“You have no idea how much crazy stuff we kill.”
— An unnamed White House staffer to Mike Allen, on why many Trump aides are not resigning despite their disappointment.
“You have no idea how much crazy stuff we kill.”
— An unnamed White House staffer to Mike Allen, on why many Trump aides are not resigning despite their disappointment.
Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) sidestepped questions about whether he thinks President Trump should face a primary challenge in 2020, Politico reports.
Said Kasich: “I don’t have any plans to do anything like that. I’m rooting for him to get it together. We all are. I mean, we’re only, like, seven months into this presidency.”
NBC News: “As Democrats look to the horizon in 2018, they think they see a distant tsunami forming in their favor. Trump has dreadful approval ratings; Democrats are dominating generic ballot tests, which ask voters which party they want to control Congress; and presidents almost always lose a slew of seats in their first midterm elections.”
“The last time a president went into his first midterm election as unpopular as Trump is now was in 1946, when Harry Truman lost 55 House seats. The Senate may be out of reach but Democrats say they can almost feel the House Speaker’s gavel in their hands.”
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Stan Collender: “Tax reform — the kind of wholesale change to the existing system that was enacted in the 1980s and that Donald Trump has repeatedly promised — requires a politically strong and disciplined president. The magnitude of the changes and the very large number of potential losers from tax reform requires a president who can twist arms (and, if need be, legs), provide political cover for the many tough votes the House and Senate will need to cast and is able to sell the tax bill to what is very likely to be an at least partially skeptical nation.”
“In light of the aftermath of the events in Charlotte, Virginia, and the firing/resignation of Steve Bannon, we now know for sure that Donald Trump is not currently that kind of president and can’t do any of these things.”
“As a result, the comprehensive tax reform Trump so often promised, that congressional leaders so badly seem to want, that the business community is desperate to get and on which so much of the White House’s economic program is based is very unlikely in 2017. And the prospects for 2018 don’t look that good either.”
“The Trump administration has decided to disband the federal advisory panel for the National Climate Assessment, a group aimed at helping policymakers and private-sector officials incorporate the government’s climate analysis into long-term planning,” the Washington Post reports.
“Billionaire investor Carl Icahn, who resigned Friday from an unpaid post as President Trump’s adviser on deregulation efforts, stepped down as The New Yorker was preparing to publish a lengthy article detailing Icahn’s potential conflicts of interest and questioning the legality of his actions,” the AP reports.
The must-read New Yorker piece notes Icahn “is worth more than the Trump family and all the members of the Cabinet combined — and, with no constraint on his license to counsel the President on regulations that might help his businesses, he was poised to become much richer.”
In an interview with the Washington Post, Stephen Bannon “warned Republican leaders to enthusiastically support Trump’s priorities on taxes, trade and funding a massive border wall — or risk the wrath of the president’s base.”
Said Bannon: “If the Republican Party on Capitol Hill gets behind the president on his plans and not theirs, it will all be sweetness and light, be one big happy family.”
He added “with a smile” that he does not expect “sweetness” anytime soon — and described the turbulent political moment in the Republican Party and the country as a necessary battle over Trump’s priorities.
Said Bannon: “No administration in history has been so divided among itself about the direction about where it should go.
Politico: “The departures from Trump’s White House have come at a dizzying pace in recent weeks: multiple communications directors, the chief of staff and the press secretary have all left, along with top aides on the national security council and a number of CEOs from influential business councils. But none of the departures are likely to change the dynamics as much as that of the polarizing Bannon, whose ouster on Friday could alienate conservatives, hearten some who feared his brand of populism-nationalism, and dial down the fights inside 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.”
Said GOP operative Mark Corallo: “Bannon is the intellectual heart and soul of the Trump movement. He was the think tank. He’s the idea generator… He was the guy who was the most thoughtful about how to enact the agenda, how to build a coalition.”
New York Times: “Some of Mr. Bannon’s protégés have already been sidelined while others may depart soon, people in the White House said. He will no longer have access to briefing papers or sit in meetings… Still, there are reasons to believe Mr. Bannon’s core worldview will outlast him.”
A new NBC News/Marist poll in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin shows President Trump’s approval underwater:
Said pollster Lee Miringoff: “For residents of these three critical electoral states, the reaction to the first round of the Trump presidency is decidedly negative. Residents are clearly dissatisfied in how candidate Trump transitioned into President Trump.”
David Remnick: “This latest outrage has disheartened Trump’s circle somewhat; business executives, generals and security officials, advisers, and even family members have semaphored their private despair. One of the more lasting images from Trump’s squalid appearance on Tuesday was that of his chief of staff, John Kelly, who stood listening to him with a hangdog look of shame. But Trump still retains the support of roughly a third of the country, and of the majority of the Republican electorate. The political figure Obama saw as a ‘logical conclusion of the rhetoric and tactics of the Republican Party’ has not yet come unmoored from the Party’s base.”
“The most important resistance to Trump has to come from civil society, from institutions, and from individuals who, despite their differences, believe in constitutional norms and have a fundamental respect for the values of honesty, equality, and justice. The imperative is to find ways to counteract and diminish his malignant influence not only in the overtly political realm but also in the social and cultural one. To fail in that would allow the death rattle of an old racist order to take hold as a deafening revival.”
The Los Angeles Times runs a scathing editorial:
These are not normal times.
The man in the White House is reckless and unmanageable, a danger to the Constitution, a threat to our democratic institutions.
Last week some of his worst qualities were on display: his moral vacuity and his disregard for the truth, as well as his stubborn resistance to sensible advice. As ever, he lashed out at imaginary enemies and scapegoated others for his own failings. Most important, his reluctance to offer a simple and decisive condemnation of racism and Nazism astounded and appalled observers around the world.
With such a glaring failure of moral leadership at the top, it is desperately important that others stand up and speak out to defend American principles and values. This is no time for neutrality, equivocation or silence. Leaders across America — and especially those in the president’s own party — must summon their reserves of political courage to challenge President Trump publicly, loudly and unambiguously.
Enough is enough.
President Trump’s “racially fraught comments about a deadly neo-Nazi rally have thrust into the open some Republicans’ deeply held doubts about his competency and temperament, in an extraordinary public airing of worries and grievances about a sitting president by his own party,” the AP reports.
“Behind the high-profile denunciations voiced this week by GOP senators once considered Trump allies, scores of other, influential Republicans began to express grave concerns about the state of the Trump presidency. In interviews with Associated Press reporters across nine states, 25 Republican politicians, party officials, advisers and donors expressed worries about whether Trump has the self-discipline and capability to govern successfully.”
The Fix: Where Republican senators stand on Trump.
Boston Globe: “A city with a fraught racial past turned out tens of thousands of protesters Saturday for an overwhelming denunciation of racism, anti-Semitism, and religious bigotry, in a demonstration that was largely peaceful though punctuated with scuffles and some edgy nose-to-nose encounters among demonstrators.”
“On a hot, humid day, sweaty throngs on Boston Common chanted — sometimes angrily, often profanely — against Nazis, racism, the Ku Klux Klan, and fascists.”
Queen Elizabeth has no intention of stepping aside for Prince Charles and insists it is “duty first, nation first, I’m going to be there”, the Times of London reports.
“Royal insiders said the Queen, the world’s longest-reigning living monarch, remained as committed as ever to her duty. They dismiss claims that she will request that the Regency Act come into force in the foreseeable future.”
The White House announce that President Trump and the first lady, Melania Trump, would not participate in this year’s Kennedy Center Honors, “to allow the honorees to celebrate without any political distraction,” the New York Times reports.
“The decision was another episode in an already fraught week for the White House. Mr. Trump has become increasingly isolated after a series of comments about the white supremacist marches in Charlottesville, Va.”
Dylan Byers: “I think the only question you have to ask is: What platform is more powerful for you than being in the White House, than having the ear of the president of the United States? If you don’t have that, how powerful can you really be? That’s really what we are going to see in terms of where Bannon goes.”
“I feel jacked up. Now I’m free. I’ve got my hands back on my weapons. Someone said, ‘it’s Bannon the Barbarian.’ I am definitely going to crush the opposition. There’s no doubt. I built a fucking machine at Breitbart. And now I’m about to go back, knowing what I know, and we’re about to rev that machine up. And rev it up we will do.”
— Stephen Bannon, quoted by the Weekly Standard.
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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