“You’re not going to hear me say glowing things about Donald Trump’s personality… I have not forgotten what he said about me. I’ve not forgotten what he said about my husband.”
— Nikki Haley, on her new SiriusXM show.
“You’re not going to hear me say glowing things about Donald Trump’s personality… I have not forgotten what he said about me. I’ve not forgotten what he said about my husband.”
— Nikki Haley, on her new SiriusXM show.
“Donald Trump’s advisers are considering whether to modify his travel after threats to his life from Iran and two assassination attempts, a shift that could affect the way the Republican nominee campaigns in the race’s final stretch,” the New York Times reports.
“Among the discussions are what events can be secured, as well as the possibility that he might travel less on his own Trump-branded plane, according to two of the people briefed on the discussions.”
“Donald Trump does not plan to meet Volodymyr Zelensky during the Ukrainian president’s trip to the United States, despite indicating last week that he likely would meet with the foreign leader,” Reuters reports.
“It was not clear whether the two leaders ever formally set a date for an encounter. But the chances of a meeting went down substantially after Zelensky traveled to a munitions factory in Pennsylvania on Sunday alongside the state’s Democratic governor, Josh Shapiro.”
The AP reports Trump described Ukraine in bleak and mournful terms, referring to its people as “dead” and the country itself as “demolished.”
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“A week after the Harris campaign launched an advisory committee to target Latter-day Saint voters in Arizona, the Trump campaign is quietly prepping a pitch of its own,” the Deseret News reports.
Ron Brownstein: “For the great majority of Americans who have firmly settled on Kamala Harris or Donald Trump, the idea that anyone could still be undecided in that choice is almost incomprehensible. But the incredulity may be rooted in confusion about who most undecided voters really are.”
“When most people think about a voter still trying to make up their mind, they probably imagine a person who is highly likely to vote but uncertain whether to support Harris, Trump, or a third-party candidate. Both political parties, however, are more focused on a different—and much larger—group of undecideds: potential voters who are highly likely to support Harris or Trump, but unsure if they will vote at all.”
“Campaigns typically describe the first group of reliable but conflicted voters as persuadable; they frequently describe the second group as irregular voters. Persuadable voters get the most attention from the media, but campaigns recognize that irregular voters can loom much larger in the outcome—especially in presidential elections when more of them ultimately participate.”
Dan Pfeiffer: “The largest swath of the undecided universe is not deciding between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. They are deciding between one candidate and the couch.”
NBC News: “More than half of every dollar spent on ads in the presidential race from Sept. 1 to 20 were spent in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin — with Pennsylvania alone drawing 1 of every 4 dollars spent.”
“Harris’ campaign is running an equal mix of positive and negative ads on broadcast TV, according to the tracking firm AdImpact, while former President Donald Trump’s campaign is running almost exclusively negative and contrast ads — a demonstration of how focused voters and both campaigns are on defining Harris as she runs against a three-time candidate who has inspired entrenched views among American voters.”
“New York City Mayor Eric Adams faced a wave of calls to resign Wednesday evening following reports that he is expected to face federal charges as soon as Thursday,” NBC News reports.
In a video last night, Adams vowed that he would not step down from his post and will fight the expected corruption charges, decrying them as “entirely false, based on lies.”
A new Washington Post-University of Maryland poll finds Angela Alsobrooks (D) leads Larry Hogan (R) in the U.S. Senate race by 11 percentage points among likely voters, 51% to 40%.
Two new polls from UMass Lowell/YouGov:
“Russia and Iran are close partners in Ukraine and in the Middle East, but they’re intervening on opposite sides in the U.S. election,” Axios reports.
“An emerging axis of U.S. adversaries and rivals, including China and North Korea, has moved closer together on a number of fronts in recent years — but not when it comes to partisan U.S. politics.”
A new Emerson College/The Hill survey finds 52% of Virginia voters support Kamala Harris for president in 2024, while 44% support Donald Trump.
“Foreign leaders traveling to the United States to attend the U.N. General Assembly this week in New York have also been meeting with former president Donald Trump, as they hedge their bets in case of a Trump victory in the November election,” the Washington Post reports.
“Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair Ben Cardin (D-MD) was recently the target of a sophisticated deepfake operation impersonating a top Ukrainian official,” Punchbowl News reports.
“On Monday morning, the Senate’s security office alerted a select group of leadership aides and security chiefs for various Senate committees about the incident, which occurred earlier this month on the video conference platform Zoom.”
“According to the notice, the individual was impersonating the recently-former Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba. “Kuleba” was asking questions during the call that the participants thought were bizarre, including: ‘Do you support long-range missiles into Russian territory? I need to know your answer,’ according to the notice sent to senior Senate aides.”
“The impersonator was speaking in the voice of Kuleba, which sources said they believed was likely recreated using artificial intelligence. The notice stated that the impersonation effort had ‘technical sophistication and believability.’”
“I can put up another controversial post tomorrow if you want me to. I mean, we do have freedom of speech. I’ll say what I want… It’s not a big deal to me. It’s like something stuck to the bottom of my boot. Just scrape it off and move on with my life.”
— Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA), quoted by CNN, digging in after deleting a post calling Haitian migrants “thugs” and “slapstick gangsters.”
“Eric Adams, a retired police captain who was elected as New York City’s 110th mayor nearly three years ago on a promise to rein in crime, has been indicted following a federal corruption investigation,“ the New York Times reports.
“The indictment remained sealed on Wednesday night, and it was unclear what charge or charges Mr. Adams will face. But when they are made public, he will become the first New York City mayor to be criminally charged while in office.”
“The indictment promised to reverberate across the nation’s largest city and beyond, plunging Mr. Adams’s embattled administration further into chaos just months before he is set to face challengers in a hotly contested mayoral primary.”
“Vice President Kamala Harris laid out a broad vision of her economic plan on Wednesday as she sought to bridge the political divide between the progressive senator who ran for president in 2019 and the pragmatic, pro-business candidate she is presenting herself as now,” the New York Times reports.
“During a speech in Pittsburgh in which she declared ‘I am a capitalist,’ Ms. Harris promised to protect and expand U.S. manufacturing as she tried to convince voters that she will defend and lift up the middle class.”
Vice President Kamala Harris is planning to travel to the southern border on Friday, making a trip to Douglas, Arizona, the Washington Post reports.
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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