“President Trump highlighted the sacrifices of military veterans during a Memorial Day speech at Arlington National Cemetery,” the New York Times reports.
“But he also used his remarks to valorize himself, taking credit for bringing the Summer Olympics and soccer’s World Cup to the United States during his second term and boasting about his plans for a military parade next month in Washington.”
Washington Post: On Memorial Day, Trump honors fallen soldiers and celebrates political wins.
Russia has suggested that Donald Trump is suffering from “emotional overload” as it deflected his criticism of its record drone strikes on Ukraine at the weekend, The Telegraph reports.
“President Trump on Monday said he was considering taking billions in grant money away from Harvard University and redistributing it to trade schools across the U.S., the latest salvo in his administration’s campaign against the Ivy League institution,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
New York Times: “The announcement, among the president’s Memorial Day social media messages, did not appear to refer to any new cut in funding, but rather to a redistribution of money the administration already announced it had frozen or stripped from Harvard and its research partners.”
“Mr. Trump gave no details about how such a plan would work.”
“California Republicans love to hate Kamala Harris. And they’d really love her to run for governor,” Politico reports.
“Republicans are exceedingly unlikely to win a governor’s race in the deep-blue state. But Harris’s possible entry is already bringing GOP candidates tactical benefits, allowing them to run against a high-profile adversary who’s likely to energize donors and the conservative rank-and-file.”
President Trump offered this Memorial Day message:
“Happy Memorial Day to all, including the scum that spent the last four years trying to destroy our country through warped radical left minds, who allowed 21,000,000 million people to illegally enter our country, many of them being criminals and the mentally insane, through an open border that only an incompetent president would approve, and through judges who are on a mission to keep murderers, drug dealers, rapists, gang members, and released prisoners from all over the world in our country so they can rob, murder, and rape again — all protected by these USA-hating judges who suffer from an ideology that is sick and very dangerous for our country.”
“Hopefully the United States Supreme Court, and other good and compassionate judges throughout the land, will save us from the decisions of the monsters who want our country to go to hell.”
“President Trump’s White House crypto czar, David Sacks, says that Executive Branch, the upcoming Trump-aligned private club in Georgetown that costs as much as $500,000 to join, will be free of stuffy Washington insiders and any worry ‘that the next person over at the bar is a fake news reporter or even a lobbyist’ who ‘we don’t know and we don’t trust,'” the New York Times reports.
“The expectation is that the president will drop by now that he no longer has the Trump International Hotel, where he spent nights in his first term holding forth in the steakhouse and providing fodder for journalists on alert in the lobby. Executive Branch, which has taken over the sprawling space of a defunct bar called Clubhouse, will have what members say is modern décor inspired by Aman New York, a luxurious hotel and private club that opened in 2022. There are to be no prying outsiders.”
Evan Osnos: “In a matter of weeks, the flood of cash swirling around the White House swamped whatever bulwarks against corruption remained in American law and culture. There have always been wealthy donors, of course. But a decade ago no one on earth had more than a hundred billion dollars. Now, according to Forbes, at least fifteen people have surpassed that mark. Since Trump first took office, Musk’s net worth has grown from roughly ten billion dollars to more than four hundred billion.”
“The ultra-rich have captured more of America’s wealth than even the nineteenth-century tycoons of the Gilded Age. Scholars who study inequality as far back as the Neolithic period struggle to find precedents.”
Washington Post: “As Democrats wrestle with who to be in the era of President Donald Trump, a growing group of party members — especially centrists — is reviving the argument that Democrats need to rethink the words they use to talk with the voters whose trust they need to regain.”
“They contend that liberal candidates too often use language from elite, highly educated circles that suggests the speakers consider themselves smart and virtuous, while casting implied judgment on those who speak more plainly — hardly a formula for winning people over, they say.”
“The latest debate is, in part, also a proxy for the bigger battle over what the Democrats’ identity should be in the aftermath of November’s devastating losses — especially as the party searches for ways to reverse its overwhelming rejection by rural and White working-class voters.”
New York Times: “His actions and statements suggest he might be envisioning a world in which each of the three so-called great powers — the United States, China and Russia — dominates its part of the globe, some foreign policy analysts say.”
“It would be a throwback to a 19th-century style of imperial rule.”
“Mr. Trump has said he wants to take Greenland from Denmark, annex Canada and re-establish American control of the Panama Canal. Those bids to extend U.S. dominance in the Western Hemisphere are the clearest signs yet of his desire to create a sphere of influence in the nation’s backyard.”
“French President Emmanuel Macron’s office on Monday downplayed an incident in which his wife appeared to push his face away as he arrived in Vietnam to begin a Southeast Asian tour,” CBS News reports.
“The president appears startled but quickly recovers and turns to wave through the open door. She remains concealed by the aircraft body, making it impossible to see her facial expression or body language.”
“Rahm Emanuel, never humble about his political skills, is trying to accomplish something that seems far-fetched even for him: push his Democratic Party—rooted in the identity politics of the left—to the center,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“The former congressman, White House chief of staff, Chicago mayor and diplomat is direct about what he thinks Democrats need to do to win national elections again. He calls the party’s brand ‘toxic’ and ‘weak and woke,’ a nod to culture-war issues he thinks Democrats have become too often fixated on that President Trump has successfully used against them.”
“While Emanuel is coy about what he wants next for his political career, he appears to be laying the groundwork for a presidential bid.“
“Russia unleashed yet another massive aerial bombardment aimed at Ukrainian cities and towns before dawn on Monday, pressing its advantage as the United States increasingly removes itself from the conflict and diplomatic efforts to end it,” the New York Times reports.
Washington Post: Slammed by Russian missiles, Ukraine seeks more U.S. air defense systems.
New York Times: “Democratic donors and strategists have been gathering at luxury hotels to discuss how to win back working-class voters, commissioning new projects that can read like anthropological studies of people from faraway places.”
“The prospectus for one new $20 million effort aims to reverse the erosion of Democratic support among young men, especially online. It is code-named SAM — short for ‘Speaking with American Men: A Strategic Plan’ — and promises investment to ‘study the syntax, language and content that gains attention and virality in these spaces.’ It recommends buying advertisements in video games, among other things.”
President Trump, on Truth Social:
“I’ve always had a very good relationship with Vladimir Putin of Russia, but something has happened to him. He has gone absolutely CRAZY! He is needlessly killing a lot of people, and I’m not just talking about soldiers.”
He added more when talking to reporters:
“I’m not happy with what Putin is doing. He’s killing a lot of people and I don’t know what the hell happened to Putin. I’ve known him a long time … we’re in the middle of talking and he’s shooting rockets into Kyiv and other cities. I don’t like it at all. I’m surprised.”
“A political strategist for Rep. Nancy Mace testified in a deposition that the congresswoman once asked him to pressure her former fiancé into giving her full ownership of their two jointly held homes and threatened to use images she’d found on her ex’s cellphone as leverage if he refused,” the Charleston Post & Courier reports.
“The request, which strategist Wesley Donehue said he interpreted as a blackmail threat, was made sometime after a lunch he had with Mace in late November 2023.”
“The U.S. will delay tariffs on the European Union until July 9, President Trump said on Sunday, giving a reprieve to his threat for 50% tariffs on the 27-nation bloc that were set to go into effect on June 1,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“I support spending cuts. I think the cuts currently in the bill are wimpy and anemic, but I still would support the bill, even with wimpy and anemic cuts, if they weren’t going to explode the debt. The problem is the math doesn’t add up. They’re going to explode the debt.”
“Somebody has to stand up and yell, ‘the emperor has no clothes.’ Everybody is falling in lockstep on this, ‘Pass the big, beautiful bill. Don’t question anything.’ Well, conservatives do need to stand up and have their voices heard.”
— Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), on Fox News Sunday.
“President Trump told cadets in a commencement address at the United States Military Academy at West Point on Saturday that they were the first graduates to serve in a ‘golden age’ of the nation that was a result of his efforts to rebuild the military and reshape American society,” the New York Times reports.
“Gone were the ‘nation-building crusades’ in countries that ‘wanted nothing to do with us’ and leadership that subjected servicemembers to ‘absurd ideological experiments here and at home,’ Mr. Trump told the group of about 1,000 cadets.”
“Wearing his red ‘Make America Great Again’ hat, Mr. Trump leaned into his aggressive agenda to purge diversity, equity and inclusion programs from the government, military and virtually every facet of American life, in making his pitch that the nation was worth fighting for again.”
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.