In a pair of tweets, President Trump called for “strong background checks” after the latest massacres over the weekend, the Washington Post reports.
However, he also suggested pairing any gun legislation with immigration reform.
Bob Moore: “Let me see if I got this: A white supremacist comes to my community with a weapon of war, murders my neighbors because they are Latino, and we should tie tepid gun measures to honoring a terrorist’s grievances?”
“The Democratic National Committee is placing operatives in six states to focus exclusively on attacking President Trump and driving local conversation about his policies ahead of the 2020 election,” Politico reports.
“It’s the DNC’s first round of staff hires in battleground states, drawing an early outline of the 2020 electoral map: Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, four of the closest states that Trump won in 2016, as well as Arizona — which has slowly been moving to the left in recent years and voted for Trump by a narrow 3.5 percentage points in 2016 — and Ohio, a traditional swing state that some Democrats argue should be considered a second-tier priority in 2020.”
J. D. Scholten, a Democrat who nearly toppled Rep. Steve King (R-IA) in a heavily Republican district in 2018, will announce on Monday that he will run again for the seat in 2020, the New York Times reports.
“His decision sets up a possible rematch with Mr. King, whose history of racist remarks has made him a pariah among Republican leaders, though not always with voters.”
Said Scholten: “Last time, we were hoping to win. Now, we are expecting to win. We know how to do it.”
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Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) was shouted down by a crowd of mourning Dayton residents Sunday night after a gunman shot nine people dead.
DeWine took the stage during a vigil and was met with repeated chants of “Do something!” as he addressed the crowd.
Washington Post: “The Republican Party, which controls power in Washington and both states where America’s most recent mass shootings occurred, struggled on Sunday to provide a response or offer a solution to what has become a public safety epidemic.”
“There were thoughts and prayers, an appeal to donate blood, accolades for law enforcement and a presidential proclamation to lower flags to half-staff to honor the victims — 29 killed in El Paso and Dayton, Ohio, and dozens more wounded over 13 hours.”
“Some Republicans, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) and Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, cited the influence of social media and video games or mentioned mental health problems. But on the question of how to stem the rising tide of gun violence, the overwhelming response from the party was silence or generalities.”
Politico: “The back-to-back mass-shootings in Texas and Ohio over the weekend shook up the Democratic presidential primary, elevating the profile of lower-tier candidates, reorienting the focus of the contest and fusing the divisive issues of immigration, racism and gun control for the first time on the campaign trail.”
“The tragedies have the potential to change the dynamics in the broader campaign for the White House, as President Donald Trump and his supporters reeled from comparisons of their rhetoric about immigrants with that of a manifesto suspected of being from the shooter in El Paso, a border city with a mostly Latino population.”
Reuters: “China let the yuan breach the key 7-per-dollar level on Monday for the first time in more than a decade, in a sign Beijing might be willing to tolerate more currency weakness that could further inflame a trade conflict with the United States.”
“The sharp 1.4% drop in the yuan comes days after U.S. President Donald Trump stunned financial markets by vowing to impose 10% tariffs on the remaining $300 billion of Chinese imports from Sept. 1, abruptly breaking a brief month-long ceasefire in the bruising trade war.”
“Some analysts said the yuan move could unleash a dangerous new front in the trade hostilities – a currency war.”
Rep. Ken Marchant (R-TX) will announce his retirement from Congress tomorrow, the New York Times reports.
He’ll be the fourth Texas Republican in recent weeks to call it quits.
Marchant’s district is highly competitive. After winning it by double digits, he only carried it by three percentage points last year.
President Trump found time between gun violence massacres to celebrate at his golf club over the weekend, the New York Daily News exports.
The commander-in-chief appeared to crash a wedding at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J., hours after a mass shooting took the lives of 20 people in an El Paso, Texas, Walmart and shortly before a different gunman killed nine people outside a Dayton, Ohio, bar.
Jonathan Swan: “Nobody knew it was coming, nobody knew how to handle it, and a week later, senior White House officials have their fingers crossed that the president won’t turn their week upside-down once again with another tweet about a Fox and Friends segment. As the week has unfurled, people inside and outside the White House described to me how a few pokes of a keyboard by the leader of the free world sent some of Washington’s most powerful political players scrambling for cover.”
“In at least one conversation with senior aides and another discussion with an outside ally, Trump entertained the idea of declaring a state of emergency in Baltimore — an extraordinary action that would potentially open up new federal powers and funding… The idea would be to say that the living conditions in Baltimore were unacceptable and that people were suffering because their Democratic representatives let them down. So Trump would take action to fix things.”
“Trump also discussed declaring a state of emergency in other cities controlled by Democrats, including San Francisco and Detroit.”
Jennifer Rubin: “In sum, we are awash in hate crimes and white nationalist-inspired mass murders. We have a president whose words inspire and bolster perpetrators of these heinous acts. That makes Trump not only a moral abomination, which no policy outcome can offset, but a threat to national security. Those encouraged by his words in recent years kill more Americans than Islamist terrorists.”
“If that is not justification for bipartisan repudiation of this president and removal from office at the earliest possible moment I don’t know what is. Those who countenance and support this president for his white-grievance mongering are not merely ‘deplorable’ but dangerous.”
In May, President Trump lamented the problem of migrants at the Southern border during a rally in Panama City Beach, Florida.
TRUMP: How do you stop these people? You can’t.
SOMEONE IN THE CROWD: Shoot them.
TRUMP: Only in the Panhandle can you get away with that statement.
The audience of thousands cheered and Trump smiled.
Vox notes there have been 2,189 mass shootings since the massacre of children at Sandy Hook elementary school.
In total, there have been at least 2,475 killed and 9,137 wounded in those shootings.
“Mexico on Sunday threatened to take legal action against the United States for failing to protect its citizens after this weekend’s mass shooting in the border city of El Paso,” NBC News reports.
“Of the 20 people gunned down at a Walmart at the Cielo Vista Mall, at least three were Mexican citizens, and Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard promised Mexico City will act.”
“Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell suffered a fractured shoulder Sunday from a fall outside his home in Louisville, briefly hospitalizing the Kentucky Republican,” the Washington Post reports.
Will Bunch: “When things fall apart, they shatter into a million pieces. I can’t tell you yet exactly how the bloodshed in El Paso is related to a mass murder in Dayton, or to the social dysfunction right here in Philadelphia that caused someone to spray bullets into a crowd of people shooting a hip-hop video, or into a crowded block party in Brooklyn the night before that. I can’t explain why people tweeting about El Paso couldn’t use the hashtag #WalmartShooting because it was already in use for a man who’d just murdered two employees at an outlet in Mississippi.”
“All I know is that it’s all starting to feel like the same event — a Great Unraveling of America. The feeling only grew worse when I read that the authorities in El Paso believe some of the wounded may not go to local hospitals … because they’re so afraid of our immigration cops. It seemed like one more sign that conditions in this country — the violence, the fear, the embrace of racism and xenophobia from the highest levels, and the long slide into neo-fascism — have become intolerable. And yet — with the blood of El Paso and Dayton not yet dry — far too many are still tolerating this.”
Walter Shapiro: “In his 2017 inaugural address, Donald Trump railed against “crime and gangs and drugs that have stolen too many lives” in the inner cities. Then Trump declared, in words that now echo with bitter irony, ‘This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.'”
“There is no way to know with absolute certainty how much of the current wave of ‘American carnage’ is directly due to Trump’s own words and his embrace of white nationalist themes. But even the Trump squad of gleeful apologists at Fox News would find it hard to argue that the president has lived up to his inaugural claim.”
CBS News: 29 people killed in two mass shootings in less than 14 hours.
Sydney Morning Herald: “In time, we will learn exactly what drove the suspect to carry out today’s mass shooting, but what we know for sure is the United States finds itself in the midst of a domestic white nationalist terrorism crisis.”
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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