Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) criticized former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates for refusing to implement President Trump’s travel ban in the early days of his administration — an action for which she was later fired — but she had a pretty good comeback.
And she had an even stronger comeback for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) when he also asked about the incident.
Acting Attorney General Sally Yates told the U.S. Senate that in the first days of the Trump administration, she told the White House counsel that National Security Adviser Michael Flynn was susceptible to Russian blackmail, the New York Times reports.
Said Yates: “General Flynn was compromised in regard to the Russians.”
A spokesperson for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee told Greg Sargent they are “on track to announce sometime this month that it raised $20 million online this year — which would already outpace the entire online haul of the last off-year of 2015.”
A Politico review of TownHallProject.com, a crowd-sourced database, “found that only 14 of the 217 House Republicans who voted for the bill last week — less than 7% — are listed as holding town halls with their constituents.”
“Health care advocates we contacted said the Town Hall Project’s database aligned with their own lists.”
“The Defense Intelligence Agency didn’t know former director Mike Flynn had been paid nearly $34,000 by a Russian state media outlet when it renewed his security clearance in April 2016,” two U.S. officials told NBC News.
“Flynn had disclosed the December 2015 trip to Moscow to the DIA, but he never told them he was paid by RT… The Defense Department inspector general is now investigating whether Flynn broke the rules. The U.S. Constitution forbids retired generals from accepting foreign payments without permission.”
“Flynn’s failure to inform the DIA he had been paid has not been reported previously. In the past, lawmakers who reviewed documents said they had seen no evidence he had reported the fees. The revelation casts new light on the White House assertion Monday that the Obama administration should have denied Flynn a security clearance if officials were concerned about him.”
Eli Lake: “For the Washington establishment, President Donald Trump’s decision to make General H.R. McMaster his national security adviser in February was a masterstroke. Here is a well-respected defense intellectual, praised by both parties, lending a steady hand to a chaotic White House. The grown-ups are back.”
“But inside the White House, the McMaster pick has not gone over well with the one man who matters most. White House officials tell me Trump himself has clashed with McMaster in front of his staff.”
“McMaster’s allies and adversaries inside the White House tell me that Trump is disillusioned with him. This professional military officer has failed to read the president — by not giving him a chance to ask questions during briefings, at times even lecturing Trump.”
A new HuffPost/YouGov survey finds that 31% of Americans favor the American Health Care Act, which narrowly passed the Republican-controlled House last week, while 44% oppose the bill and 25% are unsure.
Interestingly, Trump voters have now coalesced around the bill in a way they failed to do earlier this spring with 75% now supportive of the proposed legislation.
“I’m rooting for him to do well, for the same reason I root for a pilot on my airplane to do well. Okay? He’s the president.”
— Gov. John Kasich (R), quoted by the Washington Post, while downplaying speculation he might challenge President Trump in a Republican primary.
Bill Clinton and James Patterson are collaborating on a thriller, The President is Missing, to come out June 2018, the Boston Herald reports.
In a statement, the publishers called the book “a unique amalgam of intrigue, suspense and behind-the-scenes global drama from the highest corridors of power. It will be informed by details that only a president can know.”
On page 179 of her new book, Women Who Work, Ivanka Trump opens a section on how to “Lead with purpose from any level” with a fake quote from John Quincy Adams, the Washington Post reports.
She claims our sixth president said, “If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more, you are a leader.”
“Anyone who has read even a single letter by JQA knows that this neither captures his worldview nor sounds anything like him. Ironically, the president tweeted this same fake quote two years ago.”
Former President Obama warned Donald Trump against hiring Mike Flynn as his national security adviser, three former Obama administration officials tell NBC News.
“The warning, which has not been previously reported, came less than 48 hours after the November election when the two sat down for a 90-minute conversation in the Oval Office.”
Rick Klein: “They stood together, at least long enough to enjoy a crisp spring afternoon in the Rose Garden. President Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan put together the team that delivered on a longstanding Republican dream, in a vote that solidifies Ryan’s hold on power and establishes a template for all that winning the president promised. But everyone is awake now. First comes the challenge of getting back to that same spot on the White House grounds for a ceremony that involves a bill becoming an actual law. Then comes the fallout: fiscal, political and personal. If anywhere near 24 million people lose their health insurance, or if out-of-pocket costs for people with pre-existing conditions spike, which Republicans would want to face voters with this as their signature achievement? Do they even have confidence that Trump would defend his own bill, especially given his newfound affinity for Australia’s publicly funded universal health care?”
“Trump-Ryan could be the perfect GOP partnership, so long as it lasts – a mix of legislative brawn and brains that delivers. Or it could all end horribly for the Republican Party, with a mix of policy and politics that provokes a backlash that might seem familiar to those who’ve watched health care debates play out before. Republicans were celebrating the day. But it’s worth noting that they weren’t even the ones gloating the loudest on the House floor.”
Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) slammed Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in a New York Times op-ed, accusing the nation’s chief diplomat of adopting a foreign policy that abandons both U.S. values and victims of oppression around the world, Politico reports.
McCain’s op-ed came in response to remarks Tillerson delivered last week to State Department employees, in which he said that “in some circumstances if you condition our national security efforts on someone adopting our values, we probably can’t achieve our national security goals.”
“Tillerson’s boss, President Donald Trump, has made a habit of offering warm words for dictators and political strongmen from around the world, including Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Egypt’s Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Russia’s Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un.”
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) “didn’t have much to say about the White House, or its current occupant, as she mingled Sunday with hundreds of Iowa Democratic activists who will play an outsized role in picking the party’s next presidential candidate,” the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports.
“Instead, Minnesota’s senior senator talked jobs and education and rural broadband. But her mere presence at a Polk County fundraiser — she’s one of the first national politicians to venture into this early presidential state since Trump took office — inevitably set off speculation about Klobuchar’s 2020 aspirations.”
The Hill: The 43 people who might run against Trump in 2020.
“It is dangerous to assume that this bill will die on its own.”
A new University of Chicago poll found that only two out of the 37 economists that responded said that President Trump’s proposed tax cuts “would stimulate the economy enough to cancel out the effect on total tax revenue.”
“Those two economists now both say they made a mistake, and that they misunderstood the question.”
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.