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What Was Pruitt Doing In Morocco?

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ABC News: “The 47-hour journey in Morocco was already drawing congressional scrutiny and criticism from outside groups because of the lack transparency over why Pruitt was in the country and what he was doing while he was there.”

“Conservative congressional estimates put the cost of the trip at more than $40,000, and because of travel snags, Pruitt and his aides spent two days in Paris at high-end hotels. Pruitt did not publicly announce he was going ahead of time, did not bring reporters along, and when he finally released copies of his itinerary in response to Freedom of Information requests from ABC News and other news organizations, the bulk of the schedule was blacked out.”

GOP Fears Risk in Senate Races If House Extend Tax Cuts

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“Heading into a contentious campaign for control of Congress, Republicans are increasingly divided over how to bolster their signature legislative achievement — a $1.5 trillion tax cut — amid signs it is not the political gift they had expected it to be last year,” the Washington Post reports.

“House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-WI) aims to pass another massive tax cut this summer, which Republicans hope will rev up the GOP base and improve the standing of Republicans at the polls.”

“But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is under pressure to block a vote, which Republican campaign strategists worry could allow red-state Democrats to vote for additional tax cuts and undermine one of the GOP’s most effective lines of attack in conservative-leaning states: that Democrats voted against a big tax cut last December.”

Dismal Fundraising for House Republicans

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“A whopping 43 House Republicans raised less money than Democratic challengers in the first three months of 2018 — nearly the same number of stragglers the GOP had at the end of last year,” Politico reports.

“An overlapping group of 16 Republican incumbents already have less cash on hand than Democratic challengers, up from the end of 2017, despite hopes that tax reform would open more donor wallets.”


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Trump Warned Cohen Will Flip Quickly If Charged

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“One of President Trump’s longtime legal advisers said he warned the president in a phone call Friday that Michael Cohen, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer and close friend, would turn against the president and cooperate with federal prosecutors if faced with criminal charges,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“Mr. Trump made the call seeking advice from Jay Goldberg, who represented Mr. Trump in the 1990s and early 2000s. Mr. Goldberg said he cautioned the president not to trust Mr. Cohen. On a scale of 100 to 1, where 100 is fully protecting the president, Mr. Cohen ‘isn’t even a 1,’ he said he told Mr. Trump.”

“Mr. Goldberg said the volume of correspondence taken and the potential pressure the government can bring to bear on Mr. Cohen to testify puts the president in more potential peril from the Cohen matter than from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.”

[alert type=”general” dismiss=”no”]What’s most interesting is that a Trump ally seems to assume Cohen can tie the president to crimes.[/alert]

Haley Draws a Red Line for Trump

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“In the span of 24 hours, U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley has done what none of her colleagues in President Trump’s Cabinet have before: successfully telegraphed to her boss that she will not quietly suffer his public humiliations,” Politico reports.

“The incident has met with silence from the president and his loyalists but has only helped to burnish Haley’s image outside of the White House.”

Arizona GOP Tries to Delay Vote If McCain Leaves Senate

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Arizona lawmakers “are considering a bill that would take Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) seat off the November ballot if the six-term Arizona Republican, who is battling a deadly form of brain cancer, leaves office early,” the Arizona Republic reports.

TPM: “Statehouse Republicans seemingly tried to pull a fast one on their Democratic counterparts, quietly adding an emergency clause to a bipartisan bill to clean up special election laws in the state that would have handed Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R) assurance that he’d get to appoint a replacement for McCain through 2020.”

Kobach Held In Contempt of Court

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A federal judge ruled that Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R) was in contempt of court for failing to comply with her orders in a lawsuit over the state’s voter registration law, the Topeka Capital Journal reports.

“Robinson ordered Kobach to pay for attorney fees for litigating the contempt motion, with additional remedies to be determined later.”

Ex-Playboy Model Is Free to Talk About Trump Affair

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“The tabloid news company American Media Inc. agreed to let a former Playboy model out of a contract that had kept her from talking freely about an alleged affair with Donald Trump,” the New York Times reports.

“The settlement agreement, reached Wednesday, ends a lawsuit brought by the model, Karen McDougal, and protects the president from being drawn into a legal case involving efforts to buy the silence of women who had stories to tell about him during the 2016 campaign.”

Top Senate Democrat Will Vote ‘No’ on Pompeo

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Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), the top Democrat on the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he will oppose President Trump’s nomination of Mike Pompeo as secretary of state, “making it unlikely he will have the committee’s backing before the full Senate votes,” Reuters reports.

“Pompeo, currently director of the Central Intelligence Agency, can still be confirmed by the full Senate without the committee’s support. However, he would be the first secretary of state nominee, at least since such votes were made public in 1925, not to win the panel’s backing.”

Related for members: Why the Pompeo Secret Mission Leaked

Bonus Quote of the Day

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“I don’t think it’s possible, I’ll be honest with you. My expectation is that I will be in the minority in the Senate.”

— Tennessee U.S. Senate candidate Phil Bredesen (D), quoted by the New York Times, to Republicans who suggest a vote for him is a vote to make Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) the majority leader.

How Democrats Should Talk About ‘the Swamp’

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This piece is only available to Political Wire members.

Donald Trump rode rhetoric about “the swamp” to power with his promise to “drain it.” By labeling his opponent “Crooked Hillary” he easily linked her to the widespread feeling that traditional politicians use the machinery of government to only enrich themselves and their donors.

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Corker Decries ‘Constant Chaos’ in the White House

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Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN), who once described the White House as an “adult day-care center,” lamented that President Trump governs in a state of “constant chaos” and denounced his attacks on federal law enforcement agencies, the media and other U.S. institutions, the Washington Post reports.

Said Corker: “You know, for the chief of staff it’s got to be a nightmare that at night there are people calling in from all over the country, he’s calling them, and the chief of staff doesn’t know they’re calling.”

He also blasted the “grotesque” spending bill signed by Trump: “This president, obviously, is not a president who’s interested in fiscal issues. Is this president a president who cares about the fiscal health of our nation? No. No.”

Ryan Snuffs Out Efforts to Accelerate His Departure

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Washington Post: “Inside a closed-door meeting of lawmakers at the Capitol Hill Club, Ryan told his fellow Republicans that he had spoken to virtually all of the top GOP donors with whom he has developed relationships over his two-and-a-half years as speaker and had gotten assurances that they would continue to give through the 2018 cycle.”

“That was widely interpreted as a direct rebuttal to fears that Ryan’s fundraising would drop off a cliff as he remains a lame duck — which emerged last week as a prime argument for a quicker departure. Ryan said … that no fundraisers have been canceled and that he fully intended to maintain, if not exceed, his current fundraising pace in the coming months.”

About Political Wire

goddard-bw-snapshotTaegan 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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