“Donald Trump is planning separate fundraisers at Mar-a-Lago in October for his election campaign and to help pay legal fees for himself and his supporters,“ Bloomberg reports.
“Trump will host one event at his Florida residence for his 2024 election bid, while the other, to be led by his sons Eric and Don Junior, will be for the Patriot Legal Defense Fund.”
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, acquitted in his impeachment trial, “still faces serious risk on three fronts: an ongoing a federal investigation into the same allegations that led to his impeachment; a disciplinary proceeding over his effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election; and felony securities fraud charges dating to 2015,” the AP reports.
“Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick on Saturday ripped the House’s effort to remove Attorney General Ken Paxton, accusing Speaker Dade Phelan and his team of ramming his impeachment through the lower chamber ‘while paying no attention to the precedent’ set in past impeachments,” the Houston Chronicle reports.
“Patrick, breaking his silence shortly after senators voted to acquit Paxton on all charges, said he would seek an audit of all taxpayer money spent by the House on its impeachment effort. He also called on lawmakers to amend the Texas Constitution so that impeached officials are no longer suspended without pay during impeachment proceedings.”
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Donald Trump bungled criticisms of “cognitively impaired” Joe Biden saying he will lead the world into a second world war.
Trump also suggested that he is leading Barack Obama in polls of the 2024 race, despite Obama not being in the contest.
“Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is traveling to New York to attend the UN General Assembly amid heightened tensions with Washington over Syria and Russia,” Bloomberg reports.
“Erdogan is expected to arrive in New York on Sunday, just a day after Turkey rebuffed US allegations of enlisting child soldiers in the ranks of Turkey-backed rebels in Syria, and as Washington prepares to impose sanctions on five Turkish companies and a Turkish individual for helping Russia evade sanctions.”
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) was acquitted on all charges at his impeachment trial, the Texas Tribune reports.
Texas House Republicans had accused Paxton of bribery and corruption.
“The Iowa Democratic Party voted Saturday to hold the in-person portion of its 2024 presidential caucuses on Jan. 15 — the same day Iowa Republicans plan to caucus,” the Des Moines Register reports.
“But the bigger question, still left unresolved, is how Democrats will handle the mail-in portion of their caucuses, which they will use to cast their presidential preferences.”
Associated Press: “Despite skipping the event and many of the gatherings that attract most of the candidates, Trump has maintained his popularity with evangelical Christians and social conservatives in Iowa and elsewhere. They were delighted to see his three picks for the U.S. Supreme Court vote to overturn the Roe v. Wade decision last year and erase a federally guaranteed right to abortion.”
Washington Post: “The Republican polling leader in the 2024 presidential campaign has been relentless in leveling exaggerated or unsubstantiated accusations against Biden — raising suspicions about his family’s finances that House Republicans are now pursuing with their impeachment inquiry.”
“But Trump has so far been markedly less forceful in advocating for impeachment — a position that reflects the tenuous standing of the House GOP strategy, even within the party.”
“Vivek Ramaswamy has vowed to ‘gut’ the system for H-1B temporary worker visas if he wins the White House,” Politico reports.
“It’s the very system he’s used in the past to hire high-skilled foreign workers for the pharma company that built much of his wealth.”
CNN: “U.S. officials believe that Chinese leaders have made a deliberate decision not to launch additional balloons since the one over the US was shot down by American fighter jets in February.”
“The apparent suspension of the program comes as both the US and China have sought to stabilize an increasingly tense relationship.”
CNN: “In more than 40 interviews… in Iowa, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Alabama, South Dakota and Texas, Trump supporters said the 91 criminal charges in four separate cases against him have only deepened their support of the former president.”
“They repeated Trump’s unfounded claims that he was the subject of a politically motivated ‘witch hunt’ and said they believed the charges showed the system was rigged against him – and, by extension, them.”
“In theory, the announcement Thursday that President Biden’s son Hunter was indicted on charges related to his purchase of a gun in 2018 would seem like an obvious political win for the president’s opponents. Hunter Biden has been disparaged repeatedly by Republican politicians and the right-wing media to impugn the president; his reaching a plea agreement earlier this year that included the gun question was presented as an unacceptably light response to his alleged actions. That deal fell apart and here we are,” the Washington Post reports.
“But the indictment instead meant that the right’s broader conspiracy theory about how Joe Biden is using the levers of power needed to be adjusted… It can’t both be the case that Joe Biden is leaning on the Justice Department to go easy on Hunter Biden and that Hunter Biden is now facing a set of charges that are only rarely brought against defendants.”
“Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed a law Thursday restricting release of her travel and security records after the Legislature wrapped up a special session marked by a fight to more broadly scale back the state Freedom of Information Act,” the AP reports.
Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) apologized after she and a male companion were ushered out of a production of “Beetlejuice” in Denver last weekend for disrupting the show, Politico reports.
Said Boebert: “There’s no perfect blueprint for going through a public and difficult divorce, which over the past few months has made for a challenging personal time for me and my entire family. I’ve tried to handle it with strength and grace as best I can, but I simply fell short of my values on Sunday. That’s unacceptable and I’m sorry.”
“The already frosty relationship between President Biden and his attorney general, Merrick Garland, is now in a deep freeze,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“Respect and admiration among White House aides for Garland, a longtime federal appeals-court judge chosen to underscore the independence of the Justice Department, has shifted for some into resignation and distrust. They point to Garland having appointed not just a special counsel to investigate former President Donald Trump, but two others as well: one looking into Biden and another probing his son, Hunter Biden. On Thursday, the latter indicted the younger Biden on gun charges.”
“Some Biden aides have said they see Garland’s handling of the inquiries into the Biden family as driven less by a dispassionate pursuit of justice than by a punctilious desire to give the appearance that sensitive investigations are walled off from political pressure.”
Politico: “Examining the voters assembled behind Trump — and the minority who are backing other candidates — is essential to understanding how he came to dominate the fight for the GOP nomination. It also underscores the uphill climb Trump’s opponents have to unseating the former president as the leader of a Republican Party he’s reshaped in his own image. Call it a pre-mortem autopsy for the primary, which feels close to being over despite Trump’s well-documented judicial headaches.”
“What was once an emerging two-man race between Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis instead now looks like a runaway train.”
Donald Trump told NBC News that he likes “the concept” of having a female running mate, such as South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (R).
Said Trump: “She’s been a great governor. She gave me a very full-throated endorsement, a beautiful endorsement actually. And, you know, it’s been a very good state for me. And certainly she’d be one of the people I’d consider, or for something else maybe. But we have a lot of people. We have a lot of great people in the Republican Party.”
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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