First Read: “What’s stunning about President Trump’s admission that he’d accept dirt from a foreign government to help him win an election is not that he said it. After all, we already know that he and those around him asked for — and accepted — that help in 2016.”
“What’s stunning is that everyone should now know that the sitting president of the United States cannot ensure a fair election in 2020.”
Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD) told Axios that President Trump’s trade war with China has caused the price of his state’s soybeans to plummet 20%, costing South Dakota half a billion dollars.
The House Intelligence Committee said that it “had issued two new subpoenas demanding that Michael Flynn, President Trump’s former national security adviser, and Rick Gates, a former top Trump campaign aide, provide testimony and documents related to their interactions with Russians,” the New York Times reports.
“You cannot go back to the end of the Obama administration and think that that’s good enough… We had real problems before Donald Trump became president. We cannot return to the past.”
— Beto O’Rourke, in an interview on Morning Joe, arguing that Joe Biden is “a return to the past.”
A new UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll in California finds Joe Biden leading the Democratic presidential race with 22%, followed by Elizabeth Warren at 18%, Bernie Sanders at 17%, Kamala Harris at 13% and Pete Buttigieg at 10%.
No other candidate topped 3%, and many received less than half a point of support.
Said pollster Mark DiCamillo: “Our poll indicates that the contest is a wide-open affair, with five candidates in double digits and none dominating.”
Key finding: “Harris has a potential lifeline as the candidate voters list most often as their second choice. She gets that nod from 21% of the primary voters. Warren also does well on that measure, at 17%. Biden and Sanders are at 12%, suggesting they may have more trouble expanding their appeal.”
“The nomination on Tuesday of Halil Suleyman ‘Sul’ Ozerden to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals offers the latest glimpse of how acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney is exercising his power inside the White House — in this instance, pushing a nominee whose views rankled some of the president’s most important supporters,” Politico reports.
“Mulvaney, who was a groomsman in Ozerden’s 2003 wedding, supported the 53-year-old district court judge’s nomination long before he joined the White House this winter.”
Boris Johnson has secured the highest number of votes in the first ballot to select the Conservative party leader and next British prime minister, the BBC reports.
Johnson received 114 votes, Jeremy Hunt was second with 43, and Michael Gove third with 37 votes.
New York Times: “Next year, for the first time since 1982, the program must start drawing down its assets in order to pay retirees all of the benefits they have been promised, according to the latest government projections.”
“Unless a political solution is reached, Social Security’s so-called trust funds are expected to be depleted within about 15 years. Then, something that has been unimaginable for decades would be required under current law: Benefit checks for retirees would be cut by about 20 percent across the board.”
As Michael Flynn continues to await sentencing for lying to federal investigators about his contacts with Russian officials, President Trump is hailing his former national security adviser as a “war hero,” CBS News reports.
Trump also said that Flynn had “served with distinction.”
Orlando Sentinel: “There are only a few key battleground states in the 2020 presidential campaign, and much of the focus so far has been on places such as Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin where President Trump pulled shocking upsets over Hillary Clinton three years ago.”
“But when Trump kicks off his 2020 re-election campaign on Tuesday, he won’t be in any rust belt town or coal mining community – he will be right here in downtown Orlando, holding a rally at the 20,000-capacity Amway Center.”
“Trump’s choice of that location may be surprising to those who look at an election map of Florida and see Orange County colored in solid Democratic blue. But experts say Florida is the true key to victory next November, and the red, GOP-leaning suburbs in Central Florida are imperative to winning the state.”
The Maine House reversed course and voted to switch to a national popular vote in presidential elections, the Portland Press Herald reports.
“The 77-69 vote in the Maine House came roughly two weeks after the national popular vote bill had failed by a 10-vote margin but after the Maine Senate had reaffirmed its support for the measure. The fate of the bill remains unclear, however, because it faces additional procedural votes in both the House and Senate.”
“The bill would add Maine to the growing list of states pledging to use the national popular vote, rather than the Electoral College system, to choose a president.”
Playbook: “President Trump’s admission that he would accept a foreign government’s assistance in an election — and might not report it to the FBI — is an absolutely stunning statement that would seem out of bounds to any and every reader of Playbook.”
“Far be it from us to divine why the president said this, and what exactly is going through his head. But the people we spoke to Wednesday night said it is rooted in a win-at-any-and-all-costs mentality — a life-is-complicated vibe that tries to paint everyone else as rubes, and yet ignores the guts of American law. Furthermore, it reflects his thinking that he hates the idea the 2016 election was stolen from him, so he tries to rationalize the very things he and his campaign stand accused of doing.”
“In our time covering Congress — going on a decade — we’ve never heard anyone ever even privately say they would accept foreign assistance in an election. Ever. And a lot of members have said crazy stuff to us privately!”
HuffPost: Legal experts explode over Trump’s “despicable” bombshell.
A new MIRS News Service poll in Michigan’s 3rd congressional district finds challenger Jim Lower (R) leading Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI) in a Republican primary, 49% to 33%.
New York Times: “More than most of his Democratic rivals, Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Ind., has cracked the code of the early months of the presidential campaign, embracing TV appearances while mastering the art of creating moments for social media and cable news. The 37-year-old’s campaign was the first to grasp that the early primary race would unfold on mobile devices and televisions instead of at the traditional town-hall gatherings and living rooms in the early states.”
“He’s not alone: Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts has inundated reporters with policy proposals, prompting hours of cable news coverage and forcing fellow candidates to respond to her ideas during live interviews.”
“Over the first six months of the presidential campaign, Mr. Buttigieg and Ms. Warren have outfoxed the other 21 Democratic candidates, demonstrating an innate understanding of the value of viral moments and nonstop exposure that drives politics in the Trump era.”
“A lawyer for Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax (D) is calling on prosecutors in Massachusetts and North Carolina to open criminal investigations into sexual assault allegations made against Fairfax earlier this year,” CBS News reports.
“Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) is eyeing a possible exit from the Senate, and his decision could be a significant factor in which party controls the majority in 2021,” The Hill reports..
“In moments of frustration, the centrist senator has gone so far as to tell colleagues he may leave the upper chamber before the end of this Congress, or after the 2020 elections.”
“President Vladimir Putin said relations between Moscow and Washington were getting worse and worse, noting in an interview published on Thursday that the current U.S. administration had imposed dozens of sanctions on Russia,” Reuters reports.
“Putin made his gloomy assessment ahead of a G20 summit in Japan later this month at which he might meet U.S. President Donald Trump.”
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.