A new Quinnipiac poll finds President Trump’s approval rate is a dismal 37% to 57%.
In an open ended question asking for the right word for Trump, voters are overwhelmingly negative with the most popular word being “idiot,” followed by “liar” and “incompetent.”
Said pollster Tim Malloy: “President Trump is known for hurling insults and he’s getting slammed right back.”
“It’s a much more poisonous atmosphere. I don’t know if there’s causality or correlation, I leave that for others to determine. But I could not honestly say to someone that I like and think is a halfway decent human being, ‘Yeah, you ought to run for office’.”
— Ed Gillespie, quoted by the Washington Post, in his first interview after losing the Virginia gubernatorial race.
Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) told NBC News that President Trump is a “misogynist,” “admitted sexual predator” and “liar” with a “narcissistic need for attention.”
She added: “The only thing that will stop him from attacking us — because nobody’s safe — is his resignation.”
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A new Politico/Morning Consult poll finds that 61% of voters — including a plurality of Republicans — think the U.S. Senate should expel the embattled Roy Moore (R) if he wins election today in Alabama.
That includes 77% of Democrats, 59% of independents and 45% of Republicans.
Jonathan Chait: “Why would the tax cuts lose even more revenue than forecast? Because the design is a sieve. Thirteen top tax lawyers studied the House and Senate versions of the tax cuts, and produced a 35-page analysis laying out the various loopholes and games the bill would open up. It is shot through with opportunities for individuals and businesses to make paper changes that would create opportunities for huge savings. Listing all the dodges they found would be as boring as — well, a list of financial maneuvers written by a bunch of tax lawyers. The upshot is that it’s a big list.”
Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker (R) told WBUR that he supports the Democrat running for U.S. Senate in Alabama against Roy Moore.
Said Baker: “I certainly don’t want to see Roy Moore win. That means, obviously, that I would be supporting the alternative.”
First Read: “New data provided to NBC News puts the universe of registered voters at 3,326,812 ahead of a hotly contested special Senate election on Tuesday in Alabama. Secretary of State John Merrill, a Republican, has already increased his turnout prediction from 18 to 20 percent last month now to upwards of 25 percent, reflecting the degree to which interest in the contest between Republican Roy Moore and Democrat Doug Jones locally is catching up with national attention.”
“But as local election officials prepared for polls to open Tuesday there were indications that turnout could be even higher still, approaching levels in some cases typically seen in midterm general elections. And neither party is willing to suggest what that says about the final outcome.”
Polling places in Alabama close at 8:00 pm ET.
Nate Cohn: “The Alabama special election is forcing pollsters to confront just about every major challenge in survey research. There’s more uncertainty than usual about who will turn out to vote, and a candidate whose unpopularity may make his committed voters unwilling to admit their support to a pollster. And looming over it all is a big chunk of voters torn between their party and their misgivings about their party’s nominee. No poll can really predict what they’ll do.”
Ford Vox: “When President Trump slurred his words during a news conference this week, some Trump watchers speculated that he was having a stroke. I watched the clip and, as a physician who specializes in brain function and disability, I don’t think a stroke was behind the slurred words. But having evaluated the chief executive’s remarkable behavior through my clinical lens for almost a year, I do believe he is displaying signs that could indicate a degenerative brain disorder.”
“As the president’s demeanor and unusual decisions raise the potential for military conflict in two regions of the world, the questions surrounding his mental competence have become urgent and demand investigation.”
Washington Post: “When Mueller requests documents, they provide them. When Trump reacts to new twists in the Russia saga, they seek to calm him down. When he has questions about the law, such as the Logan Act or Magnitsky Act, they explain it. And when the president frets that Mueller may be getting too close to him, they assure him he has done nothing wrong, urge him to resist attacking the special counsel and insist that the investigation is wrapping up — first, they said, by Thanksgiving, then by Christmas and now by early next year.”
“As counsel for the world’s highest-profile client, every move and utterance by Dowd and Cobb has been scrutinized — and the criticism has been unkind.”
“Many in the Washington legal community chide them as being indiscreet, error-prone and outmatched. They say public blunders — such as Dowd and Cobb casually chatting about their legal strategy on the patio of a downtown Washington steakhouse in September within earshot of a reporter — suggest a lack of discipline.”
President Trump tweeted that the multiple allegations of sexual misconduct against him are nothing more than a Democratic ploy:
Despite thousands of hours wasted and many millions of dollars spent, the Democrats have been unable to show any collusion with Russia — so now they are moving on to the false accusations and fabricated stories of women who I don’t know and/or have never met. FAKE NEWS!
The Washington Post has “the growing list of women who have stepped forward to accuse Trump of touching them inappropriately.”
“The president’s advisers were stunned Sunday when one of the highest-ranking women in the Trump administration broke with the White House line and said the accusers’ voices ‘should be heard,'” the AP reports.
“Haley’s comments infuriated the president… Trump has grown increasingly angry in recent days that the accusations against him have resurfaced, telling associates that the charges are false and drawing parallels to the accusations facing Republican Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore.”
Bloomberg: “Bannon worked to create a counter-narrative that ultimately would change many Republicans’ perception of the Roy Moore scandal. A former filmmaker, he’s long been captivated by the propaganda films of Leni Riefenstahl, the Nazi filmmaker, and the Soviet director Sergei Eisenstein for their power to shape public sentiment.”
“Earlier this year, Bannon told the New Yorker’s Jane Mayer his 2012 anti-Obama film The Hope and the Change, had consciously mimicked Riefenstahl’s infamous, Triumph of the Will. Her film, he added, ‘seared into me’ that unhappy voters could be influenced if they felt they were being conned.”
“A defiant Roy Moore returned to the campaign trail Monday evening, delivering a thundering speech at an election eve rally in which he implored Alabamians to ignore outsiders who he said were bent on stopping him in the Senate special election,” Politico reports.
Said Moore: “We dare to defend our rights and we will defend our rights. We’re up to our neck in people that don’t want change in Washington, D.C., they want to keep their power, keep it the same, keep their positions, and we’ve got to change that.”
Olivia Nuzzi: “Roy Moore emerges from hiding for election eve rally, and good lord, was it weird.”
“President Trump’s legal team believes Attorney General Jeff Session’s Justice Department and the FBI — more than special counsel Robert Mueller himself — are to blame for what they see as a witch hunt,” Mike Allen reports.
“The result: They want an additional special counsel named to investigate the investigators.”
The new demand was prompted by a Fox News article: “Senior Justice Department official Bruce Ohr, demoted last week for concealing his meetings with the men behind the anti-Trump ‘dossier,’ had even closer ties to Fusion GPS, the firm responsible for the incendiary document, than have been disclosed: The official’s wife, Nellie Ohr, worked for Fusion GPS during the 2016 election.'”
Former White House press secretary Sean Spicer is writing a book to “set the record straight” about what he says happened during the 2016 election, transition and his time serving in the administration, CNN reports.
Said Spicer: “I looked back at the coverage of the campaign, the transition in the first six, seven months of this White House, I realized the stories that are being told are not an accurate representation of what President Trump went through to get the nomination, to transition to the White House and then his first six months in office.”
“I write you today to share my urgent concern regarding the threat to the safety of the young men and women working in the United States Senate Page Program if Roy Moore becomes the U.S. Senator. I would like to know what preventative steps are being undertaken to safeguard Senate Pages from predatory conduct of U.S. Senators and Senate staff.”
— Rep. Gwen Moore (D-WI), quoted by the Washington Post.
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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