on your head if you’re president. That’s politics 101. You never look good wearing something on your head.”[/alert]
“I was always very good at building. It was always my best thing. I think better than being President, I was maybe good at building.”
— President Trump, quoted by CNN.
“An obscure White House office responsible for recruiting and vetting thousands of political appointees has suffered from inexperience and a shortage of staff, hobbling the Trump administration’s efforts to place qualified people in key posts across government,” the Washington Post reports.
“At the same time, two office leaders have spotty records themselves: a college dropout with arrests for drunken driving and bad checks and a lance corporal in the Marine Corps reserves with arrests for assault, disorderly conduct, fleeing an officer and underage drinking.”
A new Associated Press-NORC-MTV poll finds that just 33% of Americans between the ages of 15 and 34 approve of Trump’s job performance. That’s 9 points lower than all adults.
“The survey is the first in a series of polls designed to highlight the voices of the youngest generation of voters. The respondents, all of whom will be old enough to vote when Trump seeks re-election in 2020, represent the most diverse generation in American history.”
Rick Hasen, author of The Justice of Contradictions: Antonin Scalia and the Politics of Disruption, joins Chris Riback for a discussion of Scalia’s complex legacy as a conservative legal thinker and disruptor of the nation’s highest court.
Subscribe via iTunes or Google Play to get new episodes automatically downloaded to your phone.
Thanks to the Cook Political Report for sponsoring this podcast.
“Kellyanne Conway’s husband has begun deleting a series of tweets he posted in the last month that are critical of President Trump,” CNN reports.
“George Conway, a conservative lawyer Trump once considered nominating as solicitor general, deleted several tweets that called attention to Trump’s legal woes, his difficulty in finding his next communications director and the White House’s later debunked denials of staff shakeups.”
A new Economist/YouGov poll finds 58% of Republicans think President Trump is being framed by the FBI and Department of Justice in the Russian investigation.
“Multiple companies say they’re pulling their advertisements from conservative Fox News host Laura Ingraham’s show after she sent a tweet mocking Parkland shooting survivor and gun-control activist David Hogg,” NPR reports.
“Nestle US, Hulu and Nutrish confirmed on Twitter that they are removing advertising from Ingraham’s show. Media reports say TripAdvisor, Expedia, Wayfair and Johnson & Johnson are pulling their support as well.”
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.
“There are a lot of blogs and news sites claiming to understand politics, but only a few actually do. Political Wire is one of them.”
— Chuck Todd, host of “Meet the Press”
“Concise. Relevant. To the point. Political Wire is the first site I check when I’m looking for the latest political nugget. That pretty much says it all.”
— Stuart Rothenberg, editor of the Rothenberg Political Report
“Political Wire is one of only four or five sites that I check every day and sometimes several times a day, for the latest political news and developments.”
— Charlie Cook, editor of the Cook Political Report
“The big news, delicious tidbits, pearls of wisdom — nicely packaged, constantly updated… What political junkie could ask for more?”
— Larry Sabato, Center for Politics, University of Virginia
“Political Wire is a great, great site.”
— Joe Scarborough, host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”
“Taegan Goddard has a knack for digging out political gems that too often get passed over by the mainstream press, and for delivering the latest electoral developments in a sharp, no frills style that makes his Political Wire an addictive blog habit you don’t want to kick.”
— Arianna Huffington, founder of The Huffington Post
“Political Wire is one of the absolute must-read sites in the blogosphere.”
— Glenn Reynolds, founder of Instapundit
“I rely on Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire for straight, fair political news, he gets right to the point. It’s an eagerly anticipated part of my news reading.”
— Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist.