White House aides know that Michael Cohen will be a huge spectacle today, and that it is going to overshadow much of what the president does at his summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Vietnam, CNN reports.
The expectation, according to a senior White House official, is that Trump “will stay up overnight in Hanoi and watch.”
“What struck me as I looked back and thought about that exchange between Don Jr. and his father was, first, that Mr. Trump had frequently told me and others that his son Don Jr. had the worst judgement of anyone in the world.”
— Michael Cohen, in his opening statement to the House Oversight Committee.
Jonathan Swan: “President Trump’s advisers say one of his more frequent gripes about the scandals and investigations — both by Mueller and the Hill — is that they weaken his standing with foreign leaders.”
“One of Trump’s former advisers said the president would tell stories of a foreign leader asking him about the special counsel’s investigation. The adviser interpreted that as Trump feeling humiliated by having to discuss it. Trump wants to claim a victory from his North Korean summit. And he also wants to, as he always does, produce good television.”
“Today’s explosive testimony by Michael Cohen (10 a.m., overshadowing the Hanoi statecraft and stagecraft for the day) makes the second less likely. And the first — a meaningful commitment from North Korea — doesn’t look achievable.”
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“President Trump shook hands with Kim Jong-un on Wednesday night in Hanoi, Vietnam, to kick off their second summit gathering. The two leaders are sitting down to a formal dinner with some of their top aides,” the New York Times reports.
“Amid meetings with Vietnamese officials on Wednesday, American politics were clearly on the president’s mind. He attacked his former lawyer and a Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) on Twitter just hours before he was expected to meet Mr. Kim for dinner.”
Washington Post: “Trump’s Twitter attacks on Blumenthal and Cohen raised questions about how rigorously he was preparing for the meetings with Kim.”
Michael Cohen will tell Congress that President Trump knew his longtime adviser Roger Stone was communicating with WikiLeaks about publishing stolen emails from the Democratic National Committee, the Washington Post reports.
“In the prepared remarks, Cohen calls Trump a ‘racist,’ a ‘conman’ and a ‘cheat’ and also levels accusations that the president personally signed a check to cover ‘hush money payments’ to keep quiet an affair with adult-film actress Stormy Daniels. Cohen says Trump never directly told him to lie to Congress about his business dealings in Moscow, but claims the president implicitly encouraged him to do so.”
New York Times: “The testimony underscores many of the unsavory themes and stories that have recurred in public reporting about Mr. Trump — he inflates his wealth, makes racist remarks, threatens his enemies and tries to bend the law to his favor — but puts them on the record, under oath, in the voice of a man who was one of Mr. Trump’s closest aides.”
Playbook: “Republicans are going to do their best to remind the public that his testimony reeks of opportunism as the man is on the brink of prison. But so few people have made it into Trump’s inner circle, and Cohen was in it for a decade. That’s why this is incredibly compelling. Now he’s going to prison with little else to lose, and a man with nothing to lose in a circumstance like this seems like he will have a lot to say.”
“Chicago will elect its first African-American female mayor after former federal prosecutor Lori Lightfoot and Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle won enough votes Tuesday amid a record field of 14 candidates to move on to an April runoff election,” the Chicago Tribune reports.
“It’s only the second time Chicago has had a runoff campaign for mayor.”
“Vice President Mike Pence faced a wall of resistance from Senate Republicans on Tuesday as he tried to sell President Donald Trump’s national emergency declaration on the southern border,” Politico reports.
“The pointed reception at the GOP lunch raised further doubts among Senate Republicans that the administration will be able to hold down defections on a crucial vote to block the president in the coming weeks. ‘There was a lot of passion from some of our members. And I think there is some skepticism. People are just genuinely concerned that we’re doing the right thing,’ said one Republican senator, who requested anonymity to speak candidly.”
“Voters overwhelmingly think the forthcoming report prepared by Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating foreign interference in the 2016 election and the Trump campaign, should be made public by the Justice Department, according to a new Politico/Morning Consult poll conducted amid rumors that Mueller may be preparing to wind up the probe.
“More than two-thirds of voters surveyed, 68 percent, say the report — which will go first to Attorney General Bill Barr and other department officials — should be made public. Only 10 percent say it shouldn’t be made public, and 22 percent are undecided.”
Former acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker “has agreed to meet a second time with House lawmakers to clarify public testimony he gave earlier this month,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
Joe Biden said that there’s “a consensus” in his family that he should run for president, but Mr. Biden said he did not want to embark on “a fool’s errand” and was still deliberating about whether to enter the race for the Democratic nomination, the New York Times reports.
Said Biden: “The most important people in my life want me to run.”
“Republican hardliner Kris Kobach’s inner circle is hinting that he has President Trump’s support for either a Senate run or Cabinet position,” McClatchy reports.
“They’re wrong.”
“White House officials have grown frustrated enough with the narrative being pushed by the Kobach camp that a senior administration official took the rare step of trying to squash the speculation.”
“The House on Tuesday passed a resolution to overturn President Trump’s declaration of a national emergency on the southern border, as majority Democrats painted an apocalyptic portrait of a lawless chief executive out to gut the Constitution,” the Washington Post reports.
“The 245-182 tally was mostly along party lines, with 13 Republicans defecting to side with Democrats on a vote that effectively became a test of GOP loyalty to Trump. Despite their frequent complaints of executive overreach during the Obama administration, most Republicans fell in line with Trump’s decision to try to circumvent Congress to get billions of dollars for his border wall.”
CNN’s Town Hall featuring Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) delivered 1.4 million total viewers for the network, finishing third in its 8:00 p.m. timeslot behind Fox News and MSNBC Monday night, The Hill reports.
“The Sanders event fared better from a ratings perspective than previous Town Halls the network has offered up in primetime in recent weeks, but was well behind a January event featuring Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) who drew nearly two million viewers.”
Sen. Doug Jones (D-AL) is all but daring Roy Moore (R) for a rematch in the Alabama Senate race, Politico reports.
“Moore, who was defeated in 2017 amid sexual misconduct allegations, said this year that he believes the election was ‘stolen’ from him by Democrats and a disinformation program on social media.”
Said Jones: “If he really believes that and if the Republican Party really believes that then they all ought to just step aside, have a press conference with him and let’s just do it again.”
“One day before Michael Cohen appears before the House Oversight Committee, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), a conservative firebrand from Florida and a White House ally, accused President Trump’s former lawyer of straying from his marriage and suggested that his wife would leave him once he goes to prison,” the Daily Beast reports.
Tweeted Gaetz: “Hey Michael Cohen – Do your wife & father-in-law know about your girlfriends? Maybe tonight would be a good time for that chat. I wonder if she’ll remain faithful when you’re in prison. She’s about to learn a lot…”
Gaetz later insisted to Alex Ward that he was not witness tampering: “I’m witness testing. We still are allowed to test the veracity and character of witnesses, I think.”
“Democratic Party chairs in the four early presidential states are working to convince the 2020 presidential candidates to avoid waging social media disinformation warfare against each other,” Politico reports.
“The effort began this week with a letter to state party chairs across the country broadly laying out the issue with an ultimate goal of establishing what amounts to a non-aggression pact, according to state party operatives in four states who have received or have direct knowledge of the letter.”
The Atlantic: “Bernie Sanders has called for tuition-free college. Julián Castro has signaled support for it as well. Elizabeth Warren has pushed, for years, for ‘debt-free’ college. Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, and Kirsten Gillibrand have signed on to legislation that could make college debt-free. Even Amy Klobuchar, who notably shirked ‘free college for all’ during a CNN town hall in February, signed on to a metered free-college proposal last year.”
“All together, the field seems to have converged on a consensus: A free-college proposal—or an answer about why they don’t have one—is something of a prerequisite for Democratic candidates hoping to challenge Donald Trump in the 2020 election.”
“An employee of the Missouri attorney general’s office occasionally drove Josh Hawley to campaign-related events in a state-owned car, an arrangement that raises new questions about Hawley’s use of taxpayer-funded resources in the run up to his successful bid for U.S. Senate,” McClatchy reports.
“Hawley’s use of a state-owned car stands in contrast to how Missouri’s other statewide elected officials say they utilize such vehicles.”
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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