Attorney General William Barr said “he wasn’t worried about the near certainty that the House will vote to hold him in contempt of Congress, nor was he concerned about accusations he lied to lawmakers, chalking the matter up to partisan politics,” Politico reports.
Said Barr: “I think it’s a laughable charge and I think it’s largely being made to try to discredit me partly because they may be concerned about the outcome of a review of what happened during the election.”
Atlanta Journal Constitution: “Thirty miles on I-285 separate them, but Democrats Brenda Lopez Romero and Michael Owens are hoping they can be united 650 miles away — in Congress.”
“A passion for politics brought Lopez Romero and Owens together. Now it will put their relationship to the test as they compete in Democratic primaries in two separate congressional districts on opposite sides of Atlanta.”
RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel “said that she personally opposes provisions in the new Alabama law that outlaws virtually all abortions, even in cases of rape and incest, but defended the range of views on abortion within her party,” the Washington Post reports.
Said McDaniel: “Personally, I would have the exceptions. That’s my personal belief. But we are a party that is a broad tent. If you agree with us 80 percent of the time, I want you to be a Republican. We don’t have a litmus test as to whether you can belong to our party.”
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Eli Lake: “If there’s one thing Democrats and ayatollahs agree on these days, it’s that John Bolton is trying to start a war with Iran. President Trump has said that he is open to negotiations and does not want a war, but his mustachioed national security adviser will not abide.”
“Popular as it may be in Washington, this theory has it backwards. Bolton’s antipathy toward Iran is well-known and longstanding, but the current administration strategy is not aimed at starting a war with Iran. It’s designed to avoid one.”
“This is where Bolton comes in: He’s kind of a one-man psychological warfare operation. If Iran’s leaders believe Trump’s advisers are trying to constrain him, they may assess they can get away with a proxy attack on U.S. positions. If they think Trump is trying to constrain his national security adviser, they may decide not to.”
Ahead of the final episode of Game of Thrones, a new Firehouse Strategies poll finds Donald Trump’s net favorability among the show’s viewers sits at -28, compared to a nearly even -1 net favorability among non-viewers. For comparison, Democratic frontrunner Joe Biden is at -5 among viewers and -6 among non-viewers.
This dynamic is largely reflective of the age demographics of Game of Thrones, which leans heavily towards the 18-49 year old demo.
As for the show’s plot itself, 50% of those watching think Jon Snow will end up on the Iron Throne, followed by Arya Stark at 12%, Sansa Stark at 11%, Daenerys Targaryen at 11%, Tyrion Lannister at 10% and someone else at 7%.
President Trump tweeted there’s a “good chance” Democrats will work with him to pass an immigration bill, even after Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) declared his proposal “dead on arrival.”
“South Carolina Republicans on Saturday will be asked to take a stand for the Electoral College — the constitutional mechanism President Trump called ‘a disaster for a democracy’ four years before it cemented his White House win,” the Charleston Post & Courier reports.
“When an estimated 1,200 party faithful gather for their state convention near Columbia, they will consider a resolution urging state lawmakers ‘to preserve and defend the Electoral College,’ as the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact gains momentum in other states.”
President Trump tweeted that his 2016 presidential campaign had been “conclusively spied on” by the Obama administration and claimed it was akin to “treason” and demanded “long jail sentences” for those behind it.
“Look, it’s not like I killed Bin Laden, right? I don’t want to overstate what my role was, but it certainly is something that was dangerous.”
— Pete Buttigieg, quoted by CNN, describing his military experience in Afghanistan.
Susan Glasser: “We may still be guessing about Trump, but one thing this week’s Iran-war scare has shown is the extent to which the Trump Presidency has blown up the old way of American foreign policymaking, which makes the risk of a miscalculation higher than ever.”
“Consider the damage done to the alliance between the United States and its traditional partners in Europe, who remain outraged about Trump’s decision to pull out of the Iran deal they negotiated with the United States and are deeply skeptical of his latest moves. Not only is Europe not inclined to offer a helping hand, but even the old habits and inclinations to consult with each other before major foreign-policy moves have been all but abandoned—and with them, of course, another constraint on the Trump Presidency.”
“The removal of constraints on Trump, domestically and internationally, is what is so striking at this moment when we are all trying to figure out what’s actually happening with American policy in the Middle East. Trump has already shown himself to be unbound by old fears of abandoning political norms… He doesn’t worry about cozying up to dictators or flip-flopping on core principles. He doesn’t care about creating international coalitions or whether his actions are consistent. And with all the turnover on his staff, a normal decision-making process on national-security matters seems to have been abandoned, too.”
“Instead, amazingly enough, we are now at a moment in the Trump Presidency when the capricious President himself is being touted as the possible constraint on his hawkish advisers like Bolton.”
“Facebook is still reeling from the fallout from its Cambridge Analytica scandal more than a year ago, as multiple former recruiters say candidates are turning down job offers from what was once considered the best place to work in the United States,” CNBC reports.
“Among top schools, such as Stanford, Carnegie Mellon and Ivy League universities, Facebook’s acceptance rate for full-time positions offered to new graduates has fallen from an average of 85% for the 2017-2018 school year to between 35% and 55% as of December, according to former Facebook recruiters.”
“Conservative lightning rod Roy Moore of Alabama, narrow loser of a turbulent special election for Senate in 2017, is considering a fresh run next year,” the AP reports.
“National Republican leaders are signaling they’ll again try preventing their party from nominating the twice-removed state jurist whose campaign was battered by allegations of long-ago sexual harassment of teenagers.”
Attorney General William Barr told Fox News that he is trying to get to the bottom of whether or not “government officials abused their power and put their thumb on the scale” during the early stages of the Russia probe.
Said Barr: “I’ve been trying to get answers to the questions and I’ve found that a lot of the answers have been inadequate and some of the explanations I’ve gotten don’t hang together, in a sense I have more questions today than when I first started.”
He added: “People have to find out what the government was doing during that period. If we’re worried about foreign influence, for the very same reason we should be worried about whether government officials abuse their power and put their thumb on the scale.”
Barr was even stronger in a Wall Street Journal interview: “Government power was used to spy on American citizens. I can’t imagine any world where we wouldn’t take a look and make sure that was done properly.”
“Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson broke the law when he failed to report an order for a $31,561 dining room table set for his office as well as the installation of an $8,000 dishwasher in the office kitchen, the Government Accountability Office found in a report published Thursday,” Politico reports.
Wall Street Journal: “The House Judiciary Committee and Mr. Mueller’s team have been in negotiations for days about the contours of the special counsel’s eagerly-awaited testimony about his 448-page report on Russian interference in the 2016 election and episodes in which President Trump allegedly sought to influence the investigation.”
“Legal questions on how Mr. Trump’s assertion of executive privilege would affect Mr. Mueller’s testimony are central to the continuing negotiations, said the people familiar with the matter. The privilege claim could prevent him from discussing details involving Mr. Trump and his advisers beyond what is in the redacted report, the people added. The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel is weighing the questions and is expected to provide guidance, officials said.”
Irish Times: “The Trump administration had been considering a visit to Ireland between the president’s trips to Britain and France in June. But disagreement has emerged over protocol issues.”
“While the Taoiseach’s preference is to meet Mr. Trump in Co Clare, Irish officials are reluctant to meet the U.S. president in his golf course in Doonbeg. Instead, the Government has pressed for a meeting in another location, preferably Dromoland Castle, located 50km away.”
“One White House source told The Irish Times on Thursday that the president was now favouring a visit to Scotland rather than Ireland during his European trip. But sources in Dublin on Thursday said they believed the Irish visit would still go ahead. … The unique nature of a potential visit – a U.S. president visiting his own private property in Ireland – has thrown up complex issues around protocol, and whether it constitutes a private or official visit.”
New York Times: “Mr. Bolton, several of the officials said, has quietly voiced frustration with the president, viewing him as unwilling to push for changes in a region that he has long seen as a quagmire. … Mr. Bolton’s independence has rankled the acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, and has even prompted rumors that his job might be in jeopardy — something the White House denies.”
“But Mr. Trump has poked fun at Mr. Bolton’s reputation for hawkishness, joking in meetings with him. ‘If it was up to John, we’d be in four wars now,’ one of the senior officials recalled Mr. Trump as saying.”
New York Times: “They had a plan: dramatize the special counsel’s damning but dense report on national television in their committees, animating his prose with vivid testimony from witnesses who would discuss Mr. Mueller’s findings on Russia’s election interference and Mr. Trump’s possible obstruction of justice. But so far Mr. Trump and his allies have successfully parried every one of their moves.”
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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