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Biden In Spotlight as He Mulls Another Run

September 15, 2018 at 12:06 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“When Joe Biden speaks at the national dinner for the Human Rights Campaign on Saturday night, he’ll find himself at a familiar juncture,” CNN reports.

“Speaking at the same dinner three years ago, he was grappling with a decision to make a late entrance in the 2016 presidential race mere months after the passing of his son Beau.”

“The circumstances are different this time around (it’s earlier in the process), but he is still mulling whether a third run for the White House could be the charm as he starts a campaign blitz for Democrats ahead of the midterm elections.”

How Woodward’s Book Differs from Michael Wolf’s

September 15, 2018 at 11:53 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Bob Woodward was asked by Olivia Nuzzi whether he found Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House by Michael Wolf to be as credible book as his own, Fear: Trump in the White House.

Said Woodward: “I mean, as they say, I think it got the sociology largely right. The relationships and so forth. But 50 years from now what’s going to be important about the Trump presidency is what he does or doesn’t do. And if I’m right, as I believe I am, it’s a nervous breakdown.”

He elaborated: “Things are not connected. There is not … there is impulse, decisions. I think that the most ardent Trump supporter could read the book and not feel comfortable about the management and the staying the course. There’s not a team. You know, it’s a team of predators, or people who just disagree with the president.

GOP Leaders Agree Strong Economy Won’t Save Them

September 15, 2018 at 11:30 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

New York Times: “As Democrats enter the fall midterm campaign with palpable confidence about reclaiming the House and perhaps even the Senate, tensions are rising between the White House and congressional Republicans over who is to blame for political difficulties facing the party, with President Trump’s advisers pointing to the high number of G.O.P. retirements and lawmakers placing the blame squarely on the president’s divisive style.”

“Yet Republican leaders do agree on one surprising element in the battle for Congress: They cannot rely on the booming economy to win over undecided voters.”

“To the dismay of party leaders, the healthy economy and Mr. Trump have become countervailing forces. The decline in unemployment and soaring gross domestic product, along with the tax overhaul Republicans argue is fueling the growth, have been obscured by the president’s inflammatory moves on immigration, Vladimir V. Putin, and other fronts, party leaders say.”

Trump Upset His Former Lawyer Is Writing a Book

September 15, 2018 at 11:05 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

President Trump “disputed one of his longtime lawyer’s criticisms of his behavior and questioned whether a forthcoming book by Jay Goldberg runs afoul of lawyer-client privilege,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“Mr. Goldberg represented Mr. Trump in divorce cases involving two ex-wives, Ivana Trump and Marla Maples. His memoir, The Courtroom Is My Theater, is due to be released in December. Mr. Trump questioned whether it is appropriate for Mr. Goldberg to write about a client.”

Said Trump: “There’s lawyer-client privilege here. You can’t do that.”

The Split for Democrats In 2020 Won’t Be Over Policy

September 15, 2018 at 10:58 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“The most telling split among 2020 Democratic hopefuls won’t be over policy, but whether to match President Trump’s scorched-earth tactics,” top Democrats tell Axios.

Said one veteran of Democratic presidential campaigns: “The key question is: How crazy will Trump make us? How far out there will you go to be like Trump?”

“A strategist for one of the 2020 candidate told me this calibration will be tough: Primary voters hunger for ‘someone to descend to Trump’s tactics.’ But general-election voters are more likely to prefer ‘a hopeful message about making government boring again.'”

Support for Robert Mueller Is Growing

September 15, 2018 at 10:22 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

The following post for members is by G. Elliot Morris of The Crosstab.

The big names in President Trump’s investigative and legal troubles have now “flipped,” signing plea deals for their crimes and reportedly cooperating with special counsel Robert Mueller to give up information in exchange for leniency. One would naturally wonder; with the investigations associated with the Mueller probe making big headlines for guilty Trump associates, are naysayers starting to change their mind?

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Quote of the Day

September 15, 2018 at 9:43 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“There’s absolutely nothing unusual about it. The conversation I think he really ought to be worried about is Paul Manafort with Mueller.”

— Former Secretary of State John Kerry, on Real Time with Bill Maher, responding to President Trump’s criticism of his conversations with Iranian diplomats.

Democrats May Have More Polling Upside

September 15, 2018 at 9:35 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Harry Enten: “What’s important to keep in mind is that district polls at this point in the cycle can underestimate the party benefiting from a wave election.”

“I went back since the 2006 election and looked at how much the polls from roughly within a month of this point in the cycle performed. (That is, polls completed from about 52 to 82 days before the election.)”

“The immediate thing that jumps out is the side that has won the national House popular vote has always done better on Election Day than the polls indicate right now. The average overperformance was a little over 3 points.”

FEMA to Test ‘Presidential Alert’ System

September 15, 2018 at 9:28 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

President Trump “may soon be communicating with you directly on your phone — even if you don’t follow him on Twitter,” NBC News reports.

“Next Thursday, the Federal Emergency Management Agency will do its first test of a system that allows the president to send a message to most U.S. cellphones.”

”More than 100 mobile carriers, including all the major wireless firms, are participating in the roll out.”

Trump Doubles-Down on Puerto Rico Conspiracy Theory

September 15, 2018 at 9:26 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

President Trump repeated his claim that Puerto Rico’s death toll from Hurricane Maria was doctored, even though he received widespread criticism for casting doubt on the deaths of nearly 3,000 people.

China’s Unexpected Win from Trump’s Trade Wars

September 15, 2018 at 6:59 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Washington Post: “Under pressure from President Trump’s tariff war, China has embarked on a charm offensive on the diplomatic circuit, smoothing over old disputes and courting partners who could help Beijing weather the storm with Washington. Germany, which perennially harangued Beijing over market access restrictions, recently let Chinese investors hold bigger shares in joint ventures in a significant concession. South Korea, the target of withering Chinese boycotts last year over its deployment of a U.S. missile defense system, is seeing Chinese tourism revenue and automobile sales return.”

“This week, China’s relations with its heavyweight neighbor, Japan, reached its highest level in years. After meeting at a summit in Russia, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced that China will welcome Abe on his first state visit to Beijing next month after he was frozen out for years over territorial disputes and the Japanese leader’s visits to a controversial shrine for wartime dead. The two men smiled for a photo together, a stark turnaround from four years ago, when they could barely face each other for a memorably grim snap.”

The Deficit Hawks Are Dead

September 15, 2018 at 6:48 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Washington Post: “Their demise technically came Tuesday when the Congressional Budget Office calculated the federal deficit at $895 billion for the first 11 months of fiscal 2018 — a stunning gap that was met with a collective shrug on Capitol Hill.”

“But the real death of the deficit hawks came late last year and early this year, as Republicans such as Speaker Paul Ryan who had railed against deficits in the first years of the Obama administration pushed through a massive tax cut despite CBO projections of a surge in federal borrowing.”

Fraying Ties With Trump Put Mattis’s Fate in Doubt

September 15, 2018 at 6:38 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

New York Times: “Interviews with more than a dozen White House, congressional and current and former Defense Department officials over the past six weeks paint a portrait of a president who has soured on his defense secretary, weary of unfavorable comparisons to Mr. Mattis as the adult in the room, and increasingly concerned that he is a Democrat at heart.”

“Nearly all of the officials, as well as confidants of Mr. Mattis, spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the internal tensions — in some cases, out of fear of losing their jobs.”

“In the second year of his presidency, Mr. Trump has largely tuned out his national security aides as he feels more confident as commander in chief, the officials said. Facing what is likely to be a heated re-election fight once the 2018 midterms are over, aides said Mr. Trump was pondering whether he wanted someone running the Pentagon who would be more vocally supportive than Mr. Mattis, who is vehemently protective of the American military against perceptions it could be used for political purposes.”

Wealthy Donor In Ohio Quits the Republican Party

September 14, 2018 at 10:49 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Leslie Wexner, the wealthiest Republican donor in Ohio, said that he is fed up and has quit the Republican Party, the Columbus Dispatch reports.

Said Wexner: “I just decided I’m no longer a Republican. I’m an independent. I won’t support this nonsense in the Republican Party.”

Republicans Are Tripping on Trump’s Coattails

September 14, 2018 at 10:06 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Dana Milbank: “New evidence indicates that the midterm elections in seven weeks will be the clearest referendum on a president in at least 80 years.”

“But while it may delight the narcissistic president that the 2018 midterms are entirely about him, this is precisely what his fellow Republicans were hoping to avoid. With Trump’s support at historic lows — 60% overall disapprove of his performance, including 59% of independents — Republicans scrambling to hold the House and Senate have been struggling in vain to make the election about other issues: tax cuts, Democrats’ personal foibles — anything to avoid the election being about Trump. This has failed, bigly.”

“Midterm elections have generally come to be seen as the electorate’s reaction to a presidency. But this one is on a whole different level.”

Manafort’s Plea Deal Is Pardon-Proof

September 14, 2018 at 9:51 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“The plea deal special counsel Robert Mueller granted to Paul Manafort on Friday appears built to be pardon-proof,” Politico reports.

“That doesn’t mean President Trump won’t try to legally absolve Manafort anyway, a step the president has considered taking for months. But Friday‘s events mean Trump’s ability to contain the legal damage from his former campaign chairman is now severely limited.”

”Some attorneys also believe the deal Mueller gave Manafort — accepting a guilty plea to just two of seven charges he was facing — signals that the former Trump campaign chief didn’t just agree to answer prosecutors’ questions but produced answers Mueller’s team found useful to some aspect of a case it is actively pursuing.”

‘There Never Is a Strategy’

September 14, 2018 at 6:43 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“President Trump spent Friday confronting the deadly landfall of Hurricane Florence – only to have that disaster eclipsed by the revelation that his former campaign manager cut a cooperation deal with special counsel Robert Mueller and a growing #MeToo crisis surrounding his Supreme Court nominee,” Politico reports.

“The trifecta culminated a week of the president careening from one fiasco to another, before he had fully recovered from the publication of damning excerpts from Bob Woodward’s new White House account Fear and an op-ed published anonymously by the New York Times claiming that senior staff are working to undermine him.”

Said Trump biographer Tim O’Brien: “Two things motivate almost 100 percent of his behavior: Self-preservation or self-aggrandizement. There never is a strategy because he’s not a strategic thinker.”

A Lopsided Victory for Robert Mueller

September 14, 2018 at 6:09 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Roll Call: “No matter how you look at it, this deal has to be seen as a massive victory for Mueller and his special counsel team.”

“The only concession the special counsel made was to repackage the charges against Manafort in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia from seven counts to two and to ask judges for a shorter sentence.”

“Besides that, prosecutors extracted a guilty plea, a cooperation agreement for Manafort to tell them everything he knows and fork over any documents they request, an admission of guilt to the 10 remaining charges from the Eastern Virginia trial, and likely a multi-year prison sentence for Manafort.”

Key takeaway: “Holding out on cooperation with Mueller’s team for as long as he did not strengthen Manafort’s bargaining position — it weakened it.”