Hunter Biden challenged Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. to a cage match, Reuters reports.
“It is unclear if or when this match would happen. The White House plans to host a similar event — but with actual UFC fighters — on June 14 as part of a series of events celebrating the semiquincentennial of the United States.”
Former President Joe Biden and former Speaker Nancy Pelosi recently had lunch, MS NOW reports.
Rachel Bade: “Could Pelosi be doing a little preemptive damage control before the Biden books go to print?”
“Perhaps. She’d certainly be wise to smooth things over before the release date, given that she could undoubtedly play a starring role in the narrative. Once seen as a top Biden ally — singlehandedly muscling the ex-president’s signature legislative achievements through a narrow majority — Pelosi was later branded a traitor by some in Biden’s orbit for losing faith in his ability to run again.”
“Reports suggest Pelosi has long sought to clear the air with the former president. But until now, it sure seemed like the Bidens were giving her the cold shoulder.”
CNN: “A US Secret Service special agent on former first lady Jill Biden’s security detail accidentally shot their own leg at the Philadelphia International Airport Friday morning, an agency official said.”
Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) called former Attorney General Merrick Garland a “coward” over his handling of prosecuting Jan. 6 insurrectionists, Politico reports.
Said Gallego: “We didn’t move fast enough in holding Jan. 6 Republicans, the president, everyone up and down the organizations that were helping out, accountable.”
He added that he “100 percent” blames Garland for not being more aggressive.
Former first lady Jill Biden announced that she will release a memoir of her White House years: View from the East Wing.
“The Justice Department, in the wake of calls by President Trump to criminally investigate former President Joseph R. Biden Jr., scrutinized whether Mr. Biden and his aides broke the law in using the autopen to sign presidential documents, but was ultimately unable to move forward with making a case,” the New York Times reports.
“The department’s failure to build a criminal case against Mr. Biden and his aides is the latest example of its increasing inability to follow through on Mr. Trump’s demands and bring indictments against those he wants to be criminally targeted. Some of those cases were rejected by grand juries, some were rejected by judges and some, like the autopen case, were abandoned by prosecutors.”
CNN: “The 83-year-old Biden continues to feel out a post-presidency that may prove to be one of the shortest in history and is already one of the most complicated.”
“There are days when Biden is heartbroken, indignant or in disbelief about what is happening as President Donald Trump — the man he defeated in 2020 — returned and moved not just to tear down his accomplishments, but to dig in with petty insults like the autopen photograph he put in Biden’s spot in the ‘Presidential Walk of Fame’ installed at the White House.”
“Biden knows that because of decisions he and close advisers made and the trends roiling the country and the world, he risks being forgotten for what he feels he accomplished as president and who he is as a man. He’s watching the attacks on democratic norms and the international order that he warned would come from Trump’s return — and registering the disgust directed his way that so many Democrats feel because they blame him for helping make that possible.”
“President Trump has become so politically toxic that voters now say Joe Biden — whose unpopularity forced him into early retirement — did a better job as president, according to three new polls,” Axios reports.
“One year in, Trump has squandered virtually every advantage that won him the presidency. The White House has nine months to turn the ship around before a potential midterm wipeout for Republicans.”
A new Rasmussen Reports survey finds 48% of respondents prefer Joe Biden’s tenure as president, while just 40% said Donald Trump is doing a better job.
The ex-husband of former first lady Jill Biden has been indicted on a murder charge in the death of his current wife, CNN reports.
President Trump mocked ex-President Joe Biden for only giving speeches that lasted “a matter of seconds” — except for one time where he claimed Biden was “high as a kite,” Mediaite reports.
Said Trump: “It would be very short —although the one time they had him spruced up pretty good, remember? he was high as a kite… He was floatin’ he was up there, way up.”
Hunter Biden estimated in a new interview that he is in debt to the tune of up to $15 million, and admitted that “I have no idea” how to pay that amount back, the New York Post reports.
Said Biden: “Nobody’s riding to the rescue for Hunter Biden. My dad, you know, entered the presidency as the poorest man to ever take the office. And he left the presidency as the, you know, not poorest, I mean, he’s fine, but he has no, we have no generational wealth.
“Former President Joe Biden has raised only a small fraction of the money needed to construct a presidential library, leaving uncertainty about when a library might be built and its viability as a stand-alone project,” the New York Times reports.
“In filings with the Internal Revenue Service, Mr. Biden’s library foundation revealed that it had not received any new donations in 2024, the final year of his presidency. The foundation was instead seeded entirely with $4 million left over from his 2021 inauguration.”
“It feels like a lifetime since Joe Biden was in the Oval Office, such is the turmoil and transformation unleashed since he went home to Delaware,” CNN reports.
“But one person in Washington never stops obsessing about the 46th president — his predecessor and successor.”
“Donald Trump rarely appears in public without complaining about Biden’s policies or flinging an insult at his mental or physical capacity.”
David Axelrod: “Donald Trump recaptured the White House in part by relentlessly exploiting Joe Biden’s failure to heed widespread concerns about the rising cost of living.”
“Now, bizarrely, President Trump is walking himself—and his party—into the same perilous trap by denying the economic reality that working families are living.”
“In the weeks after Joe Biden was elected president, advisers delivered a warning: His approach to immigration could prove disastrous,” the New York Times reports.
“Mr. Biden had pledged to treat unauthorized immigrants more humanely than President Donald Trump, who generated widespread backlash by separating migrant children from their parents.”
“But Mr. Biden was now president-elect, and his positions threatened to drastically increase border crossings, experts advising his transition team warned in a Zoom briefing in the final weeks of 2020…. That jump, they said, could provoke a political crisis.”
Former President Joe Biden delivered a strong critique of his successor, arguing to a room of supporters that President Donald Trump has “taken a wrecking ball” to democracy, CNN reports.
Said Biden: “I knew Trump was going to taking a wrecking ball to the country, but I had no idea, I have to admit, I didn’t know there was going to be an actual wrecking ball.”
At times during the remarks, Biden addressed Trump directly: “You act in a way that embarrasses us as a nation, quite frankly.”
Andrew Sullivan: “There was something perfect about the Supreme Court’s review of President Trump’s tariff spree the week Dick Cheney passed away. What the court was weighing, after all, was Cheney’s core legacy: the limitless executive power now claimed by Cheney’s Frankenstein monster, Trump.”
“In that sense, Dick Cheney pioneered the Trump presidency. Without Cheney and Addington, no Trump and Vought. Cheney was never a constitutional conservative; he was always an extremist, a pioneer of an elected, unaccountable, and secret monarchy that has reached its zenith in the GOP today. His attempt to cast himself in recent years as some kind of principled, old-school constitutional Republican is classic Cheney: i.e. shameless misdirection, calculated spin, and a big fat lie.”
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.
