New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) told WAMC he will run for a fourth term in 2022.
Said Cuomo: “I believe this state is doing great things at a time when a nation is floundering. I believe that. I believe we have the opportunity to set a standard for progressivity and normalcy. I know this job, I work seven days a week at it, and I think we have accomplishments.”
“President Trump publicly undercut John Bolton, his national security adviser, on Iran and North Korea in recent days, raising questions about the administration’s policy and personnel in the middle of confrontations with both long-term American adversaries,” the New York Times reports.
“The president’s remarks appeared to lay bare a rift with his national security adviser, who is known for his bare-knuckled approach to foreign policy. In private, Mr. Trump has made fun of Mr. Bolton’s reputation for hawkishness, joking that the adviser would get him into war.”
Matthew Yglesias: “Trump’s best quality is that he recognizes that many of his top officials are terrible at their jobs.”
Christopher Steele, the former British spy who produced a dossier describing alleged links between Donald Trump and Russia, “will not cooperate with a prosecutor assigned by Attorney General William Barr to review how the investigations of Trump and his 2016 election campaign began,” Reuters reports.
The documentary Running With Beto will premiere tonight on HBO.
Daily Beast: “In the doc, Beto comes off as charismatic yet controlling—its most revealing moments being ones where he is seen dressing down his clearly overworked staff for their perceived lack of preparedness. The person on the receiving end of most of the scoldings is Cynthia Cano, his road manager. At several tense points in the film, Cano is criticized by Beto—in front of her campaign colleagues—for not leaving enough time in his schedule for media interviews, having him be late to campaign events, and not adequately prepping him for those events. (Cano views Beto’s penchant for going long in his speeches and wanting to speak with every single constituent and/or person with a microphone as the reason for his constant tardiness and lack of prep time, which appears to be the more likely culprit.)”
“After Beto was narrowly defeated by Cruz, he delivered a concession speech in front of thousands of supporters in his backyard of El Paso, where he exclaimed, ‘I’m so fucking proud of you guys.’ Just prior to that, in the backstage area of the venue, Modigliani’s cameras caught Beto and his top staffers (as well as his teary-eyed wife, Amy) in an intimate huddle, where the Senate candidate apologized to them for being ‘a giant asshole.'”
Of the two dozen Democrats running for president, The Hill finds 12 have met both the polling and donor thresholds set by the DNC to participate in the first debates, while six others have cleared the polling threshold.
Five candidates are still in a scramble to reach either requirement: Bill de Blasio, Seth Moutlon, Michael Bennet, Mike Gravel and Wayne Messam.
“The field is too big. You wonder if some candidates are getting negative ratings simply as a result of voters questioning whether they really should be running.”
— Pollster Patrick Murray, quoted by NBC News, noting that the most recent Monmouth poll showed some barely known candidates with surprisingly high unfavorability ratings.
“A second House Republican blocked passage of a disaster aid bill on Tuesday, increasing the odds that lawmakers will have to wait until the chamber reconvenes from recess next week to send the measure to President Trump,” The Hill reports.
“Conservative Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) objected to an attempt by Democrats to clear a $19.1 billion disaster aid package by unanimous consent during a pro forma session.”
Geoffrey Skelley: “The 2016 contest between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton was the eighth consecutive presidential race in which the national popular vote margin was smaller than 10 percentage points. That is, in every presidential election from 1988 to 2016, the difference between the vote shares of the Democratic and Republican nominees was in the single digits. That’s the longest stretch of such elections since the Civil War, surpassing a run of seven straight single-digit margins from 1876 to 1900.”
“In the recent string of close elections, there have been two in which the nominee who won the national popular vote didn’t win the Electoral College — 2000 and 2016. Before 2000, the last time a candidate had won the popular vote but not the Electoral College was in 1888.”
“Now, some might not consider a large single-digit margin — such as Barack Obama’s 7-point win in 2008 — to be ‘close.’ But it’s worth noting that out of 21 presidential elections from 1904 to 1984 — or the time between these two competitive periods — only nine had margins in the single digits. The other 12 were double-digit blowouts.”
Rep. Bradley Byrne (R-AL), who launched his U.S. Senate campaign in February, told The Hill he’s spoken to GOP sources close to Roy Moore who said the controversial former Alabama judge will announce his candidacy for the Senate in the coming days.
Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI) tore into Attorney General William Barr in a 25-tweet thread for his handling of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on the Russia investigation.
Said Amash: “Barr has deliberately misrepresented key aspects of Mueller’s report and decisions in the investigation, which has helped further the president’s false narrative about the investigation.”
Washington Post: “Amash’s tweets came just hours before he was scheduled to hold his first town hall meeting in his Michigan district since declaring on May 18 that Trump had ‘engaged in impeachable conduct’ and becoming a pariah among his GOP colleagues.”
“President Trump told U.S. troops stationed in Japan he plans to order traditional steam powered catapults aboard American warships instead of newer electromagnetic systems that he said may not work as well during wartime,” Bloomberg reports
Said Trump: “We’re spending all that money on electric and nobody knows what it’s going to be like in bad conditions. So I think I’m going to put an order — when we build a new aircraft carrier, we’re going to use steam.”
Bloomberg Law: “Upon arriving at the West Wing in January, Mulvaney instituted a formalized system for settling regulatory policy and timeline disputes between White House assistants and Acosta’s top aides, said people with direct knowledge of the process. Conflicts are elevated to Mulvaney for a final decision.”
“Acosta and his staff have been losing these decisions so often that they’ve stopped bothering to appeal.”
Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) “has acknowledged taking a photo with a dead combatant during his time as a Marine as he defended a Navy SEAL charged with multiple war crimes, including killing a teenage fighter,” the AP reports.
A new Monmouth poll finds that 62% of Americans feel that U.S. consumers will bear the brunt of paying for new tariffs on Chinese goods, while just 23% say that Chinese producers will bear more of these costs.
Likewise, 62% believe it is very likely that American companies which sell goods or use materials made in China will simply pass those costs onto domestic consumers.
ABC News: “While details of the president’s event have yet to be finalized, the White House is facing pushback over the security, logistical and financial strains a presidential event would add on a day where additional security protocols already are in place for the hundreds of thousands expected to flock to the Mall to picnic and watch fireworks.”
“In addition to a presidential address, the administration has ordered that the location of the fireworks display be moved. A source familiar with planning said there have also been talks about adding additional military elements to the regular Fourth of July parade, while the president’s orders for a separate, grand military parade remain on perpetual delay.”
Daily Beast: “For the past two years, it has prolifically churned out glowing coverage of the Trump administration and its achievements. OAN’s top executives have beseeched the president on Twitter to forget about Fox and to signal-boost them instead.”
“Fox News is still the president’s favorite media behemoth. But OAN’s team has been catching his eye. This year, Trump has tuned in more often than ever to OAN, two sources close to him say. There’s been a conspicuous uptick in his public promotion of OAN’s segments, including on his personal Twitter account. And, it appears, he’s even pitching the network to those roaming the halls at Mar-a-Lago.”
“It may be a Hatch Act violation. It may not be. Either way, I honestly don’t care anymore.”
— HUD regional administrator Lynne Patton, quoted by the HuffPost, after sending a political tweet from her government account.
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.