Anthony Weiner, “the serial sexter and former congressman — who is now living in a Bronx halfway house after doing hard time for sexting a teenager — is skulking around Manhattan’s publishing houses trying to shop a book proposal,” the New York Post reports.
“So far, interest has been flaccid.”
And, of course, the Post‘s front page is priceless.
“Democratic congressional leaders said they held a constructive meeting with President Trump on Monday at which they agreed to seek a deal on a $2 trillion infrastructure bill,” The Hill reports.
Wall Street Journal: “In unusually positive comments about negotiations with the president, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) both praised the meeting as productive and said they had agreed to return in three weeks to hear Mr. Trump’s ideas about how to pay for an infrastructure bill.”
Said Schumer: “There was goodwill in this meeting and that was different than some of the other meetings that we’ve had.”
“Right now, I’m studying the field. I’m reading Shortest Way Home by Pete Buttigieg. I call him Buttabeep, Buttaboop. (Laughs.) The name’s either going to really hurt or really help — I think it’s going to help, actually. Just the other day, I was at Apple with Spielberg and we were in the hallway talking about, ‘What are we going to do?’ And I said, ‘Have you heard of this Butta guy?’ He goes, ‘No, Butta-who?’ I go, ‘Buttabeep, Buttaboop. Look him up.'”
— Oprah Winfrey, in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. on who she might support for president.
Greg Sargent: “As we’ve seen, there’s no end to the ugly, corrupt, destructive and bigoted things that President Trump will do in part to please his base — from separating migrant families, to pardoning racist sheriff Joe Arpaio, to supporting a lawsuit that could destroy our health-care system.”
“But there’s another move of this kind that deserves its own category: situations in which Trump tells his voters that he’s undertaking some sort of cruel action that he isn’t actually taking, simply because he believes they’ll thrill to his claim that he is.”
“According to a McClatchy analysis of campaign finance reports, Harris and Buttigieg have done a better job than any other candidate in poaching donors from their opponents in the 2020 primary race.”
“More than 450 former O’Rourke donors have cut checks for Buttigieg, accounting for roughly one out of every 10 dollars Buttigieg raised from those who gave more than $200. Harris won the support of more than 380 former donors to O’Rourke, netting her campaign more than $350,000.”
“All told, more than 1,300 former O’Rourke supporters have so far given to other candidates in a race where a crowded field is fiercely competing for a limited pool of big donors.”
“You are going to find me guilty of campaign finance, with McDougal or Stormy, and give me three years—really? And how come I’m the only one? I didn’t work for the campaign. I worked for him. And how come I’m the one that’s going to prison? I’m not the one that slept with the porn star.”
— Michael Cohen, quoted by the New Yorker.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) said that his panel would make a criminal referral to the Justice Department regarding potential false testimony by Erik Prince, the billionaire founder of the private military contractor Blackwater and an ally of President Trump, the Washington Post reports.
Said Schiff: “The evidence is so weighty that the Justice Department needs to consider this.”
Joe Biden said that Congress would have “no alternative” but to impeach President Trump if his administration seeks to block its investigations of issues raised in the special counsel’s report on Russian election interference, the Washington Post reports.
For members: ‘Impeachment Is Inevitable’
Jonathan Chait: “The most bizarre passage in Rod Rosenstein’s letter to President Trump resigning his post as deputy attorney general is praise for ‘the courtesy and humor you often display in our personal conversations.’ It is not standard practice for the president to have personal conversations with the deputy attorney general at all, certainly not when that person is supervising an investigation into the president himself. And while we cannot know the substance of those personal conversations, we do know that Rosenstein was once so alarmed by Trump’s behavior that he discussed invoking the 25th Amendment to have him removed on account of mental unfitness.”
“Maybe Trump’s private conversations somehow contain the humor that is completely lacking in his public persona, which consist of boasts, lies, and belittling attacks. Trump’s public treatment of Rosenstein included tweeting an image of him behind bars along with other alleged traitors. That Trump, what a jokester.”
“The day before special counsel Robert S. Mueller III submitted his report to the Justice Department last month, Washington was abuzz with what revelations it might contain about contacts between the 2016 Trump campaign and foreign officials. But President Trump’s 2020 campaign manager, Brad Parscale, was an ocean away, delivering a paid speech to a room full of Romanian politicians and policy elites,” the Washington Post reports.
“Legal analysts said that Parscale’s visit breaks no laws so long as he does not do any lobbying in the United States on behalf of foreign clients without registering. But ethics experts said any money changing hands between foreign citizens and campaign officials created an obstacle course of potential risks.”
First Read: “Here’s the math: With the GOP holding a 53-47 advantage right now, Democrats must pick up a net of three Senate seats to win control of the chamber if they win the White House (with the vice president getting to break 50-50 ties).”
“And here’s the map: GOP Sen. Cory Gardner is vulnerable in Colorado; Democrats have recruited Mark Kelly to run against GOP Sen. Martha McSally in Arizona; but Dem Sen. Doug Jones is going to have a challenge hanging on in Alabama in a presidential year.”
“So assuming Dem wins in Arizona and Colorado — as well as a loss in Alabama — Democrats have to beat Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, plus flip one of Georgia, North Carolina, Iowa, Kentucky or Texas.”
“It’s doable. But it’s also daunting.”
Former President Obama lent his voice to a new Joe Biden campaign video that touts his former vice president as being “resilient, loyal, and a patriot,” CBS News reports.
“The new ad features footage of the former president delivering a speech during Biden’s Presidential Medal of Freedom ceremony at the White House back in 2017. In it, he devotes his remarks to a glowing review of Biden’s storied political career.”
The video ends with Obama saying, “The best part is he’s nowhere close to finished.”
“More than a third of Americans say that illegal immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border is at a “crisis,” up 11 percentage points since January as Democrats have grown sharply more concerned about the issue,” according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll.
“At the same time, Americans assign a similar level of blame to congressional Democrats and President Trump for the situation, the survey finds, signaling that both political parties face challenges on immigration heading into the 2020 presidential election cycle.”
Jonathan Bernstein: “The Washington Post’s fact-checking operation has now counted 10,000 ‘false or misleading claims’ by Donald Trump during his presidency.”
“It’s hard to convey how big a deal this is. To begin with: It’s real. Anyone can go through the Post’s data and find plenty to argue with – maybe one statement isn’t really false, another was just an exaggeration and some other one was nit-picky. But even if the fact-checkers are wrong an implausible three out of four times, that’s still 2,500 false or misleading claims by the president in two-plus years.”
“That’s simply not normal. We don’t have equivalent historical data, but I’m confident that even Richard Nixon, who told more than a few important whoppers, didn’t come close to Trump’s level of habitual dishonesty. Barack Obama, George W. Bush? As I’ve said many times, most politicians actually care a lot about establishing a reputation for reliability. Oh, they’ll spin. They’ll present the best-looking version of events that can still count as the truth. But they will very rarely say something that flat-out isn’t so. And if they’re called on it, they’ll usually retreat to a more justifiable position. Trump, instead, just keeps going.”
“Does he get away with it? In the sense that he’s still president, I suppose so. But his professional reputation is in tatters, which reduces his influence, worsens his relationship with Congress, hinders his ability to negotiate and impedes his broader agenda.”
“Senate Republicans are beginning to set up a firewall for President Trump against special counsel Robert Mueller’s report, pushing back at a slew of Democratic attacks on the president’s conduct as described in the document,” The Hill reports.
Said Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX): “If this were legitimate oversight, that would be one thing, but I think this is more like harassment and it’s all politics. Obviously Democrats were very disappointed in the Mueller report and they’re not willing to accept the conclusions and move on.”
Stacey Abrams told the Atlanta Journal Constitution that she won’t run for the U.S. Senate in 2020 but left open the possibility she could launch a presidential campaign.
“If she doesn’t make a White House run, Abrams is likely to prepare a 2022 rematch against Gov. Brian Kemp, who bested her by about 55,000 votes in a contest marred by allegations of voter suppression. After 10 days of legal wrangling and vote-counting, Abrams ended her campaign but refused to call it a concession.”
A new Suffolk University/Boston Globe poll in New Hampshire finds Joe Biden leading the Democratic presidential race with 20% support, followed by Sen. Bernie Sanders at 12%, Pete Buttigieg at 11% and Sen. Elizabeth Warren at 8%.
“The survey showed a fragmented field for Democrats. With 24 current and potential candidates polled, the top four contenders accounted for nearly 53% of support from those surveyed, while 14 candidates didn’t reach 1 percent.”
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.