“If Donald Trump doesn’t agree with what he’s hearing, doesn’t like what he’s hearing, he shouldn’t tweet. He should come to the committee and testify under oath. And he should allow all those around him to come to the committee and testify under oath.”
— Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), quoted by Reuters, echoing Speaking Nancy Pelosi’s invitation for Trump to testify.
President Trump responded to “crazy” and “do nothing” Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s invitation to testify before the House impeachment probe.
Said Trump: “She also said I could do it in writing. Even though I did nothing wrong, and don’t like giving credibility to this No Due Process Hoax, I like the idea and will, in order to get Congress focused again, strongly consider it!”
“If you had any doubt that Trump was a human repellent spray for suburban voters who have a conservative disposition, Republicans getting wiped out in the suburbs of New Orleans, Louisville and Lexington should remove it.”
— GOP strategist Tim Miller, quoted by the New York Times.
“President Trump’s visit to Walter Reed on Saturday did not follow the protocol of a routine presidential medical exam,” CNN reports.
“Medical staff at Walter Reed did not get a staff-wide notice about a presidential visit to the medical center in Bethesda, Maryland, ahead of Trump’s arrival.”
“Typically, Walter Reed’s medical staff would get a general notice about a ‘VIP’ visit to the medical center ahead of a presidential visit, notifying them of certain closures at the facility. That did not happen this time, indicating the visit was a non-routine visit and scheduled last minute.”
Karen Tumulty: “The White House is not telling the truth.”
“With a rapidly growing campaign staff and a big investment in infrastructure, Bernie Sanders is going all in on the California ground game,” the San Jose Mercury News reports.
“The Vermont senator’s campaign has opened five offices in California — far more than top rivals Sens. Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren, who have two each, and former Vice President Joe Biden, who hasn’t opened one. Sanders’ staff says they plan to set up at least 10 more offices by the end of the year and already have hired 40 full-time paid staffers in the state.”
“Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) began the Trump era by negotiating with Democrats on immigration and co-authoring legislation to protect special counsel Robert Mueller. He even briefly opposed President Trump’s national emergency to build a border wall,” Politico reports.
“But now the North Carolina Republican’s independent streak is fading. He’s deploying the president as a shield against a conservative primary challenger and he’s hugging Trump tightly.”
A CBS News investigation uncovers a possible pay-for-play scheme involving President Trump’s ambassador nominee to the Bahamas.
“The impeachment inquiry has created the first rift between President Donald Trump and the Cabinet member who has been his closest ally, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo,” NBC News reports.
“Trump has fumed for weeks that Pompeo is responsible for hiring State Department officials whose congressional testimony threatens to bring down his presidency… The president confronted Pompeo about the officials — and what he believed was a lackluster effort by the secretary of state to block their testimony — during lunch at the White House on Oct. 29.”
“Trump particularly blames Pompeo for tapping Ambassador Bill Taylor in June to be the top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine.”
Dean Baquet, executive editor of The New York Times, accused President Trump in an interview with The Guardian of putting his reporters’ lives at risk by subjecting them to personal abuse and describing them as “enemies of the people.”
“North Korea on Monday responded to a tweet by President Trump that hinted at another summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, saying it has no interest in giving Trump further meetings to brag about unless it gets something substantial in return,” the AP reports.
“In the history of American politics, one fact distills the nation’s enduring suspicion of cities: Voters have never elected a sitting mayor to the presidency,” the New York Times reports.
“Americans have seldom embraced anyone who’s even touched the job. Calvin Coolidge was the last president, one of just three in 230 years, to have been a mayor at any point. He led Northampton, Mass. — a modest town, really — for two years.”
“But as the Democratic Party becomes ever more aligned with urban areas, its presidential field is now studded with politicians whose boasts include running a city.”
A new Harvard Institute of Politics poll finds 52% of young Americans and 58% of likely general election voters under 30 want President Trump impeached and removed from office.
Only 28% of likely voters feel differently.
“Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s two-part plan to pass a public option as a transition into Medicare for All — and then full-blown Medicare for All a few years later — has revealed the difficulty of appealing to both the pragmatic and progressive wings of the party,” Axios reports.
An overwhelming 70% of Americans think President Trump’s request to a foreign leader to investigate his political rival, which sits at the heart of the House of Representatives’ impeachment inquiry, was wrong, a new ABC News/Ipsos poll finds.
A slim majority of Americans, 51%, believe Trump’s actions were both wrong and he should be impeached and removed from office. But only 21% of Americans say they are following the hearings very closely.
Washington Post:: “Though President Trump has made cracking down on immigration a centerpiece of his first term, his administration lags far behind President Barack Obama’s pace of deportations. Obama — who immigrant advocates at one point called the ‘deporter in chief’ — removed 409,849 people in 2012 alone. Trump, who has vowed to deport ‘millions’ of immigrants, has yet to surpass 260,000 deportations in a single year.”
Boston Globe: “Trump’s promise to restore US trade dominance won him deep support in farm country, which helped him secure his narrow victory in Wisconsin in 2016. As the trade skirmishes Trump has triggered have hurt farmers directly, the president’s message has been simple: Trust me, it will all pay off.”
“They are still waiting. But the wave of new and steeper tariffs has yet to fray many farmers’ faith in a president who promised to even the playing field.”
New York Times: “After spending months in anxious passivity, staking their hopes on Joseph Biden and little else, moderate Democrats appear suddenly determined to fight for control of their party in the 2020 elections.”
“The shift in attitude has come in fits and starts over the last few weeks, seemingly more as an organic turn in the political season than as a product of coordinated action by party leaders. But each assertive act has seemed to build on the one before, starting with a debate-stage clash last month over ‘Medicare for all’ and culminating in recent days with the entry of two new moderate candidates into the primary, Michael R. Bloomberg and Deval Patrick, and a gentle warning from former President Barack Obama that Democrats should not overestimate voters’ appetite for drastic change.”
Michelle Obama is releasing a “guided journal” meant to accompany her memoir, Becoming.
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.