Stephen Bannon is heading to Alabama to rally for Roy Moore (R) on Monday night with Phil Robertson of “Duck Dynasty,” according to Axios.
“Why it matters: This rally is three days after President Trump, Bannon’s former boss, was in Alabama rallying for Moore’s opponent — Mitch McConnell’s favored candidate Luther Strange. For Bannon to make a rare public appearance in such close proximity to Trump shows how invested he is in this race specifically, and attacking McConnell more generally.”
“The Trump administration plans to shut down the federal health insurance exchange for 12 hours during all but one Sunday in the upcoming Obamacare open enrollment season,” CNN reports.
“The Department of Health and Human Services will also shut down the federal exchange — healthcare.gov — overnight on the first day of open enrollment, Nov. 1. More than three dozen states use that exchange for their marketplaces.”
“I really had such deep doubts about his preparation, his temperament, his character, his experience, but he’s been even worse than I thought he would be.”
— Hillary Clinton, quoted by The Hill, on President Trump.
Politico: “When John McCain cast the decisive vote against Obamacare repeal two months ago, Chuck Schumer waved an arm to quiet fellow Democrats as they burst into audible elation. Don’t gloat or cheer over the GOP’s failure, Schumer signaled — a move he made again on Friday in a statement, after McCain delivered what looks like a fatal blow to his party’s seven-year drive to dismantle the Affordable Care Act. Far from celebrating, Democrats tempered their responses to McCain with reminders of the bipartisan health care talks that Republicans had walked away from when they took one last shot at repealing Obamacare.”
“And even as their liberal base turned a rally to pressure McCain into a thank-you celebration, Democrats stopped far short of declaring repeal dead… Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s office did not immediately respond to questions about whether he will still hold the vote on the bill.”
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell responded to President Trump’s excoriation of players who protest during the national anthem, saying the “divisive comments” show a “lack of respect” for the nation’s most popular sport, Politico reports.
Said Goodell: “Divisive comments like these demonstrate an unfortunate lack of respect for our great game and all of our players, and a failure to understand the overwhelming force for good our clubs and players represent in our communities.”
Washington Post: “Republicans are targeting a corporate rate of 20 percent in their federal tax overhaul plan, according to three people familiar with the emerging blueprint — a number that represents a substantial cut from the current 35 percent rate but falls short of the 15 percent President Trump has long pushed for.”
“The plan remains fluid … But they said the template is taking a more definite shape ahead of a planned rollout next week by the ‘Big Six’ negotiators from the White House, Senate and House.”
Politico: “Months after Corey Lewandowski, Donald Trump’s former campaign manager, quit the lobbying firm he co-founded after the 2016 election, he appears to be working with a new one, reviving questions about whether he is still cashing in on his relationship with the president. The firm, Turnberry Solutions LLC — a name that calls to mind Trump Turnberry, the president’s Scottish golf resort — is staffed by two lobbyists who worked for Lewandowski’s old firm.”
“While Lewandowski has denied any link to the firm, there’s plenty of evidence to the contrary. Lewandowski was on a recent conference call between Turnberry and one of its clients, according to the client, and Turnberry also created an email address with his first name on it.”
CNN: “In their sentencing memorandum prosecutors are seeking 21-27 months imprisonment for Wiener, the former US congressman and estranged husband of Hillary Clinton’s former adviser Huma Abedin… Weiner, 53, pleaded guilty this May in New York’s Federal District Court to one count of transferring obscene material to a minor. The charge carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.”
Prosecutors back up their request by stating: “Weiner, a grown man, a father, and a former lawmaker, willfully and knowingly asked a 15-year old girl to display her body and engage in sexually explicit conduct for him online.”
From a Washington Post report on President Trump campaigning for Sen. Luther Strange (R-AL) in Alabama last night:
Strange took the stage just before Trump and proudly put on a red “Make America Great Again” hat. Up in the stands, a veteran of the war in Afghanistan remarked: “I don’t know who this guy is. I’m here for Trump.”
“Are you ready to support our president tonight?” Strange asked. From the stands, a young Trump supporter shouted back: “You suck!”
“I’ll be honest, I might have made a mistake. If Luther doesn’t win they’re not going to say, we picked up 25 points in a short period of time. If his opponent wins, I’m going to be here campaigning like hell for him.”
— President Trump, quoted by the Washington Post, expressing doubts about his endorsement of Sen. Luther Strange (R-AL).
Washington Post: “The no-task-too-small leadership style — dating to Kelly’s training in the Marine Corps, where he rose to a four-star general — has its benefits for a president who often sows chaos in his wake, implementing a sense of order and discipline in a White House known for lacking both.”
“But it also has prompted grumbling about micromanaging within the West Wing, where some staffers complain that Kelly may be growing his mandate too far and that his strict regimen stifles the creativity and spontaneity that have been hallmarks of Trump’s enterprises. As one of Kelly’s subordinates put it, the chief of staff sometimes becomes ‘a one-man choke point.'”
“Senior aides to President Trump repeatedly warned him not to deliver a personal attack on North Korea’s leader at the United Nations this week, saying insulting the young despot in such a prominent venue could irreparably escalate tensions and shut off any chance for negotiations to defuse the nuclear crisis,” the Los Angeles Times reports.
“Trump’s derisive description of Kim Jong Un as ‘Rocket Man on a suicide mission’ and his threat to ‘totally destroy’ North Korea were not in a speech draft that several senior officials reviewed and vetted Monday.”
“Some of Trump’s top aides, including national security advisor H.R. McMaster, had argued for months against making the attacks on North Korea’s leader personal, warning it could backfire. But Trump felt compelled to take a harder line.”
An HHS spokesperson told Politico that Secretary Tom Price “has been taking private jets because an unreliable commercial flight once forced him to cancel an important meeting.”
“But the flight in question — to a two-day industry conference at a Ritz-Carlton hotel in southern California — didn’t get off the ground on a day when storms virtually shut down air traffic in the Washington region, preventing even private jets from getting out.”
“The details cast into doubt HHS’ justification for Price’s use of private jets as he faces criticism from congressional Democrats and a review of whether he complied with Federal Travel Regulations from his department’s inspector general.”
HUD Secretary Ben Carson “issued a statement on Friday supporting Roy Moore’s candidacy for the Republican Senate nomination in Alabama, breaking with President Trump’s endorsement of the establishment-backed incumbent Sen. Luther Strange,” the Washington Post reports.
“The extraordinary endorsement in Tuesday’s primary runoff election comes just hours before Trump is set to arrive in Alabama to campaign for Strange.”
The Department of Homeland Security “notified 21 states Friday that Russia attempted to hack their election systems before the 2016 election,” The Hill reports.
“In the majority of the states, the Department of Homeland Security only saw preparations for hacking, like scanning to find potential modes for attack. Voting machines are not connected to the internet and cannot be scanned in this way, but other systems, including those housing voting rolls, can be.”
Presiden Trump’s attorneys in the probe of Russian election interference “are being funded in part through a Republican Party account with a handful of wealthy donors—including a billionaire investor, a property developer seeking U.S. government visas and a Ukrainian-born American who has made billions of dollars doing business with Russian oligarchs,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“The RNC and campaign’s payment arrangement for Mr. Trump’s lawyers is legal. But ethics experts cautioned that Mr. Trump’s decision to rely on party and campaign accounts to pay for his attorney fees can raise thorny political issues.”
A new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds that Americans prefer Obamacare to the latest GOP plan by a 56% to 33% margin.
Also interesting: Roughly twice as many people “strongly prefer” the current law to Republicans’ plan, 42% to 22%.
“As more than 40 subdued Republican senators lunched on Chick-fil-A at a closed-door session last week, Sen. Cory Gardner (R-CO) painted a dire picture for his colleagues. Campaign fund-raising was drying up, he said, because of the widespread disappointment among donors over the inability of the Republican Senate to repeal the Affordable Care Act or do much of anything else,” the New York Times reports.
“Mr. Gardner is in charge of his party’s midterm re-election push, and he warned that donors of all stripes were refusing to contribute another penny until the struggling majority produced some concrete results.”
Said Gardner: “Donors are furious. We haven’t kept our promise.”
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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