“I don’t know what he was thinking. I think this was a huge miscalculation. I think this is the captain abandoning the sinking ship.”
— Former Rep. Tom Davis (R-VA), quoted by the Daily Beast, adding that GOP lawmakers “are pissed” about Speaker Paul Ryan’s retirement announcement.
New York Times: “For House Republicans, and for a White House bracing for a potential Democratic impeachment inquiry, the more immediate and ominous impact of Mr. Ryan’s retirement was unmistakable: He has made it more difficult for his party to keep control of the House, where Republicans currently hold a 23-seat majority. With one decision, Mr. Ryan has turned an already difficult midterm election into a precarious task for his remaining colleagues.”
Said former Rep. Tom Davis (R-VA): “This is the nightmare scenario. Everybody figured he’d just hang in there till after the election.”
“Mr. Ryan’s exit is a destabilizing blow to Republicans’ 2018 plans on nearly every front.”
“The FBI agents who raided the office and hotel of President Trump’s lawyer on Monday were seeking all records related to the Access Hollywood tape in which Mr. Trump was heard making vulgar comments about women,” the New York Times reports.
“The search warrant also sought evidence of whether the lawyer, Michael Cohen, tried to suppress damaging information about Mr. Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign.”
“It is not clear what role, if any, Mr. Cohen played regarding the tape, which was made public a month before the election. But the fact that the agents were seeking documents related to the tape reveals a new front in the investigation into Mr. Cohen that is being led by the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan.”
“The National Rifle Association has accepted contributions from about 23 Russians, or Americans living in Russia, since 2015, the gun rights group acknowledged to Congress,” NPR reports.
“The NRA said in a letter to Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) that the sum it received from those people was just over $2,500 and most of that was ‘routine payments’ for membership dues or magazine subscriptions.”
“The Senate Judiciary Committee is moving forward with legislation to limit President Trump’s ability to fire special counsel Robert Mueller,” The Hill reports.
Judiciary Chairman Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) wants to add the bill to the panel’s business meeting agenda scheduled for Thursday.
Ron Brownstein: “Paul Ryan, who once aspired to advance the vision of conservative icon Jack Kemp, will leave Washington carrying a more tarnished legacy—as the most important enabler of Donald Trump.”
“No one in the GOP was better equipped, by position and disposition alike, to resist Trump’s racially infused, insular nationalism, or to define a more inclusive competing vision for the party. Instead, Ryan chose to tolerate both Trump’s personal excesses and his racially polarizing words and deeds as the price worth paying to advance Ryan’s own top priorities: cutting spending; regulations; and above all, taxes. The result was that Ryan, more than any other prominent Republican, personified the devil’s bargain the GOP has signed with Trump. And his departure crystallizes the difficult choices Republicans face as Trump redefines the party in his belligerent image.”
“It’s like Forrest Gump won the presidency, but an evil, really fucking stupid Forrest Gump.”
— An unnamed Republican congressman, who publicly supports President Trump, in an interview with conservative writer Erick Erickson.
Rep. Dennis Ross (R-FL) “told his staff this morning he is retiring, becoming the latest in a string of Republican departures,” the Tampa Bay Times reports.
Said Ross: “Eight years takes its toll on you. When you feel like a stranger in your hometown, it’s time to say, ‘There’s got to be an exit strategy at some point.'”
Ross joins more than 40 Republicans who have announced they will resign or are leaving for other reasons.
The Cook Political Report moves the seat from the Solid Republican column to Likely Republican.
“When I visited with him in Trump Tower before he was sworn in, he asked me to switch parties.”
— Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND), quoted by the Washington Post, on President Trump’s unsuccessful efforts to get her to become a Republican.
A new Elway Research poll in Washington finds Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), a member of the House Republican leadership, with just a six-point lead over Lisa Brown (D), 44% to 38%.
Speaker Paul Ryan’s retirement shifts Wisconsin’s his congressional district from the Solid Republican to the Lean Republican, “with the potential for the race to become even more competitive,” the according to the Cook Political Report.
Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball says it’s a Toss Up.
Weekly Standard: “Ryan’s district might not be competitive if the national environment was neutral. Wisconsin’s 1st District moved right in the 2016 election. Trump won the district by 10 points after Romney took it only by four points in 2012 (though 2012 may be an odd case because Ryan was the GOP’s vice presidential nominee). And in 2008, Barack Obama won the area by about three points while winning the national popular vote by seven, suggesting that it took a real step to the right over the course of the last four to eight years. If you add that to Ryan’s incumbency advantage, you get a district that would’t typically be near the boottom of the GOP’s list of worries.
“But the national environment isn’t neutral.”
“The James Comey media blitz has officially begun, with the former FBI director sitting down for a marathon five-hour interview with George Stephanopoulos of ABC News ahead of the release of his much-anticipated memoir,” Politico reports.
“Comey is preparing a media blitz of at least two weeks around the release of the book, including a live interview with CNN on April 19, an MSNBC interview later that day, an appearance on Fox News on April 26, and a PBS NewsHour interview on April 30.”
First Read: “Yesterday, we posed this question: Would congressional Republicans draw a line in the sand when it comes to protecting special counsel Robert Mueller? The answer we got 24 hours later: While they haven’t raced to pass legislation, several GOP senators did fire warning shots at President Trump.”
“So these are definite cracks in the ground between Trump and his party, at least in the Senate. And they come at a time when congressional Republicans are upset at Trump on other matters like the tariffs.”
The Rev. Bill Hybels, founder of one of the nation’s most influential evangelical megachurches, is stepping down “less than a month after a Chicago Tribune investigation disclosed that Hybels had been the subject of inquiries by church leaders into claims that he ran afoul of church teachings by engaging in inappropriate behavior with women in his congregation — including employees — allegedly spanning decades.”
Speaker Paul Ryan has told confidants that he will announce soon that he won’t run for reelection in November, Axios reports.
This decision has been long rumored but his final deliberations were held extremely closely.
New York Times: “Mr. Ryan told the House Republican Conference that he will serve until the end of this Congress in January, which will mark 20 years in Congress. But his retirement announcement is sure to kick off a succession battle for the leadership of the House Republican Conference… It could also trigger another wave of retirements among Republicans not eager to face angry voters in the fall and taking their cue from Mr. Ryan.”
Washington Post: “The party has seen a large number of retirements, and Ryan’s exit is certain to sap morale as Republicans seek to contain a surge in enthusiasm from Democrats, whose fortunes have been buoyed by the unpopularity of President Trump.”
A source present at the taping told Axios that James Comey’s interview with George Stephanopoulos airing on Sunday at 10 p.m. is “going to shock the president and his team.”
“The Comey interview left people in the room stunned — he told George things that he’s never said before… If anyone wonders if Comey will go there, he goes there.”
President Trump appeared to taunt Russian president Vladimir Putin on Twitter:
Russia vows to shoot down any and all missiles fired at Syria. Get ready Russia, because they will be coming, nice and new and “smart!” You shouldn’t be partners with a Gas Killing Animal who kills his people and enjoys it!
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.