A new Quinnipiac poll finds that American voters believe President Trump is not “fit to serve as president,” by a 56% to 42% margin. They are embarrassed to have him as president by a 51% to 27% margin.
Trump’s approval rating is a dismal, 36% to 57%.
Said pollster Tim Malloy: “A divider, responsible for the deepening chasm of racial discord. That is the inescapable characterization of President Trump from voters who see race relations deteriorating on his watch.”
President Trump refused to rule out the possibility of firing Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, saying he’s “not happy” with his use of a private plane, The Hill reports.
Said Trump: “I’m looking into it. I’m not happy about it.”
“I thought they were voting for libertarian Republicans. But after some soul-searching, I realized when they voted for Rand and Ron [Paul] and me in these primaries, they weren’t voting for libertarian ideas. They were voting for the craziest son of a bitch in the race. And Donald Trump won best in class.”
— Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), quoted by the Washington Examiner., explaining what motivates Tea Party voters.
“Jared Kushner is registered as a female voter in New York,” The Hill reports.
“Registration records show that when Kushner, who is married to first daughter Ivanka Ivanka, registered to vote in 2009, he apparently checked a box classifying his gender as a female.”
“Prior to 2009, his New Jersey voter registration noted his gender as ‘unknown.'”
“Returning from a high-dollar fundraiser in Manhattan on Tuesday evening, an infuriated President Trump watched aboard Air Force One as Fox News called the Alabama Senate primary for Roy Moore against Trump’s favored candidate, Luther Strange,” CNN reports.
“What ensued was a barrage of angry venting at his political team and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who had consolidated establishment GOP support behind Strange.”
“He went to bed ’embarrassed and pissed’ following the election loss, according to a person familiar with his mindset. Trump, multiple sources said, is furious with McConnell, and feels outdone by his former aide Bannon.”
“Tax reform is going to make health care look like a piece of cake.”
— Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN), quoted by ABC News.
A new Christopher Newport University survey in Virginia finds Ralph Northam (D) leading Ed Gillespie (R) in the governor’s race, 47% to 41%.
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Jonathan Chait: “The Republican Establishment has suffered through the Trump presidency, filling the news with a constant stream of caustic, mordant, off-the-record comments attesting to their sense of regret. The presidency is exactly the chaotic shambles the Trump campaign was, and the legislative results are much less than his party hoped to win when it made its pact with the devil. The nomination in Alabama of Roy Moore for U.S. Senate offered the party a chance to reconsider whether the prospect of supporting the team, and the incrementally higher prospects of enacting some tax cuts and social spending rollbacks, is worth the cost of elevating a dangerously unhinged demagogue for public office. The entire party, without any apparent hesitation, is leaping at the chance to make the same deal again.”
“Moore is hardly a carbon copy of Trump. He is religious where Trump is secular, fanatical where Trump is cynical. But he shares the president’s two most pertinent attributes. First, Moore is a purveyor of paranoid conspiracy theories, such as the belief that Sharia law has taken hold in American communities, or that Barack Obama was not born in the United States. Second, and more distinctly, he is not a small-d democrat.”
“Republicans on Wednesday will propose slashing tax rates for the wealthy, middle class and businesses, while also preserving popular tax deductions that encourage buying homes and giving to charity,” according to a 9-page document obtained by the Washington Post.
“But the document… leaves many key questions unanswered. In it, the White House and Republican congressional leaders do not identify the numerous tax breaks that they say will be removed in order to offset some of the trillions of dollars in revenue lost by cutting tax rates.”
For members: Who Knew Tax Reform Could Be So Complicated?
A new CNN poll finds that only 20% of registered voters want most members re-elected while 70% would rather the majority of members not return to Congress.
Also interesting: Just 30% of Republican voters say they want to see most members reelected.
Jonathan Bernstein: “Sure, Trump is the least popular president of the polling era in terms of his first 250 days. But Republicans were always going to be hesitant to dismiss the president’s popularity — especially in Republican primaries — in part because Trump’s nomination and election was such a surprise, and in part because Trump did it with awful poll numbers.”
“Trump’s utter inability to move the polls despite being very visible in his support for Strange will remove some, and perhaps quite a bit, of the belief among Republican elites that Trump has some sort of special connection with their constituents. Indeed, Moore won by a larger margin in the runoff than he did in the first-round election. Which means they’ll be less likely to give him the benefit of the doubt when deciding whether to do what he wants.”
“I bet the walls of the Oval Office are filled with dozens of tiny little fist holes today.”
— Jimmy Kimmel, in his monologue on the GOP failure to repeal the Affordable Care Act once again.
First Read: “While most eyes were on Alabama’s Senate runoff last night, two state special elections last night shouldn’t be overlooked — and they held good news for Democrats. In the Miami area, Democrat Annette Taddeo beat state representative (and former Apprentice candidate!) Jose Felix Diaz to pick up a closely-contested state Senate seat. The area was carried by Hillary Clinton in 2016, but the seat was last won by a double-digit margin by Republican Sen. Frank Artiles, who was forced to resign after making racist remarks. (Republicans did hang on to Diaz’s House seat, which he had to vacate to run against Taddeo.)”
“More surprising than the Florida win, however, was Democrats’upset in a New Hampshire House race, where first-time candidate Kari Lerner snagged a formerly GOP-held seat in an area won by Donald Trump by nearly 20 points in 2016. The victories make a total of eight state legislative seats flipped from red to blue this cycle.”
For members: A double-digit swing towards Democrats since November.
Mike Allen: “In private, President Trump has taken to physically mocking M&M: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (slumped shoulders; lethargic body language) and Sen. John McCain (imitating the thumbs-down of his historic health-care vote).”
“Trump is venting about his frustration with what he considers failed leadership by Senate Republicans as he takes his lumps this week in wars with, well, everyone… All this has left Trump isolated inside his White House at a time when he needs muscle with the Hill and juice with the public to try to pass tax reform.”
“With his stoking of the culture war and bombastic style amid national and global turbulence, Trump continues to make every issue about himself — at the very time that he most needs friends.”
A new Reuters/Ipsos poll finds that 57% of Americans disagree with President Trump’s assertion that football players should be fired for kneeling during the national anthem, even though most say they would personally stand during the song.
“President Trump is expected to tout the Republicans’ new tax blueprint as one of the biggest tax cuts in recent American history at a Wednesday rally in Indiana – but Republican lawmakers, lobbyists and others are worried about exactly what he’ll say,” Politico reports.
Said one person close to the discussions: “He’s the one guy left in Washington who still wants a 15% corporate rate. They could put 20% down on paper and he could go out and say 15% anyway. He goes to these tax meetings and people just hammer him but he still wants 15%.”
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.