“Like everything else he inherited, he ran it straight into the ground.”
— Sen. Kamala Harris, quoted by the New York Times, on President Trump taking office after the longest economic expansion in U.S. history.
“Like everything else he inherited, he ran it straight into the ground.”
— Sen. Kamala Harris, quoted by the New York Times, on President Trump taking office after the longest economic expansion in U.S. history.
“President Trump has privately said that he intends to replace Secretary of Defense Mark Esper after the November election,” Bloomberg reports.
Meanwhile, Esper has told people close to him “that he intends to leave regardless of the election’s outcome, meaning he could exit the administration about two months before Trump does, if the president loses.”
President Trump vowed to save “suburban housewives” saying he’ll protect them from an “invasion” of poor people supposedly led by Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), the Black senator from New Jersey.
Said Trump: “The ‘suburban housewife’ will be voting for me. They want safety & are thrilled that I ended the long running program where low income housing would invade their neighborhood. Biden would reinstall it, in a bigger form, with Corey Booker in charge!”
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President Trump added a new adviser on the coronavirus pandemic, CNN reports.
Dr. Scott Atlas “frequently appears on Fox News and has advised Republicans in the past. And crucially, unlike the government’s medical experts who have advised Trump until now, has adopted a public stance on the virus much closer to Trump’s — including decrying the idea that schools cannot reopen this fall as ‘hysteria’ and pushing for the resumption of college sports.”
Said Trump: “He’s working with us and will be working with us on the coronavirus. And he has many great ideas. And he thinks what we’ve done is really good, and now we’ll take it to a new level.”
“President Trump’s interest in taking intelligence briefings has been declining steadily since his first months in office and has dropped to near zero in recent weeks,” according to a HuffPost review of all of his daily schedules.
“Trump went from a high of 4.1 briefings per week on average in March 2017 to 0.7 per week since July 1, shortly after it became public that he had ignored intelligence reports about Russia offering bounties to the Taliban for each American soldier killed in Afghanistan.”
“Monday’s briefing, in fact, was the first in August and the first since July 22. That month had only three briefings scheduled.”
President Trump told Fox Sports that he wants the National Football League to start their season this fall despite the pandemic, but he added: “If they don’t stand for the national anthem, I hope they don’t open.”
President Trump was given a series of deadlines to produce his DNA and other evidence as part of mandatory discovery in an ongoing defamation lawsuit, Law & Crime reports.
“President Trump has a ready solution for almost any crisis: more Donald Trump. In a template forged in his 2016 convention speech when he declared that ‘I alone can fix it,’ the president has repeatedly put himself forth as the answer, injecting himself into controversies and refusing to cede the spotlight. And that has only accelerated as he barrels toward Election Day,” the AP reports.
“He resumed the coronavirus task force briefings and, against the advice of some aides, sidelined the public health officials in favor of standing solo on stage. He has bet heavily that his one-on-one debates with Joe Biden will be his best chance to overcome his deficit in the polls.”
Speaker Nancy Pelosi and President Trump have not spoken in nearly 10 months, even as negotiations between the White House and Congress to address the coronavirus pandemic have stalled, CNN reports.
“Trump called the negotiators three times on Thursday night while they were in Pelosi’s office. But he only spoke with White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.”
“The calls underscored the rock-bottom relationship between the top leaders of the Republican and Democratic parties who are tasked with solving the health and economic crises.”
President Trump was abruptly pulled from a press briefing after a shooting outside the White House.
He returned to the podium roughly 10 minutes later.
The team helping President Trump prepare for the presidential debates includes four men: former Gov. Chris Christie, Jared Kushner, Bill Stepian and Jason Miller, according to Axios.
Tim Miller: “The first put the second guy’s dad in jail and made the third guy the fall man for their joint corruption. The fourth guy was kept out of the White House over a hooker scandal.”
Philip Bump itemizes the time President Trump spends doing things that are obviously not part of his job.
Jack Shafer: “It starts with a reporter, usually a female reporter, asking President Trump hard, tenacious questions at a news conference. Trump’s jaw seizes up, rattled and dumbfounded by the questions that he can’t or won’t answer, he abruptly ends the presser by saying, ‘Thank you, very much’ and stalking out of the room.”
Trump’s “increasingly skittish manner with the press marks a turning point in his presidency, a new moment where his usually reliable mouth almighty seems incapable of articulating a put-down or a blow-off response. Our two-fisted brawler of a president, always ready to smash the interlocutors from the press with a virtual folding chair, has replaced moxie with pouts. In the old days, he would have had a ready answer for the much-expected question… But now he’s like the former alpha leader of the troop. He makes a show of maintaining his dominance by beating his breast, but when challenged by somebody superior, he takes his beating then slinks off to a dark, safe place to lick his wounds.”
“The Lord and the Founding Fathers created executive orders because of partisan bickering and divided government.”
— White House economic adviser Peter Navarro, on Meet the Press.
Attorney General William Barr told Fox News that Democrats and the left are trying to tear down U.S. institutions in a pursuit for “total victory.”
Said Barr: “I think the left has essentially withdrawn from this model, and really represents a Rousseauian revolutionary party that believes in tearing down the system. They’re interested in complete political victory, they’re not interested in compromise, they’re not interested in dialectic exchange of views.”
He added that Democrats’ push for victory is their “substitute for a religion.”
President Trump on Twitter:
“So now Schumer and Pelosi want to meet to make a deal. Amazing how it all works, isn’t it. Where have they been for the last 4 weeks when they were ‘hardliners’, and only wanted BAILOUT MONEY for Democrat run states and cities that are failing badly? They know my phone number!”
Sen. Chuck Schumer told MSNBC this morning that neither he nor Speaker Nancy Pelosi have called Trump.
Meanwhile, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin told CNBC the White House is open to more coronavirus stimulus talks: “We’re prepared to put more money on the table.”
“President Trump on Sunday denied reports that the White House contacted the governor of South Dakota about carving his face into Mount Rushmore,” the New York Post reports.
Said Trump: “This is Fake News by the failing New York Times & bad ratings CNN. Never suggested it although, based on all of the many things accomplished during the first 3 1/2 years, perhaps more than any other Presidency, sounds like a good idea to me!”
President Trump’s aides selectively present him with flattering comments about him and charts that make him look good to keep him in a “positive feedback loop” on the coronavirus pandemic, the Washington Post reports.
Said one official: “Everyone is busy trying to create a Potemkin village for him every day. You’re not supposed to see this behavior in liberal democracies that are founded on principles of rule of law. Everyone bends over backwards to create this Potemkin village for him and for his inner circle.”
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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