In a series of tweets, former Gov. John Kasich (R) said again he won’t run for president.
Said Kasich: “At this point, I continue to believe that, for me, there’s no clear path to prevail that I can see.”
In a series of tweets, former Gov. John Kasich (R) said again he won’t run for president.
Said Kasich: “At this point, I continue to believe that, for me, there’s no clear path to prevail that I can see.”
New York Times:: “For a while at least, he seemed to have found his Roy Cohn, a lawyer to defend him against his accusers and go after his enemies. But the relationship between President Trump and Attorney General William P. Barr may be growing more complicated with the rising threat of impeachment.”
“Rather than publicly join the fight against House Democrats pursuing the president, Mr. Barr has remained out of the fray, resisting requests by intermediaries from Mr. Trump to go before the cameras to say no crime had been committed. While Mr. Barr exonerated the president in the spring at the end of the Russia investigation, he has been more reticent in the current matter.”
“The reluctance hints at a new distance between the two men.”
New York Times: “Mr. Bloomberg and his advisers called a number of prominent Democrats on Thursday to tell them he was seriously considering the race, including former Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the retired majority leader who remains a dominant power broker in the early caucus state. Aides to Mr. Bloomberg also reached out to Gov. Gina Raimondo of Rhode Island, the chair of the Democratic Governors Association.”
Washington Post: “The move marks a major reversal for Bloomberg, who announced in March that he would not run for president, and also serves as a public rebuke of the performance so far of former vice president Joe Biden, who has attempted to build a coalition of the same moderate Democrats that Bloomberg would court.”
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Tim Alberta: “The administration, working in concert with its allies on Capitol Hill, has been hard at work identifying potential turncoats in the party and monitoring their activities to catch any sign of slippage. Believing that a unified party-line vote is needed in the House to prevent any narrative of Republicans abandoning Trump when action moves to the Senate, the president’s allies are determined to stay one step ahead of any lawmaker who might be going soft, gaming out scenarios for who could desert and why.”
“It amounts to a preemptive game of political whodunit, with Trump’s enforcers seeking to solve a mystery of political betrayal before it occurs. Naturally, there is no bigger fan of this game than the president himself.”
“Jeff Sessions announced on Thursday that he’s running for the U.S. Senate seat he gave up when he became President Donald Trump’s first attorney general in 2017. But his campaign announcement video seems aimed at an audience of one: Trump,l the HuffPost reports.
“Sessions used the video to remind Trump of how loyal ― or at least silent ― he’d been since leaving the Justice Department.”
“Democrats in the country’s most pivotal general election battlegrounds prefer a moderate presidential nominee who would seek common ground with Republicans rather than pursue an ambitious, progressive agenda,” according to a New York Times/Siena College poll of primary voters across six states.
“As the Democratic candidates intensify their argument over how best to defeat President Trump, their core voters in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Arizona and Florida are counseling them to pursue a political middle ground.”
Politico: “Democrats spent years sounding the alarm on ‘dark money’ as groups pummeled their senators. Now, the left is the side delivering the early blow.”
“A quartet of new nonprofit groups has already spent millions of dollars hammering four of the most vulnerable Republican senators on the ballot next year, sparking a wave of concern among strategists trying to protect the GOP’s slim three-seat Senate majority in 2020.”
The Guardian: “Leaked Signal messages from an online chat network around six-term Washington state Republican representative Matt Shea show new evidence of violent fantasies, surveillance of perceived adversaries, conspiracy thinking, Islamophobia, and support for white nationalists.”
“The messages from the chat group, exchanged between October 2017 and October 2018, show Shea’s network includes other serving, former and aspiring rightwing politicians from Idaho and Washington, alongside activists associated with militia groups, anti-environmental causes, and pro-gun activism.”
“They also show participants, including Shea, preparing for economic and societal collapse even as they campaign for the secession of eastern Washington from the remainder of the state.”
“Kanye West has announced his plans to run for president in 2024 — but before potentially moving into the White House the rapper might change his name,” People magazine reports.
Said West: “When people say it’s crass to call yourself a billionaire, I say I might legally change my name to Christian Genius Billionaire Kanye West for a year until y’all understand exactly what it is. It will be on the license plate.”
Politico: “Nearly three years into office, Trump’s attempts to match the lofty campaign promises he made on immigration are in disarray — the wall remains largely unbuilt, so-called sanctuary cities are still receiving federal money and birthright citizenship remains intact. And over at the sprawling Department of Homeland Security, a bitter dispute recently erupted over who should head the agency tasked with enacting Trump’s immigration policies, leading some frustrated aides to plot ways to circumvent federal law and push for the leader of their choice.”
“House Republicans’ latest plan to shield President Trump from impeachment is to focus on at least three deputies — Ambassador Gordon Sondland, Rudy Giuliani, and possibly acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney — who they say could have acted on their own to influence Ukraine policy,” the Washington Post reports.
“All three occupy a special place in the Ukraine narrative as the people in most direct contact with Trump. As Republicans argue that most of the testimony against Trump is based on faulty secondhand information, they are sowing doubts about whether Sondland, Giuliani and Mulvaney were actually representing the president or freelancing to pursue their own agendas. The GOP is effectively offering up the three to be fall guys.”
“The House committees investigating President Trump and Ukraine issued a subpoena Thursday night for acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney to testify at 9 am on Friday as part of their impeachment inquiry,” two sources familiar tell Axios.
“Mulvaney is the highest-ranking White House official to be subpoenaed yet, and the midnight-hour move suggests the committees are reaching into the final phase of their private investigation as they prepare to take their inquiry public next week.”
“I think we what ought to do is, we ought to be building a grass roots movement to make real change in this country. I don’t think that democracy should be about people coming in and buying elections.”
— Sen. Elizabeth Warren, quoted by NBC News, on Michael Bloomberg possibly entering the Democratic presidential race.
“Senior Trump administration officials considered resigning en masse last year in a ‘midnight self-massacre’ to sound a public alarm about President Trump’s conduct, but rejected the idea because they believed it would further destabilize an already teetering government, according to a new book by an unnamed author,” the Washington Post reports.
“In A Warning by Anonymous, obtained by The Washington Post ahead of its release, a writer described only as ‘a senior official in the Trump administration’ paints a chilling portrait of the president as cruel, inept and a danger to the nation he was elected to lead.”
“The book is an unsparing character study of Trump, from his morality to his intellectual depth, which the author writes is based on his or her observations and experiences.”
“Michael Bloomberg is actively preparing to enter the Democratic presidential primary and is expected to file paperwork this week designating himself as a candidate in at least one state with an early filing deadline,” the New York Times reports.
“Mr. Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor and billionaire businessman, has been privately weighing a bid for the White House for weeks and has not yet made a final decision on whether to run, an adviser said. But in the first sign that he is seriously moving toward a campaign, Mr. Bloomberg has dispatched staffers to Alabama to gather signatures to qualify for the primary there. Though Alabama does not hold an early primary, it has a Friday deadline for candidates to formally enter the race.”
“Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, the largest Republican donors in 2016, plan to hold off on significantly contributing to President Donald Trump’s reelection effort until well into the 2020 election cycle,” McClatchy reports.
“Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire casino magnate who is chairman and CEO of Las Vegas Sands Corp., wants to avoid setting public expectations early in the cycle that the president’s reelection bid is fully funded by megadonors.”
House Democrats released the transcript of George Kent’s testimony, a senior diplomat who told the impeachment probe that President Trump’s anti-corruption campaign in Ukraine was itself corrupt, The Hill reports.
Kent “voiced concern about Rudy Giuliani’s contacts with Ukraine as early as March of this year, which prompted a supervisor to warn him to lay low.”
Kent will testify publicly next week.
CNN reports on a possible timeline for the House impeachment inquiry:
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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