CNN: “Stored in devices seized from Lev Parnas by law enforcement, there’s a 34-second cell phone video of Rudy Giuliani relishing a bullfight. There are also photos of Donald Trump’s personal attorney posing with two matadors, a flamenco dancer twirling her skirt and an image of the father of Venezuela’s opposition leader beside a tray of hors d’oeuvres on the lawn of a Spanish castle.”
The best photo: Parnas wiping Giuliani’s face in London in 2019.
After President Trump said “bullshit” in a television appearance at the White House yesterday, NBC News searched the 132,480 records from the American Presidency Project and found six people had used the word before at public events.
One was songwriter Diane Warren, one was singer Kanye West and the rest were by Trump.
Chris Riback talks to Washington Post reporters Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig, authors of the bestseller, A Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump’s Testing of America.
A great conversation and a great book.
“Anita Dunn, a veteran Democratic operative and top adviser to Joe Biden, is taking on an expanded role in his campaign as he seeks a reset after a disastrous fourth-place finish in the Iowa caucuses,” the New York Times reports.
“The move follows days of speculation inside Mr. Biden’s Philadelphia headquarters about potential staff shake-ups following a disappointing Iowa result that has complicated Mr. Biden’s path forward. Before her elevation, Ms. Dunn had been focused chiefly on communications strategy.”
“Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), appearing in Maine for the first time since her vote not to impeach President Trump, said that she disapproves of retribution against anyone who came forward with evidence during the process,” the Portland Press Herald reports.
Said Collins: “I’m obviously not in favor of any kind of retribution against anyone who came forward with evidence.”
John Cassidy: “The key point is that Trump is now sufficiently popular, and the economic environment is sufficiently benign, to make his reelection a real and live danger. (In the online betting markets, for what they are worth, he is already a strong favorite to win.) This year, again, the result will most likely come down to ten battleground states: Arizona, Florida, Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, and, of course, the three Rust Belt states that Trump flipped in 2016: Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. According to the data-research firm Morning Consult, Trump’s disapproval rating currently exceeds his approval rating in all of these states apart from Florida. But the gap has narrowed in a number of places, including Arizona, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania.”
“The identity of the Democratic candidate will obviously be vitally important, but so will the manner in which the campaign is conducted. Everyone associated with the Democratic Party—from grassroots activists to elected officials and Party operatives—will need to unite behind the winner of the primary, whoever it is, and avoid scoring any own goals. During a hard-fought primary election, it is difficult, if not impossible, for the various candidates and their supporters to project this sort of unity and discipline.”
“A U.S. Senate candidate in Maine has selected an unusual logo for campaign T-shirts – the guillotine – citing the need for a revolution to remove big money from politics,” the Portland Press Herald reports.
President Trump claimed that Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) committed a crime by ripping up a copy of his speech at the State of the Union on Tuesday evening, The Hill reports.
Said Trump: “I thought it was a terrible thing. It’s illegal what she did. She broke the law.”
Trump asserted that Pelosi was barred from ripping up the speech because it is an official document, later calling it “very illegal.”
“The White House plans to transfer Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, whose testimony in the House impeachment hearings infuriated President Trump and his allies, out of the National Security Council staff as early as Friday,” the New York Times reports.
Trump essentially confirmed the move in brief comments with reporters: “I’m not happy with him.”
Daily Beast: “The Bloomberg campaign has quietly begun a campaign on Tribe, a ‘branded content marketplace’ that connects social media influencers with the brands who want to advertise to their followers, to pitch influencers on creating content highlighting why they love the former New York City mayor—for a price.”
“For a fixed $150 fee, the Bloomberg campaign is pitching micro-influencers—someone who has from 1,000 to 100,000 followers, in industry parlance—to create original content ‘that tells us why Mike Bloomberg is the electable candidate who can rise above the fray, work across the aisle so ALL Americans feel heard & respected.'”
Steve Israel: “Pragmatism, compromise and even ideological agility have always been part of politics. But what is happening now is dangerous. The rationalizers aren’t just turning against their own principles; many are turning against fundamental norms of democracy. The constant rationalization has made them unrecognizable. Unlike the Republicans who were Trumpian even before Donald Trump, the rationalizers have forgotten that what they now believe they once made up.”
“So they will stick with Mr. Trump. No matter how damning the facts or clear the evidence, they will defend him.”
“For so many of them, the loyalty is, well, quite rational.”
“A federal appeals court threw out a lawsuit by more than 200 Democratic members of Congress that alleged President Trump was improperly profiting from his presidency,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled unanimously that the lawmakers didn’t have legal standing to proceed with their claims. The lawmakers couldn’t assert the institutional interests of the House or Senate against the president because the group didn’t constitute a majority in the legislature and couldn’t represent Congress as a whole.”
New York Times: “There was never much doubt that President Trump would make boasts about the economy central to his re-election campaign; that is his style, after all. What is becoming more clear is that the data on the economy are giving him something genuinely worth boasting about.”
“The big headline out of the latest numbers was that employers added 225,000 jobs in January, comfortably more than analysts had expected. That alone suggests that economic growth is steady at a minimum, and maybe accelerating as the year begins.”
Politico: “Familiar presidential battlegrounds—not just Ohio and Virginia, but also Colorado, Iowa and more—are fading from the radar. States that haven’t experienced a top-of-the-ticket dogfight in decades—like Arizona, Georgia, Minnesota and maybe even Texas—are suddenly poised to play a pivotal role.”
“You can argue about whether Minnesota—a cradle of liberalism that produced Hubert Humphrey, Walter Mondale and Paul Wellstone—is a pipe dream for Trump in 2020. Or whether Texas—where Republicans hold all nine statewide elected offices, both Senate seats and both chambers of the Legislature—will truly be in play in November. But one thing seems increasingly inarguable: This presidential race will be fought on electoral terrain that would have been unthinkable four years ago, before Trump blew everything up.”
See the latest consensus electoral map, based on the most recent forecasts.
Former Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL) told CNN he is ending his uphill challenge against Donald Trump for the 2020 Republican presidential nomination, after suffering a crushing loss in the Iowa GOP caucuses in which he received only 1% of the vote.
“President Trump’s company charges the Secret Service for the rooms agents use while protecting him at his luxury properties — billing U.S. taxpayers at rates as high as $650 per night,” the Washington Post reports.
“Those charges, compiled here for the first time, show that Trump has an unprecedented — and largely hidden — business relationship with his own government.”
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.
