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“The House threatened on Wednesday to subpoena the White House if it did not comply by Friday with requests for a broad range of documents related to an alleged scheme to pressure Ukraine into investigating a leading political rival of President Trump,” the New York Times reports.
Said House Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings: “I do not take this step lightly. Over the past several weeks, the committees tried several times to obtain voluntary compliance with our requests for documents, but the White House has refused to engage with — or even respond to — the committees.”
Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who was fired by President Trump, praised the president for “relentlessly and actually honoring the promises he made to the American people,” the Birmingham News reports.
Said Sessions: “That’s why I still do support him.”
“Andrew Yang raised $10 million in the third quarter of the year — a huge jump in support for the outsider Democratic presidential candidate,” Politico reports.
“The haul is more than triple the $2.8 million Yang raised in the second quarter, as he has started to outpace sitting senators and other elected officials in polls.”
Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) sent a letter to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey asking the company to suspend President Trump’s account for violating its user agreement with his tweets about the Ukraine whistleblower and Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA).
Just published: The Cigarette: A Political History by Sarah Milov.
“The untold political story of the most controversial consumer product in American history.”
Nate Cohn: “Elizabeth Warren is gaining. She has breached 20 percent of the vote in recent national surveys and might hold a narrow lead in Iowa and New Hampshire. The prediction markets now consider her a clear favorite to win the nomination. It can be hard to see how her Democratic rivals will attack or stop her.”
“But the challenge facing Ms. Warren, if past primaries are any indication, isn’t those rivals. It is whether she will hit a wall: the rank and file of the Democratic primary electorate.”
Janan Ganesh: “Since the Ukraine scandal emerged, it has been natural to assume total Republican commitment to Mr Trump. Such is the tribalism of a riven nation.”
“There is another scenario, though, and it does not stop at one or two Republicans peeling away. Instead, to save itself, the GOP establishment might desert Mr Trump as swiftly and unexpectedly as it bent the knee to him in 2016. Whether this manifests as the Senate supermajority needed for his ousting is still hugely doubtful. But there are other kinds of defiance: a staff exodus from the White House, senatorial refusals to defend him, the turning of implicated parties on one another.”
“Skeptics will say this requires the party to wake up from its cringing passivity. But it has been doing that, in fits and starts, for a while now.”
Daily Beast: “When Rudy Giuliani appeared on cable news programs last week, he hammered home one talking point over and over again: The State Department knew he was trying to dig up dirt on Joe Biden and his son Hunter.”
“Giuliani’s on-air appearances threw the department into a tizzy, forcing Mike Pompeo to try to put a lid on the crisis of confidence bubbling up under him. For Pompeo, solving the problem meant finding someone to blame—and there was only one individual who fit the mold: former U.S. representative for Ukraine negotiations Kurt Volker.”
“Several U.S. officials told The Daily Beast the former Ukraine negotiator said openly that he was not ready to leave his position… Volker is set to go to Capitol Hill on Thursday with the backing of a cadre of current and former diplomats.”
Associated Press: “Trump has long measured allies’ loyalty by their willingness to fight for him on TV, and he complained bitterly this week that few had done so. And those who did, including House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy on CBS’ 60 Minutes, he believed had flubbed their appearance.”
“Though there has been growing discontent with Giuliani in the West Wing and State Department, where some officials blame him for leading Trump into the Ukraine mess, the president continued to stand by his personal lawyer.”
Wall Street Journal: “‘The only person that likes Rudy on TV right now is Trump,’ said another person close to the president, adding that Mr. Trump ‘likes people who get on TV and fight for him.’”
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo admitted Wednesday that he was on the July 25 phone call in which President Trump asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden, CNN reports.
Said Pompeo: “I was on the phone call.”
Pompeo had previously been coy about his role in the call, giving an evasive answer to ABC News when asked directly about the call last week.
“President Trump’s political advisers have concluded a monthslong effort to tighten the rules for choosing delegates to the Republican National Convention, all but ensuring there are no dissenting speeches at the gathering of party officials in Charlotte next year,” the New York Times reports.
“In 37 states and territories, there have been changes to the rules that will all but stamp out the possibility of any raucous divide on the convention floor. Those kinds of schisms have plagued party conventions in years when a Republican incumbent went on to lose his re-election bid, Republican officials said. Mr. Trump himself confronted an effort to strip him of delegates in 2016.”
President Trump personally contacted Boris Johnson to ask for help as he tried to discredit the Mueller investigation into possible connections between Russia and his 2016 election campaign, the Times of London reports.
Wall Street Journal: “The whistleblower is expected to testify before the House Intelligence Committee as soon as early next week, though his attorneys and the committee continue to negotiate logistics, including a time and place.”
Politico: “House investigators are looking into an allegation that groups — including at least one foreign government — tried to ingratiate themselves to President Donald Trump by booking rooms at his hotels but never staying in them.”
Said Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA): “Now we’re looking at near raw bribery. That was the risk from day one — foreign governments and others trying to seek favor because we know Trump pays attention to this…. It’s an obvious attempt to curry favor with him.”
A “very seasoned and well-known GOP operative” emails Playbook:
“GOP lawmakers and operatives are concerned at what appears to be a lack of urgency from the Trump administration in forming an organized, unified response engine to the Democratic impeachment threat. There is either a failure to fully appreciate the gravity of the situation; or an inability to protect the president like they did his Supreme Court nominees with a centralized war room that has credibility with stakeholders across the party.”
“Nobody wants to look like Kevin McCarthy did on ‘60 Minutes’ and right now they’ll duck and cover until they’re on firmer footing. The Trump administration has blazed their own communications path up to this point, but there is deep skepticism that the late-night Fox lineup will have any credibility with rank-and-file Republicans that are necessary to prosecute this argument against House Democrats.”
“You know, if it wasn’t for your show, Sean, they would destroy him absolutely. You are the difference between Donald J. Trump and Richard Nixon.”
— Geraldo Rivera, speaking to Sean Hannity.
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.