President Trump’s lawyer “used a private Delaware company to pay a former adult-film star $130,000 in return for her agreeing to not publicly discuss an alleged sexual encounter with Mr. Trump,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“To further mask the identities of the people involved in the agreement, the parties used pseudonyms.”
“Trump administration appointee Carl Higbie resigned Thursday as chief of external affairs for the federal government’s volunteer service organization after a CNN KFile review of racist, sexist, anti-Muslim and anti-LGBT comments he made on the radio.”
New York Magazine: “There are new details about the president’s alleged relationship with adult-film star Stormy Daniels. According to a report by Mother Jones, Daniels once claimed that the president made her spank him with an issue of Forbes magazine.”
“The information came from an email exchange between two campaign consultants who worked with Daniels back in 2009, when she was considering running for Senator of Louisiana (one of her potential campaign slogans was “Stormy Daniels: Screwing people honestly.”)”
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President Trump “personally made the decision to curtail the testimony of former chief White House political strategist Steve Bannon before the House Intelligence Committee,” Foreign Policy reports.
“Trump acted to limit Bannon’s testimony based on legal advice provided by Uttam Dhillon, a deputy White House counsel, who concluded that the administration might have legitimate executive privilege claims to restrict testimony by Bannon and other current and former aides to the president.”
“But Dhillon has also concluded that Bannon and other current and former Trump administration officials do not have legitimate claims to executive privilege when it comes to providing information or testimony to special counsel Robert Mueller.”
Trump associates said the president “was furious” with White House chief of Staff John Kelly “both for what he said and for the tone he used” in describing some of his campaign proposals as “uninformed,” which Trump thought “made it appear he was a child who had to be managed,” according to the Washington Post.
“One Trump associate who spoke to the president Wednesday night said Trump thought Kelly’s comments made him look bad and that he was giving in to Democrats.”
“The president, this person said, particularly disliked the word ‘uninformed’ which appeared in news reports and has chafed for weeks at the characterization of him as not intelligent and flighty in the best-selling book about his presidency by author Michael Wolff.”
Former Trump White House staffer Sebastian Gorka has an active warrant out for his arrest in Hungary, BuzzFeed News reports.
“Gorka, whose exact role in the White House while serving as a deputy assistant to the president was never entirely clear, apparently is in trouble with the law over a charge of ‘firearm or ammunition abuse.'”
Politico: “Every quarter, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau formally requests its operating funds from the Federal Reserve. Last quarter, former director Richard Cordray asked for $217.1 million. Cordray, an appointee of President Barack Obama, needed just $86.6 million the quarter before that. And yesterday, President Donald Trump’s acting CFPB director, Mick Mulvaney, sent his first request to the Fed.”
“He requested zero.”
Jonathan Swan: “Late last night, a few hours after Fox News aired Bret Baier’s interview with John Kelly, a source close to the president told me Trump would explode when he saw what his chief of staff said. The source — who has spent a lot of time with Trump — predicted the president would hate the interview because Kelly came off as the mature professional who patiently educated an uninformed Trump, and helped him see the light and evolve on The Wall.”
“Sure enough, a few hours later Trump tweets his displeasure.”
Said the source: “Kelly has finally ventured into Steve Bannon territory when it comes to trying to create the perception that he’s the ‘great manipulator,’ saving the country from Trump’s ignorance. The difference is, Steve tried to develop that reputation in off-the-record conversations with reporters. Kelly did it openly on the country’s most-watched cable network. It’s the subtle difference between hubris and arrogance.”
“The Trump administration is drawing up plans to keep hundreds of national parks and monuments open to the public if the government shuts down this weekend, a precedent-setting change aimed at blunting anger over the disruption of federal services,” the Washington Post reports.
“The shuttering of iconic parks proved to be a political flash point during two previous government shutdowns, in 1995 and 2013. On both occasions, Republicans controlled Congress and a Democratic president sat in the White House; both times, Republicans shouldered much of the blame for ruining people’s vacations.”
“It’s been one year since Jared Kushner, senior adviser and son-in-law to the president, assumed office, but he’s yet to receive full security clearance for his role in the White House,” Newsweek reports.
“The unprecedented delay in clearance represents a violation of security norms and suggests that Kushner continues to receive special treatment due to his relationship to President Trump.”
A new Gallup poll finds other nations’ approval of U.S. leadership under President Trump hit a historical low of 30% in 2017.
“The measure, the lowest since Gallup began tracking it worldwide in 2007, signals an 18-point drop from a year earlier, when 48% approved of the national influence under former President Obama. It is the single largest year-to-year drop in approval of U.S. leadership — or of any country examined — to date. The steep decline, researchers said, can be largely attributed to the shift in leadership in the West Wing.”
Slate notes one result from President Trump’s medical exam “was conspicuously abnormal: the president’s body mass index.”
“At 6’3” and 239 pounds, Trump’s BMI is 29.9, exactly 0.1 units shy of one big league distinction: obesity. Remarkably, the president was found to be exactly 1 pound lighter than a weight that would have pushed him over the edge to receive the diagnosis of obesity. Similarly, if he were merely 1/10 of an inch shorter, he would also be considered obese.”
“I guess they all realized they were going to have to leave it to a president that scored the highest on tests.”
— President Trump, in an interview with Reuters, blaming his three immediate predecessors for failing to resolve the North Korea crisis, a day after his doctor gave him a perfect score on a cognitive test.
Jonathan Swan: “Steve Bannon made one conspicuous slip up in his closed-door hearing on Tuesday with the House Intelligence Committee… Bannon admitted that he’d had conversations with Reince Priebus, Sean Spicer and legal spokesman Mark Corallo about Don Junior’s infamous meeting with the Russians in Trump Tower in June 2016.”
“Bannon immediately realized he’d slipped up and disclosed conversations he wasn’t supposed to discuss, because they happened while he was chief strategist in the White House. Throughout the rest of the session, committee members — in particular Republican Trey Gowdy and Democrat Adam Schiff — hammered Bannon over the fact that he’d mentioned those conversations but refused to discuss anything else about his time in the White House.”
“Bannon’s lawyer, Bill Burck, told the committee in his opening remarks that Bannon wouldn’t answer any questions that relate to his time inside the White House or during the presidential transition. The committee caught him in the slip-up inside the first 90 minutes.”
A new Quinnipiac poll finds American voters disapprove of the job President Trump is doing, 57% to 38%.
Key finding: “Wide gender, racial and political gaps leave American voters divided on whether Trump is ‘mentally stable,’ as 45% say he is stable and 47% say he is not stable.”
“An American president who cannot take criticism — who must constantly deflect and distort and distract — who must find someone else to blame — is charting a very dangerous path. And a Congress that fails to act as a check on the President adds to the danger.”
— Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), in a speech on the Senate floor.
“Steve Bannon has struck a deal with special counsel Robert Mueller’s team and will be interviewed by prosecutors instead of testifying before the grand jury,” CNN reports.
“He is expected to cooperate with the special counsel.”
CNN’s chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta said that he believes tests reveal that President Trump has heart disease, The Hill reports.
Gupta said dating back to 2009, President Trump started to have “these tests that are actually looking for the presence of calcium in the blood vessels that lead to the heart.”
Said Gupta: “It was interesting when I spoke to Dr. Jackson at first, he said, he passed all the tests with flying colors. When I asked him specifically about that test, did he then concede that, in fact, the president does have heart disease. They’re going to be increasing the medications, including the cholesterol-lowering medications to try and combat that, but there’s no question, by all standards, by all metrics, anyway a doctor or cardiologist will look at it, the president does have heart disease.”
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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