“This agreement condemns the next generation to cleaning up a nuclear war in the Persian Gulf… This is the greatest appeasement since Chamberlain gave Czechoslovakia to Hitler.”
— Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL), quoted by BuzzFeed, on the nuclear deal reached with Iran.
A judge has granted Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) the annulment that he sought to his marriage, the Miami Herald reports.
“The messy separation from his wife, Lolita Grayson, had been headline fodder in the weeks leading up to Grayson’s U.S. Senate campaign launch last week. And we’ve likely not seen the end of it: There’s plenty of campaign ads to come.”
“I’m a businessman. I contribute to everybody. When I needed Hillary, she was there. If I say ‘go to my wedding,’ they go to my wedding.”
— Donald Trump, in a Fox News interview, on whether his past contributions to Hillary Clinton suggest he’s a Democratic plant.
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Nate Silver recalls a famous Bill Clinton quote: “You know the difference in Democrats and Republicans? In every presidential election, Democrats want to fall in love. Republicans just fall in line.”
“But this year, the historical trend has reversed itself. On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton is the only candidate with any endorsements from current governors or U.S. senators and representatives. And she has a boatload of them: 88 representatives, 27 senators and two governors have endorsed Clinton, giving her 243 endorsement points, the highest figure ever at this stage of the race for a Democrat.”
“Republicans, however, haven’t fallen in line behind anyone. Jeb Bush is the nominal endorsement front-runner, but his 18 endorsement points are the lowest total for any leader at this point in the campaign since Tsongas in 1992. Only two Republican governors and three Republican senators have endorsed any candidate at all. Endorsements also came slowly in the 2012 Republican nomination contest. As of June 17, 2011 — 200 days before the Iowa caucuses — Mitt Romney was the leader, but with only 19 endorsement points.”
Mark Leibovich: “Hillary Clinton is private and guarded by nature, and three decades of being inspected like an exotic species has made her even more so. But right now, in the early days of what will be a 19-month campaign for the White House, she is trying to share and expound on her experiences, to project some greater measure of herself, big and small. Moose tales aside, this does not come easily. She has resided at the center of so many scandals, psychodramas and culture wars that it’s hard to even keep track of them all, let alone know what the person within that bubble of attention is actually like.”
“Clinton’s friends, all the thousands of them, have been saying for years that they wished people could see the Hillary They Knew, the person few get to see behind her public casing: the great boss, the chatty girlfriend, always the first to call when a parent dies or a baby is born. She possesses, they swear, that most cherished cachet among politicians — the sense of normalcy that David Foster Wallace famously described, quoting a fellow reporter in his 2000 profile of John McCain in Rolling Stone, as acting ‘somewhat in the ballpark of the way a real human being would act.’ Clinton imagines herself to be very much of this ballpark, if maybe confined to a private box and heavily guarded”
Maryland state Del. Ariana Kelly (D) “was arrested in late June and charged with indecent exposure and trespassing after a dispute at the home of her ex-husband,” the Washington Post reports.
Kelly’s ex-husband “told police that Kelly started ringing the doorbell and banging on the door and that he asked her to leave. According to the charging document, Sanford played a cellphone video for police that showed Kelly ringing the doorbell ‘numerous times,’ exposing her breasts in the direction of Sanford’s cellphone camera and then ‘with one breast in each hand [shaking] them up and down.'”
Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-FL), “whose district saw two phony candidates run in a pair of elections before he took office, has taken to Spanish-language media to suggest that Donald Trump’s campaign could be a Democratic scheme to hurt the Republican Party,” the Miami Herald reports.
Said Curbelo: “I think there’s a small possibility that this gentleman is a phantom candidate. Mr. Trump has a close friendship with Bill and Hillary Clinton. They were at his last wedding. He has contributed to the Clintons’ foundation. He has contributed to Mrs. Clinton’s Senate campaigns. All of this is very suspicious.”
“Well, they didn’t read The Art of the Deal. Most people did; they didn’t.”
— Donald Trump, quoted by Politico, when asked for his views on the Obama administration’s “ridiculous” Iran nuclear agreement.
A new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds Donald Trump’s popularity has surged among Republicans after dominating several news cycles with his anti-illegal immigration rhetoric.
“Nearly six in 10 — 57% — Republicans now have a favorable view of Trump, compared to 40% who have an unfavorable one. That marks a complete reversal from a late-May Post-ABC poll, in which 65% of Republicans saw Trump unfavorably.”
However, among Latino voters Trump’s unfavorability has risen to 81% from 60%.
Former Vice President Dick Cheney said that not since the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki nearly 70 years ago has the world been closer to the use of nuclear weapons, Politico reports.
Said Cheney: “What Obama has done, has in effect sanctioned, the acquisition by Iran of nuclear capability. And it can be a few years down the road. It doesn’t make any difference. It’s a matter of months until we’re going to see a situation where other people feel they have to defend themselves by acquiring their own capability. And that will, in fact, I think put us to closer to use — actual use of nuclear weapons than we’ve been at any time since Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II.”
Wall Street Journal: “On Wednesday, the public will get its first look at the donors bankrolling 2016 candidates’ campaigns and how the campaigns are spending that money, as of the end of the second quarter. Campaigns are required to file disclosures with the Federal Election Commission providing details of their quarterly fundraising, many of them for the first time. The only candidate who launched his campaign early enough to file a first-quarter report was Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who at the time was eight days into his campaign.”
“Many candidates have already released their fundraising totals and other selected figures, which starts to form a picture of who’s leading the race for each party’s nomination — in terms of money, Hillary Clinton leads Democrats, and Jeb Bush leads Republicans. But many other details haven’t been disclosed.”
Politico: “Concerns are mounting among top donors and party elites that an influx of huge checks into the GOP primary will hurt the party’s chances of retaking the White House. Long-shot candidates propped up by super PACs and other big-money groups will be able to linger for months throwing damaging barbs at establishment favorites who offer a better chance of victory, the thinking goes. Already, big-money groups have raised about $86 million to support a handful of second- and third-tier candidates.”
“Republican leaders in Congress are crafting their attack plan against the Obama administration’s nuclear deal with Iran,” The Hill reports.
“Lawmakers will have 60 days to review the deal after the White House delivers the text of the historic agreement to Capitol Hill. The GOP could seek to move a measure of disapproval, but it will be difficult to win a filibuster-proof 60 votes, much less the 67 required to overcome a presidential veto. But Republicans believe they will win the public relations battle on the deal, which largely unites the GOP and threatens to divide the Democratic Party.”
New York Times: “For the White House, selling the deal to Congress, including doubters in the president’s own party, may prove almost as difficult as reaching agreement with Iran.”
“The 2016 presidential contest is barely underway, and already donors have poured some $377 million into it,” an Associated Press review shows.
“Almost half of the money disclosed so far will benefit just two of the expected 22 candidates — both of whom have former presidents in the immediate families: Hillary Rodham Clinton and Jeb Bush.”
“Many members of Congress remain deeply skeptical of the landmark deal announced Tuesday to halt Iran’s nuclear ambitions but are unlikely to have the votes to stop it,” the Los Angeles Times reports.
“While Democrats largely back President Obama’s pursuit of an agreement to lift sanctions on Iran in return for measures to prevent the country from building nuclear weapons, Republicans, who have the majority in the House and Senate, say the administration should walk away from a deal they fear concedes too much.”
“But in a promising sign for Obama, few Democrats stood up publicly Tuesday to oppose the deal and the party’s presidential front-runner, Hillary Clinton, expressed support.”
Washington Post: “Clinton’s endorsement also underscores the degree to which her political fortunes have been joined with Obama’s legacy.”
President Obama defended his nuclear deal with Iran in an interview with Thomas Friedman, who concluded the president “is a man who evinces no second thoughts whatsoever about the deal he struck.”
“In a 45-minute interview in the Cabinet Room, the president kept stressing one argument: Don’t judge me on whether this deal transforms Iran, ends Iran’s aggressive behavior toward some of its Arab neighbors or leads to détente between Shiites and Sunnis. Judge me on one thing: Does this deal prevent Iran from breaking out with a nuclear weapon for the next 10 years and is that a better outcome for America, Israel and our Arab allies than any other alternative on the table?”
“A trio of Republican financiers—including Paul Singer and Ken Griffin, two of the most prominent GOP donors in the country—has formed a new federal committee focused on the 2016 presidential race and seeded it with $600,000,” National Journal reports.
“The new group is called Future45, a play on the fact that President Obama is the 44th president and that his successor will be the 45th.”
Former Harrisburg, PA Mayor Stephen Reed (D) was charged with dozens of counts “for allegedly using city money to fund obsessive buying sprees of artifacts that helped plunge the state capital into debt,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
Reed was also charged “with running a corrupt organization, bribery and multiple counts of theft… Reed served as Harrisburg’s mayor for 28 years, leaving in early 2010.”
PennLive has the long list of criminal charges.
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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