“If you have an ‘R’ next to your name and you open your mouth, you’re hated. If you’re a Democrat, like Elizabeth Warren, you can say anything you please and get away with it. That’s where we are.”
— Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R), quoted by the Boston Globe, while campaigning for Massachusetts U.S. Senate candidate Geoff Diehl (R).
Speaker Paul Ryan defended himself “amid reports of threats to his leadership position and reiterated his view that it’s not in Republicans best interest to have a divisive leadership race before the November midterm elections,” Roll Call reports.
Said Ryan: “Obviously I serve at the pleasure of the members; those are the people who drafted me in this job the first place. But I think we all agree the best thing for us is to complete our agenda and not wedge into the completion of our agenda divisive leadership elections.”
Playbook: “More than two years after running for speaker for the first time, Ryan is still reminding people he was drafted into the speakership. He’s making clear that he isn’t clinging to power — this job wasn’t even his first choice. But what would happen if he were to leave right now? Chaos, most likely, in the middle of an election year.”
Chris Cillizza: “Remember back in the summer of 2016 when Bill Clinton and then Attorney General Loretta Lynch met privately on the tarmac of the Phoenix airport amid the FBI’s ongoing investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server? People, rightly, went crazy. It had the look of impropriety — even if both sides repeatedly insisted the conversation was all small talk and had nothing to do with the email investigation.”
“That was a former President of the United States meeting, briefly and without any sort of pre-announced agenda, with the attorney general. What’s transpired over the past 96 hours or so is the sitting President demanding his Justice Department investigate a rumor he heard, then meeting with the two people in charge and announcing that, at his request, they would be doing exactly what he asked.”
President Trump said that his summit with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un may not go ahead as planned, adding that if the June 12 date does not hold, “maybe it will happen later,” according to Axios.
He added: “We’re moving along. We’ll see what happens.”
However, Vox reports the U.S. government has already issued an official commemorative coin for the event.
The woman with whom Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens (R) had an affair stood by her description of their encounters and apologized to the governor’s wife in a new interview with KSDK-TV.
Said the woman: “The second that he denied the things that were the most hurtful, that were the most hurtful for me to now have to relive. I just realized: now I have this decision. The only ethical thing I felt that I could do was to tell the truth.”
The Environmental Protection Agency is barring The Associated Press, CNN and the environmental-focused news organization E&E from a national summit on harmful water contaminants, the AP reports.
“EPA spokesman Jahan Wilcox told the barred organizations they were not invited and there was no space for them, but gave no indication of why they specifically were barred.”
Ron Brownstein: “The elimination of any distance between Trump and the conventional Republican interests that controlled the party before him has happened so incrementally it can be difficult to discern from day to day. But it remains one of the central political dynamics of 2018. Over the long term, Trump’s success at stamping his polarizing brand on the GOP remains a huge electoral gamble for the party because it risks alienating the young, well-educated and diverse groups growing, rather than shrinking, in the electorate.”
“But in the near-term, the GOP’s choice to ally so unequivocally with such a unique president may have the paradoxical effect of producing a much more conventional midterm election than seemed possible earlier this year. And that means for Democrats to secure the gains they seek in November, they will need to overcome the typical challenges they face in a midterm election far more than they expected even only a few months ago.”
“In the year since the start of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, one thing has been notably absent: a public indictment of any Russians for the hacking of the Democratic National Committee,” The Hill reports.
“Mueller has charged President Trump’s former campaign chief, secured guilty pleas from several individuals in Trump’s orbit and indicted 13 Russians for an elaborate plot to leverage social media to influence the American electorate.”
“But the special counsel has yet to announce charges for the hacking of the DNC, even though the intelligence community and private cybersecurity experts linked the attack to the Russian government more than a year ago. Legal experts say there are several possible explanations.”
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) on Twitter:
#China is winning the negotiations. Their concessions are things they planned to do anyways. In exchange they get no tariffs, can keep stealing intellectual property & can keep blocking our companies while they invest in the U.S. without limits. #Losing.
Jonathan Swan: “Who knows how the chest-bumping over China ends. But for now, President Trump’s anti-China advisers are right: The president is buckling on his threats to punish China with fundamental, lasting changes to trade tariffs and rules. The reasons are threefold: North Korea, Steve Mnuchin and a lack of focus internally.”
New York Times: “Ceaseless infighting and jockeying for influence on the White House’s trade team helped deprive Mr. Trump of a quick victory on his most cherished policy agenda… The deep internal divisions carried over into how officials characterized the agreement and muddied the outlook for the next phase of the negotiations between Washington and Beijing.”
Boston Globe: “If Democrats win the House in November, more than 20 Democratic chairmen would suddenly gain the power to compel reluctant witnesses to testify in front of their committees and cough up documents. The result would be a made-for-TV bonanza of committee investigations, with Democrats able to consistently land hearing-room punches on President Trump for the first time in two years.”
“The prospect has Democrats dreaming of what they could do if they were able to take the majority.”
Stan Collender: “Even though the start of the next federal fiscal year is still four months away, Congress’s action…or, really, inaction…over the past week makes it virtually certain both that a continuing resolution will need to be enacted by October 1 to keep the government operating and that there will be a possible government shutdown this fall only six weeks before the midterm elections.”
A new Greenberg Quinlan Rosner (D) poll finds the popularity of the new tax law has dropped into net negatives, currently opposed by a 50% to 41% margin.
Associated Press: “Going into the North Korea meeting, senior administration officials say, the president has been almost singularly focused on the pageantry of the summit —including the suspenseful roll-out of details. He has not been deeply engaged in briefing materials on North Korea’s nuclear program, said three people with knowledge of the White House efforts.”
Washington Post: “Trump advisers have expressed alarm at Pyongyang’s hostile rhetoric and actions over the past week, questioning whether Kim is committed to pledges to seriously discuss denuclearization.”
“Top House Republicans are privately questioning whether retiring Speaker Paul Ryan can make it through Election Day. No one’s plotting to take him out at this point, and Ryan insists he’s not going anywhere. But rank-and-file Republicans, including moderates who’ve been unflinchingly loyal to Ryan during his three-year tenure, have become increasingly willing to defy the lame-duck leader. And White House officials have also discussed whether Ryan should remain in the job, administration sources said, though there is no effort by the Trump White House to push out Ryan.”
“The doubts have been fueled by a series of high-profile embarrassments for the Wisconsin Republican. The most recent was the collapse of the Republican farm bill on the House floor Friday. But centrist Republicans have also backed Ryan into a corner on immigration, the most contentious issue facing the party. And this week, those moderates are expected to reach the 218-vote threshold needed to force bipartisan votes to protect Dreamers — despite Ryan’s effort to stop them.”
“Archie Parnell (D), a Democratic congressional hopeful who earned national attention after nearly winning in deep red South Carolina last year, is resisting pleas to withdraw after his campaign staff discovered that he physically abused his ex-wife in the 1970s,” the Charleston Post & Courier reports.
“In October 1973, Archie Parnell, then a University of South Carolina student, was locked out of a friends’ apartment to protect Kathleen Parnell, who was staying there. At 2 a.m., Archie Parnell used a tire iron to break a glass door, the complaint said. He made more unspecified accusations to Kathleen Parnell before striking her several times. She said she was beaten again later that evening.”
“Frustrated and impatient, fed up with waiting and eager to fight back, President Trump has embarked on what amounts to a two-prong strategy to contain the threat and undercut the credibility of the escalating investigations targeting him and his associates,” the New York Times reports.
“The blizzard of Twitter messages combined with a string of public statements by his attorney, RudyGiuliani, in recent days seemed aimed at turning the focus away from the conduct of the president or his team to that of their pursuers while laying out a series of red lines to limit the reach and duration of the primary inquiry.”
New York Times: “Chinese negotiators left Washington this weekend with a significant win: a willingness by the Trump administration to hold off for now on imposing tariffs on up to $150 billion in Chinese imports. China gave up little in return, spurning the administration’s nudges for a concrete commitment to buy more goods from the United States, and avoiding limits on its efforts to build new high-tech Chinese industries.”
“The trade fight is far from over. And large Chinese technology companies in particular could be vulnerable if the United States starts punching again, with administration officials appearing to back away from Mr. Trump’s pledges to help ZTE, a Chinese telecommunications company hit with severe American penalties.”
“Still, the latest round of negotiations showed that a confident China could be more than a match for divided American officials who have made often discordant demands.”
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.