“Anthony Scaramucci wants to tell his own story,” CNN reports.
“Following his departure from the White House after less than 11 days as communications director, Scaramucci will be hosting an online event on Friday where he will address the American people directly. Scaramucci said this daytime event… will give him the opportunity to reach and communicate with the President’s base.”
“Trump’s administration has demonstrated total impotence by surrendering its executive authority to Congress in the most humiliating way.”
— Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, quoted by the Washington Post, after President Trump signed new Russian sanctions into law.
“Kushner Cos., the New York property development business owned by the family of White House senior adviser Jared Kushner, has been subpoenaed by New York federal prosecutors regarding its use of an investment-for-immigration program,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“It isn’t clear what potential violations are being probed by the U.S. attorney.”
“When new White House chief of staff John Kelly huddled with senior staff on his first day at work, he outlined a key problem in President Trump’s White House that he planned to fix: Bad information getting into the president’s hands,” Politico reports.
“Kelly told the staff that information needed to flow through him — whether on paper or in briefings — because the president would make better decisions if given good information.”
Sources told NY1 that former Rep. Michael Grimm (R-NY) “is beginning to let a small number of political leaders on Staten Island know that he intends to run for Congress.”
“Any campaign would be a challenge for someone in Grimm’s position; he spent seven months in federal prison for tax fraud, and he was released in May of 2016.”
“Grimm also made headlines for threatening a NY1 reporter, Michael Scotto, with physical violence in 2014, saying he would throw Scotto off a balcony and break him in half while they spoke at the Capitol in Washington.”
“New White House chief of staff John Kelly, in one of his first acts in his new post, called Attorney General Jeff Sessions to reassure him that his position was safe despite the recent onslaught of criticism he has taken from President Trump,” the AP reports.
“Kelly called Sessions on Saturday to stress that the White House was supportive of his work and wanted him to continue his job.”
President Trump “has become increasingly frustrated with his advisers tasked with crafting a new U.S. strategy in Afghanistan and recently suggested firing the war’s top military commander during a tense meeting at the White House,” NBC News reports.
Said Trump: “We aren’t winning. We are losing.”
Trump also “inquired about the United States getting a piece of Afghan’s mineral wealth.” He then “compared the policy review process to the renovation of a famed New York restaurant in the 1980s.”
“Recently ousted White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci had big plans for the job, according to a draft of a memo he planned to send to White House staff,” BuzzFeed reports.
From the memo: “Make it clear that horn tooting and denigrating colleagues is unacceptable.”
Also from the memo: “No more threats about leaking and internal game playing – anyone who takes actions that do not serve the President will be dismissed – period.”
Scaramucci confirmed that he plans “an off-West Wing communications shop with the sole purpose of helping the President.” He added that “you’ll be hearing more about it next week.”
“White House senior adviser Stephen Miller smiled as he volunteered to ‘take one actual last question’ at Wednesday’s press briefing, before press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders returned to the podium. He probably wishes he’d gone ahead and ceded the floor,” Politico reports.
“Seven minutes later, Miller found himself apologizing to CNN’s Jim Acosta over the fiery, bizarre, combative and confusing exchange that had just ended. The dialogue culminated in the senior White House aide lobbing insults at a member of the White House press corps, prompting Acosta to note that he’d just been called ‘ignorant’ on television.”
The FAA issued “temporary flight restrictions” over Bedminster, New Jersey from August 4 to 21 due to “VIP movement,” a pretty good indication that President Trump will likely be taking a summer vacation at his golf club there.
“Ezra Cohen-Watnick, the senior director for intelligence on the National Security Council, has been dismissed from the White House,” the Conservative Review reports.
“Cohen-Watnick was originally brought on board by former NSC chief Gen. Michael Flynn. National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster has, in the past, attempted to rid the council of Cohen-Watnick, but was overruled by President Trump, Steve Bannon, and Jared Kushner.”
Shane Savitsky: McMaster reshuffles National Security Council.
Ed Kilgore: “Everybody should get used to the idea of a putative 2020 Democratic field the size of an Iowa cornfield. There are three potential candidates who would each become front-runners in the 2020 race if they decide to run: Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden, and Elizabeth Warren. There are questions as to whether any or all of them are too old, particularly for a party looking to show it’s shed the barnacles exposed by the 2016 Clinton campaign. Sanders will be 78 when the 2020 Iowa Caucuses are held; Biden will be 77, and Warren will be 71 (for that matter, Donald Trump will be 73). But none of them has any particular reason to diminish their influence by declining interest in 2020. Their long shadows will make it harder for little-known alternatives to emerge. But the possibility of retirement or illness among the Big Three keeps open the gate to dark-horse fantasies.”
“If Sanders, Biden, and Warren do fall by the wayside, Democrats may suddenly find themselves with a presidential field that resembles the mob that ran for the GOP nomination in 2016.”
Catherine Templeton (R) made waves in her first public forum as gubernatorial candidate in South Carolina by saying she is “proud of the Confederacy” and pledged “we’re not going to rewrite history” by removing Confederate monuments, the Charleston Post & Courier reports.
Said Templeton: “You cannot rewrite history. I don’t care whose feelings it hurts. You cannot rewrite history.”
She added: “We’re standing on the shoulders of giants in South Carolina. And it’s why are are, who we are, where we are. And I very much respect the men who gave their homes, their fortunes and their lives to put us in this position.”
The Atlantic: “A top official of the National Security Council was fired last month after arguing in a memo that President Trump is under sustained attack from subversive forces both within and outside the government who are deploying Maoist tactics to defeat President Trump’s nationalist agenda.”
“His dismissal marks the latest victory by National-Security Adviser H.R. McMaster in the ongoing war within Trump’s White House between those who believe the president is under threat from dark forces plotting to undermine him, and those like McMaster who dismiss this as conspiratorial thinking.”
A new Quinnipiac poll finds President Trump’s approval rating at a dismal 33% to 61%.
By a 54% to 26%, American voters say that they are embarrassed rather than proud to have Trump as president and by 57% to 40%, they say he is abusing the powers of his office.
Said pollster Tim Malloy: “It’s hard to pick what is the most alarming number in the troubling trail of new lows for President Trump. Profound embarrassment over his performance in office and deepening concern over his level-headedness have to raise the biggest red flags. The daily drip drip of missteps and firings and discord are generating a tidal wave of bad polling numbers.”
The Boy Scouts denied that the head of the youth organization called President Trump “to praise his recent, politically aggressive speech to its national jamboree,” the AP reports.
Trump told the Wall Street Journal in an interview: “I got a call from the head of the Boy Scouts saying it was the greatest speech that was ever made to them, and they were very thankful.”
From a statement from the Boy Scouts: “We are unaware of any such call.”
Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto “is calling into question President Trump’s most recent claims that the leader called him to praise his administration’s work on the U.S.-Mexico border,” CBS News reports.
Said Trump earlier this week: “As you know, the border was a tremendous problem and they’re close to 80 percent stoppage. And even the president of Mexico called me — they said their southern border, very few people are coming because they know they’re not going to get through our border, which is the ultimate compliment.”
Pena Nieto denies that ever happened.
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.