Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey (R) “is contacting state legislators, and apologizing for her role in a racist student skit from her time as an Auburn student,” the Birmingham News reports.
“Ivey was president of her Alpha Gamma Delta pledge class at Auburn. Photos of her sorority sisters in blackface emerged earlier this year. None showed the governor.”
Fox News host Jeanine Pirro repeated a conspiracy theory held by some White Supremacists while claiming that Democrats are waging a vast “plot” to “replace American citizens with illegals,” Mediaite reports.
Said Pirro: “Their plan and their plot to remake America is to bring in the illegals, change the way the voting occurs in this country, give them licenses, they get to vote maybe once, maybe twice, maybe three times.”
She added: “You’ve got motor voter registration on the day of the election, we’ve got voter rolls that haven’t been purged of dead people in years, where the Democrats have resisted that. Think about that, it is a plot to remake America. To replace American citizens with illegals.”
West Virginia state Sen. Mike Maroney (R) “has been charged with soliciting prostitution, and now faces calls from the state’s Democratic party to resign from office,” CNN reports.
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Joe Biden pushed back on a report in the Washington Post that he recently told an inaccurate story in New Hampshire about traveling to Afghanistan to reward a heroic Navy captain, the Charleston Post & Courier reports.
Said Biden: “The story was that he refused the medal because the fella he tried to save —and risked his life saving — died. That’s the beginning, middle and end. The rest of you guys can take it and do what you want with it.”
Former Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) wants to make a comeback, and is eyeing a path that would put him head-on with embattled Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA), Politico reports.
“The California Republican has launched an exploratory committee, according to a website that recently touted his PAC but has since been updated to say that he’s pondering a run for the state’s 50th Congressional District given ‘a tremendous outpouring of encouragement from supporters inside the district, and around the state and across the Nation.'”
NBC News: “Each year, the country gets about 1,000 applications from people for permission to stay in the country and not face deportation so family members can get or continue lifesaving medical care that is not available in their home countries.”
“But the administration quietly told families who were granted permission to stay and with children and family members receiving this kind of medical care that their permission to stay has been rescinded and they have 33 days to leave the country. The policy is being applied retroactively to any requests filed on or before Aug. 7.”
Fox News chief anchor Shepard Smith disputed President Trump’s recent remarks about border wall construction, saying on air that “there is no new wall,” The Hill reports.
Said Smith: “The president also said in the tweet that the wall is going up rapidly. It is not. As we just reported, there’s no new wall. Only replacement for walls which were in need of repair or upgrade. Those are the facts.”
“Joe Biden painted a vivid scene for the 400 people packed into a college meeting hall. A four-star general had asked the then-vice president to travel to Kunar province in Afghanistan, a dangerous foray into ‘godforsaken country’ to recognize the remarkable heroism of a Navy captain,” the Washington Post reports.
“Some told him it was too risky, but Biden said he brushed off their concerns… The Navy captain, Biden recalled Friday night, had rappelled down a 60-foot ravine under fire and retrieved the body of an American comrade, carrying him on his back. Now the general wanted Biden to pin a Silver Star on the American hero who, despite his bravery, felt like a failure.”
But the Navy captain told Biden: “He said, ‘Sir, I don’t want the damn thing! Do not pin it on me, Sir! Please, Sir. Do not do that! He died. He died!’”
The room was silent, before he added: “This is the God’s truth. My word as a Biden.”
“Except almost every detail in the story appears to be incorrect. Based on interviews with more than a dozen U.S. troops, their commanders and Biden campaign officials, it appears as though the former vice president has jumbled elements of at least three actual events into one story of bravery, compassion and regret that never happened.”
“While Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif was making his way to France for a surprise visit at the G7 summit on Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his team scrambled to make sure President Trump wouldn’t meet with him,” Axios reports.
“Netanyahu frantically tried to get President Trump on the phone — who was in back-to-back meetings and couldn’t take the call — while his office contacted multiple senior Trump administration officials, trying to connect the two leaders.”
“He doesn’t lie. Guess who lies? The press lies.”
— Trump campaign press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, in an interview by CNN, when asked about President Trump’s lies.
Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) told CNN that she will not run as an independent candidate if she fails to win the Democratic presidential nomination.
Said Gabbard: “I will not. No, I have ruled that out.”
Nate Cohn: “One theory holds that Mr. Trump is fundamentally like any other president. This would be good news for his chances in 2020: Many presidents have gone on to win after having approval ratings like Mr. Trump’s today, and many presidents have won after a midterm drubbing. The state of the economy could be pivotal; if it stayed strong, he would have a real chance to win. His approval rating could rise, like that of prior presidents, once voters began to assess his presidency in comparison with the alternative. His relative advantage in the Electoral College could put him over the top.”
“Another theory holds that President Trump and this polarized era are unique. In this view, Mr. Trump is deeply unpopular, and opinions of his presidency are entrenched. The economy cannot save him from defeat. After all, his approval ratings are poor despite low unemployment; nothing short of fundamental changes in his conduct could improve them. In this view, the 2018 midterm election, when Democrats won the national House vote by almost nine percentage points, would be a harbinger of the general.”
“Of course, the truth could be somewhere in between (and probably is). But these two theories have different consequences for how to think about the campaign in 2020.”
“Former FBI Director James Comey violated FBI policies in how he handled memos that detailed his controversial interactions with President Trump, the Justice Department’s internal watchdog found in a report released Thursday, both in engineering the release of their contents to the press and storing them at his home without telling the FBI,” the Washington Post reports.
President Trump said he’s not inclined to do an interview with CNN because he thinks it would be “disloyal” to his supporters, The Hill reports.
Said Trump: “They are begging me to do an interview, and I just think it would be disloyal to my followers.”
He added: “I think it would be very disloyal to people that are Trump fans and people that voted for me and people that are going to vote again.”
First Read: “Here’s the good news Democrats received on Wednesday: Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., will retire from the Senate in December 2019, which means Georgia will now have two Senate seats up for grabs in 2020.”
“That’s an extra GOP seat Democrats can target — in a state that’s become more demographically friendly to them — as they try to net the three Senate seats needed to flip the chamber if they win the White House.”
“But here’s the bad news: They don’t have top-tier candidates running in Georgia right now — either against Republican Sen. David Perdue or for Isakson’s seat, especially after Stacey Abrams confirmed she wouldn’t run for either seat.”
Inside Elections: “Over the last 70 years, there have been 29 times when both of a state’s Senate seats were up for election. In 26 of those instances (90 percent of the time), one party won both seats.”
Kyle Kondik: “The last time a state holding ‘double-barreled’ concurrent Senate elections rendered a split decision was South Carolina in 1966, when it reelected party-switching Sen. Strom Thurmond (R) while backing Ernest ‘Fritz’ Hollings (D) in the special.”
Axios reporter Jonathan Swan told MSNBC that Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner have discussed the possibility of replacing Vice President Mike Pence with Nikki Haley on the 2020 Republican ticket.
Said Swan: “Certainly, there have been a number of people telling people in the White House, including the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and daughter Ivanka Trump, that Nikki Haley would be a politically smart choice to replace Pence. So this is partly why a lot of these rumors have been circulating.”
“Tom Steyer just lost a $16 million bet,” Politico reports.
“The Democratic hedge fund billionaire leapt into the presidential campaign late with a clear plan: use his mega-wealth to buy his way into the televised party debates, and then use that platform, and his unelected outsider persona, to challenge the front-runners. Steyer spent millions of dollars on TV ads to boost his poll numbers in early caucus and primary states and on digital ads to meet the donor requirements set by the Democratic National Committee.”
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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