“I had a total military victory. But the fake news, guys like you, write incorrectly. You’re a fake guy. We had a total military victory. I actually think it’s sort of treasonous what you write. You should be ashamed of yourself. I actually think it’s treason.”
— President Trump, speaking to David Sanger of the New York Times.
President Trump wouldn’t say if he’ll endorse in the Texas Republican Senate runoff, but he did have comments on Democratic nominee James Talarico (D).
Said Trump: “I think the Democrats have a weird, weird candidate. Six genders, a real hit on Jesus. This guy is bad news, with his mask from relatively recently. He was a vegan.”
President Trump took questions on Air Force One:
REPORTER: Did you talk to Xi about the cyber attacks that he’s done in the United States?
TRUMP: I did. And he talked about attacks we did in China. You know, what they do, we do too. We spy like hell on them too. I told him, “We do a lot of stuff to you that that you don’t know about.”
“President Donald Trump said he’s weighing whether to ease sanctions on Chinese oil companies that buy supplies from Iran, a move that would mark a concession to Beijing after his summit with President Xi Jinping,” Bloomberg reports.
Garrett Graff: “The IRS, which remember reports to the President, and Donald Trump, who remember IS the president, are in talks to settle Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the agency.”
“The result on the table right now, somehow, seems even more corrupt than I could have originally imagined: Trump is negotiating dropping the lawsuit in exchange for the agency ending its various audits of Trump and his companies, as well as what ABC News says is the ‘creation of a $1.7 billion fund to compensate allies who claim they were wrongfully targeted by the Biden administration…'”
“This is Donald Trump basically getting the federal government to use your tax dollars to pay off the foot soldiers in his army who tried to overthrow the US government and peaceful transition of power on January 6th, as well as rewrite the history of a whole number of righteous and real prosecutions and investigations of criminals associated with the Trump administration.”
“In addition to being corrupt, it also appears that the proposed settlement is actually illegal.”
“President Donald Trump said Friday that he refused to directly answer Chinese President Xi Jinping when asked if the United States would defend Taiwan if China attacked it,” CNBC reports.
Said Trump: “That question was asked to me today by President Xi. I said I don’t talk about that.”
Politico: “American politics has been deemed broken for years, but something new is happening: Not only are more people depressed or anxious about the state of the world, but now they are seeking professional help. And therapists are more than ready to give it.”
“With anxiety over politics reaching new heights and crises flashing relentlessly across our screens, mental health professionals say they’re seeing an influx of patients distraught about the news coming out of Washington and beyond.”
Politico: “Republican and Democratic voters are all in on an ends-justify-means approach to map redraws, according to the latest Politico Poll conducted by Public First. With South Carolina GOP Gov. Henry McMaster expected to announce a special session today for legislators to push forward a 7-0 gerrymander to draw Democrats out, the fresh polling shows voters favor a maximalist approach.”
“According to the poll, both parties say gerrymandering is influential or decisive — and back it to counter the other. For Democratic voters, 63 percent either support or strongly support an effort to neutralize Republican gains. Only 8 percent oppose or strongly oppose.”
“For Republican voters, 54 percent either support or strongly support an effort to match or neutralize Democratic gains. Roughly 10 percent oppose or strongly oppose such a move.”
New York Times: “China is at odds with the United States on many issues, but it pulled out all the stops when President Trump arrived in Beijing for a state visit, with extravagant receptions, a state banquet and rarefied access to the compound where China’s leaders live and work.”
“China does not always put on the same level of ceremony for every visiting world leader. Visits by U.S. presidents are major, high-stakes events. Chinese officials described Mr. Trump’s last visit, in 2017, as a ‘state visit plus.'”
Bloomberg: “The Republican-led Congress, faced with deepening economic discontent exacerbated by President Donald Trump’s Iran war, is struggling to find consensus on any plan to address the cost of living with less than six months before midterm elections.”
“Frustration is building among vulnerable GOP lawmakers and moderates who say the party is wasting valuable time on issues that aren’t resonating with Americans while ignoring the concerns about prices and inflation dominating the campaign trail.”
“German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said that he wouldn’t recommend his children go to live in the U.S. because of what he described as a ‘social climate’ that has suddenly taken hold,” Bloomberg reports.
Said Merz: “I’m a great admirer of America — my admiration is not increasing at the moment. I would not recommend my children today go to the US to be trained or to work there.”
“President Donald Trump traded hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of securities in major American companies including Nvidia, Palantir, Paramount and Boeing in the first three months of 2026,” the Financial Times reports.
“Regulatory filings published by the US Office of Government Ethics show transactions involving Tesla, Nvidia, Apple, Meta, Visa, Citi, Boeing, Qualcomm and GE Aerospace.”
“President Donald Trump said he did not discuss a possible extension of his tariff truce when he met with Chinese leader Xi Jinping during a summit in China,” Bloomberg reports.
Said Trump: “We didn’t discuss tariffs. They’re paying substantial tariffs, but we didn’t discuss.”
Bloomberg: “President Donald Trump said China’s Xi Jinping largely agrees with him on the risks of Iran becoming a nuclear power but said he did not push his Chinese counterpart to pressure Tehran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.”
Said Trump: “He said that very strongly, they cannot have a nuclear weapon and he wants them to open up the strait.”
Norman Solomon: “After several months of heated arguments over whether the Democratic National Committee should release its autopsy report on the 2024 election, the dispute has neared a boiling point. With one recent media appearance after another, the DNC chair, Ken Martin, has set off fierce criticism and even derision, while offering notably illogical explanations for keeping the autopsy secret.”
“As the controversy simmers, no one has more at stake than the party’s latest standard-bearer. Kamala Harris, apparently preparing for another run, leads in polls for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination. One of the last things she needs is a widely publicized narrative from the DNC about failures of her 2024 campaign.”
G. Elliot Morris: “Republicans across half a dozen states spent the last year passing new congressional gerrymanders to give themselves an unfair advantage over Democrats in this November’s midterm elections. After the Supreme Court blew up Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act in Louisiana v. Callais two weeks ago, GOP legislatures in Alabama, Louisiana, Tennessee, and elsewhere have moved to cut even more Democratic seats from the map. Democrats could end up needing to win the popular vote in the House by 4 points or more in order to win the majority of seats.”
“This is a huge boon to a party that, just three weeks ago, was staring down the barrel of a virtually assured loss of the House and likely loss of the Senate, too.”
“And yet, it doesn’t change the big picture of how Americans feel about the president today.”
“Senate Democrats heaped praise on their colleague John Fetterman this week amid fresh speculation he might leave the party,” NOTUS reports.
“The iconoclastic Pennsylvania Democrat has often seemed like a senator without a party in recent years. He has broken with his party over Israel, immigration funding and government shutdowns, while defending some of Trump’s projects, including building a grand ballroom at the White House and his revamp of the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool.”
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.