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You are here: Home / Archives for Trump Transition

Trump Let Rival CEO Listen In On Call

February 16, 2017 at 10:57 am EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“Days before taking office, President-elect Donald Trump made two surprise calls to the Air Force general managing the Pentagon’s largest weapons program, the Lockheed Martin Corp. F-35 jet. Listening in on one of those calls was Dennis Muilenburg — the CEO of Lockheed’s chief rival, Boeing,” Bloomberg reports.

“Trump, who has repeatedly criticized the $379 billion F-35 program as ‘out of control,’ made the highly unusual calls to Lieutenant General Chris Bogdan on Jan. 9 and Jan. 17… Muilenburg, whose company makes a fighter jet Trump has suggested might be an alternative to the F-35, was in the president-elect’s New York office for a meeting during the second call. He appeared caught off-guard but was able to listen in on the call, according to the people, who asked to remain anonymous discussing sensitive information. One of the people said the call was on speakerphone.”

Filed Under: National Security, Trump Transition Tagged With: Boeing, Lockheed Martin

Christie Hits Flynn for Conversations with Russia

February 12, 2017 at 12:00 pm EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) criticized President Trump’s national security adviser Michael Flynn, “saying he needs to clear up questions about whether he discussed sanctions in his pre-inauguration conversations with the Russian ambassador to the United States,” CNN reports.

Said Christie: “That’s a conversation he is going to need to have with the President and the vice president to clear that up, so that the White House can make sure that they are completely accurate about what went on.”

Filed Under: National Security, Trump Transition Tagged With: Chris Christie, Michael Flynn, Russia

Most Agencies Still Missing Deputies

February 4, 2017 at 10:43 am EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Politico: “The president has named just three deputy secretaries — at the Commerce Department, Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security. The delay in filling these deputy and other high-level political appointee positions could have far-reaching consequences, as deputies act as the chief operating officers at federal agencies. Experts say experienced No. 2s are essential to ensuring the smooth implementation of Trump’s policy proposals.”

Filed Under: Trump Transition

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Ethics Chief Warned Trump About Vetting Cabinet Picks

February 2, 2017 at 6:12 pm EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“The federal government’s ethics watchdog warned President Trump’s transition team last fall about its ‘unprecedented’ and risky approach to staffing the cabinet,” according to new emails obtained by NBC News.

“The emails echo earlier transition communications, which showed Trump aides rebuffing the office’s effort to offer ethics advice on blind trusts and nominees.”

Filed Under: Trump Transition

Why Today’s Protests Matter

January 21, 2017 at 5:06 pm EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Jonathan Chait: “It matters that Trump drew a sparse crowd to inaugural festivities that he had billed beforehand as a historic, Jacksonian uprising of The People. And it matters much more that millions of Americans came out on a Saturday to register their protest. It is not only catharsis, though catharsis is better than depression. The message has been heard by the political class, Republican and Democratic alike…”

“The demobilization of the Democratic base is over. The prospect of a Democratic wave may not stop Republicans, and it may not even give them pause. But the governing party had probably assumed the clock would not start for months on the liberal backlash. Now the clock is ticking already.”

Filed Under: Trump Transition

Speech Dims GOP Hopes for a Traditional Trump Agenda

January 21, 2017 at 4:28 pm EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

New York Times: “While some of his advisers suggested that he would slip back into a more conventional Republican approach, Mr. Trump dropped hints in interviews, Twitter posts and other public comments that he intended to push his party away from its free-market, internationalist dogma on trade, foreign alliances, immigration, infrastructure spending and prescription drug access.”

“The hints are over.”

“An inaugural speech delivered with the same blunt force that propelled Mr. Trump’s insurgent campaign has dashed Republican hopes for a more traditional agenda. With his “new decree,” he declared himself modern America’s first populist president — and all but dared his own party to resist his Republican reformation.”

Filed Under: Trump Transition

Trump Didn’t Write His Own Speech

January 21, 2017 at 9:10 am EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Aides insisted during the transition that President Trump wrote his own inaugural address but a White House official now tells the Wall Street Journal that “much of the speech was written by Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon, two of Mr. Trump’s top advisers.”

Filed Under: Speechwriting, Trump Transition

An Inaugural Celebration That Rings Hollow

January 20, 2017 at 9:56 am EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

David Frum: “For the 58th time, the system has worked, and power has smoothly transferred from one heir of George Washington to another. The truth is not so happy. With full advance notice, and despite the failure to gain a plurality of the nation’s vote, the United States will soon inaugurate someone who owes his office in some large part to a hostile foreign intelligence operation. Who is, above and beyond that, a person whose character that leaves him unqualified to hold the presidency, and threatens the country with an impending sequence of financial and espionage scandals—a constitutional crisis on two legs.”

“The real message of today is that the system has failed. The challenge of the morrow is to know what to do to save the remainder.”

Filed Under: Trump Transition

Not the Way the GOP Had Planned

January 20, 2017 at 9:10 am EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Molly Ball: “But the Republican Party that takes over Washington as Trump assumes the presidency is not one the Priebus of a few years ago might have recognized. Trump won the GOP primary, and then the general election, on a populist-nationalist platform that upended much of the party’s conservative dogma. Many Republican elders abandoned him, offended in principle and sure he could not win. They got their comeuppance on Election Night.”

“In the weeks since, Trump has moved on every level to demonstrate his dominance: over the party organization, over Republicans in Congress, over the press and the public arena. Not for him to compromise, to accommodate, to forgive. He enters the White House as determined as ever to divide and conquer, to punish his enemies, to do things his way and sideline the enforcers of the old order.”

Filed Under: Republicans, Trump Transition

Is Trump Stronger Than He Seems?

January 20, 2017 at 8:16 am EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Nate Cohn: “One piece of evidence seems consistent with this possibility: the seeming optimism about his presidency.”

“Take the most recent Quinnipiac poll. At first glance, it’s bleak for Mr. Trump. Just 37 percent of registered voters — a narrower group than the adult population — view him favorably or approve of his performance. But just about every other question is better for Mr. Trump: 45 percent think he’ll take the nation in the right direction, and 52 percent of registered voters are optimistic about the next four years with Mr. Trump as president.”

“Just about every new poll tells a similar story.”

Filed Under: Trump Transition

Quote of the Day

January 20, 2017 at 8:13 am EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“There is no den she will not go into. When my men are petrified to go on a certain network I say, ‘Kellyanne, will you go?’ Then she gets on and she just destroys them. So anyway, thank you, baby.”

— Donald Trump, quoted by the Daily Mail, paying tribute to Kellyanne Conway at a campaign donors dinner.

Filed Under: Trump Transition Tagged With: Kellyanne Conway

Trump Gets a New Phone

January 20, 2017 at 8:10 am EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

New York Times: “This week, Trump traded in his Android phone for a secure, encrypted device approved by the Secret Service with a new number that few people possess. The official rationale was security. But some of Mr. Trump’s new aides, who have often been blindsided when a reporter, outside adviser or officeseeker dialed the president-elect directly, expressed relief.”

Filed Under: Trump Transition

Previewing Trump’s Speech

January 20, 2017 at 8:08 am EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Mike Allen says Donald Trump’s inauguration speech will have three themes:

  • “The speech is an attempt to address the deep structural problems facing American society… We’re talking here about decades-long problems.”
  • The speech is “not ideological”: “It’s a rejection of ideological thinking. Ideological thinking is always looking at the world through a strictly dogmatic prism. It’s having a set of beliefs that are uncompromising.”
  • The speech will convey “that a nation and its people and its affairs are like a family and you need to take care of them.”

Filed Under: Trump Transition

Trump Aides Jockey for the Best Offices

January 20, 2017 at 7:31 am EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Politico: “In the two months since Donald Trump won the most coveted office in the United States, his aides have quietly jostled for the next most valuable workspace—the short corridor just down the hall from the Oval Office. Reince Priebus will occupy the corner suite at the hallway’s end that is traditionally reserved for the chief of staff. In between, Steve Bannon, Trump’s chief strategist, will work in one of the handful of coveted corridor offices, as will Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and his most trusted confidante, according to three officials familiar with the office assignments.”

“Around the corner is the space where soon-to-be Vice President Mike Pence, the designated point man for Trump’s legislative agenda, will sit when he’s in the West Wing. Upstairs will be Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s old campaign manager and incoming counselor, in a suite occupied by Karl Rove under President George W. Bush and then Valerie Jarrett under President Barack Obama.”

Filed Under: Trump Transition

White House South

January 20, 2017 at 7:25 am EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Playbook: “Donald Trump is not going to spend as much time in New York as some think. We’re told that Trump will head south to Mar-a-Lago much more frequently.”

Filed Under: Trump Transition

This Is Really Happening

January 20, 2017 at 7:20 am EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“It’s real. It’s happening. We all knew this day would come — it’s inevitable, like death and never seeing his taxes.”

Filed Under: Trump Transition

‘None of Us Knows What Is Going to Happen’

January 20, 2017 at 7:16 am EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Politico: “Everything in Washington is a question—what kind of bills are going to come through Congress, how radically Republicanism and conservatism are going to be reshaped, what the Democratic Party is going to do in an attempt to be relevant again, how much is going to be dictated by the president’s mood on any given day, what would constitute everything going right, what will happen when something inevitably goes wrong, how much America is going to change with each day, with each minute.”

“The clock’s going to tick over to 12:01, Donald Trump will be the president, and no one knows the answers.”

New York Times: Administration, still in flux, struggles to fill key positions.

Filed Under: Trump Transition

Trump to Be Sworn In at Noon

January 20, 2017 at 7:08 am EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“Donald John Trump will be sworn in as the 45th president of the United States at noon on Friday, on a day that is expected to offer less ceremony and flourish than previous inaugurations — while ushering in a transformative shift in the country’s leadership,” the Washington Post reports.

“After taking the oath of office, President Trump will attend a luncheon at the Capitol, and his inaugural parade down Pennsylvania Avenue will begin about 3 p.m. That parade is supposed to last about 90 minutes — which would make it one of the shortest inaugural parades in recent history. Tens of thousands of protesters are expected during the day: Protest groups have vowed to gather at each of the 20 security checkpoints where attendees will enter the Mall.”

“Some groups have even vowed to ‘paralyze’ the city, by blocking traffic and even public transit.”

Politico: 5 things to watch at the inauguration

Filed Under: Trump Transition

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About Political Wire

goddard-bw-snapshotTaegan 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.

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