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Smear Merchants Try to Slime Pete Buttigieg

April 29, 2019 at 8:29 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“A Republican source told the Daily Beast that lobbyist Jack Burkman and internet troll Jacob Wohl approached him last week to try to convince him to falsely accuse Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, of engaging him sexually while he was too drunk to consent.”

“The source who spoke to The Daily Beast said Burkman and Wohl made clear that their goal was to kneecap Buttigieg’s momentum in the 2020 presidential race. The man asked to remain anonymous out of a concern that the resulting publicity might imperil his employment, and because he said Wohl and Burkman have a reputation for vindictiveness.”

“But the source provided The Daily Beast with a surreptitious audio recording of the meeting, which corroborates his account.”

Trump Goes Hard After Biden

April 29, 2019 at 7:08 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“President Trump appeared unnerved as Joe Biden secured the endorsement of the top firefighters’ union, issuing Monday a string of four tweets targeting the Democratic presidential candidate and union leaders,” CNN reports.

“That’s exactly the behavior several of the President’s political advisers have been warning him against, wary that Trump will elevate a potentially formidable rival.”

Mattis Ignored Orders from Trump

April 29, 2019 at 6:51 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Former Defense Secretary James Mattis declined to carry out orders from President Trump or tried to limit his options in attempts to prevent tensions with North Korea, Iran and Syria from escalating, the New Yorker reports.

Said one former national security official: “The president thinks out loud. Do you treat it like an order? Or do you treat it as part of a longer conversation? We treated it as part of a longer conversation.”

The official added: “We prevented a lot of bad things from happening.”


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Trump Has Sold a Million MAGA Hats

April 29, 2019 at 5:45 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

President Trump’s re-election campaign manager, Brad Parscale, told CBS News that the campaign had sold almost a million MAGA hats.

Said Parscale: “We’re closing in on selling our one millionth red MAGA hat. You know those are 45 bucks a piece. You do the math there really quick, it’s $45 million. So those kind of things—this president has changed the game in the way merchandise, rallies, the entire experience of being part of the political movement. He’s changed it.”

Rosenstein Will Resign Next Month

April 29, 2019 at 5:30 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein submitted his resignation letter to President Trump on Monday, ending a tumultuous two years in which he tried to steady a rocky Justice Department and its relationship with the White House,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

His resignation is effective May 11.

Biden ‘Takes Responsibility’ for Treatment of Anita Hill

April 29, 2019 at 3:48 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Joe Biden told ABC News he takes “responsibility” for Anita Hill’s treatment when she testified before the Senate Judiciary committee during Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s confirmation hearing.

Said Biden: “I believed her from the very beginning, but I was chairman. She did not get a fair hearing. She did not get treated well. That’s my responsibility. As the committee chairman, I take responsibility that she did not get treated well. I take responsibility for that.”

He added: “I apologized for it. I apologize again.”

Tariffs Boost Cost of Washing Machines Almost $100

April 29, 2019 at 3:28 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“A little more than a year after President Trump slapped a 20% tariff on imported washing machines, new research finds that American shoppers have been the ones to pay the price,” NBC News reports.

“A study conducted by two researchers at the University of Chicago and a Federal Reserve Board Governor found that washers cost an average of 12% more after the imposition of the tariffs, or roughly $86 to $92 more per appliance.”

Meanwhile, Bloomberg reports personal income for farmers “fell by the most in three years in the first quarter, as losses to U.S. agriculture mount from Trump’s trade wars.”

A Visit to the Clinton Library

April 29, 2019 at 2:27 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Walter Shapiro: “What is lacking throughout the Clinton Library is context. No one should be surprised that the impeachment saga is as airbrushed as an old-time Hugh Hefner-approved Playboy centerfold. Monica Lewinsky is mentioned in a single sentence—and Clinton is portrayed as morally, as well as legally, blameless. As the signage puts it, ‘After the Republicans won Congress in 1994, the fight for power culminated in two government shutdowns and an impeachment battle, bringing partisan opposition to a new high and attempting to deny the very legitimacy of the President’s election.'”

“To give Clinton a break, honesty about sex has never been his strong suit. But the true missing figure in Little Rock, whose shadow dominated the Clinton years, is Ronald Reagan.”

White House Reviewing Stephen Moore’s Writings

April 29, 2019 at 2:06 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“The White House is reviewing past writings by Stephen Moore, the conservative commentator whom President Trump plans to nominate to the Federal Reserve Board, amid criticism that many of the opinion columns he penned denigrated women,” the New York Times reports.

Ex-Envoy Says Trump Authorized North Korea Payment

April 29, 2019 at 1:45 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“Joseph Yun, the former State Department Special Representative for North Korea, confirmed Monday that he signed an agreement to pay North Korea $2 million for the release of American student Otto Warmbier in 2017,” CNN reports.

Said Yun: “As soon as North Korea side told me that this bill for $2 million would have to be paid … I contacted my boss then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. He got back to me very quickly thereafter to say yes, go ahead and sign.”

Trump has flatly denied any money was paid for the release of Warmbier.

Most Say Good Economy Hasn’t Helped Them

April 29, 2019 at 1:43 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

A new Monmouth poll finds just 12% of Americans say that their family has benefited a great deal from recent growth in the U.S. economy and another 31% say they have received some benefit from the economic upturn.

A majority, though, say they have been helped either not much (27%) or not at all (27%) from the nation’s macroeconomic growth.

On the Trail with Pete Buttigieg

April 29, 2019 at 1:34 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Vogue: “As we pass the remains of the Studebaker factories, I ask him what he’d say to those who argue that yet another white male candidate isn’t what Democrats need in this year of all years.”

Said Buttigieg: “I’m sensitive to that. In the end, I think we just bring whatever identity we have to the table. Mine is of a young, gay, first-generation white veteran mayor.”

Harris Hires Top Media Adviser

April 29, 2019 at 1:26 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“Kamala Harris has hired Jim Margolis, one of the Democratic Party’s most accomplished admakers, as her media adviser,” Politico reports.

“Margolis is a veteran of former President Barack Obama’s campaigns in 2008 and 2012, and served in a key role in Hillary Clinton’s White House bid in 2016.”

Wall Street Democrats Can’t Settle on a Candidate

April 29, 2019 at 12:54 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

New York Magazine: “The candidates who had long cultivated relationships with Wall Street — such as Cory Booker and Kirsten Gillibrand — were struggling to gain traction and had grown more hostile to finance as their party had, too. Biden, leading in early polls, had a comforting history in the Obama White House and a reputation as an Establishment Democrat but had never, until a few months ago, maintained any meaningful relationship with Wall Street, hadn’t even announced his candidacy yet, and struck many bankers as a dubious bet to beat Trump.”

“Nearly everyone else in the field, the financiers felt, was being pulled leftward by Bernie… and Elizabeth Warren (less crazy, Democrats on Wall Street think, and way more competent).”

Said one banker: “She would torture them.”

Indonesian Election Workers Die from Overwork

April 29, 2019 at 12:25 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

The Guardian: “Ten days after Indonesia held the world’s biggest single-day elections, officials say more than 270 election staff have died, mostly of fatigue-related illneses caused by long hours of work counting millions of ballot papers by hand.”

“The 17 April elections were the first time the country of 260 million people combined the presidential vote with national and regional parliamentary ones, with an aim to cut costs.”

Trump Sees Supreme Court as His Ally

April 29, 2019 at 12:00 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Washington Post: “Trump’s confidence in the high court seems borne of the fact that he’s nominated two of the five conservative justices that make up the court’s majority — Neil M. Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh. The president said this week he was pleased with Kavanaugh’s questioning in the census case, an adviser said. The president and the first lady are friendly with Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife, Ginni Thomas, having shared dinner at the White House… Trump has referred to Supreme Court justices as Democrats and Republicans, current and former aides say, and has bragged that he thinks he may get one or two more chances to remake the court.

“Trump has told White House aides that he would take the battle over his tax returns to the high court, where he believes he would win.”

The President Committed Crimes

April 29, 2019 at 11:41 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Benjamin Wittes: “There is no way around it. Attorney General William Barr’s efforts to clear President Donald Trump, both in his original letter and in his press conference the morning of the report’s release, are wholly unconvincing when you actually spend time with the document itself.”

“Mueller does not accuse the president of crimes. He doesn’t have to. But the facts he recounts describe criminal behavior. They describe criminal behavior even if we allow the president’s—and the attorney general’s—argument that facially valid exercises of presidential authority cannot be obstructions of justice. They do this because they describe obstructive activity that does not involve facially valid exercises of presidential power at all.”

Gingrich Sees Kamala Harris as Most Likely Nominee

April 29, 2019 at 11:19 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Newt Gingrich told CBS News that Sen. Kamala Harris is “most likely” to be nominated by Democrats to challenge President Trump in the 2020 presidential race.

Said Gingrich: “She’s very articulate and I think a likable person, and I think that she represents a new generation in a way that Biden and Sanders are going to work very hard to be able to match.”

But he said Pete Buttigieig may be the “most dangerous opponent” to Trump: “He’s from the Midwest, he’s a mayor of a small town, he has no particular public record, he can be like Jimmy Carter used to be, a Rorschach test of you paint on him what you want.”

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About Political Wire

goddard-bw-snapshotTaegan 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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