“United States gross domestic product rose at an annual rate of 4.1% in the second quarter, up from 2.2% in the first three months of the year. It was the strongest quarter of growth since 2014,” the New York Times reports.
“The second-quarter acceleration was widely anticipated by economists, a result of a confluence of events unlikely to recur. Most economists expect growth to slow in the second half of the year.”
President Trump unleashed several tweets accusing his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, of lying “in order to get himself out of an unrelated jam” and denying that he had any knowledge of the 2016 Trump Tower meeting with a Russian lawyer.
Said Trump: “I did NOT know of the meeting with my son, Don jr. Sounds to me like someone is trying to make up stories in order to get himself out of an unrelated jam (Taxi cabs maybe?). He even retained Bill and Crooked Hillary’s lawyer. Gee, I wonder if they helped him make the choice!”
A new Axios-Survey Monkey tracking poll launched ahead of the 2018 midterm elections with a focus on five specific groups of voters.
“The most important group to watch will be the #NeverHillary independents — a group that narrowly disapproves of Trump’s performance… It’s also not a good sign for Republicans that Trump’s disapproval ratings are high among suburban white women. The other subgroups lean pretty much the way you’d expect.”
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Cook Political Report: “With 102 days to go, Democrats remain substantial favorites for House control. A big reason: Republicans are defending 42 open or vacant seats, a record since at least 1930.”
“Of Republicans’ 42 incumbent-less seats, eight are in districts that voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, and an additional 13 are in districts where President Trump received less than 55 percent. History is working against the GOP in many of those seats: we found that since 1992, in situations when a president’s party was stuck defending an open seat two years after the president failed to carry it, that party has batted zero for 23 keeping it in their column.”
“In a wave environment, 42 seats is a dangerous level of exposure: If Democrats win even eight of the 42 (our current ratings pin eight as Lean/Likely Democratic and four more as Toss Ups), they’ll already be over a third of the way to a majority.”
“Michael Avenatti, the attorney for porn actress Stormy Daniels, said Thursday that he now represents three additional women who he says had relationships with President Trump and were paid ‘hush money’ before the 2016 presidential election,” the HuffPost reports.
Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX), “a longtime party leader and former House GOP campaign chief, is confronting a treacherous political landscape back at home — a well-funded Democratic opponent with a boffo résumé, a rapidly diversifying and more liberal district, and, perhaps most critically, a constituency of well-educated and upper-income suburban voters who increasingly are turning on the president,” Politico reports.
”His predicament underscores the grave danger confronting Republicans this fall. As the party braces for an electoral drubbing that threatens to wipe out the majority they won eight years ago, the list of incumbents under duress is growing ever longer — and even powerful lawmakers like Sessions, a sharp-elbowed tactician who hasn’t faced a serious reelection contest in over a decade, are suddenly trying to survive a Trump-fueled bloodbath.”
With 101 days left before the midterm elections, the Republican National Committee wants to test the strength of its ground game with a “national week of action,” Roll Call reports.
“The committee expects 4,000 volunteers to make 2 million contacts over the week.”
Daily Beast: “Two sources who have spoken to Trump about Cohen this week said the president was furious—hurling ‘expletives,’ per one confidant—after CNN revealed Cohen had covertly recorded at least one of their conversations.”
“After audio of the call surfaced, the president conveyed to those close to him that he felt betrayed by Cohen. He was particularly irate at being clandestinely recorded and that audio had found its way to, of all places, CNN, a frequent target of Trump’s tweets. Trump also vented his frustration that there are apparently other tapes out there, and that he doesn’t know exactly what could be on them, or when they’ll drop in the press.”
Said one source close to Trump, who also knows Cohen: “They’re dead to each other now.”
Michael Cohen claims that then-candidate Donald Trump knew in advance about the June 2016 meeting in Trump Tower in which Russians were expected to offer his campaign dirt on Hillary Clinton, sources with knowledge tell CNN.
“Cohen is willing to make that assertion to special counsel Robert Mueller, the sources said.”
“Cohen’s claim would contradict repeated denials by Trump, Donald Trump Jr., their lawyers and other administration officials who have said that the President knew nothing about the Trump Tower meeting until he was approached about it by the New York Times in July 2017.”
“A day after a December 2017 announcement that Sen. John McCain had been hospitalized for the ‘normal effects’ of cancer treatment, Arizona’s Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) was lobbying for McCain’s Senate seat,” the Arizona Republic reports.
“Gosar’s chief of staff, Thomas Van Flein, conveyed the northern Arizona congressman’s interest in replacing McCain to Gov. Doug Ducey… The brief text exchange began at 11:56 a.m. Dec. 14, less than 24 hours after news reports of McCain’s hospitalization in Bethesda, Maryland.”
“The Moscow lawyer said to have promised Donald Trump’s presidential campaign dirt on his Democratic opponent worked more closely with senior Russian government officials than she previously let on,” according to documents reviewed by the Associated Press.
“Scores of emails, transcripts and legal documents paint a portrait of Natalia Veselnitskaya as a well-connected attorney who served as a ghostwriter for top Russian government lawyers and received assistance from senior Interior Ministry personnel in a case involving a key client.”
“The Russian intelligence agency behind the 2016 election cyberattacks targeted Sen. Claire McCaskill as she began her 2018 re-election campaign in earnest,” a Daily Beast analysis reveals.
“That makes the Missouri Democrat the first identified target of the Kremlin’s 2018 election interference.”
Asked about the hack attempt, McCaskill said: “I’m not going to speak of it right now. I think we’ll have something on it next week. I’m not going to speak about it right now. I can’t confirm or do anything about it right now.”
NBC News/Marist polled possible match ups for governor in three key Midwestern states:
“If you want to be stupid, I can be stupid, as well.”
— European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, quoted by the Wall Street Journal, telling President Trump that they “need to refrain from further punitive tariffs or they would foolishly harm themselves.”
The New York Times has published an incredibly detailed, interactive map of 2016 presidential election results.
NBC News: “She’s an outspoken proponent of gun control; he’s a gun-loving NRA member who posed with a small arsenal in his campaign ads. She decries the ‘heartless’ treatment of immigrants; he says he’s ‘got a big truck just in case I need to round up criminal illegals.'”
“She’s a progressive Democrat who would be the nation’s first black female governor; he’s a white male ‘politically incorrect conservative’ with the backing of President Trump. This year’s race for governor of Georgia features a striking contrasts between the candidates, with each party’s hopefuls offering a clearer distillation of their base’s passions than you’ll find in almost any other race in the nation this year.”
Don Blankenship’s (R) attempt to run for U.S. Senate as a third-party candidate in West Virginia was denied by West Virginia Secretary of State Mac Warner.
Warner said the bid would violate the state’s “sore loser” law.
CNN: “It’s not clear how Kelly’s eventual departure — whether it comes in a matter of days, weeks, or months — might affect the structure he sought to impose. In recent weeks, Trump has told confidants he misses the chaos of the early days of his administration, which mirrored his style as a real estate impresario with its large cast of advisers and competing internal factions.”
“Still, Trump has looked to two experienced political hands as possible Kelly successors, polling friends and advisers about the possibility of tapping Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney or Vice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff Nick Ayers to take the reins. Mulvaney, whose sharp wit has impressed Trump, is seen as the strongest candidate, three sources inside the West Wing told CNN, though Trump has remarked that he likes Ayers’ hair.”
“Yet there remains no obvious successor for Kelly, which is why many believe Trump has not replaced him yet.”
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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