Cook Political Report: “There hasn’t been any reliable polling to date, but it’s a good bet that Collins is ahead, but that Gideon, assuming she in the Democratic standard bearer, has lots of room to grow. This could well end up being one of the closest Senate contests of the cycle and is in the Toss Up column.”
“In the unlikely event that Collins doesn’t run, Republicans’ chances of holding the seat decrease enormously.”
“Employees at several big companies, including Google and Whole Foods, are revolting against their bosses for accepting work from government agencies that enforce the Trump administration’s immigration policies,” Axios reports.
“The immigration debate has become so polarizing under President Trump that companies are now finding themselves at odds with their workforces for being involved at any level with the immigration enforcement process.”
“Whether you love me or hate me, you’ve got to vote for me.”
— President Trump, quoted by the New York Times, arguing that only he can protect the economy from “going down the tubes.”
“Israel has granted permission for Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib to enter the country on humanitarian grounds to visit her family in the West Bank a day after blocking her and fellow Rep. Ilhan Omar from visiting the country,” CNN reports.
New York Times: “North Korea launched two projectiles yet again off its east coast on Friday, as South Korean analysts said President Trump’s repeated downplaying of the North’s weapons tests had given it a free hand to conduct them.”
Reuters: “Danish politicians on Friday poured scorn on the notion of selling Greenland to the United States following reports that President Donald Trump had privately discussed the idea of buying the world’s biggest island with his advisers.”
“Trump is due to visit Copenhagen in September and the Arctic will be on the agenda during meetings with the prime ministers of Denmark and Greenland, an autonomous Danish territory.”
Washington Post: “Mounting signs of global economic distress this week have alarmed President Trump, who is worried that a downturn could imperil his reelection, even as administration officials acknowledge that they have not planned for a possible recession.”
“Privately … the president has sounded anxious and apprehensive. From his golf club in New Jersey, where he is vacationing this week, Trump has called a number of business leaders and financial executives to sound them out — and they have provided him a decidedly mixed analysis.”
Designer Tom Ford told Vogue that he is a “huge fan of Pete Buttigieg and met him at a small lunch early in his candidacy, where he felt he picked up on something: At the table, on the stage, Buttigieg, for all his silken rhetoric, seemed to look smaller than he was due to the generous cut of his suit.”
“Ah, thought Ford—here’s something I can fix. After the event, he texted Buttigieg’s husband, Chasten, and offered a bit of sartorial guidance to the campaign. They didn’t bite.”
Said Ford: “Obviously he can’t wear my clothes. They’re too expensive, they’re wrong, they’re not made in America. And besides, whatever he’s doing is working. So does anyone need to fuck with it?”
Beto O’Rourke (D-TX) told MSNBC that host he will not be running for the Senate.
Sad O’Rourke: “I will not in any scenario run for the United States Senate. I’m running for president. I’m running for this country. I’m taking this fight directly to Donald Trump and that is what I am exclusively focused on doing right now.”
“President Trump on Thursday mocked the weight of a protester who briefly interrupted his rally in Manchester, N.H.,” The Hill reports.
Said Trump: “That guy’s got a serious weight problem. Go home, start exercising.”
He added: “Got a bigger problem than I do. Got a bigger problem than all of us.”
“By pressuring the Israeli government to bar entry by two members of Congress, President Trump once again used the power and platform of his office to punish his political rivals,” the Washington Post reports.
“The president has grounded a military jet set for use by the Democratic House speaker, yanked a security clearance from a former CIA director critical of him, threatened to withhold disaster aid from states led by Democrats, pushed to reopen a criminal investigation targeting Hillary Clinton and publicly called for federal action to punish technology and media companies he views as biased against him.”
“Taken as a whole, Trump’s use of political power to pursue personal vendettas is unprecedented in modern history.”
“President Trump suggested Thursday that the United States can tackle its gun violence problem in part by building more psychiatric institutions and reopening facilities that were shuttered decades ago,” the Washington Post reports.
Said Trump: “We’re looking at the whole gun situation. I do want people to remember the words ‘mental illness.’ These people are mentally ill… I think we have to start building institutions again because, you know, if you look at the ’60s and ’70s, so many of these institutions were closed.”
A new Fox News Poll finds Joe Biden continues to lead the Democratic presidential race with 31%, followed by Elizabeth Warren at 20%, Bernie Sanders at 10%, and Kamala Harris at 8%.
Everyone of the four frontrunners beats President Trump in general election match ups.
The leaders are followed by Cory Booker, Pete Buttigieg, and Andrew Yang stand at 3% apiece, and Amy Klobuchar and Beto O’Rourke are each at 2%.
President Trump on Thursday predicted that if he loses his reelection bid in 2020 the economy will “go down on the tubes,” The Hill reports.
Said Trump: “Frankly if for some reason that happened in the 2020 election, you’ll see this economy go down the tubes. I will tell you that right now.”
“The former adviser to first lady Melania Trump, who has come under fire for the cost of President Trump’s inauguration, was among the event planners who raised concerns about excessive spending in the weeks before the events,” according to documents obtained by CNN.
“Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, a former friend of Melania Trump, has emerged as a witness for investigators and received a subpoena last month by Washington DC’s attorney general.”
“President Trump made his name on the world’s most famous island. Now he wants to buy the world’s biggest,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“The idea of the U.S. purchasing Greenland has captured the former real-estate developer’s imagination, according to people familiar with the deliberations, who said Mr. Trump has, with varying degrees of seriousness, repeatedly expressed interest in buying the ice-covered autonomous Danish territory between the North Atlantic and Arctic oceans.”
“Some of his advisers have supported the concept, saying it was a good economic play… while others dismissed it as a fleeting fascination that will never come to fruition. It is also unclear how the U.S. would go about acquiring Greenland even if the effort was serious. “
Kentucky Lt. Gov. Jenean Hampton (R) filed suit against Gov. Matt Bevin (R) on Thursday, asking for court orders that would restore her two fired staff members to their jobs, the Louisville Courier Journal reports.
“The 12-page lawsuit, filed in Franklin Circuit Court, argues the Bevin administration illegally dismissed Hampton’s chief of staff, Steve Knipper, in late January and her deputy chief of staff, Adrienne Southworth, in late May.”
Associated Press: “The dispute threatens to complicate Bevin’s efforts to win a second term in a state that has tilted heavily toward the GOP.”
Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang has declared that he could beat President Trump at any challenge—mental or physical—because the president “is so fat,” the Daily Beast reports.
Said Yang: “I challenge Donald Trump to any physical or mental feat under the sun. I mean, gosh, what could that guy beat me at, being a slob?”
He continued: “Like, what could Donald Trump possibly be better than me at? An eating contest? Like something that involved trying to keep something on the ground and having really large body mass? Like, if there was a hot-air balloon that was rising and you needed to try and keep it on the ground, he would be better than me at that? Because he is so fat.”
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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