Joe Pompeo: “As far as how the talks came about in the first place, it appears that Isgur, as she was preparing to exit the D.O.J., wasn’t only shopping around for a media gig at CNN. Cable-news sources told me that she also passed through 30 Rock to discuss a potential role at MSNBC, where she met with top newsroom management in recent months.”
Said one media source: “She was pitching her intimate knowledge of the Mueller probe as a selling point.”
“The son of Republican congressional candidate Mark Harris testified Wednesday that he warned his father repeatedly that he believed a political operative now at the center of an election-fraud investigation had previously used illegal tactics to win votes,” the Washington Post reports.
“John Harris, now an assistant U.S. attorney in Raleigh, said he advised his father in conversations and emails that he believed Leslie McCrae Dowless was ‘shady’ and appeared to have illegally collected absentee ballots in 2016 while working for a different Republican candidate in North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District.”
“A U.S. Coast Guard lieutenant and self-identified white nationalist has been arrested after federal investigators uncovered a cache of weapons and ammunition in his Maryland home that authorities say he stockpiled to launch a massive domestic terror attack targeting politicians and journalists,” the Washington Post reports.
Christopher Paul Hasson called for “focused violence” to “establish a white homeland” and dreamed of ways to “kill almost every last person on earth.”
Washington Post: “One of the networks’ favorite subjects is not a candidate at all but Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who is often identified by her initials, AOC. She’s received a greater density of mentions on Fox News than any likely/possible 2020 candidate besides Warren.”
“Her popularity on Fox is in part, like Sanders, a function of the politics she espouses. She’s the face of a brand of politics with which many on Fox News disagree strongly — and she’s a politician who pushes back forcefully against her critics on social media. (Republicans don’t need to worry about her running in 2020 — or 2024, for that matter. She won’t be old enough.)”
“After two weeks of efforts, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu succeeded in forming a united ultra right-wing party that will run in the April 9 elections, paving the way for Jewish supremacists from the ‘Jewish Power’ party to make it into the next Knesset,” Axios reports.
“This is an unprecedented development in Israel’s history and is equivalent to a U.S. president cutting a political deal with David Duke, the former KKK leader. The prime minister and the ruling Likud Party are legitimizing a racist, xenophobic and homophobic fringe party in hopes of bolstering a right-wing bloc after the elections.”
A new University of Massachusetts Amherst poll in New Hampshire finds Joe Biden leading the Democratic field with 28%, followed by Bernie Sanders at 20%, Kamala Harris at 14% and Elizabeth Warren at 9%.
Another 14% said they were “undecided” about what Democrat they would support in the hypothetical 2020 primary matchup.
Politico: “In the Senate, Sherrod Brown is known as a scourge of Wall Street. But in a Democratic presidential primary with fellow Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren thundering away at bankers, Brown is viewed by many in the industry as a reasonable alternative.”
Los Angeles Times: “Welcome to the new frontier of campaign tech — a loosely regulated world in which simply downloading a weather app or game, connecting to Wi-Fi at a coffee shop or powering up a home router can allow a data broker to monitor your movements with ease, then compile the location information and sell it to a political candidate who can use it to surround you with messages.”
“Campaigns don’t match the names of voters with the personal information they scoop up — although that could be possible in many cases. Instead, they use the information to micro-target ads to appear on phones and other devices based on individual profiles that show where a voter goes, whether a gun range, a Whole Foods or a town hall debate over Medicare.”
NowThis has obtained footage of Fox News host Tucker Carlson calling historian Rutger Bregman a “tiny brain moron” during an interview that the cable channel is now refusing to air.
Carlson added: “Why don’t you go fuck yourself.”
“I’m being approached by a lot of different people, and I guess the best way to put it is I haven’t thrown them out of my office.”
— Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R), when asked by CBS News if he’ll challenge President Trump in a primary.
“A Politico review of recent data extracted from Twitter and from other platforms, as well as interviews with data scientists and digital campaign strategists, suggests that the goal of the coordinated barrage appears to be undermining the nascent candidacies through the dissemination of memes, hashtags, misinformation, and distortions of their positions. But the divisive nature of many of the posts also hint at a broader effort to sow discord and chaos within the Democratic presidential primary.
“The cyber propaganda — which frequently picks at the rawest, most sensitive issues in public discourse — is being pushed across a variety of platforms and with a more insidious approach than in the 2016 presidential election … Over a recent 30-day period, between 2 and 15 percent of all Twitter mentions of the four candidates emanated in some way from within that cluster of [roughly 200] accounts.”
“Attorney General Bill Barr is preparing to announce as early as next week the completion of Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, with plans for Barr to submit to Congress soon after a summary of Mueller’s confidential report,” CNN reports.
“The preparations are the clearest indication yet that Mueller is nearly done with his almost two-year investigation.”
“The scope and contours of what Barr will send to Congress remain unclear. Also unclear is how long it will take Justice officials to prepare what will be submitted to lawmakers.”
Washington Post: “The special counsel’s investigation has consumed Washington since it began in May 2017, and it increasingly appears to be nearing its end, which would send fresh shock waves through the political system.”
Oregon lawmakers are pushing a bill that would amend the state’s constitution to lower the voting age in the state from 18 to 16, the Oregonian reports.
“They hope to put it before voters in 2020.”
“Pressing issues affecting young people have brought the voting age down before. It used to be 21 before the 26th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1971, lowered it to 18. The amendment was fueled in part by teenagers facing the draft for the Vietnam War, which had become increasingly unpopular.”
Nick Ackerman: “The possibility of Manafort really cooperating after being hammered with a huge sentence has been hardly mentioned in the press. This failure to recognize what might happen next with Manafort is premised on the faulty assumption that Manafort’s long trail of lies and duplicitous dealings with the government nullifies his ability to be an effective witness. In my experience as a prosecutor, however, this is not necessarily the case.”
“Under the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, Manafort has up to one year after the date of his sentencing to ask the court for a reduction of sentence based on cooperation. Thus, under the law it is not too late for him to cooperate.”
A federal judge granted Michael Cohen a 60-day reprieve before reporting to prison “due to recent surgery and his health and recovery needs.”
He’ll now report on May 6.
Washington Post: “The dynamic has put a squeeze on the Democratic candidates as they begin to lay out their messages. They are being pressed from one side by core Democratic voters hungry for leftist policies favored by the most energized activists and, from the other, by the need to court centrist voters who could be alienated by the party’s turn to the left.”
“Most of the presidential field doesn’t identify as socialist. Some candidates are actively rejecting the label or putting a bit of distance between their campaigns and policies such as Medicare-for-all and the Green New Deal, which many of them support.”
Washington Post: “Roberts was pointed in saying the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has ‘misapplied’ a 2017 ruling that instructed that court to reconsider its analysis of whether death-row inmate Bobby James Moore was intellectually disabled, and thus ineligible for execution. Less than two weeks ago, Roberts joined the liberals in stopping a Louisiana abortion law that was nearly identical to a Texas law the court had struck down in 2016.”
“Roberts’s role in the abortion and death penalty cases were notable partly because he had been in dissent in the original decisions.”
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.