“Protests have spilled into Israel’s streets, as the Jewish state braces for a nationwide strike amid mounting pressure on the administration of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to broker a cease-fire deal with Hamas and return hostages from the Gaza Strip,” CNBC reports.
USA Today: Israelis go on strike as hostage deaths trigger demand for Gaza deal.
“Who ever heard you get indicted for interfering with a presidential election where you have every right to do it.”
— Donald Trump, in an interview with Fox News.
General H.R. McMaster told CNN that Donald Trump sought to negotiate with the Taliban as U.S. troops began leaving Afghanistan.
He undermined the Afghan government by forcing them to release 5,000 members of the Taliban.
“Elon Musk’s endorsement of former President Donald Trump was meant to buoy the candidate’s chances in November. But more than a month after Musk officially put his weight behind Trump, a series of Democratic attacks have suggested that the endorsement has exposed a vulnerability,” NBC News reports.
“Since the tech billionaire endorsed Trump on July 13, the campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris has repeatedly attacked Musk for his anti-worker stances. The campaign has called Musk and Trump ‘self-obsessed rich guys’ and reposted audio from an event on Musk’s social media app, X, in which the two laugh together about firing striking workers.”
Margaret Sullivan skewers the New York Times saying “its politics coverage often seems broken and clueless — or even blatantly pro-Trump. There’s so much of this false-balance nonsense in the Times that there’s a Twitter (X) account devoted to mocking it, called New York Times Pitchbot.”
“Sometimes, sadly, it’s hard to tell the difference between the satire and the reality.”
Earlier for members: Holding the News Media Accountable
Sean O’Brien, president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, said he hasn’t endorsed in the 2024 presidential race yet because he hasn’t yet met with Vice President Kamala Harris, and “you don’t hire someone unless you give them an interview,” CBS News reports.
“For weeks, former President Donald Trump’s advisers have urged him to be more disciplined and to stop straying off-message,” the New York Times reports.
“But on Friday, while speaking at a rally in Johnstown, Pa., Mr. Trump insisted that his oratory is not a campaign distraction but rather a rhetorical triumph.”
Said Trump: “You know, I do the weave. You know what the weave is? I’ll talk about like nine different things, and they all come back brilliantly together, and it’s like, friends of mine that are, like, English professors, they say, ‘It’s the most brilliant thing I’ve ever seen.’”
Associated Press: “Across the country, a network of Republican political operatives, lawyers and their allies is trying to shape November’s election in ways that favor former President Donald Trump. Their goal is to prop up third-party candidates such as West who offer liberal voters an alternative that could siphon away support from Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee.”
“It is not clear who is paying for the effort, but it could be impactful in states that were decided by miniscule margins in the 2020 election won by Democrat Joe Biden.”
A new EPIC-MRA poll in Michigan finds 28% of voters said Kamala Harris’ selection of Tim Walz as her running mate made them more likely to vote for her, compared with just 14% who said Donald Trump’s selection of J.D. Vance made them more likely to back Trump.
“The person who should be applauded is the president, who has done the most selfless thing a president has done since George Washington. It’s very hard to let go of power—we know that, we’ve seen it all over the world—and for someone to say ‘I think there’s a better path forward,’ all the credit goes to him.”
— George Clooney, quoted by Variety.
Former Trump communications director Anthony Scaramucci claimed that Melania Trump wants Kamala Harris to win the 2024 presidential election, and that she “hates” her husband, the Daily Mail reports.
Said Scaramucci: “I’ve met one person that actually hates Trump more than Melania. That’s General Milley. He’s the only guy I’ve met so far that actually hates him more than Melania.”
“Despite gaining a post-convention edge in polls, Jen O’Malley Dillon, chair of the Harris-Walz campaign, says in a memo out Sunday — ‘The State of the Race 65 Days Out’ — that her candidate is the underdog,” Axios reports.
From the memo: “Make no mistake: we head into the final stretch of this race as the clear underdogs. Donald Trump has a motivated base of support, with more support and higher favorability than he has had at any point since 2020.”
More: “Vice President Harris will face Trump on the debate stage, where we expect him to be a formidable opponent. In 2020, the election came down to about 40,000 votes across the battleground states. This November, we anticipate margins to be similarly razor-thin.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) warned that Democrats could add four new Democratic senators if the filibuster is removed and Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C., achieve statehood, the Washington Examiner reports.
Said McConnell: “They’ll admit the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico as two new states — that’s four Democratic senators in perpetuity.”
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is suing the North Carolina State Board of Elections in a last-ditch attempt to get his name removed the state’s ballot ahead of the 2024 presidential election, the Raleigh News and Observer reports.
Foreign Policy has the story of how Vice President Kamala Harris worked to diffuse a transition of power crisis in Guatemala.
“The democratic transition in Guatemala represents one of the clearest victories of U.S. President Joe Biden’s agenda to promote democracy worldwide, as well as a rare example of Harris’s national security team playing a distinct and direct role in shepherding it through.”
“Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson is embarking on a high-profile, nationwide tour to promote her new memoir, Lovely One,” the AP reports.
“Jackson is using the book to trace her family’s rise from segregation to her confirmation as the first Black woman on the nation’s highest court in the span of one generation.”
A new SurveyUSA poll in Nebraska finds Sen. Deb Fischer (R) barely ahead of Dan Osborn (I) in the U.S. Senate race, 39% to 38%.
A YouGov poll released earlier in August showed a 2-point lead for incumbent Fischer, while an Impact Research poll taken the month prior showed a tied race.
Also of note: Kamala Harris leads Donald Trump in Nebraska’s second congressional district, 47% to 42%.
“Trump Media, the company majority-owned by former President Donald Trump, fell below $20 per share for the first time since the Truth Social maker started publicly trading,” CNBC reports.
“Trump’s stake of DJT stock is still worth more than $2.2 billion — more than half of his on-paper net worth, according to Forbes.”
“A lock-up agreement on Trump selling his stock is soon set to expire.”
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.
