“Russia said it was in contact with President-elect Donald Trump’s team during the U.S. election campaign, despite repeated denials by the Republican candidate’s advisers that any links existed,” Bloomberg reports.
Said Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov: “There were contacts… We continue this work of course.”
New York Times: “For all his boisterousness during the campaign, Mr. Trump was more muted than exuberant in its aftermath, according to people who spoke with him throughout the day. His victory over Hillary Clinton caught even him by surprise: Like Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Trump tracked the race through private polling that indicated he was headed for defeat, and he went all but silent in his apartment on Tuesday night as the returns from Florida turned in his favor.”
“A startled Mr. Trump fielded conciliatory phone calls from political dignitaries, including Republicans who resisted his candidacy, like Presidents George Bush and George W. Bush, and from Democrats with whom he may clash in office, like Nancy Pelosi, the minority leader in the House of Representatives.”
Playbook: “Remember we all said that a tax and infrastructure deal would’ve been a slam dunk for a President Hillary Clinton in the first days of her White House? Well, it’s not a bad idea for Trump, either. Trump, Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will be, roughly, in the same ideological space in reforming the tax code. Trump is a former donor to and acquaintance of Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), the future Democratic leader who has worked with Ryan on tax reform. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) wants an infrastructure package — and has already said so. The infrastructure package actually spooks Republicans more than it spooks Democrats. This wouldn’t be easy, but could be a win in Trump’s first 100 days.”
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“Vigils and protests against Donald Trump spread from coast to coast early Thursday as crowds burned effigies of the president-elect, blocked highways and warned of wider backlash — underscoring the difficult task Trump faces in uniting a fractured country,” the Washington Post reports.
“Despite Hillary Clinton and President Obama urging their backers to accept Trump’s victory and support his transition into power, thousands of demonstrators marched through the streets decrying his crude comments about women and attacks on immigrants.”
Politico: “From New England to heartland cities like Kansas City and along the West Coast, demonstrators bore flags and effigies of the president-elect, disrupting traffic and declaring that they refused to accept Trump’s victory.”
“Overnight, President-elect Donald Trump has reshaped what it means to be a Republican, leaving some longtime party officials scrambling to find their places in a new political era,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“Throughout Mr. Trump’s populist campaign, Washington Republicans sought separation from some of Mr. Trump’s proposals on trade and foreign policy that broke from party orthodoxy. Establishment Republicans demurred when he promised to build a border wall and send the bill to Mexico.”
“Now, though, Republicans in Washington and across the country are beginning to start adopting the Trump agenda as their own.”
Playbook: “It’s no secret that Trump and Ryan haven’t exactly gotten along, but they’re inching closer together now. They spoke by phone twice immediately after the election, and the lunch today will be another sign that they’re readying to work together. Ryan, frankly, can use Trump’s help as he readies for an internal election for House speaker. Ryan has to run in a closed-party election next week, and again on the House floor in January. If the incoming president is seen as being supportive of Ryan’s speakership, it’s far less likely anyone will run against him. Ryan’s allies already feel like Trump is — and should be — on board. Ryan and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy know how to move things on the Hill — a useful tool, since Donald Trump has never been elected to anything. Ever. And he’s president of the United States.”
“Trump has a lot of big plans. A wall with Mexico. Repealing Obamacare. Tax reform. Regulatory reform. Most of this stuff is going to take legislation, and 218 votes in the House of Representatives. It’s probably smart for Trump and Pence to get on the same page with Ryan on their priorities.”
“The political cast-offs, never-have-beens and backbench legislators who surround Donald Trump were warned that their work for the nominee would forever stain their resumes. Now they’re in line for the most influential jobs in Washington,” Politico reports.
“Resumes are rolling in from operatives looking for administration work — offering one of the surest signs that whatever wound was opened during the ugly GOP primary has been healed by Tuesday night’s stunning victories that handed both the White House and Congress to the Republican Party.”
The Trump transition has a new website.
FiveThirtyEight: “The more whites without college degrees were in a state, the more Trump outperformed his FiveThirtyEight polls-only adjusted polling average,1 suggesting the polls underestimated his support with that group. And the bigger the lead we forecast for Trump, the more he outperformed his polls.2 In the average state won by Trump, the polls missed by an average of 7.4 percentage points (in either direction); in Clinton states, they missed by an average of 3.7 points. It’s typical for polls to miss in states that aren’t close, though.”
“The most important concentration of polling errors was regional: Polls understated Trump’s margin by 4 points or more in a group of Midwestern states that he was expected to mostly lose but mostly won: Iowa, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota.”
New York Times: “Mr. Obama and Mr. Trump are set to get together at the White House, a significant step in the handoff and a meeting between men who have had little good to say about each other. Mr. Trump has famously and falsely questioned Mr. Obama’s birthplace and citizenship, and Mr. Obama has scalded him as unfit for office and worse, including during a roasting at the 2011 White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner. But the two seem to have agreed to let bygones be bygones to secure the nation’s traditional peaceful transition of power.”
Politico: “The cast of characters behind Donald Trump changed repeatedly during the course of his improbable presidential campaign as the rookie candidate struggled to strike the balance between Republican politician and anti-establishment crusader, but one person remained constant: Reince Priebus.”
“And now, the Republican National Committee chairman, whose efforts to rein in Trump at times made him the butt of jokes, is getting a lot of the credit for helping the president-elect pull off the most shocking upset in modern political history.”
Michael Moore, writing in July 2016:
Well, folks, this isn’t an accident. It is happening. And if you believe Hillary Clinton is going to beat Trump with facts and smarts and logic, then you obviously missed the past year of 56 primaries and caucuses where 16 Republican candidates tried that and every kitchen sink they could throw at Trump and nothing could stop his juggernaut. As of today, as things stand now, I believe this is going to happen – and in order to deal with it, I need you first to acknowledge it, and then maybe, just maybe, we can find a way out of the mess we’re in.
Read the whole thing. It’s really quite prophetic.
Vox: “The polls were quite close in their forecast for Clinton’s support. Clinton was expected to get 47 percent of the vote; she’s got 47.7 percent so far. On average, the polls understated her state-level support by about a percentage point.”
“Trump, however, was expected to get 44 percent of the vote, and he now has 47.5 percent; the polls undershot his support considerably… As the undecided made up their minds, and as third-party supporters moved toward the major party candidates (as they tend to do in a campaign’s final days), it looks like Trump picked up almost all of them.”
Yahoo News: “RNC staffers thought Trump would win 240 Electoral College votes, 30 short of the 270 needed to win. They cautioned reporters that these numbers could change. And it was noteworthy that their projections were more optimistic than much of the public polling. But Trump was down 2 points in Florida, down 2 points in Iowa, down 2 points in New Hampshire and down 3 points in Wisconsin. Trump won Florida, won Iowa, won Wisconsin, and as of the publishing of this story was in a tight race for New Hampshire.”
“The best data inside the Trump campaign was just as pessimistic. Even the most optimistic models run by Cambridge Analytica for Trump showed him losing.”
Key factor: “Trump’s support and turnout among rural voters was 10 percentage points higher than they had expected.”
“Within a few weeks of winning the White House, President-elect Donald Trump could face another group of U.S. citizens, a federal jury in California, courtesy of a lawsuit by former students of his now-defunct Trump University who claim they were defrauded by a series of real-estate seminars,” Reuters reports.
“A hearing in federal court in San Diego is set for Thursday, and the trial is scheduled to begin on Nov. 28, barring any delays or if Trump decides to settle the case.”
Newt Gingrich told Fox News Radio that he wanted to take on a “chief planner” role in the new Trump administration.
Said Gingrich: “I want to be able to work strategically.”
Instead of day-to-day tasks, Gingrich said, he wants to focus broadly on how to “get an American government into the 21st century” and “make it responsive to the American people.”
“If Donald Trump sticks to the immigration pledges that helped drive his presidential election victory, he will begin a clampdown on illegal immigration that would be unprecedented in American history and would require an exorbitantly expensive — and logistically difficult — operation to remove millions from the country while fortifying the border,” the Washington Post reports.
“As a candidate, Trump made immigration one of his highest-profile issues, saying he’d create a ‘special deportation task force’ and build a ‘beautiful’ wall along a major part of the southern border with Mexico. But immigration experts say those promises, though popular among his base, pose major complications as Trump prepares for office.”
“Yet even with the potential difficulties, Trump will have the administrative tools to massively scale back the Obama administration’s efforts to shield millions of immigrants from deportation, former federal officials say. With the stroke of a pen, for example, Trump could reverse a program that has protected hundreds of thousands of people brought to the United States illegally as children — something he has vowed to do.”
New York Times: “Trump campaign advisers said on Wednesday that the president-elect was turning to assembling a cabinet and White House team and selecting a conservative nominee for the Supreme Court vacancy. The advisers said Mr. Trump was inclined to roll out a few cabinet nominations at a time, rather than kicking them off with one high-profile pick for a critical department like Treasury or State.”
“Among the candidates for cabinet secretaries and advisers are members of Mr. Trump’s inner circle, aides said, including Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, a crucial adviser on policy issues; Steven Mnuchin, a businessman who was Mr. Trump’s national finance chairman; Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York; Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey; and Newt Gingrich, a former speaker of the House.”
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) said in the wake of Donald Trump’s surprising victory that Republicans should get rid of the Senate filibuster, CNN reports.
Said Walker: “You cannot use, they cannot use inside-the-ballpark Washington procedural reason to justify why things don’t happen.”
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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