“His campaign manager is a felon. His deputy campaign manager is a felon. His personal lawyer is a felon. His foreign policy advisor is a felon. His national security advisor is a felon. The Trump campaign was run by criminals.”
— GOP strategist Stuart Stevens, on Twitter.
“I need killers, I want somebody to fight. Chris Christie calls me nonstop about this job. He calls me every ten seconds; he’d do anything for this job. He is dying to be vice president. And you, it’s like you don’t care. I need killers! Do you want this thing or not?’”
— Donald Trump, quoted in Piety & Power, offering Mike Pence the chance to be his running mate in 2016.
William Galston: “In the Blue Wall triad—Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin—Mr. Trump’s job approval has been consistently lower than in Florida, Georgia and Texas, where it stands at or above 50%, as it also does in Ohio. Three other states—North Carolina, Iowa and Arizona—occupy an intermediate zone in which Mr. Trump’s popularity is higher than in the Blue Wall but lower than in the South.”
“In other words, if the president can hold his Democratic challenger’s popular-vote advantage at or near the 2 percentage points of 2016, he may well prevail again in the Electoral College. At the other end of the spectrum, if the Democrat were to approach Barack Obama’s 7-point margin in 2008, victory over Mr. Trump would be assured. Even if there is a huge mobilization of Democrats in solidly blue states, a 4-point popular-vote advantage would probably include enough voters in swing states to create a blue Electoral College majority. It’s impossible to determine exactly where the tipping point lies between 2 and 4 percentage points.”
The Electoral Vote Map lets you test various paths to victory.
Washington Post: “The IRA, the Russian troll factory U.S. prosecutors blame for the massive disinformation campaign during the 2016 campaign, devoted enormous attention and preparation to its Maryland campaign, all in a likely effort, experts say, to widen racial divisions and demoralize African American voters.”
“I mean, we’re liable to wake up one morning and Donald, if he were president, would have nuked Denmark.”
— Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) during the 2016 presidential campaign, quoted by New York magazine.
President Trump claimed on Twitter that Google “manipulated” votes in the 2016 election that would have given him an even greater lead over his opponent and that the company “should be sued,” CNBC reports.
“Trump’s tweet appears to refer to documents leaked to conservative group Project Veritas, but the documents do not appear to contain any outright allegation of vote manipulation or attempts to bias the election.”
Hillary Clinton fired back at Trump: “The debunked study you’re referring to was based on 21 undecided voters. For context that’s about half the number of people associated with your campaign who have been indicted.”
Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report on the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, allegations of Trump campaign collusion, and obstruction of justice by the president has been downloaded nearly 800 million times, Politico reports.
Alan Abramowitz: “I find no evidence that Russian attempts to target voters in key swing states had any effect on the election results in those states. Instead, the results were almost totally predictable based on the political and demographic characteristics of those states, especially their past voting tendencies, ideological leanings, and demographics. Of course, that doesn’t mean that the Russians weren’t trying to influence the results or that they might not succeed in the future. Nor does it speak to Russian efforts to hack into U.S. voting systems and potentially alter voter registration data or even election results themselves.”
“There are plenty of grounds for real concern here. Indeed, the Electoral College system used to choose the president almost invites efforts to interfere in the election. Whereas trying to affect the national popular vote results would probably be prohibitively expensive, efforts to target a few key swing states could be much more cost-effective and harder to detect.”
Stuart Rothenberg: “For all the talk about why Donald Trump was elected president while losing the popular vote and how he could win again, one of the least discussed results of the 2016 election offers valuable lessons for Democrats.”
“An astounding 7.8 million voters cast their presidential ballots for someone other than Trump or Hillary Clinton. The two biggest third-party vote-getters were Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson (almost 4.5 million votes) and the Green Party’s Jill Stein (1.5 million voters). But others received almost another 1.9 million votes as well.”
“Libertarians and Greens may try to convince you that this reflects growing support for their parties. It doesn’t. Their strong showing was due to the unpopularity of the two major-party nominees.”
Chicago Tribune: “As 20 presidential contenders descend upon Detroit for the second round of Democratic debates Tuesday and Wednesday, party officials and African American political leaders point to Clinton’s loss to Trump in Michigan as a cautionary tale of what can happen when a Democrat takes black voters for granted.”
“Trump won thanks in large part to the collapse of the so-called blue wall in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. While Clinton faltered among white working-class voters in all three states, she also notably underperformed in the urban centers of Philadelphia, Milwaukee and — most of all — Detroit.”
“The Senate Intelligence Committee concluded Thursday that election systems in all 50 states were targeted by Russia in 2016, largely undetected by the states and federal officials at the time, but at the demand of American intelligence agencies the committee was forced to redact its findings so heavily that key lessons for the 2020 election are blacked out,” the New York Times reports.
“While details of many of the hackings directed by Russian intelligence, particularly in Illinois and Arizona, are well known, the committee’s report describes a Russian intelligence effort more far-reaching than the federal government has previously acknowledged.”
Washington Post: It’s not just the Russians anymore as Iranians and others turn up disinformation efforts ahead of 2020 vote.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren told Bloomberg that she would have accepted an offer from Hillary Clinton to become her running mate in 2016.
Former special counsel Robert Mueller said he found repeated statements by Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign praising WikiLeaks to be “problematic” — his most pointed criticism of Trump’s behavior since beginning Congressional testimony, the Washington Post reports.
Said Mueller: “Problematic is an understatement in terms of what it displays of giving some hope or some boost to what is and should be illegal behavior.”
Former Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa said his country was aware that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was interfering in the 2016 US presidential election from the safety of Ecuador’s embassy in London, CNN reports.
“New documents obtained exclusively by CNN reveal that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange received in-person deliveries, potentially of hacked materials related to the 2016 US election, during a series of suspicious meetings at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.”
“The documents build on the possibility, raised by special counsel Robert Mueller in his report on Russian meddling, that couriers brought hacked files to Assange at the embassy.”
“The surveillance reports also describe how Assange turned the embassy into a command center and orchestrated a series of damaging disclosures that rocked the 2016 presidential campaign in the United States.”
Jed Shugerman: “Robert Mueller made a significant legal error and, based on the facts he found, he should have identified Trump campaign felonies. Mueller’s errors meant that, first, he failed to conclude that the Trump campaign criminally coordinated with Russia; second, he failed to indict campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his deputy Rick Gates for felony campaign coordination; third, the 10 acts of felony obstruction in Volume II fell flat among the general public because it lacked compelling context of these underlying crimes between the campaign and Russia. On top of these errors, the former special counsel said he deliberately wrote the report to be unclear because it would be unfair to make clear criminal accusations against a president.”
“The bottom line is that the Mueller Report is a failure not because of Congress or because of public apathy, but because it failed to get the law, the facts, or even the basics of writing right.”
A Politico excerpt of Tim Alberta’s American Carnage gives an inside look at how Donald Trump survived the Access Hollywood tape.
A few agonizing moments passed before the door opened. In walked Hicks, carrying a stapled packet of papers. She handed them silently to Trump. A former Ralph Lauren model known for her sharp looks and confident mien, Hicks was now ashen-faced. Trump eyed the top sheet and began reading. “Uh huh,” he said, flipping to the next page. “Mmm hmmm.”
Priebus was growing impatient—and fearful. “What is it?” he said. “Tell me what’s happening.”
Trump ignored him. Turning to a new page, he scanned the print and then stopped suddenly, his expression and tone shifting at once. He looked up at Hicks. “This doesn’t sound like me.”
Just then, Bossie pulled out his iPad. Farenthold, the Post reporter, had sent the audio file. With the nominee’s team clustered around him, Bossie pressed Play. They listened. And then, Trump spoke up. “Well,” he said, “that’s me.”
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) was convinced during the 2016 presidential campaign that Donald Trump was actively assisted by Fox News and its late chief Roger Ailes, according to an explosive new book, American Carnage, The Guardian reports.
The book “reveals vivid details of the relationship between Trump and his favorite TV channel, as well as chronicling the dismay it invoked in senior Republicans.”
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.