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.
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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.
Vanity Fair: “While Mueller quietly builds what appears to be a legal case against members of the president’s campaign, Trump is already fighting any potential charges in the only arena where they will truly matter: the media.”
A prosperity gospel televangelist is asking his followers to “pray about becoming a partner” to his mission of obtaining a $54 million private jet, CBS News reports.
The Louisiana-based ministry of Jesse Duplantis has already paid cash for three other private planes, but he says God told him, “I want you to believe in me for a Falcon 7X.”
“Federal prosecutors investigating President Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen are poised to receive on Wednesday one million files from three of his cellphones seized last month, according to a filing submitted to the court by special master Barbara Jones Tuesday night,” the Washington Post reports.
“In her update to the court, Jones said investigators from the office of the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York have already been given access to nearly 300,000 pieces of potential evidence seized from Cohen’s office and residences in an April raid.”
“House Republican candidates are blanketing the airwaves with TV ads embracing a hard line on immigration — a dramatic shift from the midterm elections in 2014,” USA Today reports.
“Republicans have aired more than 14,000 campaign ads touting a tough Trump-style immigration platform this year. The barrage underscores why House GOP leaders worry that passing a legislative fix for undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children, referred to as DREAMers, would put GOP candidates at risk heading into the fall election.”
In contrast, Democrats “bombard voters with ads that promise to protect Obamacare, shore up Social Security and expand Medicare.”
“The competing messages demonstrate how far apart the two parties are. They’re not just talking about issues differently; they’re touting completely different issues to motivate activists and win hotly contested primaries.”
“Ivanka Trump abruptly left a conference call on Tuesday about a coming fitness event after receiving questions about her company’s trademarks in China and her father’s exercise regimen,” the New York Times reports.
“White House officials insisted that she had always been scheduled to leave.”
Associated Press: “In Wisconsin on Wednesday, Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin and Republican state Sen. Leah Vukmir are expected to file for the state’s Senate race. That would bring to 42 the number of women in the two major parties — the most ever — qualified to run for 19 seats in the Senate.”
Politico: “The White House has released almost no information about Melania Trump’s condition since May 14, when her spokeswoman said the first lady was undergoing a routine embolization procedure at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center ‘to treat a benign kidney condition.’”
“Her team chose to leave unexplained her extended five-day hospital stay for a procedure that is typically completed in one, or her subsequent disappearance from events at which the public has come to expect to see her next to her husband. The directive to reveal less, not more, has been coming straight from the first lady.”
“Independents have surpassed Republicans to become the second-largest voting bloc in California, according to a firm that analyzes county voter registration information for campaigns,” the Sacramento Bee reports.
“Political Data Inc. on Tuesday released its latest count showing that voters registered with no party preference now outnumber Republicans by about 73,000 in California. The company regularly collects raw voter files from county registrars to maintain an updated database of the state’s 19 million voters.”
Playbook: “California Republicans have been sliding into obscurity for some time. But this seems particularly ominous in the long term for House Republicans, who have 14 seats in California.”
“The number of migrant children held in U.S. government custody without their parents has surged 21 percent in the past month, according to the latest figures, an increase driven by the Trump administration’s ‘zero tolerance’ crackdown on families who cross the border illegally,” the Washington Post reports.
“Although the government has not disclosed how many children have been separated from their parents as a result of the new measures, the Department of Health and Human Services said Tuesday that it had 10,773 migrant children in its custody, up from 8,886 on April 29. … Those shelters are at 95 percent capacity, an HHS official said Tuesday, and the agency is preparing to add potentially thousands of new bed spaces in the coming weeks.”
“The Trump administration plans to shorten the length of validity for some visas issued to Chinese citizens… as President Donald Trump works to counter alleged theft of U.S. intellectual property by Beijing,” the AP reports.
“According to instructions sent to U.S. embassies and consulates, Chinese graduate students will be limited to one-year visas if they are studying in fields like robotics, aviation and high-tech manufacturing.”
Playbook: “This is the precise opposite position most Republicans have taken for years. Many lawmakers have said if foreign students come here to study math and science, they should staple a green card to their diploma. Why educate people and then ship them out, many have asked.”
President Trump “is planning to focus his midterm campaigning this summer on red states with competitive Senate races where he has a deep reservoir of support and can bring a message devised to stoke partisan outrage,” the New York Times reports.
“The strategy is intended to take advantage of his star power among core Republican supporters while minimizing his exposure in states with competitive congressional races where his polarizing presence could help motivate Democrats as well as independents and moderate Republicans.”
“When a small group of alarmed White House aides caught wind that Sen. Heidi Heitkamp — one of the most endangered Democrats up for reelection in 2018 — would be attending President Trump’s bill signing last week, they raced to stop it,” Politico reports.
“As the election year kicks into high gear, Republicans have grown increasingly frustrated with Trump’s ongoing flirtation with the freshman senator. At a time when many in the GOP fear that the president’s unpredictable style will undercut their best-laid midterm plans, the relationship has given Heitkamp — who is seeking reelection in a state where Trump won nearly two-thirds of the vote — fodder to portray herself as a presidential ally.”
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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