President Trump touted the television ratings from his campaign rally in Tulsa last weekend and his town hall with Fox News’ Sean Hannity this week.
Said Trump: “These are the real polls, the Silent Majority, not FAKE POLLS!”
President Trump touted the television ratings from his campaign rally in Tulsa last weekend and his town hall with Fox News’ Sean Hannity this week.
Said Trump: “These are the real polls, the Silent Majority, not FAKE POLLS!”
Harry Enten: “Since 1940, the only incumbent losing at this point in the cycle who would go on to win another term was Harry Truman. He, like Trump, was down around 10 points to Thomas Dewey in the early summer of 1948. But remember, Truman was not elected president before taking the 1948 election. He ascended to the office through the vice-presidency, after Franklin Roosevelt died in 1945.”
“In terms of elected incumbents, Jimmy Carter was the one to be down by as much as Trump is right now. Carter went on to get crushed by Ronald Reagan in 1980.”
“Rather than protect U.S. jobs, Donald Trump’s restrictions on visas for foreign workers will encourage companies to move highly skilled roles to Canada, executives and immigration advisers on both sides of the border predict,” the Financial Times reports.
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“President Trump has been asked twice in the past two weeks to outline his priorities for a second term. He didn’t directly answer the question either time,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“Less than five months before the election, Mr. Trump has yet to publicly lay out a detailed vision for the next four years, instead touting what he marks as first-term achievements and arguing that his presumptive Democratic opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden, will undo many of the policies he has already put in place.”
Politico: “In the past few months, the Lincoln Project — a PAC with not much funding, as far as PACs go — has successfully established itself as a squatter in Trump’s mental space, thanks to several factors: members each boasting hundreds of thousands of social media followers, rapidly cut ads that respond to current events and a single-minded focus on buying airtime wherever Trump is most likely to be binging cable news that day, whether it’s the D.C. market or his golf courses across the country. And every time Trump freaks out — or every time the media covers his freakout — the Lincoln Project scores an incalculable amount of earned media, and millions of views online to boot.”
“But though the PAC has successfully caught Trump’s attention… Trump’s critics worry that the ads, as well cut and as troll-effective as they are, may not actually work to ‘prosecute the case’ against his re-election, as the group vowed to do back in December.”
A new New York Times/Siena poll finds 59% of voters, including 52% of white voters, believe the death of George Floyd at the hands of the police in Minneapolis was “part of a broader pattern of excessive police violence toward African Americans.”
The Black Lives Matter movement and the police had similar favorability ratings, with 44% of voters viewing the movement as “very favorable,” almost identical to the 43% rating for the police.
“The numbers add to the mounting evidence that recent protests have significantly shifted public opinion on race, creating potential political allies for a movement that was, within the past decade, dismissed as fringe and divisive. It also highlights how President Trump is increasingly out of touch with a country he is seeking to lead for a second term: While he has shown little sympathy for the protesters and their fight for racial justice, and has continued to use racist language that many have denounced, voters feel favorably toward the protests and their cause.”
CNN: “As he seeks to insert rival Joe Biden’s health into the presidential campaign, Trump has voiced escalating concern about how it would appear if he contracted coronavirus and has insisted on steps to protect himself, even as he refuses to wear a mask in public and agitates for large campaign rallies where the virus could spread.”
“When he travels to locations where the virus is surging, every venue the President enters is inspected for potential areas of contagion by advance security and medical teams, according to people familiar with the arrangements. Bathrooms designated for the President’s use are scrubbed and sanitized before he arrives. Staff maintain a close accounting of who will come into contact with the President to ensure they receive tests.”
A journalist who attended President Donald Trump’s rally in Tulsa last week said Friday he has tested positive for the coronavirus, the AP reports.
“A federal judge has ordered Roger Stone to report to prison July 14, granting him a two-week delay because of the coronavirus pandemic, but not the two months that President Trump’s confidant had requested with prosecutors’ assent,” the Washington Post reports.
President Trump on Twitter:
“I was going to go to Bedminster, New Jersey, this weekend, but wanted to stay in Washington, D.C. to make sure LAW & ORDER is enforced. The arsonists, anarchists, looters, and agitators have been largely stopped… I am doing what is necessary to keep our communities safe — and these people will be brought to Justice!”
“The European Union will bar most travelers from the United States, Russia, and dozens of other countries considered too risky because they have not controlled the coronavirus outbreak,” the New York Times reports.
“The exclusion of the United States, an important source of tourism to the European Union, represented a stinging rebuke to the Trump administration’s management of the coronavirus scourge.”
“The Supreme Court declined Friday to force Texas officials to offer mail-in ballots to all voters in the state because of the threat of the coronavirus, not just those over 65,” the Washington Post reports.
“The justices, without comment, turned down a request from the Texas Democratic Party to reinstate a district judge’s order that would affect the upcoming primary election in July and the general election in November.”
“American intelligence officials have concluded that a Russian military intelligence unit secretly offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants for killing coalition forces in Afghanistan — including targeting American troops — amid the peace talks to end the long-running war there,” the New York Times reports.
“Islamist militants, or armed criminal elements closely associated with them, are believed to have collected some bounty money… Twenty Americans were killed in combat in Afghanistan in 2019, but it was not clear which killings were under suspicion.”
“The intelligence finding was briefed to President Trump… Officials developed a menu of potential options — starting with making a diplomatic complaint to Moscow and a demand that it stop, along with an escalating series of sanctions and other possible responses, but the White House has yet to authorize any step.”
“For the first time since the establishment of the District of Columbia 230 years ago, the House of Representatives voted to declare the city as the nation’s 51st state, a legislative milestone that supporters say begins to right historic wrongs,” the Washington Post reports.
Every House Republican voted against the bill, and one Democratic congressman — Rep. Collin Peterson (D-MN) — also voted “no.”
CNN: Why D.C. should (and should not) be a state.
“Recent polls show President Trump losing ground to Joe Biden across a wide range of demographic groups, but his standing with suburban voters is particularly sobering for his re-election chances,” Bloomberg reports.
“Biden leads Trump 60% to 35% in suburban areas, according to an NPR/PBS/Marist poll released Friday. Trump won those areas in 2016, 49% to 45% for Hillary Clinton, as he made inroads in working-class suburbs that formerly supported Democrats.”
“Suburban women are particularly problematic for Trump. Women from suburbs and small cities support Biden 64% to 35%. Men from the same places support Biden 48% to 44%.”
“A Maryland man who organized rallies to pressure Gov. Larry Hogan to lift the state’s stay-home order says he has tested positive for the novel coronavirus, and does not plan to provide names of people with whom he had contact to public health officials for contact tracing,” the Washington Post reports.
“President Trump’s storied grip on the white working class is weakening among women, threatening both his reelection prospects and his party’s efforts to improve its standing with female voters,” the Los Angeles Times reports.
“While working-class men remain among Trump’s most loyal backers, defections among their wives, sisters and daughters are a big part of the president’s recent slide in opinion polls.”
“George Nader, who was a key witness in the Russia investigation and informally advised President Trump’s team on foreign policy, was sentenced on Friday to 10 years in prison by a federal judge in Virginia, stemming from his convictions on child sex charges,” CNN reports.
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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