In a speech this weekend, Joe Biden touched on stories and anecdotes from his memoir, Promise Me, Dad: A Year of Hope, Hardship, and Purpose, released this past week, the Miami Herald reports.
“But after he was asked by writer George Saunders to explain ‘what the hell is going on?’ — he pivoted to discuss President Trump, the middle class and what he sees as a source of divisiveness in the country.”
Said Biden: “I think it’s one of the most dangerous times in modern history.”
“In public, Wesley Goodman (R) was an up-and-coming conservative who championed pro-family and anti-LGBT causes and aspired to someday run for Congress,” the Cleveland Plain Dealer reports.
“In private, he exchanged salacious texts and emails with gay men he met on Capitol Hill, and sent sexually suggestive messages to young men he met through conservative circles who were too intimidated to publicly complain.”
“Goodman’s double life ended this week when he resigned from the Ohio legislature after House Speaker Cliff Rosenberger was alerted to Goodman’s involvement in ‘inappropriate behavior’ with a man in his state office in Columbus.”
An Alabama pastor who supports Senate candidate Roy Moore (R) told the Birmingham News that allegations of sexual harassment against Moore are part of a “war on men.”
Said pastor Franklin Raddish: “More women are sexual predators than men. Women are chasing young boys up and down the road, but we don’t hear about that because it’s not PC.”
Washington Post: In defending Roy Moore, Alabama Republicans reflect state’s tradition of defiance.
Politico: “The Moore situation presents a complicated choice for Republican candidates facing tough 2018 primaries: Side with Moore and risk suburban swing voters will think you’re defending a pedophile; call for him to drop out and risk hardcore conservative voters believing you’re buying into a liberal witch hunt. And while Democratic strategists say they don’t expect Moore himself to be a central plank of any candidate’s 2018 campaign six months from now, they are working to ensure the overall Republican brand is associated with Moore more broadly as a way of tarnishing it early in the cycle.”
“While national Democrats want to avoid the appearance of diving into the race in deep-red Alabama, the party has used the Moore accusations to attack candidates from Ohio Senate candidate Josh Mandel, to Arizona Rep. Martha McSally, to South Carolina gubernatorial candidate Catherine Templeton. All three were criticized for refusing to take sides on whether Moore should drop out of the race.”
New Yorker: “Unlike 9/11, the Russian campaign did not occur without warning on a quiet fall day. Rather, it unfolded over at least six months on Americans’ social-media accounts—hardly the stuff of spy novels. Kremlin leaders had signaled their plans years in advance. The Russian playbook wasn’t a secret, either. It had been well documented by European governments, researchers, and journalists after the Kremlin’s information operations to destabilize Estonia, in 2007; Georgia, in 2008; Ukraine, in 2014; and Britain, in the leadup to the 2016 Brexit vote.”
“Facing one of the clearest domestic threats to the U.S. in a decade, neither the F.B.I., which has the responsibility for conducting counterintelligence inside the United States, nor the O.D.N.I. warned Americans that platoons of Russian-backed automated “bots” and human trolls were working online to amplify racial divisions and anti-government conspiracy theories.”
“America’s brand has taken a major hit in the age of Trump,” CNN reports.
“At least that’s according to a survey that ranks the world’s best nation brands. The United States lands with an overall No. 6 ranking in the Anholt-GfK Nation Brands Index, which measures 50 nations in multiple categories, including governance, exports, culture, people, tourism and immigration/investment. The United States was the overall No. 1 in 2016, but Germany took the top spot this year.”
Adam Davidson: “If it gives us nothing else positive, the Republican tax plan—and, in its Senate form, the health-care repeal—at least provides clarity. There is no debate. The middle class will, in the long run, pay more in taxes than under current law, and the rich will pay less.”
“Just ask the very people who wrote it. The U.S. Congress Joint Committee on Taxation is run by the chairs of the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee—Representative Kevin Brady and Senator Orrin Hatch, respectively. The Joint Committee’s reports of this week make startling reading, or as startling as a series of spreadsheets of tax revenue data can be. The report shows that this bill is much like a teaser rate on a new credit card: there are some goodies in the first couple of years, but those disappear fairly quickly, at least for those below the median income.”
“The report shows that the rich benefit and the poor are hurt in every way that it measures.”
Air Force Gen. John Hyten, commander of the U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM), told an audience that he has given a lot of thought to what he would say if President Trump ordered a strike he considered unlawful, CBS News reports.
Said Hyten: “I think some people think we’re stupid. We’re not stupid people. We think about these things a lot. When you have this responsibility, how do you not think about it?”
“As head of STRATCOM, Hyten is responsible for overseeing the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Hyten said he has been trained every year for decades in the law of armed conflict, which takes into account specific factors to determine legality — necessity, distinction, proportionality, unnecessary suffering and more. Running through scenarios of how to react in the event of an illegal order is standard practice, he said.”
“If we become the party of Roy Moore and Donald Trump, we are toast.”
— Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), caught on a live microphone by KNXV-TV.
Out this week: On Power: My Journey Through the Corridors of Power and How You Can Get More Power by Gene Simmons.
New Yorker: “Simmons’s thesis, if that’s not too decorous a word, is that power is an amoral tool, no matter how much of it you have. It’s the wrong argument for any moment, but it’s especially perverse in this one, when so many powerful men, including Simmons, have been revealed as venal megalomaniacs. He promises a Machiavellian treatise ‘on the dynamics of power in every realm of life,’ but he ignores any evidence of said power’s corruptibility. Instead, he tells us, like a hard-nosed vice-principal, to work endlessly, to crush the lazy, and to celebrate our lust for cold, hard cash.”
Jake Tapper explains why he’s often so agitated on his CNN show:
“I recognize that it’s probably a pain in the ass for a lot of people now,” he told The Atlantic. “But it is just who I am.”
“I’m just like, I don’t want any of this to be happening,” he added. “There are so many lies and so much indecency, and I’m not only talking about President Trump. There is just a world of it exploding—and we are, I fear, as a nation, becoming conditioned and accepting of it. And it’s horrific.”
“At first, Sean Spicer’s exit from the White House followed the blueprint for famous administration officials,” BuzzFeed News reports.
“Step one: Hire mega lawyer/agent Bob Barnett, who has represented presidents and their operatives in lucrative deals, from Barack Obama and David Axelrod to George W. Bush and Karl Rove. Step two: Make the rounds at various TV networks, where a contributor job can yield reliable, high-profile income.”
“But step three — landing the plush TV deal — never happened.”
“Now Spicer and Barnett, who seeks to uphold a reputation as the preeminent talent broker in Washington, are both distancing themselves from one another, according to sources familiar with the matter.”
“President Trump just can’t quit Hillary Clinton. Rarely a few days pass without the president tweeting about the woman he beat,” Axios reports.
“Trump has tweeted or retweeted a message about Clinton approximately 837 times since 2012, and 56 times since the election.”
His tweet this morning: “Crooked Hillary Clinton is the worst (and biggest) loser of all time. She just can’t stop, which is so good for the Republican Party. Hillary, get on with your life and give it another try in three years!”
“Documents released by law enforcement officials in Montana show that Greg Gianforte, then the Republican candidate in the state’s special congressional election, told police in May that a reporter from the Guardian had grabbed his wrist during a physical altercation at his campaign headquarters, blaming the ‘liberal media’ for ‘trying to make a story,'” the Washington Post reports.
“His statement appears to contradict the apology he later issued to Ben Jacobs, saying the reporter ‘did not initiate any physical contact with me,’ raising questions about whether the congressman was truthful with authorities.”
“I didn’t think he’d be as bad as he turned out to be.”
— Hillary Clinton, quoted by Politico, on Donald Trump’s presidency. When asked if there was anything about him she admired, she said: “No. The answer is absolutely no.”
“In a move certain to please conservatives, President Trump added five names to his list of candidates for a prospective U.S. Supreme Court vacancy as he presses ahead with a campaign to move the federal judiciary to the right,” Reuters reports.
“Two of them are appellate judges who were nominated by Trump earlier this year and confirmed by the Senate: Amy Coney Barrett and Kevin Newsom. Another, Brett Kavanaugh, sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, long viewed as a stepping-stone to the high court. The others were Britt Grant, a Georgia Supreme Court justice, and Patrick Wyrick, a Oklahoma Supreme Court justice.”
Politico: “Aides in the White House often show Trump polls designed to make him feel good, according to aides and advisers. Usually they’re the ones that focus just on voters who cast ballots for him in 2016 or are potential Trump supporters —Trump’s base—but occasionally include public polls like Rasmussen, depending on what the numbers say.”
Said Gov. Chris Christie (R): “You know, I thought that he’d be a little less in campaign mode than he’s been. I think he’s never really kind of gotten out of campaign mode and I thought he might. I guess it’s his judgment that that’s what he has to do but that’s surprised me a little bit.”
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.