Washington state Sen. Maureen Walsh (R) “has drawn the wrath of state nurses after she said on the floor of the Senate that some nurses may spend a considerable part of their day playing cards,” the Spokesman-Review reports.
“The Washington State Nurses Association posted a blog about Walsh’s comments on its website, drawing so many readers that the site crashed for a time on Friday.”
“President Trump has spent the last two years denouncing the ‘fake news’ media, and yet some of the key moments in Robert Mueller’s report were uncovered or bolstered through journalists’ investigative scrutiny,” the New York Times reports.
“The report reveals a lot we didn’t know about how the president and his aides responded to overtures from Russia and how they attempted to thwart investigations. But many of the bombshells in the document were first reported by the press.”
Lawfare: “The Mueller Report describes, in excruciating detail and with relatively few redactions, a candidate and a campaign aware of the existence of a plot by a hostile foreign government to criminally interfere in the U.S. election for the purpose of supporting that candidate’s side. It describes a candidate and a campaign who welcomed the efforts and delighted in the assistance. It describes a candidate and a campaign who brazenly and serially lied to the American people about the existence of the foreign conspiracy and their contacts with it. And yet, it does not find evidence to support a charge of criminal conspiracy, which requires not just a shared purpose but a meeting of the minds.”
“Here is the other bottom line: The Mueller Report describes a president who, on numerous occasions, engaged in conduct calculated to hinder a federal investigation. It finds ample evidence that at least a portion of that conduct met all of the statutory elements of criminal obstruction of justice. In some of the instances in which all of the statutory elements of obstruction are met, the report finds no persuasive constitutional or factual defenses. And yet, it declines to render a judgment on whether the president has committed a crime.”
“Now, the House must decide what to do with these facts.”
Politico identifies five mysteries the Mueller report didn’t resolve:
“Sen. Cory Booker launched a bid for the White House in February on a message of love and unity, painting himself as an inspirational leader who would help a polarized America find common ground. Just 10 weeks later, Booker is discovering that so far love just isn’t enough,” Politico reports.
“Polling in the single digits and lagging top-tier competitors in fundraising, Booker this week sought to reboot his campaign, launching a ‘Justice For All’ two-week, national tour heavy on economic policy proposals and social justice messaging.”
Washington Post: “Sure, it is a little longer than necessary. Too many footnotes and distracting redactions. The writing is often flat, and the first half of the book drags, covering plenty of terrain that has been described elsewhere. The story shifts abruptly between riveting insider tales and dense legalisms. Its protagonist doesn’t really come alive until halfway through, once Volume I (on Russian interference) gives way to Volume II (on obstruction of justice). The title — far too prosaic, really — feels like a missed opportunity. And it hardly helps that the book’s earliest reviewer, Attorney General William Barr, seems to have willfully misunderstood the point of it; he probably should not have been assigned to review it at all.”
“Yet as an authoritative account, the Mueller report is the best book by far on the workings of the Trump presidency.”
CNBC: “Many of these people didn’t work within Biden’s office throughout Obama’s tenure as president, but they have extensive campaign experience ranging from political consulting to communications.”
President Trump stepped up his attacks against special counsel Robert Mueller early Saturday morning, claiming Mueller’s recently released report “was written as nastily as possible” by “true Trump Haters,” The Hill reports.
Trump lashed out at Mueller calling him “highly conflicted” and once again declaring the special counsel’s investigation “the greatest Witch Hunt in U.S. political history.”
New York Times: “Interviews with Donald McGahn, the former White House counsel, were cited 157 times, more than any others. The special counsel relied on Mr. McGahn’s answers most often in the section of the report that covered obstruction of justice.”
“Interviews with four associates of Mr. Trump — Michael Flynn, Rick Gates, Michael Cohen and George Papadopoulos — were cited more than 320 times. All four were found guilty of crimes relating to the investigation.”
“President Trump seethed Friday over the special counsel’s portrayal of his protracted campaign to thwart the Russia investigation and directed much of his ire at former White House counsel Donald McGahn, whose ubiquity in the report’s footnotes laid bare his extensive cooperation in chronicling the president’s actions,” the Washington Post reports.
“Some of the report’s most derogatory scenes were attributed not only to the recollections of McGahn and other witnesses but also to the contemporaneous notes kept by several senior administration officials — the kind of paper trail that Trump has long sought to avoid leaving.”
CNN: “Perhaps more angering to a leader who detests weakness — but doesn’t necessarily mind an amoral reputation — were the number of underlings shown ignoring his commands, privately scoffing at the ‘crazy shit’ he was requesting and working around him to avoid self-implication.”
“Now, those close to him say Trump is newly furious at the people — most of whom no longer work for him — whose extensive interviews with the special counsel’s office created the epic depiction of an unscrupulous and chaotic White House. And he’s seeking assurances from those who remain that his orders are being treated like those of a president, and not like suggestions from an intemperate but misguided supervisor.”
“By now, most Democratic presidential candidates have polished their stump speeches. But when they’re in South Carolina, they may need to add in a sermon,” the AP reports.
“In a large and diverse primary field, White House hopefuls are angling to develop relationships with black churches. That’s because success in South Carolina, home to the nation’s first Southern presidential primary, could come down to connecting with politically influential churchgoing African Americans.”
A new Reuters/Ipsos poll finds President Trump’s approval rate has dropped to just 37% to 56% — down from 43% to 54% just three weeks ago.
Margaret Sullivan: “It’s no secret that Fox News and the Trump administration are deeply entwined with each other: They are the conjoined twins of misinformation.”
“I tuned in to Fox for a while Thursday morning, trying the experiment of using it as my only news source for an hour or two.”
“When I emerged and started reading and watching elsewhere — and looked at the report for myself — I felt like I had returned from beyond the looking glass and was back in the real world.”
For members: One Mueller Report, Two Realities
“For the sake of the country, fulminate, don’t go forward with impeachment. It’s so bad for the country.”
— Former Independent Counsel Ken Starr, on Fox News, urging Democrats not to impeach President Trump.
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) blasted Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) after the Utah Republican said he was “sickened” by President Trump’s actions in the Mueller report, The Hill reports.
Said Huckabee: “Know what makes me sick, Mitt? Not how disingenuous you were to take Donald Trump’s money and then 4 years later jealously trash him and then love him again when you begged to be Secretary of State, but makes me sick that you got the GOP nomination and could have been president.”
Ron Brownstein: “Mueller’s report crystallizes two cardinal rules about governance in Donald Trump’s Washington. One is that Trump will shatter any boundaries of law, morality, or custom in his exercise of presidential power. The second is that Republicans—not only in Congress, but now also in the executive branch—will not restrain any of his excesses. The same holds true for both unwritten rules: They constitute a defining gamble for the GOP in future elections.”
“The Mueller report may not dislodge significant elements of Trump’s electoral coalition, some of whom thrill to his behavior and others who accept it in the same implicit bargain as do Republicans in Congress. But it seems highly likely to reinforce the doubts of the nearly 55 percent of Americans who expressed unease, if not outright revulsion, about him as president through their votes for other candidates in the 2016 election and for Democrats in the 2018 House races.”
“The Trump campaign has hired its own in-house attorney for its 2020 reelection bid — shifting future business away from Jones Day, the law firm, that has represented Trump since his first run for president,” Politico reports.
“Campaign officials and advisers cast the decision to hire Nathan Groth as a money-saving move… But close Trump advisers say the decision also stems from disappointment with the White House’s former top attorney and current Jones Day partner, Don McGahn, whose behavior has irked the president and some of his family members.”
“Taking business away from Jones Day is payback, these advisers say, for McGahn’s soured relationship with the Trump family and a handful articles in high-profile newspapers that the family blames, unfairly or not, on the former White House counsel.”
Washington Post: Trump blames McGahn after Mueller paints damning portrait with notes from White House aides.
NBC News: “A poll released this week of national Latino voters had Castro, a former U.S. housing secretary and mayor of San Antonio, in fourth, with 45 percent… That was much better than Castro, the only Latino in the 2020 race, has fared in other polls on the Democratic primary race that polled fewer Latinos.”
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.
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