World Red Eye posts photos of Jerry Falwell Jr. partying at a Miami nightclub — photos that multiple Liberty University officials told Politico that Falwell “tried to make disappear.”
Falwell originally claimed the photos are fake.
World Red Eye posts photos of Jerry Falwell Jr. partying at a Miami nightclub — photos that multiple Liberty University officials told Politico that Falwell “tried to make disappear.”
Falwell originally claimed the photos are fake.
“The share of Americans with health insurance fell last year, despite a strong economy that lifted families out of poverty,” the New York Times reports.
“About 27.5 million people, or 8.5 percent of the population, lacked health insurance for all of 2018, up from 7.9 percent the year before, the Census Bureau reported Tuesday. It was the first increase since the Affordable Care Act took full effect in 2014, and experts said it was at least partly the result of the Trump administration’s efforts to undermine that law.”
President Trump made at least 21 other false claims at his North Carolina rally last night, “most of them statements that have been debunked on multiple previous occasions,” CNN reports.
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Zachary Wolf: “President Trump, by his simultaneous existence as a real estate tycoon and President, continues to test the U.S. Constitution in ways that the founding fathers didn’t anticipate and for which the current legal and political systems are completely unprepared.”
“The founders didn’t specifically anticipate a hotelier President pushing his golf resort as the ideal location for an international meeting of heads of state. They didn’t specifically say an Air Force crew couldn’t use taxpayer dollars to stay at a resort owned by the President in a foreign country, which may or may not be suffering as a result of his presidency.”
“They didn’t anticipate the President’s subordinates would begin serially staying at his properties or planning parties at them, potentially currying favor with their boss. And they didn’t anticipate a President who would be so willing to push every rule to the breaking point — or be so cavalier about the appearance of self-dealing.”
“But the real problem is that Congress hasn’t, either. There’s nothing on the books curtailing any of this — which means that the President could be in violation of the Constitution without breaking the law.”
Jennifer Rubin: “The House should seriously consider shifting the focus from the Mueller report and Trump’s attempts to short circuit the Russia investigation to the overarching issue of this presidency: His unparalleled corruption. The Mueller report will come into play, but as an example of a particular form of corruption. This is easy to understand and undermines the entire premise of Trump’s outsider campaign by focusing on how he uses the presidency to enrich himself and serve his personal needs.”
“The enrichment schemes multiply and become more nauseating by the day.”
In a Facebook post that generated speculation she would run for president, Carly Fiorina objected to being called “disloyal” because she is critical of President Trump.
She added: “I am not alone. Many others have been intimidated into silence or compelled to defend the indefensible… It is not a citizen’s job to ‘be loyal’; it is the official’s job to earn our loyalty. And when they cannot, we vote them out of office. As citizens it is both our responsibility and our right to hold elected officials accountable: for their words, their actions and the consequences of both.”
Charlie Sykes: “A Fiorina run would also badly rattle TrumpWorld. Why? Because it would make great TV. And that’s something Trump understands well. Who could forget this moment?”
However, a source close to Fiorina told National Review that she’s not running.
“President Trump has privately and repeatedly expressed opposition to the use of foreign intelligence from covert sources, including overseas spies who provide the U.S. government with crucial information about hostile countries,” CNN reports.
“Trump has privately said that foreign spies can damage relations with their host countries and undermine his personal relationships with their leaders.”
Said one source: “The president believes we shouldn’t be doing that to each other.”
“Many Democrats see Joe Biden as a voice of ideological restraint in a party rapidly moving to the left,” McClatchy reports.
“But the 2020 Democratic frontrunner’s emerging policy agenda is anything but moderate — at least compared to the party’s last presidential nominee.”
“From health care to climate change to criminal justice, Biden has proposed ideas more ambitious and liberal than policies supported by Hillary Clinton in the 2016 campaign, a McClatchy review of the candidates’ platforms found.”
Politico: “What’s interesting about O’Rourke at this moment is not just that he’s saying fuck a whole bunch—he’s always dropped curse words on the stump—but that he’s entered more broadly a new phase of his 2020 bid, which supporters find inspiring and critics consider desperate to the point of pathetic. Up close, though, it feels actually pretty compelling.”
“Let’s go ahead and call it Beto’s ‘fuck-it phase.'”
“The question lurking behind this caution-free style is whether O’Rourke is doing this because he cares less about his stagnant candidacy or because he in fact cares so much more.”
President Trump urged caution in admitting people into the U.S. from the Bahamas, claiming ― with no apparent basis in fact ― that “very bad people” could be hidden among the hordes of Hurricane Dorian survivors attempting to flee the devastated archipelago, the HuffPost reports.
Said Trump: “We have to be very careful. Everyone needs totally proper documentation because the Bahamas had some tremendous problems with people going to the Bahamas who weren’t supposed to be there.”
Jim VandeHei: “Every public poll shows a steady and indisputable trend: The Democratic 2020 race is a three-way brawl between 70-somethings who came to fame in the U.S. Senate.”
“In this era of change, technology and disruption, Democrats seem content with three pre-Internet era throwbacks: Bernie Sanders, 78; Joe Biden, 76; and Elizabeth Warren, 70.”
“The Democratic nominee will run against 73-year-old President Trump.”
Nate Silver: “Yesterday, I wrote about the middle and upper echelons of the Democratic field: those candidates who are polling in the mid-single-digits or higher. You can certainly posit a rough order of which of these candidates are more likely to win the nomination. I’d much rather wager a few shekels on Joe Biden than Pete Buttigieg, for instance. But I don’t think there’s any hard-and-fast distinction between the top tier and the next-runners-up.”
“For candidates outside of that group — those polling in the low single digits, or worse — I have less welcome news. I don’t really care which order you place them in, because unless they turn it around soon, they’re probably toast.”
Wall Street Journal: “Delegate-rich California’s primary was moved forward this cycle to March 3, the critical voting day known as Super Tuesday, from June in 2016. California’s mail-in voting starts a month earlier, the same day Iowa voters go to the polls, and the state is home to generous liberal donors in Silicon Valley and Los Angeles.”
“All that means California’s importance to the 2020 primaries has increased exponentially. The top candidates have been to California 58 times. The state is third only to Iowa (108) and New Hampshire (77).”
“Senate Democrats plan to force another vote in Congress aimed at overturning President Trump’s border emergency — potentially triggering another standoff between the administration and congressional Republicans over the billions in dollars being siphoned from the Pentagon to pay for Trump’s border wall,” the Washington Post reports.
“Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) plans to announce later Tuesday that Democratic senators will force a second vote in the chamber this year on a resolution to terminate Trump’s emergency border declaration.”
NBC News: “A former senior Russian official is living in the Washington area under U.S. government protection… NBC News is withholding the man’s name and other key details at the request of U.S. officials, who say reporting the information could endanger his life.”
“Yet the former Russian government official, who had a job with access to secrets, was living openly under his true name. An NBC News correspondent went to the man’s house in the Washington area and rang the doorbell. Five minutes later, two young men in an SUV came racing up the street and parked immediately adjacent to the correspondent’s car.”
Playbook: “Tonight, Republican Dan Bishop and Democrat Dan McCready will finally face off in North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District. Nearly $20 million has been spent on this race — McCready has spent $4.7 million, Bishop has spent $1.7 million, and the NRCC and CLF have spent a combined $5.4 million. All the groups involved in this race say the same thing: Internal polling has the two candidates within a few points of each other — all within the margin of error.”
“As you know by now, this district went for President Trump by a dozen points. Democrats don’t have much business holding this seat.”
Old North State Politics: “The last time a Democrat held the seat was up to 1962, when Hugh Quincy Alexander lost his re-election bid to Republican Jim Broyhill in that year’s mid-term; Republicans have held the different configurations of this district since 1963.”
Washington Post-ABC News Poll: “Trump’s approval rating among voting-age Americans stands at 38%, down from 44% in June but similar to 39% in April, with 56% now saying they disapprove of his performance in office.”
“Among registered voters, 40% say they approve of Trump, while 55% disapprove.”
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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