A new NBC News/Marist poll in Tennessee finds Phil Bredesen (D) edging Marsha Blackburn (R) in the U.S. Senate race, 48% to 46% among likely voters.
Among the larger pool of registered voters, Bredesen leads Blackburn by four points, 48% to 44%, but it’s still within the survey’s margin of error.
Twitter announced that it has permanently banned conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and Infowars from its social media platform, CNBC reports.
The ban comes weeks after Jones was banned or suspended by other major tech companies like Apple, Facebook and YouTube.
Jonathan Bernstein: “The anonymous New York Times column by a ‘senior official in the Trump administration’ has people talking about the 25th amendment again. But the writer is absolutely correct: Trying to remove the president by that mechanism – an idea that apparently was batted around in ‘early whispers within the cabinet’ — would have failed, risking a serious constitutional crisis.”
“That’s because the relevant portions of the 25th amendment allowing the removal of a president ‘who is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office’ are poorly drafted, and are entirely useless for a situation in which the president contests his removal.”
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Hollywood Reporter: “Yes, he acknowledges factors like Russian President Vladimir Putin and former FBI head James Comey, but asserts that the person most responsible for the Trump presidency is… Gwen Stefani. ‘You hadn’t heard that before, have you?’ Moore asks, delighted with the audacity of the claim.”
“Moore posits that when Trump realized Stefani’s performance fees as a coach on ‘The Voice’ were larger than his own on ‘The Apprentice’, he staged his now-infamous Trump Tower campaign announcement to prove his popularity to NBC, which aired both shows… After Trump’s accusation that Mexico was sending rapists across the border, NBC cut ties with him. But Trump, suddenly finding himself cheered on by massive crowds and an indulgent media, figured why not make a serious run for the highest office in the land?”
Said Moore: “He’d been talking about running for president since 1988, but he didn’t really want to be president. There’s no penthouse in the White House. And he doesn’t want to live in a black city. He was trying to pit NBC against another network, but it just went off the rails.”
“A government photographer edited official pictures of Donald Trump’s inauguration to make the crowd appear bigger following a personal intervention from the president,” The Guardian reports.
“The photographer cropped out empty space ‘where the crowd ended’ for a new set of pictures requested by Trump on the first morning of his presidency, after he was angered by images showing his audience was smaller than Barack Obama’s in 2009.”
Associated Press: “With just a few primaries remaining before the decisive midterm elections in November, voters have dramatically reshaped the Democratic Party to become younger, more diverse and unquestionably liberal.”
“For now, Democratic leaders are embracing the enthusiasm of their base — even as it’s unclear where it will lead.”
Speaker Paul Ryan says that he has a “good understanding” with President Trump to fund the government by a Sept. 30 deadline, despite Trump’s comments a day earlier that he would be willing to shut down government if Congress does not provide enough border security funding, Reuters reports.
Said Ryan: “We have a very good understanding with the president that we want to get our appropriations done… And we have a very good agreement and understanding that we’re going to keep government funded.”
Stan Collender: “Trump continues to be ‘consistently inconsistent’ about a shutdown so everything he says about it on any day should be taken with at least a grain, if not a whole shaker, of salt. Bottom line: There’s still a 60 percent chance of a shutdown.”
A new Economist/YouGov poll finds 53% of voters disapprove of President Trump’s job performance while just 38% approve.
What is more, the share of voters who say they “strongly disapprove” of Trump has increased by five points, from 37% to 42%, over the past few weeks.
Key finding: “The decline in the president’s numbers stems largely from a change among college-educated whites. These voters will have a disproportionate weight in the upcoming midterm elections to the House of Representatives, both because they show up at polling booths and because so many of them live in marginal congressional districts. In the same poll, 49% of college-educated whites support Democratic candidates for the House (the generic ballot), while 40% support the Republicans. These are awful numbers for Republicans: the president is contagious.”
“The drama of this op-ed, the drama of the Woodward book, the drama of the Omarosa tapes, the drama of Cohen, the drama of Manafort, the drama of just the three-ring circus that is the White House almost every day, I think that it exhausts the American people. And I know that the founders would regard anything like this as you know, really unhelpful. You don’t run the country as a soap opera.”
— Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE), in an interview on the Hugh Hewitt Show.
Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) announced at the start of Thursday’s Senate Judiciary Supreme Court confirmation hearing for Brett Kavanaugh that he would publicly release “committee confidential” documents, Axios reports.
Said Booker: “I am going to release the email about racial profiling. And I understand that the penalty comes with potential ousting from the Senate. And if Sen. Cornyn believes that I violated Senate rules, I openly invite and accept the consequences…the emails being withheld from the public have nothing to do with national security.”
“As a White House lawyer in the Bush administration, Judge Brett Kavanaugh challenged the accuracy of deeming the Supreme Court’s landmark Roe v. Wade abortion rights decision to be ‘settled law of the land,'” according to a secret email obtained by the New York Times.
“The email, written in March 2003, is one of thousands of documents that a lawyer for President George W. Bush turned over to the Senate Judiciary Committee about the Supreme Court nominee but deemed ‘committee confidential,’ meaning it could not be made public or discussed by Democrats in questioning him in hearings this week.”
Wrote Kavanaugh: “I am not sure that all legal scholars refer to Roe as the settled law of the land at the Supreme Court level since Court can always overrule its precedent, and three current Justices on the Court would do so.”
The Guardian excerpts a scene from Bob Woodward’s new book Fear: Trump in the White House, in which Steve Bannon explains to Donald Trump that his campaign was for the common man, against crony capitalism and insider deals.
TRUMP: “I love that. That’s what I am, a popularist.”
BANNON: “No, no. It’s populist.”
TRUMP: “Yeah, yeah. A popularist.”
A new UtahPolicy.com poll shows Mitt Romney (R) has a huge lead over Jenny Wilson (D) for U.S. Senate, 55% to 29%.
Two months before Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) told WZZM that “he is not endorsing any of the candidates to replace him. Not even fellow republican Bill Schuette.”
Said Snyder: “I’m staying out of politics. I’m governing.”
Former CIA director John Brennan told NBC News that the anonymous op-ed in the New York Times shows “the depth of concern within the administration…about what is happening and the extraordinary steps that individuals are willing to take…to prevent disasters.”
However, he added: “It’s active insubordination…born out of loyalty to the country, not to Donald Trump. This is not sustainable to have an executive branch, where individuals are not following the orders of the chief executive.”
Brennan also said: “I do think things will get worse before they get better. I don’t know how Donald Trump is going to react to this. A wounded lion is a very dangerous animal and I think Donald Trump is wounded.”
“Nearly 12 hours into Brett Kavanaugh’s Senate confirmation hearing, Kamala Harris opened with a tantalizing query: Has the Supreme Court nominee ever discussed Robert Mueller’s probe with a lawyer at Kasowitz Benson & Torres, President Donald Trump’s longtime law firm?,” Politico reports.
Said Harris: “Be sure about your answer, sir.”
“Trump’s high court pick appeared nonplussed, responding that ‘I’m not sure I know everyone who works at that law firm,’ but the California Democrat – a veteran prosecutor known for her tenacious questioning and high on her party’s 2020 presidential short lists — would not let up.”
Asked Harris: “How can you not remember whether you’ve had a conversation about Robert Mueller or his investigation with anyone at that law firm?”
First Read: The best thing that happened to Brett Kavanaugh was that anonymous op-ed. Why? Because had it not come out, the top political story in America this morning would be his rough day on Capitol Hill yesterday.
Ross Douthat says President Trump has lost control of his White House and that he’s an exceptionally weak president.
“Some of that weakness is invisible because we simply take it for granted; it’s just part of the scenery, for instance, that this White House has no legislative agenda, no chance of advancing any policy priority on the hill, barely two years into the president’s first term.”
“Some of the weakness shows up in his attempts to play the tough guy. The child-separation policy, for instance, was abandoned scant days after it was publicized, because the president lacked the support within his own party and within his own White House to actually see a draconian measure through.”
First Read: “But it’s also hard to disagree with Douthat’s conclusion that Trump’s weakness could turn out to be dangerous. (Remember, Trump hates the perception of weakness.) Is Trump trapped in a cage (by his own staff)? Or can what’s in a cage eventually get out?”
Washington Post: “Bob Woodward’s new book, Fear, does not paint a different picture of the early Trump White House than the one that has already emerged from credible news organizations in daily reporting on President Trump. Rather, the book fills in details of a presidency led by an ignorant, impulsive and dishonest narcissist — and the people around him who enable or restrain his worst instincts.”
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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