Politico: “As Americans rush Monday to finish up their own taxes, their judgment on Trump’s beloved tax cut bill is pretty clear: Most really don’t like it.”
“Multiple polls show a majority of Americans don’t think they got a tax cut at all — even though independent analyses show they did. And only around a third of the country approves of the legislation itself, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, passed by Congress at the end of 2017.”
Hollis Tharpe, the mayor of Front Royal, Virginia, was indicted Friday and charged with soliciting a prostitute in May 2018, the mayor told NBC Washington.
Tharpe said the charges stem from two visits he made to a massage parlor in Front Royal in 2018.
“President Trump raised more than $30 million for his re-election in the first three months of 2019 and now sits atop more than $40 million,” the New York Times reports.
“Mr. Trump’s campaign — which has set an ambitious $1 billion goal for the 2020 race — launched an aggressive fund-raising push earlier than his predecessors. The campaign has already installed a headquarters in Northern Virginia and is combining a push for both big donations and small contributions online.”
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Mayor Pete Buttigieg made his call to scrap the Electoral College part of his 2020 campaign launch, The Hill reports.
Said Buttigieg: “We can’t say it’s much of a democracy when twice in my lifetime the Electoral College has overruled the American people.”
He added: “Why should our vote in Indiana only count once or twice in a century? Or your vote in Wyoming or New York?”
Related: The Electoral College penalizes voters in high turnout states.
New York Times: “In a memo on Sunday, Ms. Gillibrand’s campaign suggested that her fund-raising had been hampered by a continuing backlash to her decision in 2017 to call for the resignation of a fellow Democratic senator, Al Franken of Minnesota, over sexual harassment allegations.”
From the memo: “There’s no question that the first quarter was adversely impacted by certain establishment donors — and many online — who continue to punish Kirsten for standing up for her values and for women.”
Speaker Nancy Pelosi demanded President Trump remove a video he tweeted Friday that shows footage from 9/11 spliced in between comments from Muslim Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), claiming that the president’s “hateful and inflammatory rhetoric creates real danger,” Axios reports.
Said Pelosi: “Following the President’s tweet, I spoke with the Sergeant-at-Arms to ensure that Capitol Police are conducting a security assessment to safeguard Congresswoman Omar, her family and her staff. They will continue to monitor and address the threats she faces. The President’s words weigh a ton, and his hateful and inflammatory rhetoric creates real danger.”
Jonathan Swan: “Much of Washington has spent the weekend on pins and needles preparing for this week’s release of the Mueller report. But in one particular quarter, people seem quite relaxed.”
“Two of the president’s top advisers who will be handling the response to Mueller’s report were watching the Masters when I called them about it this weekend. By all accounts, the president himself is also taking a fairly blasé approach. The subject has barely come up, if at all, in recent senior staff meetings, according to two sources with direct knowledge. And in recent calls to aides and allies, Trump has barely mentioned it.”
Rudy Giuliani told the Wall Street Journal that Trump’s outside lawyers have prepared a counter-report that is currently 140 pages but they’re trying to whittle it down to 50 pages. Giuliani added that they expect to focus their defense mostly on the topic of obstruction of justice and will largely ignore collusion.
Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) said that President Trump may have threatened to transport illegal immigrants to so-called sanctuary cities to “make everybody crazy” and generate media attention, Reuters reports
Said Scott: “I mean maybe he’s just saying this to make everybody crazy, make everybody talk about it on their shows.”
White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said that she doesn’t believe members of Congress are “smart enough” to examine President Trump’s tax returns, pushing back against Democrats’ demands for information on the president’s finances, the Washington Post reports.
A Goldman Sachs forecast finds President Trump enjoys a “narrow advantage” over rival candidates heading into the 2020 election given the outlook for the U.S. economy, Bloomberg reports.
“Incumbent presidents carry a 5 to 6 percentage-point edge over rival candidates in the popular vote and Goldman Sachs’s economic forecast also leans in favor of Trump, although that is partly offset by his negative approval rating, economists Alec Phillips and Blake Taylor wrote in a report released late on Saturday.”
“Sen. Bernie Sanders, in a rare and forceful rebuke by a presidential candidate of an influential party ally, has accused a liberal think tank of undermining Democrats’ chances of taking back the White House in 2020 by ‘using its resources to smear’ him and other contenders pushing progressive policies,” the New York Times reports.
“Mr. Sanders’s criticism of the Center for American Progress… reflects a simmering ideological battle within the Democratic Party and threatens to reopen wounds from the 2016 primary between him and Hillary Clinton’s allies. The letter airs criticisms shared among his supporters: That the think tank, which has close ties to Mrs. Clinton and the Democratic Party establishment, is beholden to corporate donors and has worked to quash a leftward shift in the party led partly by Mr. Sanders.”
Wall Street Journal: “Mr. Trump has selected candidates like Messrs. Moore and Cain in recent weeks because he believes they have the interests of his presidency in mind, the person said.”
“Describing Mr. Trump’s views, the person said, ‘I want people who care about me and my presidency and economic growth…because that’s important to the health of the country and his re-election chances.’”
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) raised $3 million for her presidential campaign in the first quarter of 2019, Axios reports.
“Nothing stirs President Trump’s most radical ideas like immigration. And nothing so stirs his willingness to entertain what some consider illegal or wrong,” Axios reports.
“Trump is genuinely frustrated that two years into his presidency, he hasn’t built the wall he promised, and he hasn’t reduced the flow of asylum seekers and undocumented immigrants into the U.S. In fact, the numbers are going up. The issue is highlighted above all others by the news outlet he focuses on most, Fox News. That raises his blood pressure every day.”
“He can’t understand why he’s not allowed to have total control over who enters the U.S. across the southern border.”
Politico: “Aides insist they have nothing to fear from the special counsel’s nearly 400-page report, though not all of the president’s allies are so confident.”
“His fluency on faith and his willingness to speak about it is an asset. Carter, Clinton, and Obama — they all shared that quality. It was one of the cues that opened the door to voters.”
— David Axelrod, quoted by New York Magazine, on Pete Buttigieg.
Throwing down the tax return gauntlet against both Sen. Bernie Sanders and President Trump, Sen. Kamala Harris released 15 years of her tax returns, the most of any 2020 Presidential candidate, CNN reports.
“Candidly, I don’t even know all the reasons why this is going so well.”
— Pete Buttigieg, in a Interview with New York Magazine, on his presidential bid.
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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