Disgraced former Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) has to report to federal prison on Monday, WABC reports.
The 53-year-old was sentenced to 21 to 27 months in prison for sexting a 15-year-old girl.
Disgraced former Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) has to report to federal prison on Monday, WABC reports.
The 53-year-old was sentenced to 21 to 27 months in prison for sexting a 15-year-old girl.
Carter Page told the House Intelligence Committee that he met Russian government officials during a July 2016 trip he took to Moscow, the New York Times reports.
“Shortly after the trip, Mr. Page sent an email to at least one Trump campaign aide describing insights he had after conversations with government officials, legislators and business executives during his time in Moscow.”
“The new details of the trip present a different picture than the account Mr. Page has given during numerous appearances in the news media in recent months and are yet another example of a Trump adviser meeting with Russians officials during the 2016 campaign.”
You are reading the free version of Political Wire.
“One of President Trump’s most trusted confidants, a security chief who served as his sounding board for nearly two decades, will face questions from congressional investigators next week about Trump’s 2013 trip to Moscow,” the Washington Post reports.
“The excursion is at the center of some of the most salacious allegations contained in a now-famous dossier, which contains unverified charges that Trump has vehemently disputed.”
Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) is firing back at President Trump over his push for the Justice Department to investigate Democrats and Hillary Clinton, The Hill reports.
Said Corker: “President Trump’s pressuring of the Justice Department and FBI to pursue cases against his adversaries and calling for punishment before trials take place are totally inappropriate.”
He added that the president’s remarks “not only undermine our justice system but erode the American people’s confidence in our institutions.”
A new Roanoke College poll in Virginia finds Ralph Northam (D) and Ed Gillespie (R) are tied in the race for governor, 47% to 47%.
Said pollster Harry Wilson: “As we noted in the last poll, Republicans closed well in the 2013 and 2014 elections. This one may be following the same script.”
“An Associated Press investigation into the digital break-ins that disrupted the U.S. presidential contest has sketched out an anatomy of the hack that led to months of damaging disclosures about the Democratic Party’s nominee. It wasn’t just a few aides that the hackers went after; it was an all-out blitz across the Democratic Party. They tried to compromise Clinton’s inner circle and more than 130 party employees, supporters and contractors.”
“The AP’s reconstruction— based on a database of 19,000 malicious links recently shared by cybersecurity firm Secureworks — shows how the hackers worked their way around the Clinton campaign’s top-of-the-line digital security to steal chairman John Podesta’s emails in March 2016.”
Matthew Yglesias: “There’s no need to pass a giant tax reform package, and there’s also no need to run around Washington with a hangdog look or vague sense of shame about it. With the federal government under GOP control, the judiciary is filling up with GOP appointees. Regulatory agencies are in the hands of people who share the party’s mostly pro-business orientation. Appropriations bills are pouring money into the military and domestic security forces. Partisan control of the government is a big deal with or without major legislation.”
“But Republicans are mostly a party of cultural grievance-mongers, not ambitious legislators. That’s why Donald Trump is their president. That’s why they don’t seem to notice or care that Paul Ryan is a total fraud. They’d be a lot happier if they just owned it.”
Recode: “U.S. lawmakers are probing the extent of the Kremlin’s campaign to disrupt last year’s presidential election and have focused their latest efforts on tech platforms like Twitter.”
“But new data show that many news publications — from established outfits like the Post, the Miami Herald (owned by McClatchy), Buzzfeed, CBS and even Vox, to controversial alt-right hubs like InfoWars — were duped into citing some of these nefarious tweets in their coverage, perhaps unwittingly amplifying the reach of Russian propaganda.”
“After a display of unity for the unveiling of an ambitious plan to slash individual and corporate taxes, some House Republicans began late Thursday to pick out the parts of the tax legislation they don’t like,” Bloomberg reports.
“The ink was barely dry on the first draft when at least four Republicans declared they would vote against the bill in its current form. While the early opponents represent high-tax states that would get slammed by the plan’s elimination of state and local income-tax deductions, several other areas began to emerge as points of contention as Republicans sifted through the 429-page bill.”
Andrew Sullivan: “If Gillespie wins, or the result is close, it means the Trump-transformed GOP is electorally viable in every swing district in 2018. That it could win in the state where actual white supremacists marched this past summer and when the president is 20 points underwater is a sobering reminder of the actual state of play in our politics. I can only hope it’s a wake-up call to the Dems. In 2017, they are either useless or actively counterproductive in the struggle to resist right-authoritarianism.”
“They have learned nothing from 2016. Their intelligentsia seems determined to ensure that no midwestern whites ever vote for the party again. Their public faces are still Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer, and Nancy Pelosi. They still believe that something other than electoral politics — the courts, the press, the special counsel — will propel them back to power. They can’t seem to grasp the nettle of left-populism. And they remain obsessed with a Russia scandal that most swing voters don’t give a damn about.”
“Sam Clovis was almost a comically bad nominee, even for this administration.”
— Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), in a statement.
Harvard Crimson: “Sean Spicer was publicly offered a Visiting Fellowship here at the Harvard Kennedy School—and then allowed to speak entirely off the record.”
“During his time on campus, Spicer had closed-door forums with select faculty and fellows, spoke in a few chosen classes, and attended invite-only meals with selected groups of students. In total, 11 events over three days, all off the record, none open to the general student body or public. Not a single word Sean Spicer spoke during his Visiting Fellowship at Harvard was on the record, nor could a single word could be heard without an explicit invite.”
BuzzFeed: “Kid Rock sold merchandise for a fake Senate campaign in Michigan for months, all the while encouraging rumors that he would run and teasing announcements. Now that the ‘campaign’ is officially over… the artist won’t say how much money he made from the ‘Kid Rock For Senate’ stunt or where it went.”
“Top House GOP campaign strategists met with former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon on Friday morning — an indication party leaders are attempting to avert the divisive primaries that Bannon is organizing against Senate Republicans,” Politico reports.
Frank Bruni: “It hit me this week, around the time when Sarah Huckabee Sanders was blithely seconding Chief of Staff John Kelly’s Civil War revisionism, that I missed Sean Spicer.”
“I missed the panic in his eyes, which signaled a scintilla of awareness that he was peddling hooey. I missed the squeak in his voice, which suggested perhaps the tiniest smidgen of shame.”
“He never seemed to me entirely at home in his domicile of deception; she dwells without evident compunction in a gaudier fairyland of grander fictions. There’s no panic. No squeak. Just that repulsed expression, as if a foul odor had wafted in and she knew — just knew — that the culprit was CNN.”
“Lemme tell you, the one that matters is me. I’m the only one that matters, because when it comes to it, that’s what the policy is going to be.”
— President Trump, in an interview on Fox News, about unfilled State Department positions.
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.
“There are a lot of blogs and news sites claiming to understand politics, but only a few actually do. Political Wire is one of them.”
— Chuck Todd, host of “Meet the Press”
“Concise. Relevant. To the point. Political Wire is the first site I check when I’m looking for the latest political nugget. That pretty much says it all.”
— Stuart Rothenberg, editor of the Rothenberg Political Report
“Political Wire is one of only four or five sites that I check every day and sometimes several times a day, for the latest political news and developments.”
— Charlie Cook, editor of the Cook Political Report
“The big news, delicious tidbits, pearls of wisdom — nicely packaged, constantly updated… What political junkie could ask for more?”
— Larry Sabato, Center for Politics, University of Virginia
“Political Wire is a great, great site.”
— Joe Scarborough, host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”
“Taegan Goddard has a knack for digging out political gems that too often get passed over by the mainstream press, and for delivering the latest electoral developments in a sharp, no frills style that makes his Political Wire an addictive blog habit you don’t want to kick.”
— Arianna Huffington, founder of The Huffington Post
“Political Wire is one of the absolute must-read sites in the blogosphere.”
— Glenn Reynolds, founder of Instapundit
“I rely on Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire for straight, fair political news, he gets right to the point. It’s an eagerly anticipated part of my news reading.”
— Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist.