White House national security adviser John Bolton told Fox News that North Korea has not made progress toward denuclearization, in stark contrast to President Trump’s claims of an agreement with Kim Jong Un.
Said Bolton: “The United States has lived up to the Singapore declaration. It’s just North Korea that has not taken the steps we feel are necessary to denuclearize.”
North Carolina congressional nominee Mark Harris (R) “on multiple occasions — as a preacher and political candidate — has said that women should submit fully to their husbands and that he believed homosexuality is a choice,” Roll Call reports.
Harris faces Dan McCready (D), “a Marine veteran and business owner, in this once-thought safe Republican district that stretches along the South Carolina border from the wealthy suburbs of Charlotte to Fayetteville.”
“It boomerangs. He goes in the other direction, so that’s not effective. The pissing match doesn’t work.”
— Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI), quoted by the New York Times, on why he’s not publicly critical of President Trump.
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“The legal pressures facing Michael Cohen are growing in a wide-ranging investigation of his personal business affairs and his work on behalf of his former client, President Trump,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“In previously unreported developments, federal prosecutors in New York are examining whether Mr. Cohen committed tax fraud… Federal authorities are assessing whether Mr. Cohen’s income from his taxi-medallion business was underreported in federal tax returns… That income included hundreds of thousands of dollars received in cash and other payments over the last five years.”
“Prosecutors also are looking into whether any bank employees improperly allowed Mr. Cohen to obtain loans for which he didn’t provide adequate documentation.”
Out next month: Contempt: A Memoir of the Clinton Investigation by Ken Starr.
This comes 20 years after the Starr Report was published.
A new Daily Beast/Ipsos poll finds that 43% of self-identified Republicans said that they believed “the president should have the authority to close news outlets engaged in bad behavior.” Only 36% disagreed with that statement.
When asked if President Trump should close down specific outlets, including CNN, The Washington Post, and The New York Times, 23% of Republicans agreed and 49% disagreed.
Architects Newspaper: “One of the most dangerous construction-related carcinogens is now legally allowed back into U.S. manufacturing under a new rule by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). On June 1, the EPA authorized a ‘SNUR’ (Significant New Use Rule) which allows new products containing asbestos to be created on a case-by-case basis.”
“According to environmental advocates, this new rule gives chemical companies the upper hand in creating new uses for such harmful products in the United States.”
Peter Enns, Jonathon Schuldt and Adrienne Scott: “The key to our analysis was to divide Republicans into three groups: those who say they identify strongly with the Republican Party; those who identify as Republicans but not strongly; and those who call themselves independents but say they lean toward the Republican Party. These distinctions, often obscured in media coverage, are important because research shows that the strength of a voter’s partisan identity has an important effect on their political attitudes.”
“Among strong Republicans, Trump’s overall approval rating is 93%, with 78% ‘strongly’ approving of the president. The problem for Trump, however, is that these voters make up less than half of the Republican electorate — and 18% of likely voters.”
“Among the larger number of Republicans who identify less strongly with their party, Trump is much less popular. For example, Trump’s overall approval rating among not-so-strong Republicans is 72%, with 38% saying they strongly approve. Thirty-four percent say they only ‘somewhat’ approve of Trump. Those numbers are similar among independent-leaning Republicans.”
“To be sure, having reservations about the president doesn’t mean Republican voters will abandon their party and vote for Democrats in the autumn. But it does raise the question of how much Republican congressional candidates can count on those who ‘somewhat approve’ of Trump.”
Troy Balderson (R) appeared to denigrate Franklin County — home of Columbus, and many OH-12 voters, who are probably more likely to vote Democratic — in his final campaign stop of Monday night, saying the district doesn’t want a representative from there, NBC News reports.
“On the one hand, this certainly seems like a good way for Balderson to alienate potential voters in a densely-populated part of the district. But it also says something about conservatives’ strategy in the Trump era, as diverse cities and suburbs become more and more politically distant from Trump country.”
Ron Brownstein: “The party is now consciously trading suburbs for small towns: the country club for the country. It’s the famous Kinsley gaffe of saying what you really mean: we don’t consider those voters who we are anymore.”
Sen. Dean Heller (R-NV) told the Washington Examiner that he believes Republican lawmakers made a “big mistake” by pushing to repeal the Affordable Care Act as their first big legislative move at the outset of the Trump administration.
Said Heller: “I don’t think we should have done it first. I think we should have done the economy first. We needed to get some wins. We should have done transportation and the economy first, and then done healthcare after. I think you would have seen a very different result on healthcare.”
First Read: “Trump’s been on a primary winning streak lately, but he’s got less of a strong track record of endorsing in elections that pit Republicans against Democrats (See: Roy Moore, Ed Gillespie and Rick Saccone.) A Balderson loss would be another black eye for Trump, particularly since the president appeared at a rally for him over the weekend. In primary races, Trump has endorsed John James in the Michigan Senate race, Bill Schuette in the Michigan governors’ race, and — just yesterday — Kris Kobach in the Kansas gubernatorial primary.”
President Trump “has headlined 29 fundraisers since he was sworn into office, raising at least $135 million — but unlike the five previous presidents, nearly half of the events benefited himself, instead of just his party or candidates,” according to an analysis by McClatchy.
“Trump is the first U.S. president since at least the 1970s to raise money for his own re-election campaign during the first two years of his term when the political world’s attention is usually focused on midterm elections for Congress.”
Jonathan Last: “It has become an article of faith among Republicans that Trump will be very lucky if the Democrats nominate a radical progressive—or maybe even a socialist—to challenge him in 2020. That would assure his re-election, the thinking goes, because Trump won by converting disillusioned working-class white Obama voters in the Rust Belt precisely because the Democrats were already too far out of the mainstream. If Democrats double-down on their progressivism, then Trump might be able to win with two pair, instead of having to draw to an inside straight.”
“On the one hand, that makes a certain kind of sense. On the other hand, it’s hard to square this belief with the argument that conservatives have been making for 40 years: that the key to victory is bold colors, not pale pastels. Because if the bold colors strategy could work for Republicans, why couldn’t it work for Democrats, too?”
“Think about it this way: In the wake of the 2012 election, Republicans spent a lot of time on their own autopsy and came away with the conclusion that if they were going to be competitive again at the national level, they had to moderate their stance on immigration. Instead, the party nominated the biggest immigration extremist since Levi Boone. And he won.”
A new Axios/SurveyMonkey poll finds “there’s an almost perfect match between President Trump’s approval ratings on immigration — including his overall policies and his proposed border wall — and his job approval rating.”
“The fact that his job approval rating (44%) is so closely aligned with his immigration numbers suggests that Trump’s immigration policies play a huge role in how the public sees his presidency. If they’re with him on immigration, they’re with him on everything. And his wall of defense is rural voters — the only one of the five key voter groups that’s sticking with him.”
“The Trump administration is expected to issue a proposal in coming weeks that would make it harder for legal immigrants to become citizens or get green cards if they have ever used a range of popular public welfare programs, including Obamacare,” four sources with knowledge of the plan told NBC News.
“The move, which would not need Congressional approval, is part of White House senior adviser Stephen Miller’s plan to limit the number of migrants who obtain legal status in the U.S. each year.”
Forbes: “A multimillion-dollar lawsuit has been quietly making its way through the New York State court system over the last three years, pitting a private equity manager named David Storper against his former boss: Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross. The pair worked side by side for more than a decade, eventually at the firm, WL Ross & Co.—where, Storper later alleged, Ross stole his interests in a private equity fund, transferred them to himself, then tried to cover it up with bogus paperwork. Two weeks ago, just before the start of a trial with $4 million on the line, Ross and Storper agreed to a confidential settlement, whose existence has never been reported and whose terms remain secret.”
”It is difficult to imagine the possibility that a man like Ross, who Forbes estimates is worth some $700 million, might steal a few million from one of his business partners. Unless you have heard enough stories about Ross.”
“Almost everybody has an opinion on national politics today. Even if you’re totally uninformed, you still have an opinion.”
— Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R), quoted by The Hill.
Rudy Giuliani told the Washington Post that Trump’s legal team is planning to send a letter to special counsel Robert Mueller this week that will largely rebuff Mueller’s latest offer of a presidential interview that would include questions about possible obstruction of justice.
Said Giualiani: “‘We have a real reluctance about allowing any questions about obstruction.”
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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