“Corey Lewandowski, who helped Donald Trump win the Republican nomination, is getting back in the campaign game,” Fox News reports.
“He is joining Vice President Pence’s political action committee, which will enable him to travel with the VP and puts him firmly back in the president’s 2020 reelection orbit.”
Don Blankenship (R), who was defeated in last week’s Republican U.S. Senate primary in West Virginia, isn’t done with Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY).
“Since the White House leaks like a sieve will one of the leakers tell me, does @POTUS do his own tweeting? Or does someone help him? Or does he dictate into the microphone? He’s much more prolific than I am.”
— Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA), on Twitter.
New York Times: “While Mr. Trump attacks major news organizations and suggests revoking media credentials for outlets he deems ‘Fake News,’David Brody and his network enjoy a closeness to the White House that is foreign to most reporters. In return, Mr. Trump gets a direct line to his most supportive voters, the conservative evangelicals who make up CBN’s core audience. Their allegiance is critical to his success; more than 80 percent of white evangelicals who went to the polls in 2016 voted for Mr. Trump.
Said Brody: “The access has been phenomenal. I’m very appreciative to God for allowing it.”
New York Times: “While Mr. Trump remains an overpowering personality in Republican politics, he is mostly uninterested in the mechanics of managing a political party. His team of advisers is riven with personal divisions and the White House has not yet crafted a strategy for the midterms. So Mr. Trump’s supremely disciplined running mate has stepped into the void.”
“Republican officials now see Mr. Pence as seeking to exercise expansive control over a political party ostensibly helmed by Mr. Trump, tending to his own allies and interests even when the president’s instincts lean in another direction. Even as he laces his public remarks with praise for the president, Mr. Pence and his influential chief of staff, Nick Ayers, are unsettling a group of Mr. Trump’s fierce loyalists who fear they are forging a separate power base.”
A new Public Policy Polling survey finds 60% of voters think it’s immoral if President Trump had an extramarital affair with Stormy Daniels, as compared to 21% who say it’s not immoral.
However, Trump voters are pretty divided on the question: Only 41% think it’s immoral if he had an affair with Daniels to 33% who say it’s not and 26% who are not sure.
“We also as an experiment asked voters if they think it would be immoral if Bill Clinton had an affair with Daniels. Trump voters think that would be immoral by an 18 point margin (46/28) compared to just the 8 point margin for Trump having an affair with Daniels. Hillary Clinton voters were more consistent, saying it would be immoral for Trump to by a 60 point margin (74/14) and saying it would be immoral for Bill Clinton to by a 62 point margin (75/13).”
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“As national Republicans scramble their resources for a high-stakes midterm election year, some of the party’s biggest and most reliable donors have quietly withheld their support for Senate and House Republican groups out of frustration with the new tax law,” CNN reports.
“The donors who have boycotted… are leaders of prominent hedge funds… Collectively, they have bristled at what they view as favored treatment for corporations under the law. While the corporate tax rate was slashed from 35% to 21%, hedge funds are largely taxed at the top individual rate, which ticked down from 39.6% to 37%.”
Daily Beast: “Inside the White House, aides say that anything related to the Stormy Daniels-Michael Cohen saga is purview of outside counsel. At the Republican National Committee, sources say, there is no rapid-response-like operation designed to counter-balance Avenatti’s numerous media appearances. Conservative outlets allied with the president have covered the drama but they have largely avoided doing the type of oppositional digging that they have undertaken on other real and perceived Trump foes. And Republican strategists seem unclear as to whether anyone is gearing up an operation any time soon.”
Said one GOP operative: “No one seems to understand why the RNC, America Rising and other GOP groups aren’t doing even basic political blocking and tackling with Avenatti. He’s essentially gotten a free pass from them.”
Rep. Martha McSally (R-AZ) “has dropped her support for immigration-reform legislation that offers a pathway to citizenship for undocumented dreamers in favor of a less generous alternative that also would sharply reduce legal immigration,” the Arizona Republic reports.
“McSally, now a U.S. Senate candidate, instead is backing a bill that calls for allowing undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children to apply for ‘contingent non-immigrant status,’ rather than giving them a shot at becoming legal permanent residents and eventually full U.S. citizens.”
“The move comes as McSally is facing two rival conservatives seeking this year’s Republican nomination for the state’s open Senate seat and as she has taken a harder line on border security and other issues in advance of a combative Republican primary.”
“The U.S. Supreme Court acted Monday to bust Nevada’s monopoly on legal sports betting, allowing more states to get in on the action and reap the tax benefits,” NBC News reports.
USA Today: “The justices ruled 7-2 that a 25-year-old federal law that has effectively prohibited sports betting outside Nevada cannot block states such as New Jersey that want to set up sports books. The ruling could set the stage for other states to expand legalized gambling as a source of government revenue.”
New Yorker: “Typically, an incoming President seeks to charm, co-opt, and, when necessary, coerce the federal workforce into executing his vision. But Trump got to Washington by promising to unmake the political ecosystem, eradicating the existing species and populating it anew. This project has gone by various names: Stephen Bannon, the campaign chief, called it the ‘deconstruction of the administrative state’—the undoing of regulations, pacts, and taxes that he believed constrain American power. In Presidential tweets and on Fox News, the mission is described as a war on the ‘deep state,’ the permanent power élite.”
Said Nancy McEldowney, who retired after thirty years in the Foreign Service: “In the anatomy of a hostile takeover and occupation, there are textbook elements—you decapitate the leadership, you compartmentalize the power centers, you engender fear and suspicion. They did all those things.”
“This idea, more than any other, has defined the Administration, which has greeted the federal government not as a machine that could implement its vision but as a vanquished foe.”
“Palestinians’ anger erupted as American and Israeli officials prepared to celebrate President Trump’s move of the embassy to Jerusalem, which previous American administrations have been unwilling to do,” the New York Times reports.
“Many Israelis see the relocation of the embassy as simply acknowledging that Jerusalem is Israel’s capital. But Palestinians, who hope to see the eastern part of Jerusalem become the capital of a Palestinian state, see the move as an abdication of any vestige of American impartiality in determining the region’s future.”
“Palestinian officials say at least 41 people have died in the latest round of protests… At least 1,700 Palestinian demonstrators were also wounded along the border fence with Gaza.”
“Last year’s race for state delegate in Newport News went down in Virginia history for its razor-thin margin. Republican David Yancey won on Election Day by 10 votes; Democrat Shelly Simonds beat him by a single vote in a recount. Then, a judicial panel declared a tie, so officials picked a name out of a bowl to determine a winner, and it was Yancey,” the Washington Post reports.
“Now, a review of voter registration records and district maps by The Washington Post has found more than two dozen voters — enough to swing the outcome of that race — cast ballots in the wrong district, because of errors by local elections officials. The misassigned voters lived in a predominantly African American precinct that heavily favored Democrats in the fall.”
The Atlantic: “FBI agents working for special counsel Robert Mueller allegedly detained a lawyer with ties to Russia who is closely associated with Joseph Mifsud, the shadowy professor who claimed during the election that Russia had ‘dirt’ on Hillary Clinton.”
“The revelation was made in a book co-written by that lawyer, Stephan Roh, and set to be published next month. The Faking of RUSSIA-GATE: The Papadopoulos Case is the latest in a stream of books aiming to capitalize on the chaos of this political moment. But it sheds new light on the expansive nature of Mueller’s investigation into Russia’s election interference and possible ties between President Donald Trump’s campaign team and Moscow. It also highlights Mueller’s interest in answering one of the probe’s biggest outstanding questions: whether the campaign knew in advance that Russia planned to interfere in the election.”
Associated Press: “President Trump said Sunday he has instructed his Commerce Department to help get a Chinese telecommunications company ‘back into business’ after the U.S. government cut off access to its American suppliers. At issue is that department’s move last month to block the ZTE Corp., a major supplier of telecoms networks and smartphones based in southern China, from importing American components for seven years. The U.S. accused ZTE of misleading American regulators after it settled charges of violating sanctions against North Korea and Iran.”
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.