“It’s like Forrest Gump won the presidency, but an evil, really fucking stupid Forrest Gump.”
— An unnamed Republican congressman, who publicly supports President Trump, in an interview with conservative writer Erick Erickson.
“It’s like Forrest Gump won the presidency, but an evil, really fucking stupid Forrest Gump.”
— An unnamed Republican congressman, who publicly supports President Trump, in an interview with conservative writer Erick Erickson.
Rep. Dennis Ross (R-FL) “told his staff this morning he is retiring, becoming the latest in a string of Republican departures,” the Tampa Bay Times reports.
Said Ross: “Eight years takes its toll on you. When you feel like a stranger in your hometown, it’s time to say, ‘There’s got to be an exit strategy at some point.'”
Ross joins more than 40 Republicans who have announced they will resign or are leaving for other reasons.
The Cook Political Report moves the seat from the Solid Republican column to Likely Republican.
“When I visited with him in Trump Tower before he was sworn in, he asked me to switch parties.”
— Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND), quoted by the Washington Post, on President Trump’s unsuccessful efforts to get her to become a Republican.
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A new Elway Research poll in Washington finds Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), a member of the House Republican leadership, with just a six-point lead over Lisa Brown (D), 44% to 38%.
Speaker Paul Ryan’s retirement shifts Wisconsin’s his congressional district from the Solid Republican to the Lean Republican, “with the potential for the race to become even more competitive,” the according to the Cook Political Report.
Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball says it’s a Toss Up.
Weekly Standard: “Ryan’s district might not be competitive if the national environment was neutral. Wisconsin’s 1st District moved right in the 2016 election. Trump won the district by 10 points after Romney took it only by four points in 2012 (though 2012 may be an odd case because Ryan was the GOP’s vice presidential nominee). And in 2008, Barack Obama won the area by about three points while winning the national popular vote by seven, suggesting that it took a real step to the right over the course of the last four to eight years. If you add that to Ryan’s incumbency advantage, you get a district that would’t typically be near the boottom of the GOP’s list of worries.
“But the national environment isn’t neutral.”
“The James Comey media blitz has officially begun, with the former FBI director sitting down for a marathon five-hour interview with George Stephanopoulos of ABC News ahead of the release of his much-anticipated memoir,” Politico reports.
“Comey is preparing a media blitz of at least two weeks around the release of the book, including a live interview with CNN on April 19, an MSNBC interview later that day, an appearance on Fox News on April 26, and a PBS NewsHour interview on April 30.”
First Read: “Yesterday, we posed this question: Would congressional Republicans draw a line in the sand when it comes to protecting special counsel Robert Mueller? The answer we got 24 hours later: While they haven’t raced to pass legislation, several GOP senators did fire warning shots at President Trump.”
“So these are definite cracks in the ground between Trump and his party, at least in the Senate. And they come at a time when congressional Republicans are upset at Trump on other matters like the tariffs.”
The Rev. Bill Hybels, founder of one of the nation’s most influential evangelical megachurches, is stepping down “less than a month after a Chicago Tribune investigation disclosed that Hybels had been the subject of inquiries by church leaders into claims that he ran afoul of church teachings by engaging in inappropriate behavior with women in his congregation — including employees — allegedly spanning decades.”
Speaker Paul Ryan has told confidants that he will announce soon that he won’t run for reelection in November, Axios reports.
This decision has been long rumored but his final deliberations were held extremely closely.
New York Times: “Mr. Ryan told the House Republican Conference that he will serve until the end of this Congress in January, which will mark 20 years in Congress. But his retirement announcement is sure to kick off a succession battle for the leadership of the House Republican Conference… It could also trigger another wave of retirements among Republicans not eager to face angry voters in the fall and taking their cue from Mr. Ryan.”
Washington Post: “The party has seen a large number of retirements, and Ryan’s exit is certain to sap morale as Republicans seek to contain a surge in enthusiasm from Democrats, whose fortunes have been buoyed by the unpopularity of President Trump.”
A source present at the taping told Axios that James Comey’s interview with George Stephanopoulos airing on Sunday at 10 p.m. is “going to shock the president and his team.”
“The Comey interview left people in the room stunned — he told George things that he’s never said before… If anyone wonders if Comey will go there, he goes there.”
President Trump appeared to taunt Russian president Vladimir Putin on Twitter:
Russia vows to shoot down any and all missiles fired at Syria. Get ready Russia, because they will be coming, nice and new and “smart!” You shouldn’t be partners with a Gas Killing Animal who kills his people and enjoys it!
“Dana Boente, the former acting attorney general who now serves as general counsel at the FBI, has been interviewed by the special counsel’s office and turned over handwritten notes that could be a piece of evidence in the ongoing investigation into whether President Trump obstructed justice,” the Washington Post reports.
“Boente was interviewed some months ago by special counsel Robert Mueller’s team on a wide range of topics, including his recollections of what former FBI director James Comey told him about troubling interactions with Trump.”
“The interview is significant because it shows how Mueller is exploring whether the president obstructed justice and keying in on conversations Trump had with his former FBI director about the probe involving his presidential campaign. It also shows the extent to which Mueller has gone to corroborate Comey’s account.”
A video obtained by NBC News shows U.S. Border Patrol agents “attempting to break international law by forcing an injured and mentally unstable man back into Mexico by falsely claiming that he is not in their custody, failing to identify him and assuming he is Mexican because ‘he looks like it.'”
Rep. Devin Nunes, “a once-obscure Republican congressman from California’s rural Central Valley, saw his fundraising spike during the first quarter of the year as his steady antagonism of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation turned him into a national folk hero on the Right,” the Washington Examiner reports.
“A composed and contrite Mark Zuckerberg held up under hours of grilling by more than 40 senators Tuesday — but his performance did little to mask Facebook’s growing political problems in Washington,” Politico reports.
The Information: “Senators didn’t inspire confidence that they would be able to regulate the internet economy in a meaningful way. Lawmakers sometimes stumbled through technical descriptions, both of complicated advertising systems and some more basic distinctions like understanding how WhatsApp works.”
New York Times: “Inside the White House, Mr. Trump — furious after the FBI raided his longtime personal lawyer, Michael Cohen — spent much of the day brooding and fearful and near what two people close to the West Wing described as a ‘meltdown.'”
“Mr. Trump’s public and private wrath about the special counsel’s investigation into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election are nothing new. But the raids on Monday on Mr. Cohen’s Rockefeller Center office and Park Avenue hotel room have sent the president to new heights of outrage, setting the White House on edge as it faces a national security crisis in Syria and more internal staff churn.”
Banjamin Wittes: “I will put this as bluntly as I know how: There is no way that the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York would have sought or executed a search warrant against the president’s lawyer without overpowering evidence to support the action. The legal standard for such a search requires only probable cause that criminal activity is taking place. Under normal circumstances, which these are not, the prudential and policy factors counseling against such an action would be powerful.”
“This is the kind of step that would predictably elicit a reaction. The Justice Department simply would not take such an action lightly or without evidence that emphatically supports it. Add these prudential, legal and policy factors together and they cumulatively suggest that the evidence supporting the warrant application likely exceeds—probably by far—what is legally required.”
“Put another way, Cohen’s situation, and thus Trump’s situation, is grave.”
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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