Just dropped · Trial Balloon · Ep. 187
Bad Instincts
Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC) responds to a purported gay “sex tape” of him being shared on social media:
“A new hit against me just dropped. Years ago, in this video, I was being crass with a friend, trying to be funny. We were acting foolish, and joking. That’s it.”
He added: “I’m not backing down. I told you there would be a drip drip campaign. Blackmail won’t win. We will.”
“The United States has provided intelligence that has helped Ukrainians target and kill many of the Russian generals who have died in action in the Ukraine war,” the New York Times reports.
“Ukrainian officials said they have killed approximately 12 generals on the front lines, a number that has astonished military analysts.”
“The targeting help is part of a classified effort by the Biden administration to provide real-time battlefield intelligence to Ukraine. That intelligence also includes anticipated Russian troop movements gleaned from recent American assessments of Moscow’s secret battle plan for the fighting in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, the officials said. Officials declined to specify how many generals had been killed as a result of U.S. assistance.”
A poll commissioned by a national Republican organization shows Rep. Madison Cawthorn’s (R-NC) lead in the eight-way GOP primary “has dropped markedly following coverage of his controversies and missteps,” the Asheville Citizen Times reports.
Nonetheless, Cawthorn still leads his nearest challenger, Chuck Edwards (R), 38% to 21%.
Cawthorn led 49% to 14% in the March poll.
Marc Johnson and Robert Saldin: “Republicans have effectively harnessed the grievance that comes with a feeling of being cheated, leaning on it to mobilize, organize and consolidate the conservative movement that has fueled the GOP ever since.”
“But if the court overturns its line of decisions protecting abortion rights in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, it will leave a very different set of Americans aggrieved. Supporters of abortion rights will fume over something long taken for granted being suddenly stripped away. And a fight in deeply conservative Idaho three decades ago indicates that their anger could scramble the politics of abortion.”
“Stewart Rhodes, the Oath Keepers militia group leader charged with seditious conspiracy over the January 6 attack on the Capitol, tried to get a Donald Trump confidant to ask the former US president to allow his group to forcibly stop the peaceful transfer of power,“ The Guardian reports.
“The previously unknown phone call with the unidentified individual appears to indicate the Oath Keepers had contacts with at least one person close enough to Trump that Rhodes believed the individual would be a good person to consult with his request.”
U.S. surpasses one million Covid-19 deaths, according to data compiled by NBC News — “a once unthinkable scale of loss even for the country with the world’s highest recorded toll from the virus.”
With the publication of This Will Not Pass by Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns today, the authors released another audio tape of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) criticizing Donald Trump just after the January 6 Capitol riot.
Said McCarthy: “What the president did is atrocious and totally wrong.”
McCarthy also discussed using the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office but concluded the process “takes too long.”
“If Herschel Walker (R) wins Georgia’s U.S. Senate seat, he would become the most prominent elected official in the nation who has struggled openly with a mental illness,” the Atlanta Journal Constitution reports.
“For some, he would be an important symbol and champion for a type of illness that has long been stigmatized.”
“But Walker’s mental health story is complicated, interlaced with allegations of domestic violence and featuring a controversial therapist who has said a patient’s choice of crayon color can reveal whether he or she is gay or even possessed by demons.”
A new CNN poll finds only 23% of Americans rate economic conditions as even somewhat good, down from 37% in December and 54% last April.
Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) told the Daily Caller that Democrats could try to “pack” the Supreme Court by trying to seat Ketanji Brown Jackson before Justice Stephen Bryer retires in an effort to stop Roe v. Wade from being overturned.
Said Blackburn: “In April, Biden did sign those commission papers appointing her to the court. And I think it’s going to be interesting to see if the left starts pushing Justice Roberts to seat Judge Jackson because they are trying to push the balance of the court. They’re trying to pack the court.”
Donald Trump Jr. interviewed with the Jan. 6 committee “for several hours” on Tuesday, Politico reports.
Donald Trump touted victories in a Fox News interview for the nearly two dozen candidates he endorsed who won their primary races in Ohio and Indiana Tuesday night, predicting the night was just the beginning of a “tremendous season” for Republicans he supports.
Said Trump: “I was 22 and 0. I won every race.”
Washington Post: “A modern-day adaptation of underground abortion networks that helped people access care when the procedure was illegal, the Auntie Network stands alongside formal organizations like the Brigid Alliance and the National Network of Abortion Funds that coordinate travel and remove financial barriers to getting abortions.”
“But as the prospect of terminating a pregnancy in America faces staunch restrictions in large swaths of the country, the Reddit group offers a glimpse into a post-Roe era when getting an abortion will require an influx of community-based aid to organize and assist.”
Colorado gubernatorial candidate Greg Lopez (R) was asked how he reconciles opposing abortion under all circumstance with being arrested in 1993 for assaulting his pregnant wife.
Lopez responded by noting he isn’t Jesus, “the one perfect man that’s ever walked this Earth.”
“Nearly every politician commits an occasional gaffe, and nearly every election features at least one news cycle about something stupid that a candidate did or said,” Politico reports.
“Even so, the recently concluded Ohio Republican Senate primary was uniquely stupid, by almost any standard. The election was unrivaled in the number of times the candidates debased themselves for attention, said something absurdly provocative or committed an act of epic buffoonery, perpetuating a spiral of attacks against each other that generated a flood of local and national headlines.”
“President Biden would be on shaky legal ground if he were to pursue broad-based student debt cancellation by executive action, President Barack Obama’s former top Education Department lawyer wrote in a legal analysis,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“Using executive action to cancel debts for student borrowers without tying relief to their individual needs and using regulatory procedures would put the Biden administration at risk of having its plan overruled in court.”
“For nearly half a century, Republicans have railed against ‘unelected judges’ making rulings that they claim disenfranchise voters from deciding for themselves what laws should govern hot-button issues,” the Washington Post reports.
“But since the release this week of a draft Supreme Court opinion that would overturn the long-standing constitutional right to abortion, Democrats have been the ones embracing that complaint, flipping the script as the party vents its frustration with elements of the U.S. system that have empowered a minority of the country’s voters to elect lawmakers who have successfully reshaped the high court.”
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.