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As President Trump continues to question the advice of public health experts, he’s now blaming the media for the country’s economic slowdown.
“The LameStream Media is the dominant force in trying to get me to keep our country closed as long as possible in the hope that it will be detrimental to my election success. The real people want to get back to work ASAP. We will be stronger than ever before!”
“California Gov. Gavin Newsom said that the state has seen one million unemployment claims in less than two weeks as the coronavirus pandemic has led to businesses being shutdown across the state,” CNBC reports.
“Newsom’s announcement comes one day before a key national data release on new jobless claims for the United States, which some have projected to be in the multi-millions. The initial claims data has never before surpassed 1 million, and it was 285,000 last week.”
“A round of 11th-hour objections is throwing a curveball into the Senate’s consideration of a mammoth stimulus package,” The Hill reports.
“But a brewing fight over a deal on unemployment provisions is threatening to open the door to a push for broader changes to the bill, which was negotiated by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.”
A new CBS/YouGov poll asked Democrats who they trust for information on the coronavirus pandemic. Their answers are instructive: the CDC 87%, your governor 75%, the media 72%, friends and family 72%, religious leaders 44%, President Trump 14%.
Compare that to the answers of Republicans: President Trump 90%, the CDC 84%, friends and family 81%, religious leaders 71%, your governor 65%, the media 13%.
“A mystery of the 2020 election was solved Tuesday as it became clear the Montana Republican Party paid for an effort to qualify the Montana Green Party for the ballot this election,” the Missoulian reports.
“Earlier this year paid petitioners appeared in Montana’s larger cities gathering signatures to qualify the Greens to run candidates this cycle, even though the Montana Green Party has made clear it did not do any work to qualify for the ballot this year and had not planned to run any candidates.”
“A compilation video of mayors lambasting people for flouting coronavirus quarantine rules has struck a chord with Italians, who have shared it in their thousands on social media,” The Guardian reports.
Democratic strategist Lis Smith tells Vanity Fair that expecting President Trump’s blunders to have political consequences all by themselves would be a huge mistake, as polls are already showing.
Said Smith: “That line of thinking drives me fucking nuts. Democrats always think that there’s going to be some divine intervention, that Trump will somehow self-destruct. That is a losing strategy.”
Jennifer Palmieri added: “What we used to think of as a politician setting himself on fire is how Trump thrives.”
“My focus is just dealing with this crisis right now. I haven’t thought about any more debates. I think we’ve had enough debates. I think we should get on with this.”
— Joe Biden, quoted by ABC News, when asked if there should be more Democratic presidential debates.
New York Times: “Since reviving the daily White House briefing — a practice abandoned last year by an administration that bristles at outside scrutiny — Mr. Trump and his coronavirus updates have attracted an average audience of 8.5 million on cable news, roughly the viewership of the season finale of The Bachelor.”
A Biden Super PAC is out with a new ad that sounds like it could be the theme of Joe Biden’s presidential campaign for the next seven months.
Playbook says a voice vote in the House on the massive economic relief package is most likely and not a unanimous consent.
“Let us explain. The No. 1 choice is a unanimous consent vote, which would have the House pass this bill without any recorded action. If they can’t do that — remember, just one person needs to dissent — the next best option is a voice vote, a method that’s not appreciably different than a unanimous consent, but allows lawmakers to go to the floor to shout ‘aye’ or ‘no.’ The chair decides which side prevails. The political benefit to a voice vote is people can come and vote if they choose.”
“If all of that goes sideways, the next best option is to bring the House back, and allow for a very long vote series, in which the voting machines — they include a card slot, and two buttons to cast your vote — would be cleaned after each use.”
According to Der Spiegel, the G7 foreign ministers haven’t been able to agree on a joint statement on the coronavirus because of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s insistence that they call it the “Wuhan virus.”
A new Morning Consult poll finds 74% of voters support a national quarantine, limiting activity except essential trips such as to the grocery store and the pharmacy.
New Rochelle Mayor Noam Bramson talks to Chris Riback about the challenges of running one of the first cities hit by the coronavirus.
Nearly every national media organization suddenly paid a visit. And the face of New Rochelle through all of this – the one racing from town meetings to food distribution centers to senior living homes to religious groups to 60 Minutes interviews – is the city’s hometown mayor Noam Bramson.
Full disclosure: I’ve know Noam and Chris for nearly 30 years and found this conversation as interesting as those we had in graduate school. But I think you will too.
According to the political betting markets, Gov. Andrew Cuomo is now more likely than Sen. Bernie Sanders to be the Democratic presidential nominee.
“The Department of Homeland Security has been briefed that New York City’s morgues are nearing capacity,” Politico reports.
“Officials were told that morgues in the city are expected to reach capacity next week, per the briefing. A third person familiar with the situation in New York said that some of the city’s hospital morgues hit capacity over the last seven days.”
CNN’s Kaitlin Collins asked President Trump how he decided to have the “country opened” by Easter Sunday:
COLLINS: Who suggested Easter? Who suggested that day?
TRUMP: I just thought it was a beautiful time. A beautiful time. A beautiful timeline. It’s a great day.
A company is analyzing phone GPS location data to create a Social Distancing Scoreboard that grades, county by county, which residents are changing their behavior.
The scorecard uses the reduction in the total distance users travel as an index for whether we’re staying in one place.
Geoffrey Fowler: “Efforts to track public health during the coronavirus pandemic are a reminder of the many ways phones reveal our personal lives, both as individuals and in the aggregate. Unacast’s location data comes from games, shopping and utility apps that tens of millions of Americans have installed on their phones — information the company normally analyzes for retailers, real estate firms and marketers. It’s part of a shadowy world of location tracking that consumers often have little idea is going on.”
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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