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World leaders have made clear the U.S.’s isolated stance on climate change, with 19 of the G20 countries affirming their commitment to the “irreversible” Paris climate agreement, the Guardian reports.
“After lengthy negotiations that stretched well into Saturday, the final G20 joint statement notes Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris deal while stating that the world’s other major economies all still support the international effort to slow dangerous global warming.”
“I’m pleased with where we are. We have a very aggressive agenda, and we know that most of these big difficult things take about a year to do, and that’s why this will ultimately coalesce around getting these things done in the fall. But we’re basically where I was hoping to be.”
— Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI), quoted by the Madison Capital Times.
Just published: Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government’s Secret Plan to Save Itself — While the Rest of Us Die by Garrett Graff.
Graff was interviewed in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: “You’ve got 20 people in the line of official succession, but each office has a 20-person line of succession beneath it. You would have this very weird set of surprise leaders. It would include the UN ambassador, the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, the top federal prosecutor in Chicago. You would have all of these people popping up and saying: Hi, we’re the new leadership of the United States!”
Politico: “In very concrete terms, through speech and action, the president signaled a willingness to align the United States with Vladimir Putin’s worldview, and took steps to advance this realignment. He endorsed, nearly in its totality, the narrative the Russian leader has worked so meticulously to construct.”
Spencer Ackerman: Trump just set the table for Vladimir Putin’s next election hack.
“Donald Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, took his seat at a Group of 20 meeting table in Hamburg, sitting in for the president when he stepped away for one-on-one meetings with world leaders,” Bloomberg reports.
“G-20 leaders are allowed to bring staff into the room for some of the meetings, and when other leaders stepped out during today’s session, their seats were briefly filled by others. Ivanka… But her presence at the table is the sort of blurring of lines — between family and official business — that Donald Trump is often criticized for, and it would be unusual for world leaders to have family members take their place at their table.”
“The White House and Senate Republican leaders are planning a final, urgent blitz to pressure reluctant GOP senators to pass an overhaul of the Affordable Care Act before their month-long August recess,” the Washington Post reports.
“Aware that the next 14 days probably represent their last chance to salvage their flagging endeavor, President Trump, Vice President Pence and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) intend to single out individual senators and escalate a broad defense of the evolving proposal, according to Republicans familiar with their plans.”
New York Times: “A week that Senate Republicans had hoped would mobilize conservatives and shore up support for their measure to repeal the Affordable Care Act instead ended with eroding enthusiasm, as usually reliable Republican senators from red states blanched at its impact on rural communities.”
“For years the United States was the dominant force and set the agenda at the annual gathering of the leaders of the world’s largest economies,” the New York Times reports.
“But on Friday, when President Trump met with 19 other leaders at the Group of 20 conference, he found the United States isolated on everything from trade to climate change, and faced with the prospect of the group’s issuing a statement on Saturday that lays bare how the United States stands alone.”
Washington Post: “Normally a venue for drab displays of international comity, this gathering of economic powers saw clashes and talk of a possible transatlantic trade war. The tensions were also a warning signal of Washington’s diminished clout as leaders mounted a near-united opposition to U.S. policies.”
New York Times: “Amid speculation about whether Mr. Trump would visit London, since Mayor Sadiq Khan has asked him to stay away and there has been concern about huge protests should he appear, the president confirmed he still planned to visit.”
Said Trump: “I will be going to London.”
“Further details on the timing and circumstances of the visit were not immediately available. The White House and Downing Street had earlier dismissed news reports that Mr. Trump was considering a quick visit to Britain on his way back to the United States from the G-20 meeting.”
McClatchy: “Whether it’s the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J., where the U.S. Women’s Open Golf Championship starts Monday; the club outside the nation’s capital, where the president often spends time over the weekend; the historic Mar-a-Lago Club, where he hosted the president of China and the prime minister of Japan; or one of his other exclusive addresses, each collects a hefty initiation fee from new members — up to $450,000 per person, with annual dues on top of that.”
“Trump has benefited greatly from these initiation fees for years. Even back when it was typical for membership fees to take the form of refundable deposits, he broke with the norm for such clubs by taking the money for himself, according to documents and interviews.”
“The bigger takeaway here for me right now is… he seemed presidential today. And we actually had a Secretary of State who was explaining stuff to us. How often have we had that? This seemed like we were back to normal life for the first time — one of the only times in the last few months.”
— David Gergen, on CNN.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) told Iowa Public Radio that he probably won’t support an amendment by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) to the Senate’s Obamacare repeal bill.
“Cruz proposes allowing insurance companies to sell two types of healthcare policies, one that is compliant with the Affordable Care Act and one that is not. Grassley says he’s concerned how Cruz’s amendment might affect people with pre-existing conditions.”
Said Grassley: “There’s a real feeling that that’s subterfuge to get around pre-existing conditions. If it is subterfuge and it has the effect of annihilating the pre-existing condition requirement that we have in the existing bill, than obviously I would object to that.”
“The U.S. Treasury Department identified eight tax regulations that it plans to change, including part of the Obama administration’s high-profile attempt to stem corporate tax avoidance,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“The debt regulations were part of the Obama administration’s attempt to address inversions, the corporate technique of putting a headquarters address outside a country. The rules made it harder for companies to engage in the practice known as earnings stripping, in which they load up the U.S. operations with debt and reduce U.S. taxes.”
In a major shift, President Trump pressed Vladimir Putin on his country’s meddling in the 2016 election, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told reporters after a long meeting between the two leaders, the New York Times reports.
Said Tillerson: “He began by raising the concern of the American people of Russian interference in the 2016 election. He pressed him more than once.”
Putin denied “such involvement” and Tillerson doubted ever getting Russian to admit their meddling: “It may be simply an intractable disagreement at this point.”
“If there’s a path for a Republican to challenge Donald Trump, it doesn’t run through Iowa. Sen. Ben Sasse’s foray this weekend into the first-in-the-nation caucus state has already sparked chatter about a potential 2020 GOP primary to unseat Trump. But Iowa’s top operatives say there’s no appetite, today, to see any Republican take on the president,” McClatchy reports.
“That hasn’t stopped Sasse, and his possible ambitions, from attracting attention in Iowa and nationwide, notably as Trump’s disapproval rating hovers around 60 percent and a smattering of Republicans around the country speak openly of their hopes for a run from someone like the Nebraska senator… Yet despite Trump’s myriad challenges and the angst his Twitter account causes in Washington, he remains so strong in conservative corners of Trump-friendly states, including Iowa, that party leaders, operatives and grassroots activists say there is no serious on-the-ground discussion of a 2020 challenge at this point.”
Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) told KUTV that he intends to run for re-election in 2018 but said his wife’s trepidation is giving him pause.
“The 83-year-old Hatch said he suspects he’ll need to decide before the end of the year, but said he’s not putting any hard timeline on it.”
Said Hatch: “Right now, I intend to run. But you know, Elaine is not real enthusiastic about it, which causes me to pause a little bit. But, I’m chairman of the finance committee, the most powerful committee in the whole Congress and we’re doing work that has never been done before and that needs to be done.”
John Podesta responds to President Trump’s earlier tweet that everyone was talking about him at the G20 summit in Germany:
On a x-country road trip with my wife.
Pulled in for a pit stop in E. Fairmont W. Va. to see that our whack job POTUS @realDonaldTrump is tweeting about me at the G20.
Get a grip man, the Russians committed a crime when they stole my emails to help get you elected President.
Maybe you might try to find a way to mention that to President Putin.
BTW, I had nothing to do with the DNC.
God only knows what you’ll be raving about on Twitter by the time we get to Utah.
Dude, get your head in the game. You’re representing the U.S. at the G20.
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.