There’s an interesting reference about Madeleine Westerhout, who was abruptly dismissed yesterday as President Trump’s executive assistant, in Tim Alberta’s book, American Carnage.
The former Mitt Romney 2012 campaign staffer was “inconsolable” on Election Night 2016 because Trump had won the election. “To the amusement of her RNC peers, she was later chosen as the president’s executive assistant and now sits just outside the Oval Office.”
Wall Street Journal: “A former Pentagon official charged in a lawsuit Thursday that the Defense Department has delayed a review of his tell-all book about Jim Mattis to benefit the former defense secretary, whose own book will be published next week.”
“Lawyers representing Guy Snodgrass, Mr. Mattis’s former communications director and speechwriter, said the Defense Department has demanded that chapters of the book be redacted.”
Back in 2006, Elizabeth Warren wrote a personal financial book: All Your Worth: The Ultimate Lifetime Money Plan.
But even then, she took a shot at a certain Manhattan mogul who was running get-rich-quick real-estate seminars at the time, Bloomberg reports.
Wrote Warren: “We are also not going to say that if you’ll just shift to generic toilet paper and put $5 a week in the bank, all your problems will instantly disappear. A few pennies here and a few pennies there, and the next thing you know, you’ll be debt-free, investment-rich and lighting cigars with Donald Trump. Nope, we’re not selling that brand of snake oil.”
The Hill: “Polls show President Trump losing women voters by huge margins, presenting his reelection campaign with a massive hurdle to overcome as he seeks a second term in office.”
“Perhaps most alarmingly for Trump, the president is losing support from the white women who were pivotal to his electoral success in 2016.”
New York Times: “In the power circles of Tehran, where ‘Death to America’ is regularly chanted, the idea has taken hold that Iran must eventually negotiate with President Trump, according to several people with knowledge of the shift.”
“These people said Iran’s leadership had concluded that Mr. Trump could be re-elected and that the country cannot withstand six more years of the onerous sanctions he has imposed.”
“I’m not delusional on prospects. It’s not as if I’m saying, you know, I think I can become president. But I think you can change the debate, and you might even have an impact on the general election.”
— Former Rep. Mark Sanford (R), quoted by the AP, on challenging President Trump in a primary.
“The Democratic National Committee will recommend rejecting a plan for ‘virtual caucuses’ in Iowa and Nevada, introducing a level of uncertainty in the caucus states ahead of the upcoming election season,” Politico reports.
“A source with knowledge of the decision said late Thursday that the DNC will recommend rejecting Iowa’s virtual caucus proposal ‘due to security concerns.’ Sources confirmed to the Associated Press that Nevada’s system faced similar peril.”
“The Elizabeth Warren honeymoon may be coming to an end. Warren’s weak fundraising and Native American controversy out of the gate gave her the look of a second-rate candidate, and her rivals have treated her as such, even as she’s rebounded from those early troubles,” Politico reports.
“But with the Massachusetts senator now drawing massive crowds and surging in national polls, competing campaigns are starting to refocus on Warren, looking to blunt her momentum. Democrats are already opening up new lines of attack: calling her celebrated policy proposals a ‘fraud,’ challenging her to say how she’d pay for her massive health care plan, highlighting a lack of diversity in her supporters and dropping reminders of Warren’s long span as a Republican.”
Charleston Post & Courier: “Biden acknowledged the impact that a setback in the other early states could have on his odds of winning the Democratic nomination.”
Said Biden’ “Iowa can change the dynamic of a race for everybody and anybody,’ Biden said. ‘In New Hampshire, in Iowa, in Nevada, the dynamic can change.”
“But he argued that his substantial campaign operation, dozens of prominent endorsements and decades of relationships in South Carolina could preserve his frontrunner status in the Palmetto State regardless of what happens elsewhere.”
Playbook: “Next month’s special election in North Carolina’s 9th congressional district is truly a squeaker. Internal Republican polling has shown GOP candidate Dan Bishop anywhere from 2 points to 4 points ahead of Democrat Dan McCready. And believe it or not, that’s an improvement, because Bishop was down big in the Charlotte-and-east-area district just a few weeks ago.”
“Democratic party internal polling has McCready up 1 point. So both parties are seeing the same thing: that this race is truly a toss-up, with all results in the margin of error.”
“Remember: This is a district President Trump won by nearly 12 points, and this race is within the margin of error 10 days before Election Day. The president is going to try to move the needle with a visit the week after next, but some Democrats are whispering the trend lines are in their direction, with the early indications favoring McCready. McCready ran in 2018 — so he has a lot of momentum, and recognition.”
Los Angeles Times: “O’Rourke entered the presidential race with an exuberant burst, but he’s fizzled since: His fundraising has been mediocre, debate performances uninspired, poll numbers cringingly low.”
“After a pause following the mass shooting in his native El Paso, the former Texas congressman is now attempting to relaunch his campaign with a focus on gun violence, immigrant rights and the dangerous toxicity, he says, that oozes from the White House. It may be his last stand.”
“O’Rourke promises to follow an unconventional path, as he did in his near-miss 2018 Senate campaign, away from the usual early-voting states and rutted tracks of his many competitors.”
“President Trump has become increasingly rattled over the potential of an economic downturn and is spinning to find victories to sell to voters,” CNN reports.
“He and his economic team, who are often at odds with one another, have been searching for ways to prevent market anxieties from spilling over into next year’s presidential election, but have yet to agree on a solution. They have wavered between floating tax cuts to insisting they aren’t considering tax cuts. They have feuded privately over which direction to take. They have contradicted each other publicly.”
“And Trump has insisted it’s the Federal Reserve’s fault, while his own aides have admitted much of it is because of his trade war with China. Trump refuses to give up on the tactic, saying it would make him look weak.”
CNN: “Though Trump and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin insisted there had been ‘communication,’ aides privately conceded the phone calls Trump described didn’t happen they way he said they did.”
“Instead, two officials said Trump was eager to project optimism that might boost markets, and conflated comments from China’s vice premier with direct communication from the Chinese.”
Vanity Fair: “This should come as something of a relief to the Chinese, who were flummoxed by Trump’s initial claims.”
“President Trump’s personal assistant, Madeleine Westerhout, whose office sits in front of the Oval Office and who has served as the president’s gatekeeper since Day 1 of his administration, resigned on Thursday,” the New York Times reports.
“Ms. Westerhout’s abrupt and unexpected departure came after Mr. Trump learned on Thursday that she had indiscreetly shared details about his family and the Oval Office operations she was part of during a recent off-the-record dinner with reporters staying at hotels near Bedminster, N.J., during the president’s working vacation.”
“Being Donald Trump’s spokeswoman can drive a person to drink, but Stephanie Grisham had a record of drunk driving long before she got the job in June,” the New York Daily News reports.
“Mugshots from 2013 and 2015 show the repeat offender after a pair of arrests in central Arizona that happened two years apart.”
Adam Gopnik: “The principled case, now and then, is summed up in three words: Trump’s a crook. If the phrase deliberately left open by the Founders to be defined as “high crimes and misdemeanors” does not apply to the evidence of Trump’s conduct over the past three years, then it would seem to have no meaning at all. Any one of half a dozen scandals that would have been the immediate cause of an impeachment inquiry into—and, before that happened, of universal cries for the resignation of—any previous President are still open…”
“The protection that Trump has is the level and the energy and the somewhat awe-inspiring completeness of his corruption. Not only has there never been anything like it in American history; there has never been anything like it in the modern history of democracies. He makes Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi look like Alexander Hamilton, Richard Nixon like a statesman who set a few feet wrong.”
“On Labor Day, President Trump’s re-election campaign plans to fly banners urging beachgoers in cities that largely went blue in 2016 to add their phone numbers to the list of supporters the campaign has been cultivating. That list already has contact information for more than 33 million voters, or about half of the number of Americans who voted for Mr. Trump in 2016, and campaign manager Brad Parscale expects to have at least 50 million by Election Day,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“The campaign hopes to collect about 30,000 phone numbers from the flyovers, an adviser to the campaign said, which is toward the middle of the range of numbers that a Trump rally typically brings in. Planes will be flying the banners for a total of 21 hours.”
A new Change Research poll in Massachusetts finds Rep. Joe Kennedy III (D-MA) leading Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) in a possible Democratic U.S. Senate primary, 42% to 25%.
Businessman Steve Pemberton earned 7% and attorney Shannon Liss-Riordan got 5%.
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.
