Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) told CNN that he is close to deciding whether to run for president in 2020.
Said Swalwell: “I’m close to making a decision. I’ll be in New Hampshire tomorrow, so I’m excited for that.”
Swalwell said he hopes to “talk to Granite Staters about what their idea of the future of America is” and “how his ideas could work and lift up their vision and aspirations.”
First Read: “Independent candidates like Schultz don’t face early nominating caucuses and primaries. (Maybe he’s going to where the political reporters are.)”
An internal inquiry has found no evidence to support President Trump’s claims that prayer rugs have been found at the Mexican border or that smugglers are binding women with duct tape to traffic them, ABC News reports.
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“Mike Bloomberg has bigger plans for 2020 than running for president. The billionaire and former New York City mayor has been openly dreaming of the White House for 25 years, and spent huge amounts of time and money now four times over the last 10 years trying to figure out a way to get him there,” The Atlantic reports.
“But he has hesitations about this race, too. He’s not sure there is a realistic space in the Democratic primaries for his centrist record. And he almost certainly won’t run if Joe Biden does, members of his team believe.”
“While no final decision has been made, his aides have nonetheless been working on a fallback that only a man worth $40 billion can afford, whether he runs or not. Bloomberg is pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into a data-centric political operation designed to assure one goal: Crush Donald Trump.”
“Though a budget has not been set, this effort would almost certainly become the biggest and most powerful political organization in the country overnight. It would also be the only real counter to the operation that Trump’s campaign put together in 2016, which allowed it to reach out to millions of voters in a more targeted, under-the-radar way, and helped deliver the election to Trump by shaping their thinking for months and then activating them on Election Day.”
“In a four-day blitz of interviews across major broadcast networks, Schultz has been outspoken in his criticism of liberal Democratic leaders, saying their policies for expanding Medicare or taxing the wealthy are ‘not American,’ ‘misinformed’ and ‘ridiculous,'” the Washington Post reports.
“Schultz’s aggressive approach reflects a core strategy his advisers have developed in recent months through extensive polling and research. Schultz hopes to turn the 2020 campaign into a referendum not only on Trump, as is traditional when a president seeks reelection, but on the nation’s two-party political system, which could open up space for partisans to reconsider an independent campaign.”
“The White House is finalizing the details of a potential national emergency declaration to secure President Donald Trump’s border wall, even as lawmakers are trying to broker an immigration deal that could avert another shutdown in just over two weeks,” Politico reports.
“Trump met with his budget chief, acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, Jared Kushner and other top officials including White House lawyers on Tuesday to walk through the logistics of such a move. And White House aides have been quietly meeting with outside conservative political groups to build support for the president to take such an action. Those talking points, which emphasize Trump’s legal authority, have begun to show up in such conservative media outlets as Breitbart News.”
“Mitch McConnell is willing to go big, go small or anything in between to avoid another government shutdown,” Politico reports.
“McConnell has made no secret of how much he hates shutdowns, particularly the most recent and historic partial funding lapse. He said Tuesday he’ll probably support ‘whatever works’ to avoid another debacle. He’s considering bills to end shutdowns forever and giving his four GOP conference committee negotiators wide berth to strike a deal with Democrats.”
Playbook: “Mick Mulvaney, the acting chief of staff, is interested in succeeding Wilbur Ross as Commerce secretary… Our colleagues Nancy Cook and Andrew Restuccia scooped in November that Mulvaney was angling for the job, but now that he’s in the White House’s top job, the positioning has started anew, and seems to have picked up in recent weeks.”
“President Trump interviewed Heidi Cruz for the job of World Bank president although he’s not offering the post to the Goldman Sachs Group Inc. executive and wife of Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas,” Bloomberg reports.
“Treasury Undersecretary David Malpass remains the clear frontrunner for the job, but Trump has continued to consider others.”
“President Trump seethed Wednesday morning as he watched the highlights of his intelligence chiefs testifying on Capitol Hill and singled out Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats by name during his morning rant,” CNN reports.
“The President didn’t see Coats’ full testimony in front of lawmakers that took place on Tuesday, but he was furious Wednesday as he watched television chyrons blare that the officials had contradicted him.”
Howard Schultz is gearing up to visit early caucus and primary states as he mulls an independent run for president in 2020, CNBC reports.
Schultz will likely travel to Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada to speak with voters while he contemplates entering the race.
“An undocumented worker who was fired from the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J., after she publicly disclosed her immigration status will attend President Trump’s State of the Union address next week,” the Washington Post reports.
“Victorina Morales, who was born in Guatemala, will be a guest of Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-NJ) when the president speaks to a joint session of Congress Tuesday night.”
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) was awarded more than $580,000 in damages and medical expenses in his lawsuit against the neighbor who tackled him and broke several of his ribs in a dispute over lawn maintenance, the AP reports.
“Donald Trump will be in your personal life 30 years from now, whether you like it or not.”
— Stephen Bannon, quoted by USA Today.
White House press secretary Sarah Sanders told the Christian Broadcast Network that she believes God wanted President Trump to win the 2016 election.
Said Sanders: “I think God calls all of us to fill different roles at different times and I think that he wanted Donald Trump to become president, and that’s why he’s there.”
A new study found that the steady loss of local newspapers and journalists across the country contributes to the nation’s political polarization, the AP reports.
“With fewer opportunities to find out about local politicians, citizens are more likely to turn to national sources like cable news and apply their feelings about national politics to people running for the town council or state legislature.”
“The result is much less ‘split ticket’ voting, or people whose ballot includes votes for people of different parties. In 1992, 37 percent of states with Senate races elected a senator from a different party than the presidential candidate the state supported. In 2016, for the first time in a century, no state did that, the study found.”
Said professor Johanna Dunaway: “The voting behavior was more polarized, less likely to include split ticket voting, if a newspaper had died in the community.”
“There’s no glamour to the job. I hated every second I was there. The West Wing has bad karma to it. They say, ‘Because you were doing bad stuff!’ But I was doing the Lord’s work.”
— Stephen Bannon, quoted by USA Today, on working in the Trump White House.
Sen. Cory Gardner (R-CO) told the Independent Journal Review that he will support President Trump’s 2020 re-election bid because it’s the “right thing to do for Colorado.”
Said Gardner: “Look, I’ve made it very clear that where I agree with the president, we will agree or where I disagree, we will disagree. But I’m going to fight like hell for Colorado … I know what Kamala Harris and I know what Bernie Sanders will do to Colorado, and that’s why I’ll be supporting the president.”
Gardner called for Trump to step aside in 2016 and said he did not vote for him.
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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