“North Korea said Saturday its leader Kim Jong Un supervised another test-firing of a new multiple rocket launcher system that could potentially enhance the country’s ability to strike targets in South Korea and U.S. military bases there,” the AP reports.
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Fox News Host Tells Viewers Trump Is Wrong
“Immediately after President Trump boasted to White House reporters that the United States rakes in billions of dollars from China because of his tariffs, Fox News anchor Neil Cavuto issued an on-air fact-check of the president’s remarks, directly telling his viewers that Trump is wrong,” the Daily Beast reports.
Said Cavuto: “I don’t know where to begin here. Just to be clarifying, China isn’t paying these tariffs. You are. You know, indirectly and sometimes directly.”
Senator Held Up Nominee In Effort to Steer Contract
“A Republican senator held up the confirmation of a White House budget official this week in an attempt to obtain sensitive information about border wall contracts he has been trying to steer to a major donor,” according to emails obtained by the Washington Post.
“The emails show Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) blasting the ‘arrogance’ of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers after senior military officials told him the contracts contained sensitive, proprietary information provided by the companies that could not be shared.”
‘Multiple Generations of Political Junkies’
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Trump Praises Bannon’s Analysis of the 2020 Election
President Trump embraced analysis of the 2020 Democratic field from former strategist Stephen Bannon, whom he previously derided as “sloppy” and a leaker, The Hill reports.
Said Trump: “Nice to see that one of my best pupils is still a giant Trump fan. Steve joined me after I won the primaries, but I loved working with him!”
Trump shared a clip from Bannon on CNBC in which he dismissed the chances of the current field of Democrats against Trump in 2020.
Trump Wants All Troops Out of Afghanistan by Election
“President Trump has told his advisers that he wants to pull all U.S. troops out of Afghanistan by the November 2020 presidential election,” NBC News reports.
“The president’s advisers are now scrambling to meet his election-year deadline, which has exacerbated tensions between officials at the Pentagon and the State Department over the timing of withdrawal and whether it should be completed.”
Two Top Staffers Leave Ocasio-Cortez
Two of Rep. Alexandria-Ocasio Cortez’s (D-NY) top staffers are leaving her office, The Intercept reports.
“Saikat Chakrabarti, her chief of staff, and Corbin Trent, her director of communications — who, through their work with Justice Democrats, have been alongside Ocasio-Cortez since her primary run — will leave the lawmaker’s office.”
“The news comes just as a drawn-out fight between House Democratic leadership and the progressive wing of the party — which at times put Ocasio-Cortez’s staffers in its crosshairs — seemed to be smoothing over.”
Exchange of the Day
Yamiche Alcindor of PBS asked President Trump about pulling his nomination of Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-TX) to be Director of National Intelligence:
ALCINDOR: What does this withdrawal by Ratcliffe say about the White House vetting process? This is at least the second time someone you announced as a leader of an agency has to withdraw.
TRUMP: The press does the vetting for me and it’s much cheaper that way.
Trump and the Attack on U.S. Intelligence
Chris Riback talks to Philip Mudd about how President Trump has taken on the U.S. intelligence agencies and Mudd’s new book, Black Site: The CIA in the Post-9/11 World.
Trump Directs Government to Punish Newspaper Owner
Jonathan Chait: “When he was running for president, Donald Trump threatened to single out Amazon for retribution. He is carrying out that threat. The White House has ordered the Defense Department to reexamine a $10 billion cloud-computing contract ‘because of concerns that the deal would go to Amazon,’ the Washington Post reports.”
“It’s not yet possible to prove that Trump is directing this decision as punishment for Jeff Bezos’s ownership of the Post. And proof may never be found. Trump’s Mafia style of management, which the Mueller report chronicles, is designed to avoid leaving a paper trail that would incriminate the boss. (The report shows Trump, among other things, using buffers to carry out his illegal orders and chiding his lawyer for taking notes.)”
“But Trump is also not smart or subtle enough to leave any doubt about his intentions. He has made it abundantly clear both that the Post is the source of his hatred of Amazon, and that his policy grounds for punishing Amazon are pretexts.”
Republicans Will Oppose Trump When They Want To
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Is Hickenlooper Preparing to Run for Senate?
A Colorado political consultant registered several domain names last week that point to a possible U.S. Senate bid by former Gov. John Hickenlooper (D), according to Colorado Pols.
“Now before anybody gets carried away, there’s always the possibility that these were contingency purchases for a decision that hasn’t been finalized yet.”
Trump Won’t Nominate Ratcliffe
President Trump said that he will not nominate Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-TX) to be Director of National Intelligence, just days after announcing plans to tap the GOP congressman to replace Dan Coats, The Hill reports.
New York Times: “The announcement, made on Twitter, came after questions about his qualifications and whether he had exaggerated his résumé.”
Said Trump: “Our great Republican Congressman John Ratcliffe is being treated very unfairly by the LameStream Media. Rather than going through months of slander and libel, I explained to John how miserable it would be for him and his family to deal with these people… John has therefore decided to stay in Congress.”
Debates Didn’t Move the Needle
A new Morning Consult poll conducted after this week’s Democratic debates finds 32% of primary voters said they still want to see Joe Biden at the top of the party’s 2020 ticket. That figure hasn’t shifted much since the end of the first round of debates, when 33% said Biden was their first choice.
No candidate saw movement outside the survey’s margin of error of 2 percentage points.
Six Husbands Try to Figure Out the Best Way to Campaign
Washington Post: “Of the five men whose wives are running for president (only Marianne Williamson, among the six female Democratic candidates, is currently unmarried), all have much lower profiles than their wives — and certainly are much less recognizable than the last would-be First Man, Bill Clinton, who would always be far better known as a former president.”
“Chasten Buttigieg, the male spouse of South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg, has carved out the most prominent role of any spouse — male or female — in the field, with the possible exception of former second lady Jill Biden.”
Obama Unfazed by Criticism at Democratic Debates
A source familiar with Barack Obama’s thinking wouldn’t tell CBS News whether the former president watched this week’s Democratic debates, but said Obama believes “his legacy is going to be fine, that there’s a staying power to it and the things under attack by this president are high water marks for the country.”
Bonus Quote of the Day
“There is no defense, no rationalization, no suitable explanation for what my father said on that taped phone conversation.”
— Patti Davis, writing in the Washington Post, referencing a conversation from 1971 in which Ronald Reagan referred to African leaders as monkeys.
Hurd Thinks Texas May Turn Blue
Rep. Will Hurd (R-TX), who announced his retirement from Congress last night, told the Washington Post that there’s a real chance Democrats can win Texas in the 2020 presidential election.
Said Hurd: “When you look at trends, the two-largest growing groups of voters are Latinos and young people. And we know what the broader trends are happening there.”
