President Trump slammed former Attorney General Jeff Sessions in a Daily Caller interview, calling him a “total disaster.”
Said Trump: “You look at what’s happening over at the Justice Department, now we have a great attorney general. Whereas before that, with Jeff Sessions, it was a disaster. Just a total disaster. He was an embarrassment to the great state of Alabama.”
He added: “And I put him there because he endorsed me, and he wanted it so badly. And I wish he’d never endorsed me.”
Sen. Cory Gardner (R-CO) repeatedly refused to answer a “hypothetical question” from KDVR about whether it would be acceptable for a president to request election assistance from a foreign power.
Rudy Giuliani reportedly had lunch with Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman at Trump International Hotel in Washington yesterday, the same day that they were arrested on campaign-finance charges, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Prosecutors said at a press conference that Parnas and Fruman were attempting to leave the country when they were arrested at Dulles International Airport.
“Presidential candidates often keep a running list of influential individuals who they will informally call for ideas, advice, and, perhaps, to scope them out as a potential running mate,” the Daily Beast reports.
“And for several candidates, including at least one in the top tier, former Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum is on speed dial. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), in particular, has been in contact with Gillum over the past several months.”
“Two sources said the talks between Warren and Gillum resemble the kind of courtship that happens when a leading presidential candidate is exploring potential vice presidential contenders.”
New York Times: “Republicans have tried to brand her as a socialist, attack her policy ideas and portray her as too left-wing for the American electorate. None of those arguments have diminished her political momentum, robust fund-raising or polling.”
“But in the past week, conservative news sites have challenged Ms. Warren’s story about how a public school principal forced her out of a teaching job in 1971 because she was ‘visibly pregnant,’ and the Republican National Committee grabbed onto the issue to wage its own attack. In doing so, Republicans employed a tactic — questioning a female candidate’s authenticity — that is at once often a sexist trope in politics and a strategy used against Hillary Clinton in 2016.”
A new PBS NewsHour, NPR and Marist poll finds 52% of Americans said they supported the House impeachment inquiry, and 49% of U.S. adults said President Trump should be impeached.
When asked what should happen after he is impeached, 48% of Americans said Trump should be removed from office.
George Will: “The canine loyalty of Senate Republicans will keep Trump in office. But until he complies with House committee subpoenas, the House must not limply hope federal judges will enforce their oversight powers. Instead, the House should wield its fundamental power, that of the purse, to impose excruciating costs on executive branch noncompliance. This can be done.”
“In 13 months, all congressional Republicans who have not defended Congress by exercising ‘the constitutional rights of the place’ should be defeated. If congressional Republicans continue their genuflections at Trump’s altar, the appropriate 2020 outcome will be a Republican thrashing so severe — losing the House, the Senate and the electoral votes of, say, Georgia, Arizona, North Carolina and even Texas — that even this party of slow-learning careerists might notice the hazards of tethering their careers to a downward-spiraling scofflaw.”
House Appropriations Chairwoman Nita Lowey (D-NY) announced that she is not running for reelection, Roll Call reports.
Rep, John Shimkus (R-IL) told KMOX that President Trump’s decision to pullout of Syria was “terrible and despicable.”
Shimkus added that he told staff “to take my name off the I support Donald Trump list” and that he is “saddened for the Kurdish people.”
Shimkus is not running for re-election.
Wall Street Journal: “When Donald Trump took the stage last month in Fayetteville, N.C., to support Republican candidate Dan Bishop in a special election, thousands of people showed up.”
“Unknown to the crowd, the Committee to Defend the President, a Republican political-action committee that supports Mr. Trump, had hired a company to collect unique identification numbers from attendees’ smartphones that evening, based on location data those phones were sending to third parties. The goal was to target ads at people it could drive to the polls the next day. Mr. Bishop won by about 3,800 votes.”
“The PAC now plans to use the technique, which is called geofencing, in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election in about half a dozen swing states to find people who may not be registered to vote, said its chairman, Ted Harvey.”
President Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton has decided to write a book about his time in the Trump administration, Axios reports.
“Given the fact that he wrote a book about his tenure in the George W. Bush administration, from the moment he left the White House, senior officials privately expressed concerns about what Bolton might say and reveal about his time serving Trump.”
“It’s becoming a challenge to keep up with the high crimes and misdemeanors.”
— Hillary Clinton, on Twitter.
Georgia Republicans blamed last night’s humiliating playoff defeat for the Atlanta Braves because of their efforts to ban the “tomahawk chop” chant, the Atlanta Journal Constitution reports.
The team didn’t distribute the trademark foam tomahawks to fans at the decisive National League Division series game after St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Ryan Helsley, who is a member of the Cherokee Nation, called the chop disrespectful.
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said he will send the 3.6 million Syrian refugees in Turkey to Europe if European countries continue to criticize his military incursion in Syria, Reuters reports.
Said Erdogan: “We will open the gates and send 3.6 million refugees your way.”
Coming soon: Conversations with RBG: Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Life, Love, Liberty, and Law by Jeffrey Rosen.
“An informal portrait of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, drawing on a series of her conversations with Jeffrey Rosen, starting in the 1990s and continuing through the Trump era.”
“Amy McGrath, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s leading Democratic opponent in the 2020 Kentucky Senate race, raised $10.7 million in the third quarter of 2019 after launching her campaign in July,” CBS News reports.
Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) said President Trump’s discussions with foreign governments about Joe Biden were “inappropriate,” but impeaching the president would be a “mistake,” The Hill reports.
Said Alexander: “It’s inappropriate for the president to be talking with foreign governments about investigating his political opponents, but impeachment would be a mistake. An election, which is just around the corner, is the right way to decide who should be president.”
He added: “Impeachment has never removed a president. It will only divide the country further.”
“The White House gave a politically appointed official the authority to keep aid to Ukraine on hold after career budget staff members questioned the legality of delaying the funds, a shift that House Democrats are probing in their impeachment inquiry,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“President Trump’s order to freeze nearly $400 million in aid to Ukraine in mid-July is at the center of House Democratic efforts to investigate allegations that Mr. Trump used U.S. foreign-policy powers to benefit himself politically.”
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.
