Miles Taylor, the former Trump Homeland Security appointee, told ABC News his endorsement of Joe Biden was just the “opening salvo.”
Said Taylor: “I’m not going to mention any other names yet, but the president can expect that in the coming weeks and months he is going to hear from more people that served in his administration.”
“Former President Bill Clinton is getting a chance to speak during the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday, although the virtual, pre-recorded address will last less than five minutes and will come well-before the 10 p.m. primetime hour,” The Week reports.
New York Times: “Mr. Clinton’s blink-and-you’ll-miss-him moment before a party that once revered him is testimony to how his influence has faded, a reflection of time and age, to be sure — he is turning 74 on Wednesday — but also of the baggage he carries with the re-examination of allegations of sexual assault and harassment over his years in public life in the wake of the #MeToo movement.”
The final Senate Intelligence Committee report finds Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort used ten different encrypted messaging apps, including WhatsApp, Wickr, Signal, Threema, Skype, Snapchat, Fiber, Hushmail, WeChat and Voxer.
Amanda Milius, whose father is “Apocalypse Now” screenwriter John Milius, shot in secret “The Plot Against the President,” a documentary that defends President Trump against the Russia investigation, the Hollywood Reporter reports.
The film includes interviews with Rep. Devin Nunes, Rudy Giuliani and Roger Stone.
Pollster John Anzalone told Politico that the Biden campaign intends to continue conducting full polls until the end of the race and not rely solely on analytics surveys as the Clinton campaign did over the final month in 2016.
The final Senate Intelligence Committee report on Russian interference in the 2016 election has some damning details about the day the infamous Access Hollywood tape was released, Politico reports.
The Trump campaign team knew about the tape an hour before its release. Roger Stone then told Jerome Corsi to get Julian Assange at Wikileaks to “drop the Podesta emails immediately.”
WikiLeaks did so about 30 minutes after the tape was published.
President Trump at a mini-rally yesterday: “We are going to win four more years. And then after that we’ll go for another four years, because they spied on my campaign. We should get a redo of four years.”
Associated Press: “Typical conventions have moments for television analysts to comfortably opine, when there’s a set change, a boring speaker who drones on too long or lengthy applause by delegates.”
“Yet there were fewer obvious moments to slip away Monday. CNN and MSNBC essentially sidelined their onscreen talent to show virtually all the production. Others missed moments in order to get in some words edgewise.”
Jonathan Bernstein: “I’m skeptical that Republicans are going to put together an equally professional presentation next week. Democrats realized that they weren’t going to Milwaukee months ago; President Trump held out hope that he’d be giving a live speech to cheering supporters until very recently. Meanwhile, Biden’s campaign has been largely stable while Trump’s has been in turmoil.”
The Senate Intelligence Committee released its fifth and final report on Russia’s “aggressive, multifaceted effort” to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.
This seems particularly damning:
Manafort hired and worked increasingly closely with a Russian national, Konstantin Kilimnik. Kilimnik is a Russian intelligence officer. Kilimnik became an integral part of Manafort’s operations in Ukraine and Russia, serving as Manafort’s primary liaison to Deripaska and eventually managing Manafort’s office in Kyiv. Kilimnik and Manafort formed a close and lasting relationship that endured to the 2016 U.S. elections. and beyond.
Axios: “On numerous occasions, Manafort sought to pass sensitive internal polling data and campaign strategy to Kilimnik. The committee was unable to determine why or what Kilimnik did with that information. The committee did, however, obtain ‘some information’ suggesting Kilimnik ‘may have been connected’ to Russia’s hacking and leaking of Democratic emails.”
The bottom line:
Taken as a whole, Manafort’s high level access and willingness to share information with individuals closely affiliated with the Russian intelligence services, particularly Kilimnik and associates of Oleg Deripaska, represented a grave counterintelligence threat.
President Trump announced he’ll pardon Susan B. Anthony, who was arrested for voting in 1872 in violation of laws permitting only men to vote, the AP reports.
New York Times: “The pardon appeared to be an effort to distract from the Democratic National Convention and narrow the historically large gender gap that has him trailing Joe Biden in the White House race.”
President Trump on Twitter: “Looking back into history, the response by the ObamaBiden team to the H1N1 Swine Flu was considered a weak and pathetic one. Check out the polling, it’s really bad.”
Here’s Gallup from April 2009: “Americans give the Obama administration high marks for its handling so far of the continuing spread of swine flu, or H1N1 virus, in the United States… 66% of Americans say they approve of how the administration is handling the situation, while 16% disapprove and 17% have no opinion.”
President Trump said that his 2017 decision to move the US embassy to Jerusalem and recognize the city as the capital of Israel was done for evangelical Christians, the Times of Israel reports.
Said Trump: “And we moved the capital of Israel to Jerusalem. That’s for the evangelicals.”
He added: “You know, it’s amazing with that — the evangelicals are more excited by that than Jewish people. That’s right, it’s incredible.”
“You’ve seen what’s going on in New Zealand? Big surge in New Zealand. It’s terrible. We don’t want that.”
— President Trump, quoted by the Washington Post, after New Zealand reported 22 new coronavirus cases in two days. The United States is currently averaging 50,000 new cases every day.
Jonathan Bernstein: “Modern political conventions have two basic jobs. They need to offer a compelling speaker with a compelling speech in the slim prime-time broadcast window. And they must produce lots of video clips that can be repurposed across all sorts of platforms, from news programs to social media to paid advertisements.”
“The Democrats achieved both on the first night of their first virtual convention. Former First Lady Michelle Obama gave an outstanding speech, and the rest of the two-hour program included plenty of usable clips.”
“Was the whole thing compelling television? Of course not — just as the platform presentations of regular conventions aren’t.”
Matt Glassman: “This format really does distill the modern convention to its infomercial essence.”
“The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee will hold a hearing Friday with Postmaster General Louis DeJoy on the U.S. Postal Service’s vote-by-mail financial requirements,” the Washington Post reports.
“It will be DeJoy’s first opportunity to publicly answer lawmakers’ questions about the nation’s embattled mail service, which is experiencing delays as a result of policies DeJoy implemented cutting overtime and eliminating extra trips to ensure on-time mail delivery.”
“DeJoy and USPS board of governors Chairman Robert Duncan are also set to testify before the House Oversight Committee on Monday.”
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.