“It’s like a fire. Fires are a part of the ecosystem, part of the natural progress. And when the forest burns, it’s purified. There can be new growth. For there to be new growth of a conservative movement, of a right center party, the one that I joined in 1988, it needs to burn to the ground.”
— Former GOP strategist Steve Schmidt, talking about the Republican party on MSNBC.
Rep. Tom Garrett (R-VA) told CNN that he was told during a briefing with the FBI director that Russian meddling played in a role in “fomenting the flames of what happened in Charlottesville” one year ago, when a white nationalist rally turned violent.
Said Garrett: “I sat in a closed session briefing probably two months ago about Charlottesville with the director of the FBI, amongst others, and asked if Russian inter-meddling had to do with fomenting the flames of what happened in Charlottesville. I was told yes, it did.”
President Trump blasted Attorney General Jeff Sessions for being “scared stiff and missing in action” in a series of tweets, Axios reports.
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Politico: “Trump’s respite has provided him hours of downtime, with aides sprinkling his comparatively sparse schedule with meetings and phone calls as he prepares to stump all fall for Republican candidates. He’s spent long stretches in high spirits, according to several accounts, gloating about the economy and gross domestic product, and riding high following recent ballot-box victories.”
“But Trump has found time to rage about the Russia investigation led by Robert Mueller and what he views as the unfair treatment of his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who is on trial in Virginia on charges of tax and bank fraud. Trump’s mood has darkened during periods when the Russia story has dominated”
Said one close adviser: “Every day you wake up and it’s Manafort this, Manafort that. It’s crazy. How do you get away from it?”
Coming soon: The Red and the Blue: The 1990s and the Birth of Political Tribalism by Steve Kornacki.
“Kornacki follows the twin paths of Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich, two larger-than-life politicians who exploited the weakened structure of their respective parties to attain the highest offices.”
North Carolina congressional candidate Mark Harris (R) said in a 2015 speech that the United States had descended into “moral decay” and cited as one of several examples that “we have watched in one generation where homosexuality was once criminalized to now we see the criminalization of Christianity,” according to video found by Media Matters.
Florida state House candidate Melissa Howard (R) “lied about having a college degree and posed with a fake diploma after a news outlet questioned her credentials,” WPLG reports.
Howard had claimed she graduated with a bachelor’s degree from Miami University in Ohio. But “a bombshell email sent to the Sarasota Herald-Tribune from Miami University general counsel Robin Parker declares unequivocally that Howard never graduated. And Parker also takes aim at the diploma seen in the pictures, laying out a series of reasons why it does not appear to be authentic.”
Rep. Chris Collins (R-NY), one of President Trump’s earliest backers in Congress, suspended his campaign on Saturday, in the wake of insider trading allegations that resulted in his dramatic arrest this week, CNBC reports.
Roll Call: “Removing Collins’ name from the ballot would be extremely difficult under New York State law. According to a spokesman for the state Board of Elections, the three avenues to remove one’s name from the ballot is if the candidate dies; does not meet the basic requirements for candidacy like minimum age and residency in the state; or runs for another office and declines the nomination for the first office that candidate was seeking.”
Politico: “Under New York law, Collins’ name can be supplanted on the ballot at this stage of the cycle only if he dies, moves out of state or is nominated for another office — like a local judgeship. According to Erie County GOP Chairman Nick Langworthy, the exact mechanisms are still being worked out, but he noted Collins owns houses in Florida and Washington, D.C.”
Kansas Gov. Jeff Colyer (R) accused Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R) of intentionally pushing a miscount of the number of ballots cast in the gubernatorial primary race in an interview with Fox News.
Said Colyer: “Secretary Kobach’s office was instructing counties not to count ballots that are in the mail, and those clearly have to be counted under Kansas law.”
NBC News: In vowing to remain on the ballot for his re-election race this fall — despite facing insider trading charges — New York Republican Rep. Chris Collins joins a not-so-exclusive club of lawmakers who have refused to resign even after being indicted.”
“Unfortunately for Collins, members of that club almost always meet an unhappy fate.“
“Most lawmakers in a similar situation initially vowed to fight, but wound up quickly caving in to bad press and resigning. A handful managed to win re-election only to have to give up the seat later after being convicted.”
“On Christmas Eve 1998, five days after the House impeached President Bill Clinton, Brett Kavanaugh urged his boss — Kenneth W. Starr, the independent counsel — not to pursue a criminal indictment of Mr. Clinton until after he left office,” the New York Times reports.
“Judge Kavanaugh, now President Trump’s nominee to fill the Supreme Court seat left vacant by the retirement of Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, delivered the advice in a private memorandum made public on Friday by the National Archives in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.”
Associated Press: “Trump, who is loath to admit to sleeping — let alone taking time off — has spent his week away mixing downtime and golf rounds with meetings and dinners, intent on projecting the image that he’s been hard at work.”
“Not that it was his idea to leave Washington anyway, he contends.”
Said Trump: “We’re renovating the White House, a long-term project and they approved it years ago. And I said, ‘Well, I guess this would be a good place to be in the meantime.”
He added: “I miss it. I would like to be there, but this is a good way of doing it.”
“We must be a party that fights fire with fire. When they go low, I say hit back harder.”
— Michael Avenatti, quoted by the New York Times, speaking at a Democratic fundraiser in Iowa.
The Boston Globe is proposing a coordinated editorial response from publications across the U.S. on August 16th to President Trump’s frequent attacks on the news media, the AP reports.
About 70 outlets had committed to editorials denouncing what the Globe called a “dirty war against the free press,” with the list expected to grow.
“As a flamboyant veteran of Washington and New York City politics, the campaign strategist Roger Stone has been in any number of knock-’em-down scrapes over the years, reaching back four decades to his early days as a self-described ‘dirty trickster’ in the Nixon administration,” the New York Times reports.
“But now Mr. Stone, a veteran adviser to President Trump who has long cut a piratical figure on the political scene, appears to be engaged in his stiffest fight yet: the one for his own legal future.”
“Democrats have all but acknowledged that they are unable to stop the Senate from confirming Trump nominee Brett Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court this fall,” the Washington Post reports.
“Moderate Republican senators such as Susan Collins of Maine, the most closely watched GOP swing vote, are sending strong signals that they will back Kavanaugh. Several Democrats facing difficult reelections this year have indicated they are open to voting for the judge. And leaders of the resistance are already delivering post-mortem assessments and blaming fellow Democrats for a looming failure.”
BuzzFeed News: “In one of the most intriguing episodes of the 2016 presidential campaign, Republican activist Peter W. Smith launched an independent effort to obtain Hillary Clinton’s emails to help defeat her and elect Donald Trump. His quest, which reportedly brought him into contact with at least two sets of hackers that he himself believed were Russian, remains a key focus of investigations into whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Kremlin.”
“Now… FBI agents and congressional investigators have zeroed in on transactions Smith made right as his effort to procure Clinton’s emails heated up. Just a day after he finished a report suggesting he was working with Trump campaign officials, for example, he transferred $9,500 from an account he had set up to fund the email project to his personal account, later taking out more than $4,900 in cash. According to a person with direct knowledge of Smith’s project, the Republican operative stated that he was prepared to pay hackers ‘many thousands of dollars’ for Clinton’s emails — and ultimately did so.”
Lawfare: “It comes in the wake of Mueller’s indictments of Russians involved in the Kremlin’s social media manipulation operation and, more importantly for present purposes, the hacking and leaking of Democratic Party materials during the 2016 campaign. In that context, it is highly significant that Buzzfeed reports that Smith’s efforts are actively being investigated by the special counsel’s team.”
Omarosa Manigault Newman “has lately been telling people that she’s the one who should be afraid” now that her tell-all book is out and that she has given copies of her Trump tapes to family members for safekeeping in the event that she is murdered,” Politico reports.
“She has also that she is taking meetings in disguise – dressed in a baseball hat, sunglasses and baggy clothes – out of a growing paranoia that the president will come after her.”
Also interesting: “She is also teasing her book as an appetizer, telling friends and acquaintances she has held onto explosive material that she intends to release later – such as the names of illegitimate children she claims Trump has fathered.”
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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