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Senate GOP Leaders Threaten to Work Through Labor Day

August 23, 2018 at 11:26 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“Despite rumors of an early exit for the Senate, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said the chamber wouldn’t be cutting short the August session unless all 17 of the president’s nominations on which he sought to cut off debate Wednesday are confirmed,” Roll Call reports.

Said Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-TX): “To any of our Democratic colleagues who are not here and preventing us from making a quorum, I can guarantee we will be here in session next week because this is important work to get these judges processed.”

Trump Says Sessions Has Lost Control

August 23, 2018 at 10:24 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

President Trump took aim at Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Bloomberg reports.

Said Trump: “We have somebody who they seem to go after a lot of Republicans.”

He added that the inability of his attorney general to “control” his department was “a regrettable thing.”

DNC ‘Hacking’ Attempt Was Actually Just a Test

August 23, 2018 at 10:22 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“What the DNC this week thought was an attempted hack of its valuable voter file turned out to be a security test organized by a state party, unbeknownst to the national organization,” the Washington Post reports.

“The committee on Tuesday alerted the FBI to a fake online portal it thought had been set up as an elaborate attempt to trick DNC staff into giving up their log-in credentials — through a hacker technique known as ‘phishing’ — as a way to gain access to the party’s VoteBuilder database.”

Prosecutors Have the Receipts

August 23, 2018 at 9:33 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

First Read: “When it comes to Michael Cohen’s claim that he was directed by an unnamed candidate in 2016 — Donald Trump — to make payments to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal to influence the 2016 election, there’s something important to remember.”

“Prosecutors say they have audio recordings, text messages and phone records about Cohen’s payments — and the intent behind them.”

Trump Pushes Omarosa’s Book to Number 1

August 23, 2018 at 9:19 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Unhinged, the tell-all memoir by Omarosa Manigault Newman topped the New York Times best seller list this week, spurred on by attacks by President Trump on his former White House aide, CNN reports.

Washington Post: “Manigault Newman should thank Donald Trump for her success. Even before the book was officially released on Aug. 14, the president started firing off angry tweets, gassing up public interest far beyond anything the publisher or the author could have managed by themselves.”

The Much Bigger Fish Than Michael Cohen

August 23, 2018 at 9:12 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

This piece is only available to Political Wire members.

With Michael Cohen pleading guilty to fraud, the Trump Organization’s CFO, Allen Weisselberg, is now also implicated in that fraud. He’s been called to testify before a grand jury and he knows far more about all of President Trump’s financial dealings than Cohen.

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DeVos Weighs Letting Schools Buy Guns

August 23, 2018 at 8:39 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos “is considering whether to allow states to use federal funding to purchase guns for educators,” the New York Times reports.

“Such a move appears to be unprecedented, reversing a longstanding position taken by the federal government that it should not pay to outfit schools with weapons. And it would also undermine efforts by Congress to restrict the use of federal funding on guns. As recently as March, Congress passed a school safety bill that allocated $50 million a year to local school districts, but expressly prohibited the use of the money for firearms.”

Trump Says ‘Flipping’ Should Be Illegal

August 23, 2018 at 8:36 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

President Trump told Fox & Friends that Michael Cohen “flipping” on him to get a better plea deal isn’t fair and should be made illegal.

Said Trump: “I’ve known all about flipping—for 30 or 40 years I’ve been watching flippers. I’ve seen it many times, I’ve had many friends involved in this stuff, it’s called flipping and it almost ought to be illegal. You get 10 years in jail but if you say bad things about somebody, in other words make up stories if you don’t know, they just make up lies… and now they go from 10 years to they’re a national hero. They have a statue erected in their honor. It’s not a fair thing but that’s why he did it. He made a very good deal.”

Exchange of the Day

August 23, 2018 at 8:29 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

President Trump was interviewed by Ainsley Earhardt on Fox & Friends:

EARHARDT: What grade do you give yourself so far?

TRUMP: So I give myself an A+.

Trump Distances Himself from Michael Cohen

August 23, 2018 at 8:17 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

President Trump tried to distance himself from his longtime former personal lawyer Michael Cohen in an interview on Fox & Friends. saying that Cohen “worked more or less” as a “part time” employee.

Said Trump: “He was a lawyer for me, one of many. Didn’t do big deals, did small deals.”

NBC News: “Cohen, in fact, was a vice president of the Trump Organization when he left the company in May.”

Poll Shows Stable Opinions Over Last Three Months

August 23, 2018 at 8:09 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

A new GW Politics poll, which is unusual because it tracks the views of the same group of registered voters over time, finds few fluctuations in opinions since the first poll in May.

“The stability of people’s preferences between the two interviews was striking: 92% of those who said in May that they planned to vote for the Republican candidate said the same thing in July. Similarly, 95% of those saying they would vote for the Democrat in May were planning to vote for the Democrat in July. Altogether, over three-quarters of all respondents (78%) were ‘consistent partisans’ in these two interviews.”

Overall, President Trump’s approval rating is 45% and Democrats lead the generic ballot, 44% to 39%.

Quote of the Day

August 23, 2018 at 7:38 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“I don’t know how you can impeach somebody who’s done a great job. If I ever got impeached, I think the market would crash, I think everybody would be very poor. Because without this thinking [points to head] you would see, you would see numbers that you wouldn’t believe in reverse.”

— President Trump, in a Fox News interview.

Republicans Urge Embattled Incumbents to Speak Out

August 23, 2018 at 7:30 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“Senior Republican Party leaders began urging their most imperiled incumbents on Wednesday to speak out about the wrongdoing surrounding President Trump,” the New York Times reports.

Said Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK): “Where there’s smoke, and there’s a lot of smoke, there may well be fire.”

“By urging some candidates to speak out or at least stay silent, Republican leaders who gravely fear losing control of the House risked opening the first significant rift between the Trump White House and the Republican-controlled Capitol.”

Cohen Told Congress He Doesn’t Know If Trump Knew

August 23, 2018 at 7:22 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“Michael Cohen told lawmakers last year, in sworn testimony, that he didn’tknow whether then-candidate Donald Trump had foreknowledge of the 2016 Trump Tower meeting with Russians,” three sources with knowledge of Cohen’s testimony tell Axios.

Said Cohen lawyer Lanny Davis: “Nothing has changed.”

Mueller’s Approval Is Up

August 23, 2018 at 7:13 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

A new Fox News poll finds approval of special counsel Robert Mueller stands at 59%, up 11 points since July, and 40% expect the investigation will find Trump committed criminal or impeachable offenses, up 5 points.

Why Cohen’s Betrayal Terrifies Trump

August 23, 2018 at 7:07 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Politico: “He has called himself a ‘great loyalty freak.’ He has said he values loyalty ‘above everything else—more than brains, more than drive.’ And one of his greatest strengths, at least of a certain sort, always has been his ability to engender unwavering, slavish, even sycophantic allegiance. But it’s also been so brutally, consistently one-sided, and the Cohen flip brings to the fore the fragility of Trump’s transactional brand of loyalty and potentially its ultimate incompatibility with the presidency.”

”This is not some tabloid or Twitter tit-for-tat. The stakes are of course incomparably higher. And Trump’s long span of quiet about Cohen was so out of character it suggested even he understands the reality of his legal jeopardy. For the first time, it appeared, a once biddable lapdog had turned around and bitten the boss—hard.”

Said Trump biographer Michael D’Antonio: “He is terrified. This is 40 years of deceit coming home to torment him.”

Republicans Shrug Off Trump’s Legal Predicament

August 23, 2018 at 7:03 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Politico: “Twenty-four hours after one of the most damaging days for Donald Trump’s presidency, the Republican wall of support around him shows no signs of crumbling.”

“Though some GOP senators expressed discomfort with the plea deal reached by Trump lawyer Michael Cohen and the guilty verdict rendered on former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, there has been no seismic shift in the GOP after a bombshell Tuesday. Some Republicans attacked Cohen as not credible, some said Manafort’s conviction has nothing to do with Trump and others still said the matter doesn’t fall in their purview as senators.”

Lone Juror Prevented Manafort Conviction on All Counts

August 23, 2018 at 6:51 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“A juror in the trial of Paul Manafort said Wednesday that all but one of the jurors wanted to convict President Trump’s former campaign chairman on every charge he faced,” the Washington Post reports.

“The juror, who spoke on the record to Fox News and gave her name as Paula Duncan, said jurors ‘again and again’ laid out for the lone holdout the evidence that persuaded them Manafort was guilty. But the holdout, a female, said she harbored reasonable doubt.”