Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) said that President Trump may have threatened to transport illegal immigrants to so-called sanctuary cities to “make everybody crazy” and generate media attention, Reuters reports
Said Scott: “I mean maybe he’s just saying this to make everybody crazy, make everybody talk about it on their shows.”
White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said that she doesn’t believe members of Congress are “smart enough” to examine President Trump’s tax returns, pushing back against Democrats’ demands for information on the president’s finances, the Washington Post reports.
A Goldman Sachs forecast finds President Trump enjoys a “narrow advantage” over rival candidates heading into the 2020 election given the outlook for the U.S. economy, Bloomberg reports.
“Incumbent presidents carry a 5 to 6 percentage-point edge over rival candidates in the popular vote and Goldman Sachs’s economic forecast also leans in favor of Trump, although that is partly offset by his negative approval rating, economists Alec Phillips and Blake Taylor wrote in a report released late on Saturday.”
You're reading the free version of Political Wire
Upgrade to a paid membership to unlock full access. The process is quick and easy. You can even use Apple Pay.
“Sen. Bernie Sanders, in a rare and forceful rebuke by a presidential candidate of an influential party ally, has accused a liberal think tank of undermining Democrats’ chances of taking back the White House in 2020 by ‘using its resources to smear’ him and other contenders pushing progressive policies,” the New York Times reports.
“Mr. Sanders’s criticism of the Center for American Progress… reflects a simmering ideological battle within the Democratic Party and threatens to reopen wounds from the 2016 primary between him and Hillary Clinton’s allies. The letter airs criticisms shared among his supporters: That the think tank, which has close ties to Mrs. Clinton and the Democratic Party establishment, is beholden to corporate donors and has worked to quash a leftward shift in the party led partly by Mr. Sanders.”
Wall Street Journal: “Mr. Trump has selected candidates like Messrs. Moore and Cain in recent weeks because he believes they have the interests of his presidency in mind, the person said.”
“Describing Mr. Trump’s views, the person said, ‘I want people who care about me and my presidency and economic growth…because that’s important to the health of the country and his re-election chances.’”
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) raised $3 million for her presidential campaign in the first quarter of 2019, Axios reports.
“Nothing stirs President Trump’s most radical ideas like immigration. And nothing so stirs his willingness to entertain what some consider illegal or wrong,” Axios reports.
“Trump is genuinely frustrated that two years into his presidency, he hasn’t built the wall he promised, and he hasn’t reduced the flow of asylum seekers and undocumented immigrants into the U.S. In fact, the numbers are going up. The issue is highlighted above all others by the news outlet he focuses on most, Fox News. That raises his blood pressure every day.”
“He can’t understand why he’s not allowed to have total control over who enters the U.S. across the southern border.”
Politico: “Aides insist they have nothing to fear from the special counsel’s nearly 400-page report, though not all of the president’s allies are so confident.”
“His fluency on faith and his willingness to speak about it is an asset. Carter, Clinton, and Obama — they all shared that quality. It was one of the cues that opened the door to voters.”
— David Axelrod, quoted by New York Magazine, on Pete Buttigieg.
Throwing down the tax return gauntlet against both Sen. Bernie Sanders and President Trump, Sen. Kamala Harris released 15 years of her tax returns, the most of any 2020 Presidential candidate, CNN reports.
“Candidly, I don’t even know all the reasons why this is going so well.”
— Pete Buttigieg, in a Interview with New York Magazine, on his presidential bid.
New York Times: “Mr. Buttigieg’s distinctive political passion appears to be storytelling, wrapping conventional liberalism in an earnest, youthful persona that Democrats might see as capable of winning over the middle of the country.”
“A Times review of Mr. Buttigieg’s writings, starting in college, found that rhetorical task to be a consistent preoccupation. As a student, Mr. Buttigieg, now 37 and the mayor of South Bend, Ind., habitually discussed Democrats’ challenges in terms of language and argument, rather than policy or ideology. Mr. Buttigieg urged liberals in his student columns to speak in terms of “effective political values,” and he recalled corresponding in college with the University of California, Berkeley, linguist George Lakoff, who in 2004 published a best seller about political communication.”
USA Today: 7 hurdles facing Buttigieg’s presidential campaigns.
“Joe Biden is finalizing the framework for a White House campaign that would cast him as an extension of Barack Obama’s presidency and political movement. He’s betting that the majority of Democratic voters are eager to return to the style and substance of that era — and that they’ll view him as the best option to lead the way back.”
“The former Vice President has begun testing the approach as he nears an expected campaign launch later this month. After remarks at a recent labor union event, Biden said he was proud to be an ‘Obama-Biden Democrat,’ coining a term that his advisers define as pragmatic and progressive, and a bridge between the working-class white voters who have long had an affinity for Biden and the younger, more diverse voters who backed Obama in historic numbers.”
President Trump tweeted on Saturday night that he has the legal right to send undocumented immigrants to sanctuary cities and demanded it happen.
Said Trump: “Just out: The USA has the absolute legal right to have apprehended illegal immigrants transferred to Sanctuary Cities. We hereby demand that they be taken care of at the highest level, especially by the State of California, which is well known or its poor management & high taxes!”
“For the first time ‘No Religion’ has topped a survey of Americans’ religious identity, according to a new analysis by a political scientist. The non-religious edged out Catholics and evangelicals in the long-running General Social Survey,” CNN reports.
“Ryan Burge, a political scientist at Eastern Illinois University and a Baptist pastor, found that 23.1% of Americans now claim no religion. Catholics came in at 23.0%, and evangelicals were at 22.5%.”
Daniel Kreiss: “Using staffers’ educational backgrounds, we network analyzed the diversity of connections among presidential campaigns and the universities where staffers graduated. We found that Democratic presidential campaigns have continuously hired staffers from a homogeneous group of universities. Since 2004, Democratic presidential campaigns have hired 25% of the staffers in our dataset from 15 universities including Harvard, NYU, Stanford, Georgetown, UC Berkeley, Yale, Columbia, University of Chicago, Boston University, and DePaul, just to name the top ten.”
“A very different picture emerges on the other side of the aisle. The top three Republican schools are state public institutions: University of Texas, Austin (3%), Ohio State University (2%), and the University of Wisconsin-Madison (1%). The rest of the schools in the Republican top twenty are a mix of public and private institutions, including state schools such as George Mason (2%), the University of Alabama (2%), and Missouri State University (1%) and Brigham Young (2%).”
New York Times: “Today’s primaries tend to produce one nominee but many winners. Beyond the long-shot candidates effectively auditioning for cabinet positions or building a profile (and donor base) for future races, there are prospective books to sell and television contracts to sign, boards to join and paid speeches to paid-speak. Any setback is temporary, any embarrassment surmountable.”
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said at private lunch in New York not to forget what special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation was about: cyber crimes, Bloomberg reports.
When the report finally comes out, Rosenstein said “a lot of what we see will deal with that” and it will “clear up questions about Russian election interference.”
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.
“There are a lot of blogs and news sites claiming to understand politics, but only a few actually do. Political Wire is one of them.”
— Chuck Todd, host of “Meet the Press”
“Concise. Relevant. To the point. Political Wire is the first site I check when I’m looking for the latest political nugget. That pretty much says it all.”
— Stuart Rothenberg, editor of the Rothenberg Political Report
“Political Wire is one of only four or five sites that I check every day and sometimes several times a day, for the latest political news and developments.”
— Charlie Cook, editor of the Cook Political Report
“The big news, delicious tidbits, pearls of wisdom — nicely packaged, constantly updated… What political junkie could ask for more?”
— Larry Sabato, Center for Politics, University of Virginia
“Political Wire is a great, great site.”
— Joe Scarborough, host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”
“Taegan Goddard has a knack for digging out political gems that too often get passed over by the mainstream press, and for delivering the latest electoral developments in a sharp, no frills style that makes his Political Wire an addictive blog habit you don’t want to kick.”
— Arianna Huffington, founder of The Huffington Post
“Political Wire is one of the absolute must-read sites in the blogosphere.”
— Glenn Reynolds, founder of Instapundit
“I rely on Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire for straight, fair political news, he gets right to the point. It’s an eagerly anticipated part of my news reading.”
— Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist.