Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) told MSNBC that Republican enablers of President Trump “will go down in history as despicable actors” who are “doing some of the worst things” in the history of the country.
Said Booker: “The truth about Donald Trump will come out. I have a very low regard for people who know he’s doing wrong but defend him and empower him to remain in that office.”
After months of publicly considering mounting a return to Congress, former Rep. Darrell Issa (R) will challenge embattled Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) in California’s 50th congressional district, the San Diego Union Tribune reports.
“The acting Director of National Intelligence threatened to resign over concerns that the White House might attempt to force him to stonewall Congress when he testifies Thursday about an explosive whistleblower complaint about the president,” the Washington Post reports.
“The revelation reflects the extraordinary tensions between the White House and the nation’s highest-ranking intelligence official over a matter that has triggered impeachment proceedings against President Trump.”
“The officials said that Joseph Maguire, who was thrust into the top intelligence post last month, warned the White House that he was not willing to withhold information from Congress.”
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“President Trump potentially exposed himself to ‘serious national security and counter-intelligence risks’ when he pressed his Ukrainian counterpart to investigate a leading political rival, Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden, and his son, the intelligence community’s inspector general warned,” Reuters reports.
“The previously undisclosed warning, included in a Justice Department legal opinion released on Wednesday, reflected the concerns of a whistleblower who filed a complaint about a July 25 call between Trump and then newly elected Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.”
“In the hours after the release Wednesday of the rough transcript of President Trump’s July phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, the White House circulated an email with proposed talking points for Trump’s defenders,” the Washington Post reports.
“Unfortunately for the White House, the email was mistakenly sent to not only Republicans but also Democratic lawmakers and their staff.”
“The chairmen of four of the U.S. House of Representatives committees involved in the impeachment investigation of President Trump called a summary of his call with Ukraine’s president ‘an unambiguous, damning, and shocking abuse’ of office on Wednesday,” Reuters reports.
“The four committee leaders, all Democrats, repeated that Congress needs full, unredacted access to the whistleblower complaint that fueled calls for the impeachment inquiry and threatened to subpoena the State Department and White House if they do not turn over related records for a Thursday deadline.”
House Intelligence committee Chair Adam Schiff said President Trump’s conversation with Ukraine’s President was like a “classic mafia-like shakedown” and “far more damning than I and others had imagined,” BuzzFeed News reports.
Cindy McCain, the widow of the late Sen. John McCain, told Politico that the Republican Party is “excluding people for the wrong reasons” and is no longer “the party that my husband and I belonged to.”
“Several Senate Republicans were stunned Wednesday and questioned the White House’s judgment after it released a rough transcript of President Trump’s call with the Ukraine president that showed Trump offering the help of the U.S. attorney general to investigate Joe Biden,” the Washington Post reports.
“One Senate Republican, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly, said the transcript’s release was a ‘huge mistake’ that the GOP now has to confront, even as they argue that House Democrats are overreaching with their impeachment effort.”
“A top Senate GOP aide said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is expecting Wednesday’s closed-door lunch to be eventful and possibly tense as Republicans react to the transcript and debate their next step.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) delivered unequivocal support for President Trump less than an hour after the White House released the rough transcript of a phone call congressional Democrats say could be grounds for impeachment, McClatchy reports.
Said Graham: “From my point of view, to impeach any president over a phone call like this would be insane.”
“Speaker Nancy Pelosi and President Trump were discussing gun violence over the telephone Tuesday morning when the president abruptly changed the topic to an intelligence community whistle-blower complaint that had Democrats talking about impeachment,” the New York Times reports.
“Ms. Pelosi stopped him short.”
Said Pelosi: “Mr. President, you have come into my wheelhouse.”
“The remark was a reference to Ms. Pelosi’s quarter-century of experience with intelligence matters in Congress, an aspect of her biography that played a central role in her decision on Tuesday to open a formal impeachment inquiry into Mr. Trump.”
Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) said on Wednesday that a transcript of a call between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is “deeply troubling,” The Hill reports.
Said Romney: “I did read the transcript. It remains troubling in the extreme. It’s deeply troubling. Clearly what we’ve seen from the transcript itself is deeply troubling.”
He added: “There’s a process the House is pursuing. The Senate is also looking at the testimony of the whistleblower.”
“This ‘transcript’ itself is a smoking gun. If this is the version of events the president’s team thinks is most favorable, he is in very deep jeopardy. We need to see the full whistleblower complaint and the administration needs to follow the law. Now.”
— Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), on Twitter.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-NY) called on Attorney General William Barr to recuse himself from the probe around President Trump’s dealings with Ukraine.
Said Nadler: “The President dragged the Attorney General into this mess. At a minimum, Attorney General Barr must recuse himself until we get to the bottom of this matter.”
Roll Call: “Several House members in crucial swing districts rolled the dice this week by supporting an impeachment inquiry into President Trump, betting voters will eventually agree that such an inquiry is the best path forward.”
“The support from members whose victories helped flip the House from red to blue last year may have spurred Speaker Nancy Pelosi to apply the impeachment description Tuesday to ongoing investigations.”
“President Trump told his Ukrainian counterpart to work with the U.S. attorney general to investigate the conduct of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and offered to meet with the foreign leader at the White House after he promised to conduct such an inquiry, according to a newly-released transcript of the call,” the Washington Post reports.
“Those statements and others in a July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky were so concerning that the intelligence community inspector general thought them a possible violation of campaign finance law.”
New York Times: “The director of national intelligence and the inspector general for the intelligence community each referred a whistle-blower’s concerns about the call for a possible criminal investigation into the president’s actions.”
“Now, she has so much less to push up I don’t think that’s fair.”
— Chief Justice John Roberts, quoted by CNN, when asked if he could do as many push ups as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Jonathan Bernstein: “So far, President Donald Trump is unpopular – and, polls say, so is impeachment. I expect the latter to change. The more that highly visible Democrats are united in favor of impeachment, the more that Democratic voters and independents who dislike Trump will likely shift toward their position. I wouldn’t be surprised if that shift happens rapidly, at least if the news media gives saturation coverage to the story and voters start to learn more about it.”
“I think it’s a lot less likely that Trump’s popularity will change. Yes, President Richard Nixon’s approval ratings dropped dramatically over the course of the Watergate scandal. But there are a lot of differences, starting with the fact that Trump has a lot less ground to lose. It’s possible that new facts could push mild Trump supporters into being mild Trump opponents (and so on for other levels of support), but I wouldn’t count on a lot of that. What really could hurt Trump would be if numerous high-profile Republicans turned against him. That’s unlikely, because those Republicans know that the less popular Trump is, the worse off all party candidates will be in the next election. But if Trump’s approval ratings are going be harmed, that’s how it’ll happen.”
“Assuming Trump survives and becomes the Republican nominee next year, the effects of impeachment per se on the presidential election will probably be small and possibly nonexistent. We don’t know how long any impeachment and trial would last, but voters tend to have shockingly short memories.”
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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