“Republican billionaire Meg Whitman, who spent $144 million of her own money on her unsuccessful gubernatorial bid in 2010, is backing Democrat Antonio Villaraigosa’s campaign for governor this year,” the Los Angeles Times reports.
“Whitman is among the co-hosts of a Silicon Valley fundraiser for the former Los Angeles mayor on Thursday night.”
A new Gallup poll finds that approval for same-sex marriages hit an all time high of 67% — a near mirror image of public opinion on the issue just 22 years ago.
“A federal judge agreed to begin the process of preparing to sentence George Papadopoulos, a former adviser to President Trump’s 2016 campaign, an initial move toward wrapping up one phase of the investigation led by special counsel Robert Mueller,” the Washington Post reports.
“Prosecutors’ willingness to start the sentencing process for Papadopoulos may be a sign that their need of assistance from the young oil and gas consultant is coming to a close.”
“Our presidency has been debased by a figure who has a seemingly bottomless appetite for destruction and division and only a passing familiarity with how the Constitution works. And our Article I branch of government, the Congress is utterly supine in the face of the moral vandalism that flows from the White House daily.”
— Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), quoted by the Daily Beast, in an advanced copy of the commencement address for Harvard School of Law.
New York Jets chairman Christopher Johnson told Newsday that he will pay the fines for players on his team who protest during the national anthem, hours after the NFL announced a new policy penalizing players who do so.
Johnson said that he never wants “to put restrictions on the speech of our players.”
Rep. Tom Garrett (R-VA) “has abruptly parted ways with his chief of staff and is considering not seeking reelection in November,” Politico reports.
“The first-term Garrett represents a conservative district that stretches from southern reaches of the state to more northern areas. His seat has become more competitive this election year in part because he’s posted anemic fundraising totals. In recent months, the congressman has struggled to keep pace on the fundraising front with his Democratic opponent, journalist and filmmaker Leslie Cockburn.”
The Cook Political Report rates Garrett’s seat as Lean Republican.
Rudy Giuliani switched gears Wednesday, saying that he would prefer the president grant an interview to special counsel Robert Mueller’s office and that a decision would be made within “the next couple weeks,” the Washington Post reports.
Said Giuliani: “I guess I’d rather do the interview. It gets it over with it, it makes my client happy. The safe course you hear every lawyer say is don’t do the interview, and that’s easy to say in the abstract. That’s much harder when you have a client who is the president of the United States and wants to be interviewed.”
Washington Post: “Kushner has had two interview sessions with the special counsel’s team. The first set of questions in November centered largely around former national security adviser Michael Flynn… Then, in mid-April, Kushner sat for six to seven hours of questions that covered many topics, including his work on the Trump campaign, the transition and in the White House and about Trump’s decision in May 2017 to fire Comey.”
“The special counsel’s questioning focused only on Kushner’s work with Trump and did not include topics such as Kushner’s personal finances or those of his family business, Kushner Companies.”
Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) “raised an extraordinary approximate sum of $2.25 million in six weeks as grassroots Republicans rewarded the House Intelligence Committee chairman for quarterbacking President Trump’s counterattack against allegations of collusion with Russia in 2016,” the Washington Examiner reports.
“The haul should push Nunes’ midterm war chest past $5 million, with donations pouring in from a national fundraising program.”
Jared Kushner “has been granted his permanent security clearance… ending a period of uncertainty that had fueled questions about whether Mr. Kushner was in peril in the special counsel investigation,” the New York Times reports.
“Mr. Kushner’s F.B.I. background checks had dragged on for a year. White House officials were adamant that the lengthy process was not unusual for a government official who has a complicated financial history and many foreign contacts. But the delay became a distraction and, with the special counsel investigating some of Mr. Kushner’s meetings with Russian officials, it left open the question of whether investigators had uncovered evidence that made him a security threat.”
“NFL players will be allowed to stay in the locker room during the national anthem, but their teams will be fined by the league if they go onto the field and kneel, according to new rules adopted by owners on Wednesday in an effort to defuse an issue that escalated last season into a national debate catalyzed by President Trump,” the New York Times reports.
A federal judge ruled that President Trump can’t block people from viewing his Twitter feed, The Hill reports.
A new Navigator Research survey finds that 59% of Americans believe that special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation has not yet uncovered evidence of crimes, even though Mueller has already obtained five guilty pleas and 17 criminal indictments.
Matthew Yglesias: “That suggests that the press as a whole has not done a good job of actually conveying factual information to our audience, that Democrats’ messaging on the investigation has not been clear enough on the most damning point (Trump, even if otherwise innocent, is guilty of hiring crooks and trying to prevent an investigation into their activity), and that Trump’s counterstrategy of muddying the waters around the investigation has been fairly successful.”
Michael Cohen “received a secret payment of at least $400,000 to fix talks between the Ukrainian president and President Trump,” sources in Kiev close tell the BBC.
“The payment was arranged by intermediaries acting for Ukraine’s leader, Petro Poroshenko, the sources said, though Cohen was not registered as a representative of Ukraine as required by US law.”
“The meeting at the White House was last June. Shortly after the Ukrainian president returned home, his country’s anti-corruption agency stopped its investigation into Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort.”
Jonathan Chait: “Trump may be forming an even more radical theory. Gabriel Sherman reports that Trump’s team ‘is attempting to build the case that anti-Trump forces in the F.B.I. entrapped his advisers using informants to plant evidence about Russian collusion.’ Let this roll around in your mind for a moment. Trump is not merely accusing the FBI of planting a spy, but of planting evidence.”
“Planting evidence? Multiple spies? Obama political operatives? You might think this is all so unhinged Trump could not possibly believe it, but then, you would have to explain Trump’s longtime infatuation with the conspiracy theories he imbibes in his binge-watching of Fox News, where hours of air time can pass by without the appearance of anybody who is hinged. And you might also think Trump could not get his party to go along with this theory, to dismiss all the evidence of culpability as having been fabricated by a pro-Obama cabal in the FBI. But then you would be ignoring how far down the Trump rabbit hole the Republican Party has gone so far.”
Mark Leibovich: “To speak for any White House is a delicate exercise even in the best of circumstances. You’re trying to relay a president’s message while also disseminating little actual information; you’re taking abuse from the press while trying, theoretically, to assist them; you’re selling the president’s agenda while not stealing too much of his spotlight. Also, be careful: Your words can move markets, offend entire religions and trigger international incidents — or, in this case, trigger the ‘audience of one’ tuned in to his surrogates from upstairs.”
“But speaking for President Donald J. Trump presents a particular set of challenges. In Gidley’s case, it means saying things that Gidley might normally not be inclined to say, or defending things he might normally have a hard time defending, or offending people in ways that might defy his otherwise pleasing nature. But Gidley is willing to do it, and that, perhaps more than any of his other qualities, is why I had become fascinated with 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.