“We’re fighting all the subpoenas.”
— President Trump, speaking to reporters.
“We’re fighting all the subpoenas.”
— President Trump, speaking to reporters.
Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney issued a statement saying he didn’t recall instructing aides to keep discussions about election security off President Trump’s radar, after the New York Times reported Mulvaney said the topic “should be kept below his level,” Politico reports.
Said Mulvaney: “I don’t recall anything along those lines happening in any meeting.”
Charlie Cook: “In the 11 ABC News/Washington Post, 17 CBS News, 22 CNN, 23 Fox News, 106 Gallup, 22 NBC News/Wall Street Journal, and 12 Pew Research Center polls, the president’s approval rating was upside down (higher disapprovals than approvals) in all but one of them… To reiterate: That’s 212 out of 213 polls showing upside-down approval ratings for Trump.”
“He couldn’t even add to that meager total if we included the 22 Kaiser Family Foundation, 29 Marist, 14 Monmouth, and 41 Quinnipiac national polls. That’s 318 out of 319 major national polls.”
The FiveThirtyEight polling average currently finds Trump’s approval at 41% to 54%.
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“MJ Hegar, an Air Force veteran whose viral campaign ads nearly helped her get elected in one of Texas’ most Republican-friendly congressional districts last year, set her sights higher on Tuesday and launched a run for U.S. Senate against Republican incumbent John Cornyn,” the AP reports.
William Barr said in a 1998 interview that he was “disturbed” that Attorney General Janet Reno had not defended independent counsel Ken Starr from “spin control,” “hatchet jobs” and “ad hominem attacks,” CNN reports.
“Two decades later, Barr is now attorney general himself — and defending another president who has repeatedly blasted a special counsel’s investigation of his activities. Barr stayed silent as President Donald Trump railed against special counsel Robert Mueller’s ‘witch hunt.'”
“Hawaii is likely to move to elections conducted almost entirely by mail as soon as 2020 after a conference committee of state legislators voted in favor of a measure to overhaul voting in the state,” Honolulu Civil Beat reports.
“Democrats want six years of President Trump’s tax returns, and those should be plenty interesting. But it is the other documents they are seeking—administrative files for the president’s IRS audits—that may prove most revealing,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“Experienced tax lawyers could take the returns, the audit files and Mr. Trump’s responses to IRS questions and quickly understand the status and core issues of any IRS inquiry into the president.”
President Trump tweeted that “the American people deserve to know who is in this country,” breaking with the Justice Department in its defense of Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross’s efforts to place a citizenship question on next year’s census questionnaire, Politico reports.
“The Commerce Department, in defending its efforts to ask everyone in the country next year if they are U.S. citizens, has said the question would be inserted at the request of the Justice Department as part of an effort to better protect voting rights.”
But Trump offered his own rationale: “The American people deserve to know who is in this Country. Yesterday, the Supreme Court took up the Census Citizenship question, a really big deal. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
“Facing a multi-front war in the post-Mueller world, President Trump is turning to litigation strategies that he long used in business — resist, delay and sue,” Axios reports.
Said one source: “Trump can run out the clock by taking a hardline position. The president thinks it’s in his political interest to keep the fight going, and make it harder for the Democrats to have a coherent message.”
“The Trump administration is fighting House Democrats’ investigative inquiries at every turn. Some Democrats want to make them pay,” Bloomberg reports.
“At a meeting of House leaders earlier this month, Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler suggested fining officials personally if they deny or ignore subpoenas, according to a person who attended the meeting. Nadler’s idea, the person said, was to put teeth in his party’s numerous investigative queries, many of which Trump officials are stonewalling or simply ignoring.”
Tucker Carlson said on Fox News that Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) has “spent the rest of her life attacking” the United States after immigrating to the country from Somalia.
Said Carlson: “Here’s someone who was brought to the United States at public expense simply because we’re a kind country that accepts a lot of refugees. And rather than being grateful for that, she’s spent the rest of her life attacking this country. Why?”
President Trump tweeted that he would challenge impeachment in the Supreme Court if Democrats moved forward.
Said Trump: “The Mueller Report, despite being written by Angry Democrats and Trump Haters, and with unlimited money behind it ($35,000,000), didn’t lay a glove on me.”
He added: “If the partisan Dems ever tried to Impeach, I would first head to the U.S. Supreme Court. Not only are there no ‘High Crimes and Misdemeanors,’ there are no Crimes by me at all.”
Rep. Steve King (R-IA) said he can relate to the suffering of Jesus Christ, seemingly equating his recent controversies to what Christ “went through for us,” CNN reports.
Said King: “For all that I’ve been through — and it seems even strange for me to say it — but I am at a certain peace, and it is because of a lot of prayers for me.”
He added: “And, when I have to step down to the floor of the House of Representatives, and look up at those 400-and-some accusers, you know we just passed through Easter and Christ’s passion, and I have better insight into what He went through for us partly because of that experience.”
Gabriel Sherman: “Trump is lashing out at former West Wing officials whom he blames for providing the lion’s share of damaging information in Mueller’s 448-page report. The former officials Trump has vented about, sources told me, are a group known as ‘the notetakers’ that includes former White House counsel Don McGahn, McGahn’s deputy Annie Donaldson, and staff secretary Rob Porter.”
Said one former West Wing official: “The thing that pisses him off is the note-taking. Trump thinks they could have cooperated with Mueller without all the note-taking.”
“Senior Trump 2020 advisers are headed to Harrisburg on Wednesday to meet with Pennsylvania GOP officials amid mounting concerns about the president’s prospects in the critical battleground state,” Politico reports.
“Trump’s campaign is moving to shore up the state after a 2018 midterm election that saw Republicans get blown out in races up and down the ballot… The private meeting, confirmed by a half-dozen party officials, underscores the high stakes for the president… Trump won Pennsylvania by less than 1 point in 2016, and reelection aides view the state’s 20 electoral votes as crucial to his 2020 hopes.”
The interactive Electoral Vote Map shows it’s very hard for Trump to win without Pennsylvania.
A new Reuters/Ipsos poll finds Joe Biden leads the Democratic presidential field with 24%, followed by Bernie Sanders at 15%.
No other candidate received more than 7% of public support, and 21% said they “don’t know” which candidate they would back in a primary.
Politico: “Three dramatic clashes between White House lawyers and congressional Democrats over the past 36 hours have created an atmosphere of total war … suggesting that even modest compromise may be impossible and that protracted court fights likely are inevitable.”
Stephen Collinson: “Trump’s stonewalling White House is mounting a multi-front assault on accountability, testing the notion that a president must answer to citizens for whom he holds a public trust.”
Playbook: “The White House can’t just summarily block all document production and testimony — Congress could hold people in contempt.”
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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