NBC staff members are “horrified” that Megyn Kelly will be part of the team covering the State of the Union for the network a source tells the Daily Mail.
The network denied the claim: “Not only is there zero truth to this, but everyone is genuinely excited to see her jump back into political coverage.”
“During a week featuring a three-day government shutdown, the job approval rating of President Trump fell slightly in the latest SurveyMonkey tracking poll, wiping out a holiday ‘bump’ that had lifted briefly lifted his rating as high at 44%.”
“This past week, 40% of Americans say they approve of the way Trump is handling his job as president, while 58% disapprove.”
“President Trump’s immigration proposal to Congress will include a path to citizenship for an estimated 1.8 million young undocumented immigrants… more than twice the number of ‘dreamers’ who were enrolled in a deferred action program Trump terminated last fall,” the Washington Post reports.
“The figure represents a significant concession to Democrats but is likely to produce sharp blowback among conservative Republicans.”
“Trump’s plan… also includes a $25 billion ‘trust fund’ for a border wall and additional security upgrades on both the southwest and northern U.S. borders. And the president will propose significant curbs to legal immigration channels, restricting the ability of U.S. citizens to petition for visas only for spouses and minor children and ending categories for parents and siblings. Both of those provisions are likely to engender fierce objections among liberal Democrats.”
The New York Times reports White House officials called the plan “extremely generous” but also a “take-it-or-leave-it proposal” by the president.
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“John Dowd, a lawyer for President Donald Trump, told the Daily Beast on Wednesday he will be the one to decide whether or not Trump sits down for an interview with special counsel Robert Mueller. Dowd also said he hasn’t made any decision on whether or not an interview will happen.”
“Dowd noted that the president will only talk to Mueller if his legal team advises him to do so.”
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) “blasted the idea of giving young undocumented immigrants a path to citizenship, a day after President Trump said he was open to the idea as part of immigration legislation being negotiated in Congress,” Bloomberg reports.
Said Cruz: “I do not believe we should be granting a path to citizenship to anybody here illegally. Doing so is inconsistent with the promises we made to the men and women who elected us.”
A new Fallon Research poll in Ohio finds Richard Cordray (D) narrowly leads the wide-open Democratic race for governor, while Attorney General Mike DeWine (R) is running away with the Republican primary.
In a head-to-head match up, DeWine leads Cordray 49% to 28%, with 23% of respondents unsure.
Matt Bai: “Senate Democrats are right to worry that another shutdown might get in the way of that goal. Up to now, absent this shutdown business, Democrats have been looking at a midterm election cycle so promising that even Vladimir Putin couldn’t find a way to rig it.”
“But the longer this standoff looms, the more likely it is that the midterms will become all about immigration. And here the math isn’t nearly so favorable for Democrats, who champion immigration generally but rarely talk about the legitimate anxieties arising from porous borders.”
“Pennsylvania Republicans increasingly believe Rep. Pat Meehan (R-PA), the latest elected official to be tarnished by a sexual harassment claim, will not be able to run for reelection this fall — and it’s now a question of whether he resigns or declares this to be his last term,” the Philadelphia Inquirer reports.
“One, who has been in touch with Meehan’s congressional aides, said the Delaware County Republican is being walked through his dim political prospects and weighing his next step, but that a departure is all-but certain.”
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), “a key co-author of the 2013 Gang of Eight comprehensive immigration bill, has no plans to join a swelling bipartisan group of senators trying to strike a deal to protect Dreamers,” Politico reports.
“In fact, other senators say Rubio prefers a more conservative approach than the bipartisan group. And his reluctance to join the new gang underscores the steep challenge — and sense of pessimism — for reaching an agreement on a tight schedule that can win support from the House, Senate and President Trump.”
Out next month: The Common Good by Robert B. Reich.
“Societies and nations undergo virtuous cycles that reinforce and build the common good, as well as vicious cycles that undermine it. Over the course of the past five decades, Reich contends, America has been in a slowly accelerating vicious cycle–one that can and must be reversed.”
Sources close to Mitt Romney tell UtahPolicy.com that the former GOP presidential nominee will announce next week that he is running for the U.S. Senate this year.
“The left-leaning ballot access group iVote will spend at least $5 million across swing states to elect Democratic secretaries of state — the latest front in the ‘voting wars’ that Democrats worried they have been losing,” the Washington Post reports.
The states targeted: Arizona, Colorado, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico and Ohio. Only one of those states, New Mexico, has a Democratic secretary of state.
Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA), the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, “plans to release transcripts of its interviews with President Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., and others who participated in a June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower with a Russian lawyer allegedly promising damaging information about Hillary Clinton,” the Washington Post reports.
In a recent Politico interview, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) predicted the Trump Jr. transcript would be “explosive” if released.
Timothy O’Brien writes about how he was sued by Donald Trump for libel in 2006 for a biography called TrumpNation and witnessed the future president testifying under oath:
Trump ultimately had to admit 30 times that he had lied over the years about all sorts of stuff: how much of a big Manhattan real estate project he owned; the price of one of his golf club memberships; the size of the Trump Organization; his wealth; his speaking fees; how many condos he had sold; his debts, and whether he borrowed money from his family to avoid going personally bankrupt. He also lied during the deposition about his business dealings with career criminals.
Trump’s poor performance stemmed in part from the fact that he was being interrogated by shrewd attorneys wielding his own business and financial records against him. But there were lots of other things that went wrong as well.
Trump is impatient and has never been an avid or dedicated reader. That’s OK if you’d rather play golf, but it’s not OK when you need to absorb abundant or complex details. Lawyers typically prepare binders full of documents for their clients to pore over prior to a deposition, hoping to steel them for an intense grilling. My lawyers did that prior to my own deposition in the Trump lawsuit. But Trump didn’t appear to be well prepared when we deposed him, a weakness that my lawyers exploited (and that Mueller surely would as well).
A new Quinnipiac poll finds that the vast majority of American voters do not think President Trump is a good role model for children, 67% to 29%.
“There is almost no gender gap in grading President Trump’s standing as a role model. Every party, gender, education, age and racial group, except Republicans, say the president falls short.”
Republicans say Trump is a good role model for children by 72% to 22%.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) “convened his top political advisers in Washington on Saturday for a planning meeting that included a discussion of the feasibility and shape of a possible 2020 presidential campaign,” Politico reports.
“The Democratic socialist’s response to the series of presentations, according to multiple Democrats: I haven’t yet made a decision about 2020, but I still think beating Donald Trump is the most important thing for this country. And I want to be ready if I do decide to run.”
“Since the work is concealed, there’s no way to know for sure how many hedge funds are leveraging Washington to benefit their portfolios. But interviewing insiders and scouring public records, Bloomberg Businessweek identified six major influence campaigns waged on behalf of investors in a particular stock or bond since 2006. DCI, it turns out, coordinated all six.”
“The campaigns are remarkably similar. Behind the scenes of official Washington, the company repeatedly crafted narratives portraying investors as victims of corrupt governments… If all went well, the targets of these campaigns—administration officials, media ‘thought leaders,’ and lawmakers—didn’t know they were being lobbied, much less who paid for it.”
The Doomsday Clock is now two minutes to midnight, the closest it’s been to midnight since 1953.
“The Science and Security Board for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists assesses that the world is not only more dangerous now than it was a year ago; it is as threatening as it has been since World War II… To call the world nuclear situation dire is to understate the danger — and its immediacy.”
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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