President Trump blasted Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) in a tweet, calling him “one of the biggest liars” in Washington:
Little Adam Schiff, who is desperate to run for higher office, is one of the biggest liars and leakers in Washington, right up there with Comey, Warner, Brennan and Clapper! Adam leaves closed committee hearings to illegally leak confidential information. Must be stopped!
Stan Collender: “The White House and congressional GOP insisted the big tax cut bill would pay for itself so there would be no negative impact on the federal deficit or national debt. They also said the Trump/GOP economic plans would result in a balanced budget within 10 years. The fiscal 2019 budget resolution — the one Congress is supposed to debate and adopt this year — would be the first one considered since the tax bill was enacted and, therefore, the first with projections that should validate and confirm those promises.”
“That means House and Senate Republicans should be rushing to get it done, take another victory lap and prove themselves to be budget seers, sages, oracles and truth tellers. But the GOP is doing the exact opposite.”
“So why isn’t the GOP going to do a budget? Because the vote on the 2019 budget — the last one Congress will consider before the 2018 midterm elections — will reveal that all the Republican promises on the deficit and debt, including its blind belief on dynamic scoring, were completely bogus.”
Jonathan Swan: “Rarely has a president changed his party as fast and profoundly as Donald J. Trump. Love him or hate him, you can no longer argue his ability to bend an entire party to his will.”
“In the two and a half years since he announced his candidacy, he has moved the party away from decades of orthodoxy on trade, Russia, deficits and more — and has helped make the law-and-order party skeptical of FBI leadership.”
“Perhaps the most profound thing Trump has done is show how many movement leaders and Republicans in Congress are out of touch with Republican voters.”
Politico: “More than 40 House Republican incumbents were outraised in the final quarter of 2017 by one — or several — of their Democratic opponents, according to the latest round of fundraising numbers. And of that group, more than a dozen had less cash on hand than their Democratic challengers.”
Politico: “But Republican state Rep. Jeanne Ives, whose campaign produced the ad in her primary election challenge to Gov. Bruce Rauner, is refusing to pull the spot, saying it exposes Rauner’s ‘betrayal’ of GOP voters. The new ad mockingly thanks the governor for clearing a path in support of a series of social issues. Then it taps just about every conservative bogeyman in Illinois politics, and every lightning-rod cultural issue.”
“Congress may just end up punting on its Dreamer dilemma. As lawmakers grasp for a solution for the young undocumented immigrants, one option is a temporary extension — perhaps one year — of their legal protections paired with a little bit of cash for border security,” Politico reports.
“Some senators are already deriding a yearlong patch as ‘misguided,’ a ‘Plan Z’ and a proposal that would keep immigrants ‘in fear.’ But lawmakers have only until March 5 to save the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program under President Trump’s deadline. And in a Congress that has routinely struggled to keep the lights on, at least some lawmakers say a temporary fix for Dreamers might be all but inevitable.”
Said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC): “That may be where we’re headed because, you know, Congress is pretty dysfunctional. That’d be a real loss. But that’s probably where we’re headed, OK?”
“One of the Pentagon’s largest agencies can’t account for hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of spending, a leading accounting firm says in an internal audit obtained by Politico that arrives just as President Donald Trump is proposing a boost in the military budget.”
“Ernst & Young found that the Defense Logistics Agency failed to properly document more than $800 million in construction projects, just one of a series of examples where it lacks a paper trail for millions of dollars in property and equipment. Across the board, its financial management is so weak that its leaders and oversight bodies have no reliable way to track the huge sums it’s responsible for, the firm warned in its initial audit of the massive Pentagon purchasing agent.”
Playbook: “The government runs out of money Thursday. There is little expectation that Congress will be able to find a path forward on a long-term budget deal and DACA this week. Onec again, look for Republicans to tee up a short-term funding bill as soon as tomorrow. This is getting harder and harder for conservatives to swallow. But senior Republican leaders seem to think they could squeeze a funding bill to keep the government open until the end of the month through the House with only GOP votes.”
“Our best guess: They squeeze the funding bill through the House after a few fits and panics. Maybe they add some defense spending to the bill to sweeten it for conservatives. And then the Senate — which seems hell-bent on avoiding a shutdown scare — clears it without much fanfare.”
Jonathan Swan: “Republicans close to Nunes say there could be as many as five additional memos or reports of ‘wrongdoing.’ But a source on the House Intelligence Committee tells me there’s no current plan to use the same extraordinary and highly controversial process they just went through, with a vote and ultimately a presidential approval to declassify sensitive information.”
“I’m told the Nunes team has discussed producing additional reports or disclosures that don’t require declassification.”
Nunes confirmed as much to Fox News: “Yeah, so this completes just the FISA abuse portion of our investigation. We are in the middle of what I call phase two of our investigation, which involves other departments, specifically the State Department and some of the involvement that they had in this.”
“Arthur Jones (R) — an outspoken Holocaust denier, activist anti-Semite and white supremacist — is poised to become the Republican nominee for an Illinois congressional seat representing parts of Chicago and nearby suburbs,” the Chicago Sun Times reports.
Said Jones: “Well first of all, I’m running for Congress not the chancellor of Germany. All right. To me the Holocaust is what I said it is: It’s an international extortion racket.”
Jones is the only one on the Republican ballot for the March 20 primary.
Former CIA Director John Brennan accused Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, of selectively releasing information to accuse law enforcement officials of improperly obtaining a warrant to monitor the communications of a former Trump campaign adviser, the Washington Post reports.
Said Brennan: “It’s just appalling and clearly underscores how partisan Mr. Nunes has been. He has abused the chairmanship of the Intelligence Committee.”
“I actually don’t think it is has any impact on the Russia probe.”
— Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC), in a CBS News interview, rejecting President Trump’s claim that the Nunes memo “totally vindicates” him.
“Democrats lead by 14 points among likely voters in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll, a result reported previously. But that reflects a vast 38-point Democratic lead in districts already held by Democratic members of Congress. In districts the Republican Party holds, by contrast, it’s a tight 45% to 51% Democratic vs. Republican contest.”
“The Democrats’ lead in their districts, 64% to 26%, marks the extent of potential Democratic overvoting in areas where they’re already in control – which partly reflects a Democratic concentration in urban areas, and possibly also gerrymandering of district lines.”
A new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds Democrats “are just about as likely as Republicans to say they plan to vote in this year’s congressional elections, a break from the two previous midterm elections, in which Republicans were significantly more inclined to vote.”
“Sixty-five percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independent voters say they are certain to vote, compared with 63 percent of Republican-leaning voters. Among Republicans, motivation to vote appears to be down from the past two cycles, while Democrats have changed less, although this may reflect the fact that the surveys in previous years were conducted later in those election years.”
Former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page bragged that he was an adviser to the Kremlin in a letter obtained by Time that raises new questions about the extent of Page’s contacts with the Russian government.
From the letter, dated Aug. 25, 2013: “Over the past half year, I have had the privilege to serve as an informal advisor to the staff of the Kremlin in preparation for their Presidency of the G-20 Summit next month, where energy issues will be a prominent point on the agenda.”
New York Times: “The war between the president and the nation’s law enforcement apparatus is unlike anything America has seen in modern times. With a special counsel investigating whether his campaign collaborated with Russia in 2016 and whether Mr. Trump obstructed justice in 2017, the president has engaged in a scorched-earth assault on the pillars of the criminal justice system in a way that no other occupant of the White House has done.”
“In his telling, that bureaucracy, now run by his own appointees, is a nest of political saboteurs out to undermine him — an accusation that raised fears that he was tearing at the credibility of some of the most important institutions in American life to save himself.”
Washington Post: Once the party of law and order, Republicans are now defiant.
Washington Post: “Trump has told advisers in recent days that he was hopeful the memo’s release would pave the way for further shake-ups at Justice, including firing Rosenstein.”
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.