Former Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) dismissed charges of sexism over Donald Trump’s comments on women, The Hill reports.
Said Bachmann: “I feel like all this kind of stuff is like nonsense.”
She added: “The main thing really that really, honestly, voters are thinking about are the 54 million women of working age who are not in the workforce today because there are not jobs for them.”
“A 5 p.m. deadline loomed on Friday for the city of New Orleans to either pay its firefighters $75 million in back wages or see Mayor Mitch Landrieu (D) placed under weekend house arrest until a deal is reached,” Reuters reports.
“The standoff is the result of a decades-old settlement over back wages that have gone unpaid through several mayoral administrations. The local firefighters union recently sought to have the city held in contempt of court for not honoring the commitment.”
“I think it’s pretty outrageous for him to be attacking anybody’s appearance when he looks like he’s got a squirrel sitting on his head.”
— Gov. Bobby Jindal, quoted by CBS News, on Donald Trump.
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Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake (D), “beleaguered by the death of Freddie Gray and the protests and rioting that followed, will announce that she won’t seek re-election,” the Baltimore Sun reports.
“Rawlings-Blake, 45, wants to focus on preparing the city for the upcoming trials facing the six officers involved in Gray’s arrest and death… She briefed her Cabinet and staff this morning, and has no plans to seek another office.”
“Sometimes it just overwhelms you.”
— Vice President Joe Biden, in an interview on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
Rick Klein: “It was one of many lines that it was virtually impossible to imagine any other politician, much less a potential presidential candidate, uttering on national television. In its raw emotion and honesty, the interview displayed what is undeniably compelling about Biden, his life story, his passions, and his motivations. It also suggested strongly a man who just isn’t able to bring himself to run for president, not at this time and under these circumstances. Yet somehow that all seemed secondary for the moment.”
“It took 14 hours, two failed votes and a day full of drama, but at 3:12 a.m. Friday, state Rep. Todd Courser (R) resigned from his state House seat, and an hour later, Rep. Cindy Gamrat (R) was expelled on a 91-12 vote, ending a controversial sex and cover-up scandal that has rocked Lansing for the last month,” the Detroit Free Press reports.
“The scandal swirling around Courser and Gamrat had been rumored for months, but burst onto the public scene last month when audio recordings surfaced and revealed that Courser had asked his staff to send an anonymous, “false flag” e-mail that he had written, saying he was addicted to drugs and pornography, and paid for sex with men outside a Lansing bar. His staff refused to participate in the attempt to make it appear that Courser was the victim of a smear campaign and to downplay the affair he was having with Gamrat.”
DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz “stood firmly by her plan to hold exactly six presidential debates—and jabbed at the candidate who’s been most aggressive in agitating for more,” Bloomberg reports.
Said Wasserman Schultz: “We’re having six debates–period.”
She added: “We’re not changing the process. We’re having six debates. We’re having six debates and the candidates will be uninvited from any subsequent debates if they accept an invitation to a debate outside the six DNC-sanctioned debates.”
Former aides to Mitt Romney “are curiously aligned once again in common cause, a stem-to-stern effort that has united old comrades even as they nominally play for different teams: stopping Donald Trump,” the Boston Globe reports.
Said one: “We are united. It’s a common goal and not just for Romney people, but for anyone invested in Republicanism, conservatism, and anyone who gives a flying [expletive] about what we’re trying to do here. Even if you’re not getting paid, this isn’t good for anybody.”
Donald Trump “didn’t mean any harm when he criticized fellow GOP 2016 presidential candidate Carly Fiorina’s face. He says he was just being the showman he is,” Politico reports.
Said Trump: “Many of those comments are made as an entertainer because I did The Apprentice and it was one of the top shows on television. Some comments are made as an entertainer and as everybody said, as an entertainer is a much different ball game.”
Meanwhile, The Hill reports Trump blames the editors of Rolling Stone for adding “a lot of garish stuff” to his controversial interview.
A new Quinnipiac poll in Iowa finds Donald Trump still leading the GOP field with 27%, followed by Ben Carson at 21%, and Ted Cruz at 9%.
Key finding: “Trump also tops another list as 25% of Iowa likely Republican Caucus participants say they ‘would definitely not support’ him for the GOP nomination. Bush is next on this ‘no way’ list with 23 percent, followed by Chris Christie with 14%.
Said pollster Peter Brown: “The Iowa Republican Caucus looks like a two-man race in which the Washington experience that has traditionally been a major measuring stick that voters have used to choose candidates is now a big negative. With five months until the balloting, anything can happen. But the field has become a two-tiered contest – Donald Trump and Ben Carson ahead and everyone else far behind.”
Darin LaHood (R), son of former U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, easily won a special election to replace disgraced former Rep. Aaron Schock (R), sending a familiar name to Washington, D.C., from Illinois, the Chicago Tribune reports.
A new CNN/ORC poll shows Hillary Clinton’s lead in the race for the Democratic nomination “has fallen to just 10 points, and at the same time, her advantage in hypothetical general election matchups against the top Republican contenders has vanished.”
Clinton leads with 37%%, followed by Sen. Bernie Sanders at 27% and Vice President Joe Biden at 20%.
In the general election matchups, Clinton trails Ben Carson by 51% to 46%, while running about evenly with both Jeb Bush, 49% to 47%, and Donald Trump, 48% to 48%.
Bloomberg: “Stephen Colbert’s new comedy show was effectively preempted Thursday, its third day on the air, in favor of a wrenching, intimate conversation about love, loss and running for president between the comedian and Vice President Joe Biden, who said he still has moments when he breaks down over the recent death of his son Beau, ‘and you can’t do that’ during a presidential campaign.”
“Nobody could doubt either the honesty or the grief. Or the fact that no matter how long Colbert is on the air, there won’t be many other shows like this one.”
Politico: “Republicans are plotting to make Democrats pay dearly for backing an agreement the GOP argues hinges on an historic enemy of the United States playing nice. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell plans to return to the floor next week to force Democrats to take more votes Republicans say they’ll regret as soon as Iran violates the terms of the deal or sponsors terrorist attacks, which critics believe is just a matter of time.”
“After that will come the attack ads, national GOP officials say. It’s expected to be a key cog of Republicans’ electoral strategy: some GOP senators are already comparing it to Obamacare in its scope and potential to damage Democratic supporters politically.”
Mike Huckabee said the Dred Scott decision denying U.S. citizenship to African-Americans is the law of the land even though it was overturned by the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which was ratified in 1868., The Hill reports.
Said Huckabee: “The Dred Scott decision of 1857 still remains to this day the law of the land, which says that black people aren’t fully human. Does anybody still follow the Dred Scott Supreme Court decision?”
“The Senate narrowly blocked a measure aimed at derailing the landmark nuclear accord with Iran, effectively ending a bitter, partisan fight in Congress over the two-decades-long deal,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“The 58-42 vote clears the way for President Barack Obama to implement an agreement seen as the foreign-policy capstone of his second term without the embarrassing spectacle of a veto war with the GOP-controlled Congress.”
“If you look at his past, which I’ve done, he wasn’t a big man of faith. All of a sudden he’s becoming this man of faith. And he was heavy into the world of abortion.”
— Donald Trump, quoted by CNN, after Ben Carson questioned his faith in God.
Gov. Bobby Jindal pulled no punches against Donald Trump, “raining down a deluge of criticisms on the current Republican leader in the polls,” Politico reports.
He called Trump “a narcissist,” “an egomaniac,” “non-serious,” “substance-free,” “insecure,” “weak,” “shallow,” “unstable,” among other things.
Said Jindal: “Donald Trump is for Donald Trump. He believes in nothing other than himself. He’s not for anything, he’s not against anything. Donald Trump is a narcissist and he’s an egomaniac. That may sound like a serious charge to make, but everyone knows it to be true.”
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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