Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) pushed back against acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney’s justification for withholding Ukraine aid in exchange for political help, CNN reports.
Said Murkowski: “You don’t hold up foreign aid that we had previously appropriated for a political initiative. Period.”
A new Keating Research-OnSight Public Affairs-Martin Campaigns Poll in Colorado finds John Hickenlooper (D) leads Sen. Cory Gardner (R) in a theoretical Senate matchup next year by 11 points, 53% to 42%.
BuzzFeed News: “An impeachment trial would consume every senator’s schedule. Under the Senate’s current rules, all senators must be in session Monday through Saturday, starting at around noon each day. The trial may last several weeks — Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial lasted five — thus taking several candidates off the campaign trail the month before the primaries start.”
“That’s a major problem for the six senators running to be the Democratic nominee for president — Cory Booker, Michael Bennet, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren.”
“In theory, the Senate could change its rules and lighten the schedule. But that would require unanimous consent from both Democrats and Republicans, and that’s unlikely.”
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“Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney on Thursday revised remarks he made in a press briefing earlier in the day, now maintaining that there had been no quid pro quo between the hold the administration put on aid to Ukraine and Ukraine’s cooperation on an investigation into allegations surrounding a Democratic National Committee server in 2016,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
Said Mulvaney: “There was absolutely no quid pro quo between Ukrainian military aid and any investigation into the 2016 election.”
“All roads lead to Putin.”
— Speaker Nancy Pelosi, quoted by USA Today, describing what she told President Trump at a White House meeting yesterday.
A new Emerson poll in Iowa finds Joe Biden is now tied with Elizabeth Warren for the lead in the Democratic presidential race with 23% each, followed by Pete Buttigieg at 16%, and Bernie Sanders dropping to fourth at 13%.
No other candidate reaches above 5%.
William McRaven: “If our promises are meaningless, how will our allies ever trust us? If we can’t have faith in our nation’s principles, why would the men and women of this nation join the military? And if they don’t join, who will protect us? If we are not the champions of the good and the right, then who will follow us? And if no one follows us — where will the world end up?”
“President Trump seems to believe that these qualities are unimportant or show weakness. He is wrong. These are the virtues that have sustained this nation for the past 243 years. If we hope to continue to lead the world and inspire a new generation of young men and women to our cause, then we must embrace these values now more than ever.”
“And if this president doesn’t understand their importance, if this president doesn’t demonstrate the leadership that America needs, both domestically and abroad, then it is time for a new person in the Oval Office — Republican, Democrat or independent — the sooner, the better. The fate of our Republic depends upon it.”
New York Times: “Rick Perry, the energy secretary who has drawn scrutiny for his role in the controversy surrounding President Trump’s efforts to push Ukraine officials to investigate the son of a political rival, on Thursday told the president he would resign from the cabinet.”
“The Perry resignation had been anticipated for several weeks, even before the news emerged of his involvement in efforts to pressure the new president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, to investigate a company that had worked with Hunter Biden, the younger son of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.”
A new Pew Research poll finds 54% of Americans currently approve of the House’s decision to conduct an impeachment inquiry into President Trump, while 44% disapprove.
President Trump’s external legal team is now trying to distance itself from acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney’s press briefing today, where he admitted a quid pro quo in delaying of military aid to Ukraine.
Said Jay Sekulow to CNN: “The legal team was not involved in the Acting Chief of Staff’s press briefing.”
In a fiery speech on the Senate floor, Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) called for Senate hearings into President Trump’s decision to withdrawal U.S. troops from Syria.
Said Romney: “So America is diminished, Russia, Iran and Assad are strengthened. And so I ask, how and why this decision was reached.”
He added :”Was there no chance for diplomacy? Are we so weak and so inept diplomatically that Turkey forced the hand of the United States of America? Turkey?”
When asked about acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney’s admission of a quid pro quo in withholding military aid from Ukraine, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) said the situation has “gone from very, very bad to much, much worse,” NBC News reports.
“Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney said Thursday that President Trump did not withhold military aid to Ukraine as part of a quid pro quo to get that country to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden,” CNBC reports.
“Instead, Mulvaney told reporters, that the withholding of aid this summer was due in part because Trump wanted Ukraine to investigate the possibility that elements in that country somehow had interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election to Trump’s detriment.”
New York Times: “It was the first time a White House official has publicly acknowledged what a parade of current and former administration officials have told impeachment investigators on Capitol Hill.”
Vice President Mike Pence announced from Ankara on Thursday that Turkey has agreed to cease its military operation in northern Syria until Kurdish forces can withdraw from the area, Axios reports.
Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney said during a press briefing Thursday that next year’s G7 summit will be hosted at the Trump National Doral Miami resort, Axios reports.
Philip Bump: “There are a number of remarkable lines in the letter President Trump sent to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan this month. But it’s a relatively unremarkable one that may be the most revealing.”
“‘I have worked hard to solve some of your problems,’ Trump writes at the beginning of the second paragraph. It’s not as splashy as ‘Don’t be a fool!’ but it’s more interesting. What, exactly, are those problems Trump has been working to solve?”
A new Pew Research survey finds 65% of American adults describe themselves as Christians when asked about their religion, down 12 percentage points over the past decade.
Meanwhile, the religiously unaffiliated share of the population, consisting of people who describe their religious identity as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular,” now stands at 26%, up from 17% in 2009.
A new Marketing Resource Group poll shows Sen. Gary Peters (D) holds a small lead over challenger John James (R) by a slim 43 percent to 40 percent margin.
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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