President Trump on Twitter: “Nervous Nancy Pelosi is doing everything possible to destroy the Republican Party. Our Polls show that it is going to be just the oppidite. The Do Nothing Dems will lose many seats in 2020. They have a Death Wish, led by a corrupt politician, Adam Schiff!”
Rep. Justin Amash (I-MI) responds: “Your polls must have been done on Oppidite Day.”
Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WI) rebuked various television pundits — such as Laura Ingraham and Sean Duffy — who attacked Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman’s loyalty to the United States because he was born in Ukraine, the Washington Post reports.
Vindman is the Purple Heart recipient who is testifying before the House impeachment inquiry today.
Said Cheney: “We are better than that.”
Philip Bump: The fundamentally un-American attacks on Alexander Vindman.
Rep. Mark Amodei (R-NV) was asked multiple times by CNN if it’s acceptable for President Trump to ask foreign countries to investigate his rivals.
He was unable to answer the direct question: “My English teacher says you got a conclusion, so if you want to interview yourself, go ahead.”
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Federal political committees have spent more than $20 million at businesses owned by President Trump since the 2008 cycle, according to OpenSecrets.
“Roughly 99% of that money has come since the start of the 2016 cycle, when Trump announced his bid for president and began spending campaign money at his own properties.”
Joe Biden was denied Holy Communion on Sunday morning at a South Carolina church, the South Carolina Morning News reports.
“Father Robert Morey of Saint Anthony Catholic Church confirmed Monday afternoon that he had denied the presidential candidate Holy Communion because of his stance on abortion. Biden, a lifelong Catholic, had attended the church’s 9 a.m. Mass.”
Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the White House National Security Council’s top expert on Ukraine, has arrived for his closed-door joint deposition before the House Intelligence, Oversight and Foreign Affairs Committees as part of the ongoing impeachment inquiry, NBC News reports.
President Trump attacked Vindman on Twitter as a “Never Trumper witness.”
The New York Times has a must-read profile of Vindman.
“Over his nearly three years in office, lawyers representing President Trump have made numerous legal arguments that, taken as a whole, would give the president sweeping immunity—even if he were to commit murder,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“An extensive review of correspondence, court documents, legal opinions and public statements from lawyers representing Mr. Trump shows the president’s attorneys have consistently pushed to put him beyond the reach of any other institution in federal, state or local government—immune to civil lawsuits, judicial orders, criminal investigations or congressional probes.”
“Those arguments have become even more aggressive as Mr. Trump faces numerous legal threats, including a possible impeachment in Congress, a New York state prosecutor who has subpoenaed his tax records as part of a criminal probe and a welter of civil lawsuits.”
“Robert Murray, the U.S. coal baron who pressed the Trump administration to help save America’s struggling miners, placed his company into bankruptcy as demand for the fossil fuel continues to weaken,” Bloomberg reports.
A man seen in a viral video refusing to shake Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) hand at the late Rep. Elijah Cummings’s (D-MD) funeral told the Washington Post the snub wasn’t based on his loyalty to Cummings.
Bobby Rankin said he blamed McConnell for denying veterans’ benefits to his brother before he died last year from cancer.
Said Raskin: “I could not put my hands in the man’s hand who refused to help somebody who served his country… I couldn’t do it, because I was thinking about my brother.”
A new Selzer & Co national poll finds 81% of Americans believe that it’s not right for political candidates to ask foreign governments to help them win election. That includes 81% of Republican, 85% of evangelicals Christians, 87% of rural voters — President Trump’s 2016 base.
If the general election were today, only 38% of likely voters say they would definitely vote to re-elect Trump while 47% would definitely vote for someone else.
James Hohmann: “This helps explain why Trump defenders on Capitol Hill have fixated more on complaining about the impeachment process than offering a substantive defense of Trump’s conduct toward Ukraine or his public call for China, from the White House lawn, to investigate the Bidens.”
“Joe Biden risks a humiliating third or fourth-place finish in Iowa early next year, according to nearly a dozen senior Democrats in the state who attribute it to what they see as a poorly organized operation that has failed to engage with voters and party leaders,” Bloomberg reports.
“With fewer than 100 days until the Feb. 3 caucuses, Biden is failing to spend the time with small groups of voters and party officials that Iowans expect and his campaign’s outreach has been largely ineffective, according to 11 senior Democrats in the state. They worry that could send Biden to a crippling loss behind Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg, who have highly organized campaigns in Iowa, said the Democrats.”
“It seems very clear that he is incredibly concerned about Ukrainian defense. I don’t know that he’s concerned about American policy… We all have an affinity to our homeland where we came from… He has an affinity for the Ukraine.”
— Former Rep. Sean Duffy (R-WI), in a CNN interview, trying to challenge the credibility of Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a who will testify in the House impeachment inquiry today.
“A growing number of Republicans are privately warning of increasing fears of a total wipeout in 2020: House, Senate, and White House,” Axios reports.
“All of this is unfolding while the economy still looks strong, and before public impeachment proceedings have officially begun.”
The Guardian: “Jeremy Corbyn has announced that Labour is ready to back a general election now that the EU27 has granted a three-month Brexit delay, making a pre-Christmas poll all but certain.”
“With the Liberal Democrats and the Scottish National party preparing to support a one-line bill tabled by Boris Johnson’s government later on Tuesday, triggering an early poll, Corbyn said his party would also support it.”
CNN: “A San Francisco man is going to extreme lengths to call out Facebook’s controversial policy of allowing politicians to run false ads on its platform. On Monday morning, he registered as a candidate in California’s 2022 gubernatorial election — not with the primary goal of becoming governor, but so he can run false Facebook ads of his own.”
Wall Street Journal:”Top White House officials have been urging a cautious approach to the escalating impeachment proceedings in the House, operating under the belief that because President Trump withstood the Mueller investigation he can overcome the threat posed by the latest round of scrutiny.”
“That circumspect White House view, in the face of growing criticism from some Republican allies, has most clearly been articulated by Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and adviser and one of the few senior aides remaining in the West Wing since Robert Mueller was appointed special counsel in May 2017.”
“During impeachment-related meetings inside the White House, Mr. Kushner has urged officials to remain calm, homing in on one of the president’s often repeated lines: that the impeachment inquiry is the latest in a long line of partisan attacks the West Wing has had to endure. Mr. Kushner’s message has been that the facts are in the White House’s favor, and that reduces the need to be on the defensive.”
Playbook: “Every major investigation has its breakout witness — someone who helps bury the target or changes the course of the investigation. Democrats think they might have that in Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who will testify today.”
“Vindman — a Ukrainian-born, two-decade veteran of the U.S. Army with a Purple Heart from fighting in Iraq — will testify today that ‘he believed President Donald Trump undermined U.S. national security when he appealed to Ukraine’s president to investigate his political rivals.”
“Shouldn’t this end all discussion of the whistleblower? There is now a named person who heard the call with Volodymyr Zelensky, was concerned about its contents and reported it to a government attorney.”
Greg Mankiw, former economic adviser to President George W. Bush, writes that he’s no longer a Republican.
“First, the Republican Party has largely become the Party of Trump. Too many Republicans in Congress are willing, in the interest of protecting their jobs, to overlook Trump’s misdeeds (just as too many Democrats were for Clinton during his impeachment). I have no interest in associating myself with that behavior. Maybe someday, the party will return to having honorable leaders like Bush, McCain, and Romney. Until then, count me out.”
“Second, in Massachusetts, unenrolled voters can vote in either primary. The Democratic Party is at a crossroads, where it has to choose either a center-left candidate (Biden, Buttigieg, Klobuchar, Yang) or a far-left populist (Warren, Sanders) as their nominee for president. I intend to help them choose the former.”
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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