The Burlington Free Press notes that Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) is paying to run ads for her presidential campaign when someone does a Google search for Bernie Sanders.
GOP Operative Will Oversee News at CNN
Sarah Isgur, Jeff Sessions’s former chief spokeswoman at the Justice Department, will join CNN as a political editor overseeing coverage of the 2020 campaign, Politico reports.
“Isgur joined the administration in 2017 after overcoming resistance from the president, who balked at bringing on a political operative who had trashed him on the campaign trail. As deputy campaign manager for Carly Fiorina’s presidential campaign, and in the months after Fiorina bowed out of the race, Isgur repeatedly laced into Trump… While it is common for departing administration officials to join cable news networks as analysts or contributors, it is less common for them to oversee news coverage. Isgur has no experience in news but a long history as a political operative.”
Margaret Sullivan: CNN’s hiring of a GOP operative as political editor is even worse than it looks.
More Virginia Voters Say Northam Should Stay In Office
Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D) “appears to have quelled any widespread public clamor for his resignation in the wake of his blackface scandal,” Politico reports.
“Two new polls out Wednesday show pluralities say the Democrat should not quit or be forced out over a racist photo that appeared on his medical-school yearbook page 35 years ago. Most African-American voters agree that he shouldn’t go, according to one of the surveys.”
Trump Says New York Times Is the ‘Enemy of the People’
President Trump called the New York Times “a true enemy of the people” on Twitter, just a day after an extensive report detailing the ways in which he has sought to derail the investigations into his presidency.
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Three New Scandals Rock Trump Administration
First Read notes it’s hard to keep up with all of the alleged scandals hitting the Trump administration, including three just yesterday:
- Trump asked his acting attorney general to put a Trump ally, the U.S. attorney in New York, in charge of the Michael Cohen investigation, according to the New York Times.
- Whistleblowers “have told a congressional committee that efforts by former national security adviser Michael Flynn to transfer sensitive nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia may have violated the law, and investigators fear Trump is still considering it,” NBC News reports.
- “House and Senate Democrats say they have obtained evidence that a senior official at the Department of Education tried to oust the department’s independent watchdog after she pushed back on an attempt to interfere in an active investigation of Secretary Betsy DeVos,” per NBC News.
“Any one of these stories would have dominated the news — for days and weeks — in any other administration. But in our current era, it was just Tuesday.”
Bernie Sanders Raises $4 Million In 12 Hours
First Read: “At 8:00 pm ET last night, Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign announced having raised more than $4 million since the start of his campaign kickoff from nearly 150,000 individuals. That’s in just 12 hours.”
“By comparison, Kamala Harris’ campaign raised $1.5 million in its first 24 hours; Amy Klobuchar’s reported raising more than $1 million in its first 48 hours; and Elizabeth Warren got some $300,000 from ActBlue in her first day (although that’s not a complete way to measure total fundraising).”
“The question we have is: If Beto O’Rourke does run, can he match or exceed Bernie’s first-day amount?”
Panel to Assess Climate Change as Security Threat
“The White House is working to assemble a panel to assess whether climate change poses a national security threat, according to documents obtained by the Washington Post, a conclusion that federal intelligence agencies have affirmed several times since President Trump took office.”
“The proposed Presidential Committee on Climate Security, which would be established by executive order, is being spearheaded by William Happer, a National Security Council senior director. Happer, an emeritus professor of physics at Princeton University, has said that carbon emissions linked to climate change should be viewed as an asset rather than a pollutant.”
Trump Has Attacked the Russia Investigation 1,200 Times
“President Trump has publicly criticized dozens of people and groups related to federal inquiries into contacts between his campaign and Russia,” according to a New York Times analysis..
“The attacks, which number nearly 1,200, are part of a strategy to beat back the investigations. They have also opened him to possible obstruction of justice charges. They include statements made on Twitter, in official speeches, at rallies and during news media interviews and other press events.”
“While it is highly unusual for anyone — let alone the president of the United States — to comment on continuing criminal investigations, Mr. Trump has done so at least once on 330 days, or more than 43 percent of his time in office as of Feb. 14.”
Trump Revives ‘Crazy Bernie’ Nickname
President Trump revived his “Crazy Bernie” nickname as he greeted the entry of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) in the 2020 presidential race.
Said Trump: “Crazy Bernie has just entered the race. I wish him well!”
The White House Plan to Exploit McCabe’s Book
“White House officials and sources close to President Trump are treating Andrew McCabe’s book as an opportunity,” according to Jonathan Swan.
“These people plan to keep promoting bits from The Threat, which has rocketed past Michelle Obama’s Becoming to #1 on Amazon’s best-sellers list, that support their ‘deep state’ narrative. They also plan to argue that the rest of the former FBI deputy director’s claims are a pack of lies.”
“The part they’ll trumpet as true: McCabe’s comments about discussions, at the highest rungs of the FBI, about removing Trump from office. Trump and his allies view this as vindicating his narrative that there’s a Deep State ‘coup’ afoot.”
FBI Had Backup Plan to Save Russia Probe Evidence
Associated Press: “The plan was crafted in the chaotic days after Comey was fired, when the FBI began investigating whether President Donald Trump had obstructed justice and whether he might be, wittingly or not, in league with the Russians.”
“The goal was to ensure that the information collected under the investigations, which included probes of Trump associates and possible coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign, would survive the firings or reassignments of top law enforcement officials.”
Trump Could Formally End Korean War
““With their second summit fast approaching, speculation is growing that President Donald Trump may try to persuade North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to commit to denuclearization by giving him something he wants more than almost anything else: an announcement of peace and an end to the Korean War,” the AP reports.
“Such an announcement could make history. It would be right in line with Trump’s opposition to ‘forever wars.’ And, coming more than six decades after the fighting essentially ended, it just seems like common sense. But, if not done carefully, it could open up a whole new set of problems for Washington.”
Meanwhile, Reuters reports that veteran North Korean diplomats “are being sidelined from nuclear talks ahead of a second summit with the United States as recent defections and allegations of spying undermine the trust of leader Kim Jong Un.”
O’Rourke Sees Immigration as His Opening
“The feud between President Donald Trump and Beto O’Rourke over immigration resumed at a distance on Tuesday, driving the politics of a border wall further into the 2020 presidential campaign,” Politico reports.
“Tying his political identity to this heavily Hispanic, heavily Democratic region of the Southwest, the former Texas congressman has seized on Trump’s border politics to create an opening for himself in the Democratic primary.”
Deutsche Bank Weighed Restructuring Trump Loans
“Top Deutsche Bank executives were so concerned after the 2016 U.S. election that the Trump Organization might default on about $340 million of loans while Donald Trump was in office that they discussed extending repayment dates until after the end of a potential second term in 2025,” Bloomberg reports.
Trump Builds More Traditional Campaign Operation
President Trump “is assembling a sprawling, corporate-style reelection campaign with 10 divisions reporting to a single senior adviser, campaign manager Brad Parscale — a top-down structure that represents everything Trump’s improvisational 2016 effort was not,” Politico reports.
“The organization, described in interviews by a half-dozen Trump top political aides, prioritizes the campaign’s digital- and data-focused strategy, in keeping with Parscale’s expertise. The campaign has hired more than 30 full-time staffers so far and has begun building out a surrogate network devoted exclusively to putting pro-Trump talking heads on TV and radio and in newspaper op-eds — a move that reflects Trump’s fixation with how he’s portrayed in the media.
Trump Grows Frustrated with Dan Coats
“President Trump has grown increasingly disenchanted with Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats, who has served as the nation’s top intelligence official for nearly two years, leading some administration officials to worry he will soon be dismissed,” the Washington Post reports.
“The president has never seen Coats as a close or trusted adviser, the people said, but he has become more frustrated with him in recent weeks over public statements that Trump sees as undercutting his policy goals, particularly with respect to reaching a disarmament agreement with North Korea.”
Wilbur Ross Faces Ethics Violation
“The U.S. government’s top ethics watchdog has ruled that Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross violated his ethics agreement by inaccurately reporting stock holdings in his 2018 financial disclosure form,” the Washington Post reports.
“Ross — one of the wealthiest members of President Trump’s Cabinet — did not sell stock he held in a bank, despite reporting otherwise.l
