President Trump authorized the release of documents related to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy despite concerns from the National Security Agency, the Washington Post reports.
“Earlier this week Trump confidant Roger Stone told Infowars conspiracy theorist Alex Jones that he spoke to Trump and urged the president to release all the documents.”
The Economist: “More and more very wealthy men are running for and winning office as state governors. Tennessee’s Bill Haslam, West Virginia’s Jim Justice, Florida’s Rick Scott, Kentucky’s Matt Bevin, Minnesota’s Mark Dayton, Nebraska’s Peter Ricketts, Pennsylvania’s Tom Wolf, Michigan’s Rick Snyder, North Dakota’s Doug Burgum and Arizona’s Doug Ducey all have a net worth measured in the tens, and in some cases hundreds, of millions. The richest is Mr Haslam, a multibillionaire whose father founded Pilot Flying J, a chain of petrol stations and convenience stores. Mr Justice, a coal billionaire, is the richest man in the state he governs.”
“America has had wealthy governors before—think of Nelson Rockefeller and Franklin Roosevelt, both of whom governed New York. But their proliferation is new.”
Stephen Bannon said there “has not been a more destructive presidency than George Bush’s,” while arguing that Bush “embarrassed himself” with a “high falutin” speech which criticized President Trump, CNN reports.
He added that Bush “has no earthly idea of whether he’s coming or going… just like it was when he was president.”
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White House aides were “hustling” to get an up-to-date list of soldiers who died this year after President Trump claimed in an interview that he had contacted the families of “virtually everybody” in the military who was killed since he took office, Roll Call reports.
An email exchange “shows that senior White House aides were aware on the day the president made the statement that it was not accurate — but that they should try to make it accurate as soon as possible, given the gathering controversy.”
President Trump told Fox Business he doesn’t think he would be elected president of the United States without the power of social media.
Said Trump: “I doubt I would be here if it weren’t for social media, to be honest with you.”
He added: “Tweeting is like a typewriter — when I put it out, you put it immediately on your show. I mean, the other day, I put something out, two seconds later I am watching your show, it’s up.”
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told a reporter that it would be “highly inappropriate” to get into a debate with “a four-star Marine general” over whether he misstated facts, the Washington Post reports.
“Video of a 2015 speech delivered by Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-FL) revealed Friday that John Kelly, the White House chief of staff, misrepresented her remarks when he accused her of bragging about securing $20 million for a South Florida F.B.I. building and twisting President Barack Obama’s arm,” the New York Times reports.
“Mr. Kelly, escalating a feud between Mr. Trump and Ms. Wilson, had cast the congresswoman on Thursday as a publicity-seeking opportunist. However, the video, released by the Sun Sentinel, a newspaper in South Florida, showed that during her nine-minute speech, Ms. Wilson never took credit for getting the money for the building, only for helping pass legislation naming the building after two fallen federal agents.”
Washington Post: “It marked the fifth day of a controversy that has raged since Trump attempted to deflect criticism of his handling of the deaths of four service members in an ambush in Niger.”
Daily Beast: “Over the past week, President Trump has accused his predecessors of not caring enough about fallen soldiers and their families, used his own chief of staff’s dead son as a political weapon, brought a Gold Star widow to tears, and repeatedly attacked a congresswoman for speaking out about it.”
“It was a spectacularly-shambolic week for the White House. And Trump has absolutely no regrets about any of it.”
Said one White House aide: “He loved Kelly’s performance yesterday, and considers the issue won.”
President Trump told Fox Business that his personal feuds with Republican lawmakers are an asset, not a liability, because “sometimes it gets people to do what they’re supposed to be doing.”
Said Trump: “Sometimes it helps, to be honest with you. So we’ll see what happens in the end.”
“If President Trump prevails in shutting down a major Obamacare health insurance subsidy, it would have the unintended consequence of making free basic coverage available to more people, and making upper-tier plans more affordable,” the AP reports.
“The unexpected assessment comes from consultants, policy experts, and state officials, who are trying to discern the potential fallout from a Washington health care debate that’s becoming even more complicated and volatile.”
“The California Republican Party’s decision to invite right-wing provocateur and former presidential advisor Stephen Bannon to address its convention Friday created an unsettled concoction of excitement, dread and rubbernecking curiosity for GOP loyalists in the state,” the Los Angeles Times reports.
“Bannon will appear before a California GOP desperate to reverse its deteriorating influence in a state where it has been losing members and where Republican victories in statewide political races have been nonexistent for a decade. His admirers hope his speech will invigorate the GOP base and lure Trump supporters outside of the party into its fold. But Republican critics worry he’ll undercut efforts to rekindle the party in a state where Trump and his policies remain widely unpopular.”
Coming next year: The Restless Wave: Good Times, Just Causes, Great Fights, and Other Appreciations by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ).
A new Marist poll finds that 58% of Americans believe Donald Trump will be remembered as either one of the worst presidents in the nation’s history.
Said pollster Lee Miringoff: “Deep into his first year as president, Donald Trump’s less than stellar approval rating has lowered expectations about how history will judge him. For history to treat him kinder, he will have to up his game.”
Georgia state Rep. Betty Price (R), the wife of former Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, asked in a hearing this week “what are we legally able to do” to limit the spread of HIV throughout the state, Stat reports.
Said Price: “I don’t want to say the quarantine word — but I guess I just said it. Is there an ability, since I would guess that public dollars are expended heavily in prophylaxis and treatment of this condition, so we have a public interest in curtailing the spread. … Are there any methods legally that we could do that would curtail the spread?”
A new Gallup poll finds Americans’ approval of Congress fell to 13%.
“Americans of all political stripes hold Congress in similarly low regard. Just 18% of Republicans, 14% of Democrats and 10% of independents approve of the job the legislative body is doing. This month, these figures are unchanged among Republicans, while down slightly among Democrats and independents.”
“The Trump administration is pushing the limits of an obscure federal law that restricts nominees from serving in federal positions before they’re approved by the Senate,” Politico reports.
A review “has identified four officials at three different agencies doing substantially similar work to the position for which they have been nominated – despite not yet getting a green-light from the Senate.”
“Lawyers and other experts said the moves to have unconfirmed nominees show up for work appears to skirt the Federal Vacancies Reform Act, which prohibits most people who have been nominated to fill a vacant government position from performing that office’s duties in an acting capacity.”
BuzzFeed News: “To truly understand how Facebook is responding to its role in the election and the ensuing morass, numerous sources inside and close to the company pointed to its unemotional engineering-driven culture, which they argue is largely guided by a quantitative approach to problems. It’s one that views nearly all content as agnostic, and everything else as a math problem. As that viewpoint has run headfirst into the wall of political reality, complete with congressional inquiries and multiple public mea culpas from its boy king CEO, a crisis of perception now brews.”
A new Salt Lake Tribune/Hinckley Institute poll in Utah finds Rep. Mia Love (R-UT) leading challenger Ben McAdams (D), 48% to 42%.
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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