Mitt Romney told the Deseret News that he wrote in his wife, Ann Romney, as his vote for president in 2016.
Said Romney: “I wrote in the name of a person who I admire deeply, who I think would be an excellent president. I realized it wasn’t going to go anywhere, but nonetheless felt that I was putting in a very solid name.”
Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) warned that Americans would soon grow “tired of” the Trump-Russia scandal, tamping down the impeachment fever spreading through his party’s base, Politico reports.
Said Warner: “The notion for those who may be partisans in the crowd … ‘Well, gosh, if Democrats take control, they’ll be able to really ramp these up’ — I think the American public will be tired of it if this is not wound down in this calendar year.”
“I will never roll on Donald Trump. John Dean I am not.”
— Roger Stone, quoted by New York magazine, appearing on the Alex Jones radio show to raise money for his legal defense.
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President Trump’s “claim that the FBI embedded a spy in his campaign for political purposes began to crumble Wednesday after a prominent Republican, as well as defenders of the president, said he might have the story wrong,” Politico reports.
“In less than 24 hours, Trump’s allegations were publicly refuted by House Oversight Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-SC), one of just nine lawmakers briefed on highly classified details of the FBI’s operation; Fox News legal analyst Andrew Napolitano, a Trump favorite; and prominent legal scholar Alan Dershowitz, a vocal Trump ally who has advised the president on legal strategy.”
Former acting FBI director Andrew McCabe wrote a confidential memo last spring recounting a conversation that offered significant behind-the-scenes details on the firing of James Comey, the New York Times reports.
“In the document, whose contents have not been previously reported, Mr. McCabe described a conversation at the Justice Department with the deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein, in the chaotic days last May after Mr. Comey’s abrupt firing. Mr. Rosenstein played a key role in the dismissal, writing a memo that rebuked Mr. Comey over his handling of an investigation into Hillary Clinton.”
“But in the meeting at the Justice Department, Mr. Rosenstein added a new detail: He said the president had originally asked him to reference Russia in his memo, the people familiar with the conversation said. Mr. Rosenstein did not elaborate on what Mr. Trump had wanted him to say. To Mr. McCabe, that seemed like possible evidence that Mr. Comey’s firing was actually related to the F.B.I.’s investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, and that Mr. Rosenstein helped provide a cover story by writing about the Clinton investigation.”
New York Times: “In the weeks after Mr. Trump’s election, Mr. Obama went through multiple emotional stages, according to a new book by his longtime adviser Benjamin J. Rhodes. At times, the departing president took the long view, at other points, he flashed anger. He called Mr. Trump a ‘cartoon’ figure who cared more about his crowd sizes than any particular policy. And he expressed rare self-doubt, wondering whether he had misjudged his own influence on American history.”
“Set to be published next week by Random House, Mr. Rhodes’s memoir, The World as It Is, offers a peek into Mr. Obama’s tightly sealed inner sanctum from the perspective of one of the few people who saw him up close through all eight years of his presidency. Few moments shook Mr. Obama more than the decision by voters to replace him with a candidate who had questioned his very birth.”
“Rudy Giuliani said that he can fully understand why Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from investigations related to Russia and the presidential election and that he might have done the same, had he accepted that job, as Trump wanted,” the HuffPost reports.
“Giuliani said he would have had the same conflict of interest as Sessions because they were both major players in Trump’s campaign, although, unlike Sessions, he never met with the Russian ambassador.”
A new Quinnipiac poll in Texas finds Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) leading challenger Beto O’Rourke (D) by double-digits, 50% to 39%.
Said pollster Peter Brown: “Cruz, apparently benefiting from a nationwide Republican mini-move, has taken a solid lead in his reelection race. President Trump’s Texas numbers also have climbed during those six weeks moving from a nine point deficit on job approval to an even split today. It is hard not to see a pro- Cruz effect there.”
“A three-judge panel of a federal appeals court on Wednesday rejected former Rep. Aaron Schock’s (R-IL) effort to throw out his criminal indictment, a major setback for the Illinois Republican’s efforts to avoid a trial on corruption charges,” Politico reports.
Roseanne Barr said she was “Ambien tweeting” when she wrote racist remarks on Twitter that compared a black former Obama administration official to an ape, but the makers of Ambien “were having none of it,” the New York Times reports.
Said the company: “People of all races, religions and nationalities work at Sanofi every day to improve the lives of people around the world. While all pharmaceutical treatments have side effects, racism is not a known side effect of any Sanofi medication.”
“Mexico will never pay for a wall. Not now, not ever.”
— Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto, quoted by the Guardian.
Nate Silver: “With the 2018 midterm elections approaching, we’ve updated FiveThirtyEight’s pollster ratings for the first time since the 2016 presidential primaries. Based on how the media portrayed the polls after President Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton later that year, you might expect pollsters to get a pretty disastrous report card.”
“But here’s a stubborn and surprising fact — and one to keep in mind as midterm polls really start rolling in: Over the past two years — meaning in the 2016 general election and then in the various gubernatorial elections and special elections that have taken place in 2017 and 2018 — the accuracy of polls has been pretty much average by historical standards.”
President Trump finally weighed in on ABC’s firing of Roseanne Barr for a racist tweet:
Bob Iger of ABC called Valerie Jarrett to let her know that “ABC does not tolerate comments like those” made by Roseanne Barr. Gee, he never called President Donald J. Trump to apologize for the HORRIBLE statements made and said about me on ABC. Maybe I just didn’t get the call?
Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) former presidential campaign manager told C-SPAN that the Vermont independent is considering another presidential run.
Said Jeff Weaver: “Nationally, he is considering another run for the presidency. When the time comes I think we’ll have an answer to that. But right now he’s still considering it.”
Weaver’s new book, How Bernie Won, is just out.
This is hilarious: The Beautiful Poetry of Donald Trump by Robert Sears.
Arkady Babchenko, the prominent Russian journalist and Kremlin critic whose apparent assassination yesterday sparked an international outcry has appeared at a news conference today, Axios reports.
The BBC reports that Ukrainian authorities reported an assassination in order to “expose Russian agents.”
First Read: “By the way, given the Roseanne and Greitens news from yesterday, we’ll repeat: In the Trump Era, the only person who’s been able to avoid getting punished over alleged affairs/sexual impropriety or racist/controversial remarks — at least so far — has been Trump.”
President Trump tweeted that he wished he had picked someone other than Attorney General Jeff Sessions to oversee the Justice Department, The Hill reports.
“I wish I did!” the president exclaimed in a tweet after quoting House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-SC) saying the president “could have picked somebody else” to be the nation’s top cop.
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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