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Lewandowski Cleared to Testify in House Inquiry

September 16, 2019 at 8:01 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“The White House on Monday blocked two more former aides to President Trump from testifying in House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry, but cleared a third witness, Corey Lewandowski, to appear publicly on Tuesday and answer questions about potential obstruction of justice by the president,” the New York Times reports.

“The White House decisions amounted to mixed news for the House Judiciary Committee as it tries to crank up the intensity of an investigation devised to determine whether to recommend Mr. Trump’s impeachment for obstruction of justice and abuse of power — and to convince the public that such action is warranted.”

Bolton Already Contacting Literary Agents

September 16, 2019 at 5:00 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“Following his acrimonious departure from the White House, former National Security Adviser John Bolton has insisted that he will have his ‘say in due course,'” the Daily Beast reports.

“It hasn’t yet been a full week, but it appears he’s found a vehicle for clearing the air. According to two people with knowledge of the situation, Bolton has already expressed interest in writing a book on his time in the Trump administration, and has been in contact in recent days with literary agents interested in making that happen.”

Said one source: “He has a lot to dish.”

Elaine Chao Investigated for Possible Conflicts

September 16, 2019 at 3:23 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“The House Oversight and Reform Committee asked Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao on Monday to turn over documents related to communication with her family’s shipping company as the panel stepped up an investigation into whether any actions taken by Ms. Chao amount to a conflict of interest,” the New York Times reports.

“The request by the committee in the Democratic-controlled House relates to actions Ms. Chao has taken that potentially benefited Foremost Group, a New York-based shipping company owned by her family. Foremost has received hundreds of millions of dollars in loan commitments from a bank run by the Chinese government to help build ships that Foremost has purchased from government-owned shipyards there.”

Early-State Democrats Await Decisive Primary Blow

September 16, 2019 at 3:19 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Politico: “Deep into the 2020 primary campaign — post-Labor Day and with three rounds of debates and fundraising quarters past — caution, patience and stasis have emerged as the defining traits of the Democratic contest.”

“Even as three candidates have pulled away from the rest of the field, early-state Democrats say it’s remarkable how none of them have truly taken command of the primary. They’re not seeing bold strategic strokes designed to distinguish their campaigns or sustained attempts to strike a decisive blow against rivals. And they don’t see an obvious front-runner with just 140 days until the Iowa caucuses.”

8 Years of Trump Tax Returns Subpoenaed

September 16, 2019 at 3:00 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“State prosecutors in Manhattan have subpoenaed President Trump’s accounting firm to demand eight years of his personal and corporate tax returns,” the New York Times reports.

“The subpoena opens a new front in a wide-ranging effort to obtain copies of the president’s tax returns, which Mr. Trump initially said he would make public during the 2016 campaign but has since refused to disclose.”

Hillary Clinton’s Zombie Impeachment Memo Lives

September 16, 2019 at 2:45 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Politico: “A document Hillary Clinton helped write nearly a half century ago has returned from the dead to threaten the man she couldn’t vanquish in 2016. The bizarre, only-in-D.C. twist centers on a congressional report penned by a bipartisan team of young attorneys that included Hillary before she was a Clinton and written in the throes of Watergate.”

“The 45-year-old report has become a handbook House Democratic lawmakers and aides say they are using to help determine whether they have the goods to mount a full-scale impeachment effort against President Donald Trump, the same man who three years ago upended Hillary Clinton’s bid for a return trip to the White House.”

Populist Anger Hasn’t Gone Away

September 16, 2019 at 2:33 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

This piece is only available to Political Wire members.

An underappreciated factor in the 2020 presidential race is the tremendous anger among voters. While much of that anger — at least on the Democratic side — is about Donald Trump, it’s important to recognize that anger is what got him elected in the first place.

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Bonus Quote of the Day

September 16, 2019 at 2:20 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“Frankly, we are concentrating our resources on determining whether to impeach the president. Personally, I think the president ought to be impeached, but we have to concentrate on that for the next few months.”

— House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-NY), on WNYC.

Trump Keeps Telling Bizarre Story About Kim Jong Un

September 16, 2019 at 1:29 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

BuzzFeed News: “The story got its latest outing at last month’s summit in Biarritz, France, as the world leaders were gathered around the table for the formal meeting. When the discussion turned to North Korea … Trump went off on a tangent, spending some 10 minutes rambling about his great relationship with Kim, leaving the other G7 leaders mostly speechless.”

“The story goes like this: When Trump first met Kim, in Singapore in June last year, the two men talked about the tweets that Trump had posted in 2017, nicknaming the North Korean leader ‘Little Rocket Man.’ In Trump’s retelling, during a back and forth exchange about the name calling the two men had engaged in over many months before the meeting in Singapore — ‘You called me fat… and then you called me this…,’ — Kim asks Trump why he’d called him that.”

“‘Don’t you know Elton John? It’s a great song,’ the president, who is a big fan of the British musician, says. To which Kim responds, ‘But you called me “little.”’ Then comes Trump’s punchline: ‘That’s what he didn’t like!'”

Quote of the Day

September 16, 2019 at 1:00 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“Having our country act as Saudi Arabia’s bitch is not ‘America First.'”

— Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI), saying on Twitter that President Trump is awaiting “instructions from his Saudi masters.”

Walsh Says the GOP Is a ‘Cult’

September 16, 2019 at 12:57 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Former Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL) told CNN the Republican party was a “cult” and President Trump is a “would-be dictator.”

Said Walsh: “I’ve given up on the Republican Party, the Republican Party is a cult, right. They no longer stand for ideals. The Republican Party right now is all about washing their leaders’ feet every day, that’s what they do.”

Working Families Party Backs Warren

September 16, 2019 at 12:54 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“The Working Families Party, the labor-aligned progressive group whose electoral influence has grown since the 2016 election, has endorsed Sen. Elizabeth Warren for the Democratic presidential nomination, a boon to her candidacy as she attempts to position herself as the main challenger to former Vice President Joe Biden,” the New York Times reports.

“The party endorsed Sen. Bernie Sanders during the last presidential cycle.”

Employee Who Sent Tweet Wasn’t Aware of Trump’s Claim

September 16, 2019 at 12:35 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

The Alabama National Weather Service employee who tweeted that the state was not in the path of Hurricane Dorian was not aware of President Trump’s tweet that the state would be hit, the New York Times reports.

“It was incoming phone calls from Alabamians energized about Hurricane Dorian, suddenly confused and worried about whether they were in the path of the giant Caribbean storm. At one point, the few people on duty were all answering calls at the same time.”

“In response to the alarm, one employee dashed off a short message to the office’s 50,000 Twitter followers that reaffirmed what the latest models were saying: Alabama had little to worry about.”

What Is Beto O’Rourke Up to Anyway?

September 16, 2019 at 12:08 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Jonathan Bernstein: “He’s thrown away poll-tested strategies and is wandering around the nation getting increasingly angry. Could it work? Well, all the low-polling candidates need attention, so you never know. But it reminds me of Gary Hart’s post-scandal campaign during the 1988 nomination race. Except with a lot more profanity. That’s … more annoying than anything else. Hart had suspended his campaign, but eventually reentered without much hoopla. At first, his polling numbers surged, but it didn’t last and voters soundly rejected him.”

“Voters claim to hate poll-tested, slickly produced campaigns, but there’s very little evidence they actually want candidates raw without any frills, with the exception of a certain reality-television star in the 2016 Republican primaries (and Donald Trump was more ‘raw’ than raw, his entire persona wrapped up in the weird non-reality of reality TV). As it was with Hart, it’s tempting to think that O’Rourke will beat the consultants and the ad specialists and connect directly with voters. But he probably won’t.”

Who Will Win Florida’s Latino Voters?

September 16, 2019 at 11:34 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

New Yorker: “In every Presidential election since 1992, the winner of Florida has gone on to the White House. Trump won the state, which has a population of twenty-one million, by a hundred and thirteen thousand votes. He’s since made it the centerpiece of his reëlection effort, launching his campaign in Orlando and making frequent visits to South Florida to deliver major addresses on Cuba and Venezuela.”

“Most of the diaspora communities in the state have fled socialist dictatorships. Republicans, and especially Trump, have seized on this fact to relentlessly attack left-wing populists in Central and South America.”

“The Latino electorate is younger, more numerous, and more diverse than ever before, with largely progressive views on health-care and social-justice issues. These trends should work in favor of the Democrats. Still, the Presidential election is more than a year away, and disaffection with Republicans is hardly a guarantee of Democratic votes.”

Talking to Strangers

September 16, 2019 at 11:02 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

A must-read: Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know about the People We Don’t Know by Malcolm Gladwell.

“How did Fidel Castro fool the CIA for a generation? Why did Neville Chamberlain think he could trust Adolf Hitler? Why are campus sexual assaults on the rise? Do television sitcoms teach us something about the way we relate to each other that isn’t true?”

Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know about the People We Don't Know

Amazon Kindle Edition
Gladwell, Malcolm (Author)
English (Publication Language)
401 Pages - 09/10/2019 (Publication Date) - Little, Brown and Company (Publisher)

Buttigieig Hasn’t Won Over His Own Generation

September 16, 2019 at 10:32 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Associated Press: “His lack of any ample base of support, even among his fellow millennials, is a central challenge of the 37-year-old’s long shot bid to rise to the nation’s highest office. He plays well across a broad spectrum of Democratic voters, but in small fragments that have left him an intriguing candidate stuck in single digits in national polls.

Biden Allies in Massachusetts Attack Warren’s Electability

September 16, 2019 at 10:17 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“As Elizabeth Warren climbs in the polls, Joe Biden’s Massachusetts allies are warning that her election history suggests she runs weakest among the types of voters Democrats need to win over to capture the White House,” Politico reports.

“While Warren won reelection easily in 2018, Biden’s backers point to her performance among independent and blue-collar voters as evidence she’ll fail to appeal to similar voters in the Rust Belt — just as Hillary Clinton did in 2016.”