“To those who would criticize our tough stance, I would point out that the United States has demonstrated — not merely with its words but with its actions — that we stand firmly behind Article 5, the mutual defense commitment.”
— President Trump, quoted by CNBC, explicitly endorsing NATO’s Article 5 mutual-defense provision after failing to do so the last time he was in Europe.
Rick Klein: “In the run-up to the most anticipated meeting of Donald Trump’s presidency, the give-and-take that matters is inside the president’s head. Specifically, how much does the part of Trump that craves being liked decide to give? And how much does the part of Trump that wants to be feared and respected try to take? One can imagine Russian President Vladimir Putin’s watching the president’s news conference this morning with a kind of anticipation he hasn’t had since … Barack Obama was the new president.”
“The fact that even now – nearly six months into office – Trump still won’t accept as fact that the Russians attempted to influence the election? That gives Putin an out as big as a Red Army tank, plus a giant hint that hacking allegations are not on the U.S. president’s agenda… For now, Trump seems more inclined to slam Obama and CNN, as he did at the news conference today, than Putin.”
Politico: “Chief strategist Steve Bannon has two special assistants, a deputy assistant, an executive assistant and a body man working in his ‘war room’ — plus his external press hand, something his predecessors under President Barack Obama, David Axelrod and David Plouffe, never had while working in the White House. Senior adviser Jared Kushner has seven staffers below him, including his own communications adviser, a former Hollywood PR exec who previously repped Kushner’s real estate work…”
“Senior counselor Kellyanne Conway … has a chief of staff, Renee Hudson, who manages one person below her … Ivanka Trump also has a chief of staff, Julie Radford, who holds the title of special assistant to the president and only manages a single person below her. … Most noticeable is the proliferation of spokespeople operating parallel to the White House press office.”
New York Times: “Even his top aides do not know precisely what Mr. Trump will decide to say or do when he and Mr. Putin meet face to face on Friday on the sidelines of the Group of 20 economic summit gathering in Hamburg, Germany. And that is what most worries those advisers as well as officials across his administration as Mr. Trump begins his second foreign trip as president, stopping first in Warsaw to give an address on Thursday and then heading to Hamburg.
“The highly anticipated conversation with Mr. Putin is in many ways a necessity, given the critical disputes separating the United States and Russia. But it also poses risks for Mr. Trump, who faces a web of investigations into his campaign’s possible links to Russia, as well as questions about his willingness to take on Moscow for its military aggression and election meddling on his behalf. The air of uncertainty about the meeting is only heightened by the president’s propensity for unpredictable utterances and awkward optics.”
President Trump suggested that he “still was not convinced that Russia was solely responsible for interference in the 2016 election, breaking with American intelligence agencies who have agreed that the effort emanated from Moscow and was directed by Mr. Putin,” the New York Times reports.
Said Trump: “I think it was Russia, and it could have been other people in other countries.”
He added: “Nobody really knows. Nobody really knows for sure.”
New York Times: “While the June jobs report, coming on Friday, is expected to show that hiring continued at a healthy pace last month, other recent indicators in areas like consumer spending, construction and auto sales have been decidedly less robust.”
“As a result, Wall Street forecasters have been busy lowering their growth estimates for the second quarter, which ended last Friday, much as they were forced to do over the first three months of the year. Economic expansion for the full year now appears unlikely to be much greater than 2 percent — about the average for the current recovery, which celebrates its eighth year this month.”
New York Times: “White House advisers have discussed a potential point of leverage over their adversary, a senior administration official said: a pending merger between CNN’s parent company, Time Warner, and AT&T. Mr. Trump’s Justice Department will decide whether to approve the merger, and while analysts say there is little to stop the deal from moving forward, the president’s animus toward CNN remains a wild card.”
Dan Primack: “There could be a chilling effect on M&A activity if it was believed that the Department of Justice would block a merger — or require applicants make certain concessions — due to a political beef between an applicant and the White House. It also would be sure to spark legal challenges.”
“Conservative groups are aggressively backing Mike Lee and Ted Cruz in their bid to move the Senate Republicans’ Obamacare repeal bill further to the right, setting up a major confrontation between the party’s warring factions next week,” Politico reports.
“On Wednesday afternoon both FreedomWorks and the Club for Growth urged Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to adopt an amendment from Sens. Cruz of Texas and Lee of Utah that would largely gut Obamacare’s regulatory regime. The move is significant: Without at least a neutral stance from conservative groups, it could be impossible for McConnell to find the 50 votes needed to pass a repeal this month. But what the right is asking for may not be able to pass the Senate either.”
The next big project from David Fahrenthold, the Washington Post reporter who won the Pulitzer for writing relentlessly about Donald Trump’s (lack of) charitable contributions, is apparently focusing on Trump’s golf partners, according to Axios.
Columbia Journalism Review: “The president is fully aware that his war against the press is one of the few things that is working for him. His campaign promise to replace Obamacare is in tatters, his immigration ban has been watered down by the courts, the wall is still only (and thankfully) an architect’s rendering. There’s very little of substance left to bind Trump to his base or to the rightwing mediasphere that has been his cheerleader. Take away the war on the media and the bond between Trump and his supporters thins out fast.”
“Every time Trump fires a shot in his war against the media, there’s an opportunity for a more serious, nuanced argument about why everyone benefits from a free and vigorous press: Airing a president and his policies to open discussion and scrutiny results in better government. Squashing those things, or seeking to discredit the scrutiny before it even happens, neutralizes a key check against power baked into our Constitution. Dialing up the outrage meter every time Trump attacks CNN, The Washington Post, or The New York Times gets us no closer to that important debate, which is just fine for a president who has very little else to offer.”
Los Angeles Times: “Much of the debate over Republican efforts to roll back the Affordable Care Act has focused on the impact cuts would have on working-age adults, millions of whom gained coverage under the healthcare law that President Obama signed in 2010.”
“But in Fayette County and 779 other mostly rural counties across the country — the vast majority of which went for Trump — more than half the children rely for coverage on Medicaid and the related Children’s Health Insurance Program, or CHIP, according to a Times analysis of county voting data, census data and Medicaid enrollment data.”
“That is stoking rising alarm among parents, pediatricians and other medical providers in West Virginia and other largely rural states, including Arkansas, Tennessee, New Mexico and Maine.”
A must-read: Devil’s Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency by Joshua Green.
“The shocking elevation of Bannon to head Trump’s flagging presidential campaign on August 17, 2016, hit political Washington like a thunderclap and seemed to signal the meltdown of the Republican Party. Bannon was a bomb-throwing pugilist who’d never run a campaign and was despised by Democrats and Republicans alike.”
“Yet Bannon’s hard-edged ethno-nationalism and his elaborate, years-long plot to destroy Hillary Clinton paved the way for Trump’s unlikely victory. Trump became the avatar of a dark but powerful worldview that dominated the airwaves and spoke to voters whom others couldn’t see.”
Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) said he would not support calls to repeal Obamacare now and replace it at a later date, KTAR reports.
Said McCain: “I fear we may fall under the trap of repealing and not replacing and that would be bad for America.”
New York Times: “When members of Congress return next week from their Fourth of July break, they will be greeted by a mammoth legislative logjam. Republicans are increasingly skeptical that they can get everything done. There are even calls from some to forgo their sacred August recess — a respite from the capital in its swampiest month.”
“The Republican Party is under intense pressure to achieve something of consequence in that limited time in order to legitimately claim that the first year of the Trump administration has been a success. So far, the ambitious agenda has stagnated without a signature achievement. President Trump’s unpredictability has only made matters more complicated.”
For members: There’s Serious Pain Ahead for Republicans
The Trump Organization has renewed its claim on more than 1,000 of the web domains registered by its general counsel, including some politically sensitive websites such as TrumpRussia.com and TrumpTowerMoscow.com, Politico reports.
“Democratic leaders are zeroing in on a new mantra for their long-promised economic agenda: the ‘Better Deal,'” Politico reports.
“The rebranding attempt comes as Democrats acknowledge that simply running against President Trump wasn’t a winning strategy in 2016 and probably won’t work in 2018 either. The slogan, which is still being polled in battleground House districts, aims to convince voters that Democrats have more to offer than the GOP and the self-proclaimed deal-maker in the White House.”
President Trump’s voter fraud commission “may have violated the law by ignoring federal requirements governing requests for information from states,” The Hill reports.
“Under the Paperwork Reduction Act, information requests from agencies and other federal entities are supposed to first be submitted to the Office of Management and Budget’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). This 1980 law requires federal agencies to seek public input, including through a comment period, before a request for information.”
Rick Hasen: “The Trump commission process has been so poorly handled that whatever it concludes will be likely ignored by serious people, even while the president latches onto it to make it harder for people to register and vote. He’s overplayed his hand, and we should be thankful for that.”
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.