Rep. Steve King (R-IA), who has a long history of touting white nationalism, shared a graphic that imagined “another civil war,” this time between red and blue states, the HuffPost reports.
From the meme: “One side has about 8 trillion bullets, while the other side doesn’t know which bathroom to use. Wonder who would win…”
ProPublica: “Federal authorities raided the office of Republican fundraiser Elliott Broidy last summer, seeking records related to his dealings with foreign officials and Trump administration associates.”
“Agents were authorized to use the megadonor’s hands and face to unlock any phones that required fingerprint or facial scans.”
Beto O’Rourke raised $6.1 million in his first 24 hours as a presidential candidate, according to his campaign, surpassing Bernie Sanders and every other 2020 Democrat who has disclosed their figures, NBC News reports.
Washington Post: “O’Rourke was a fundraising juggernaut during his U.S. Senate race in Texas last year, but there were significant questions about whether that would translate to a national campaign where he was running against fellow Democrats, not Republican Sen. Ted Cruz.”
“The answer appears to be yes.”
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“This is the race I want to run.”
— Sen. Elizabeth Warren, quoted by the Associated Press, on running for president as an underdog.
Politico: “Biden has a $2.7 million vacation home. He charges more than $100,000 per speaking gig and has inked a book deal likely worth seven figures.”
“Since leaving office in 2017, the 76-year-old former vice president has watched his bank account swell as he continues to cultivate the image of a regular, Amtrak-riding guy. He’s repeatedly referred to himself as ‘Middle-Class Joe’ on the campaign trail and in speaking engagements as he publicly mulls whether to run for president.”
CNN: “O’Rourke told reporters in Milwaukee on Sunday that he is ‘in talks’ with someone to become his campaign manager and has offered the job to one person. He did not say who that person is. O’Rourke’s campaign declined to comment, and Jen O’Malley Dillon did not return requests for comment.”
“O’Malley Dillon was the deputy campaign manager of President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign and a top political consultant for Justin Trudeau in Canada.”
NBC News: “Ben Carson’s daily schedule from 2017 shows a HUD secretary who held senior staff meetings once a week, lunched with the author of ‘Chicken Soup for the Soul’ and the founder of My Pillow, and left work before 2 p.m. on some Fridays to fly to his Florida mansion.”
“A list of appointments for a 31-week period shows that for about half of the Fridays Carson worked a traditional eight or nine-hour day. For five of the Fridays he was off or had no appointments. For five more Fridays he left before 2 p.m. to get to the airport to fly to South Florida, where he owns a house valued at $4.3 million. For the remaining six, he had no scheduled appointments past 3 p.m. In all, he made a dozen weekend trips to South Florida during the 31 weeks.”
“The U.S. military is crafting plans that could keep nearly 1,000 forces in Syria, U.S. officials said, a shift that comes three months after President Trump ordered a complete withdrawal and is far more than the White House originally intended,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“Protracted administration talks with Turkey, European allies and U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters have so far failed to secure an agreement to create a safe zone in northeastern Syria, part of Mr. Trump’s plan for leaving Syria.”
“The U.S. now plans to keep working with Kurdish fighters in Syria, despite Turkish threats to cross the border and attack the Kurds, the U.S. officials said. The proposal could keep as many as 1,000 American forces, spread from the north of Syria to the south.”
New York Times: “As the primary process kicks into full swing, some Democrats are bypassing the kind of experienced Washington ‘wiseguys’ who operated in the caldron of beltway politics — famous strategists like David Axelrod, James Carville and, more recently, Robby Mook. Instead, campaigns are increasingly filling senior positions with a new generation of activist-driven operatives, whose political formation took place in grass-roots movements.”
“The shift has resulted in greater staff diversity than in previous cycles, but it has also influenced strategy, according to campaign officials. New voices are joining with election-cycle veterans to bring fresh ideas and political strategies to the presidential stage.”
Geekwire: Schultz has hired Instagram’s former head of analytics, Mike Develin, as his chief analytics officer, according to Develin’s LinkedIn profile. In addition, Schultz’s team on Friday posted nine new job openings, including several tech roles, such as Senior Front End Engineer, BI Developer Analyst, Marketing Operations Manager, IT Specialist, and Senior Front End Engineer.”
The Week: “Trump’s ridicule of the late Arizona Sen. John McCain came during a weekend tweeting spree that was, even by the president’s own very low standards, extraordinary for its sustained thin-skinned narcissism. He complained about a Saturday Night Live rerun, about a pair of insufficiently toadying Fox News anchors, and, of course, about Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into his 2016 presidential campaign.”
“His criticism of McCain wasn’t just incorrect — yes, McCain took the now-infamous Steele Dossier to the FBI, but he did it after Election Day — but extraordinarily petty. Even Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who has become one of Trump’s most loyal sidekicks, felt compelled to issue a corrective of sorts.”
“Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan acknowledges that many Republicans nationwide who have heard about his potential presidential ambitions probably view him as a centrist with little hope of finding support in President Trump’s GOP,” the Washington Post reports.
“But amid growing tensions between Trump and Republican lawmakers over foreign policy and the president’s treatment of global alliances, Hogan is signaling that if he decides to wage an insurgent campaign for the GOP nomination, he would pitch himself as far more in tune with the party’s long-held values and worldview than Trump.”
Politico: “North Carolina Republicans are suffering from a lack of credibility, a crowded field and a cash deficit as they head into the primary for the 9th Congressional District redo election.”
“After last week’s filing deadline, 10 Republicans have declared their candidacy for the suburban Charlotte House seat, which has been vacant since January due to allegations of election fraud. A political operative hired by Republican candidate Mark Harris’ 2018 campaign oversaw the illegal collection and manipulation of absentee ballots, subsequently spurring the state election board to order a rerun last month.”
Politico: “Four days into his presidential campaign, O’Rourke’s supporters are still stuffing themselves into coffee shops and living rooms across the Midwest to see the Democratic sensation as he motors east from Iowa to New Hampshire in a Dodge Grand Caravan. And O’Rourke by the weekend was moving deliberately to speak more specifically about policy, to hold more organized events and to mend his relationship with the media.”
“But for all the charisma and fundraising that could carry him far into the Democratic primary, a series of missteps in his campaign’s earliest days served as a reminder of how uncertain a prospect his star remains.”
“The President is not a white supremacist.”
— Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, on Fox News Sunday.
BuzzFeed News: “Across a breathtaking succession of stops throughout Iowa, from three different countertops, one podcast studio, and one truck bed, the first three days of O’Rourke’s campaign unfolded a world away. It wasn’t that Iowans hadn’t seen the skepticism about O’Rourke. It was that many of them didn’t much care. They saw an O’Rourke much closer to the one stormed across Texas, coming within a narrow margin of defeating Cruz.”
“They were entranced, they said, by his charisma, his oratory, and his particular style of campaigning — down-to-earth, personal, and relentlessly positive. Though few were willing to commit to voting for him, as is common this early in Iowa, many said they were convinced that he could deliver on the promise of unity that he offered at every campaign stop.”
“In President Trump’s view, self-driving cars are a menace to society. A skeptic of cutting-edge technology — as his tweets about Boeing’s ‘complex’ planes emphasized — Trump has privately said he thinks the autonomous vehicle revolution is ‘crazy’ and that he’d never let a computer drive him around,” Axios reports.
Said one source: “You know when he’s telling a story, and he does the hand motions. He says, ‘Can you imagine, you’re sitting in the back seat and all of a sudden this car is zig-zagging around the corner and you can’t stop the fucking thing?’”
Jonathan Swan: “Rudy Giuliani has vanished from your television. The last time the president’s once-ubiquitous attack dog did a major TV appearance was on Sunday, Jan. 20, when he went on NBC’s Meet the Press and CNN’s State of the Union.”
“Sources familiar with Giuliani’s thinking say he views a major part of his job as trying to undermine public confidence in the Mueller probe and harden the support of Republican voters for Trump to protect him against impeachment. So for Giuliani to stay off TV for an extended stretch is odd.”
“When I asked Giuliani about all of this, he texted that he has spent hours with Trump in the last month and hasn’t heard any complaints about his TV appearances from the president. Giuliani then called me to elaborate. He said his decision to stay off TV since Jan. 20 had nothing to do with his performances on those shows.”
Said Giuliani: “About a month to a month and a half ago we decided, because we thought the Mueller report was imminent in the next four or five days, that it would be better not to comment until the report was filed or made public. Obviously those days have now expanded way beyond four or five days.”
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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