NY Times:
“It’s astonishing, especially from someone who has been so supportive of law enforcement for as long as he has,” said Asha Rangappa, a former F.B.I. agent who now works as a TV analyst and a senior lecturer at Yale University. “I can’t believe that anyone believes that he really believes what he’s been saying. But it’s a standard defense counsel playbook. When you don’t have the facts on your side, you attack the investigators.”
If you were a NYer around in Rudy’s day, it’s not astonishing at all. He’s always been a racist blowhard. Really, he has.
TPM:
In Bizarre Interview, Giuliani Says Some Of His Own Statements Are Just Rumors
Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani on Sunday called his own public statements “rumors” and contradicted them several times when pressed about a hush money payment made on Trump’s behalf to an adult film star.
Giuliani also said Trump’s longtime fixer Michael Cohen, himself the subject of a months-long criminal investigation, could have made other such hush money payments.
Personnel choices are not Trump’s strong suit.
Politico:
Legal experts say the decision by Trump’s chatty counsel to keep publicly chewing over Cohen’s situation risks drawing the president into more courtroom drama. But Giuliani seems content to keep the attention focused on that tabloid-friendly fight, as the White House appears to count on Trump’s base continuing to forgive his alleged moral lapses — and as his team seems to bet that GOP voters will turn out in November if they believe it’s the only way to save the president’s political skin.
Discretion is not Trump’s strong suit.
CNBC:
Anger in France, Britain over Trump's gun law speech
- U.S. President Donald Trump caused anger in France and Britain by suggesting looser gun laws could have helped prevent deadly attacks in Paris in 2015 and linking knife crime in London to a handgun ban.
- In a speech to the National Rifle Association (NRA) on Friday, Trump mimicked the shooting of victims in the Paris rampage and said if civilians had been armed "it would have been a whole different story."
Diplomacy is not Trump’s strong suit, either.
Well, this nominee seems to combine all of Trump’s skills (personnel, discretion and diplomacy). Maybe not the best choice?
Politico:
Blankenship surging on eve of West Virginia Senate primary
Establishment Republicans are fretting about a late surge by the convicted coal bar
Particularly concerning to Republicans is Blankenship’s TV spending. Over the final six days of the race, the self-funding coal baron is set to spend over $640,000 on commercials, according to media buying totals — more than Jenkins and Morrisey combined. Blankenship has spent over $2.5 million on TV ads in total, far more than his rivals.
Well, Joe Manchin must be watching this closely.
WaPo:
Republicans whose jobs once seemed safe are struggling for a 2018 survival strategy
Republican Rep. Ted Budd opened the calendar on his iPhone during a campaign day last week to reveal a jam-packed schedule — wake up at 4:55 a.m., breakfast with veterans, an opioid discussion in another county — and yet he was worried that it wasn’t enough.
“I’m getting nervous because of the white space I see,” said Budd, pointing to the few blank lines on the schedule.
Across the country, dozens of House Republicans who previously coasted to victory are for the first time facing credible and well-financed Democratic opponents — and working furiously to find a strategy for survival.
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) delivered a stern message last month to the rank and file after a surprisingly narrow special election win in a reliably Republican Arizona district: Wake up, because Democrats are motivated.
FiveThirtyEight:
But while the 2018 map is the party’s steepest uphill climb in a long time, defending red-state Senate seats isn’t a new challenge for Democrats. In fact, they’ve gotten pretty good at it over the years. They haven’t had a choice: It gets less ink than the gerrymandered districts in the U.S. House, but the Senate — which reserves the same number of seats for a sparsely populated state as for a crowded one — has an inherent Republican bias as well. Within the past 25 years, Democratic majorities in the Senate — up through 1995, briefly from 2001 to 2002 and then finally from 2007 to 2015 — were possible because more Democrats represented red states than Republicans represented blue states. To wield a majority in 2019 and beyond, Democrats will simply (OK, not so simply) have to pull off the same trick.
BuzzFeed:
The Legal Fight Over DACA Is Now Even Messier. Here's What's Happening.
Trump ordered an end to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. Judges revived it. Now, Texas is suing to stop it again.
Upset at injunctions issued by federal judges in recent months that partially revived DACA, Texas and six other states filed a lawsuit this week challenging the legality of the program. The state asked for a preliminary injunction blocking the Trump administration from enforcing the terms of the original 2012 memorandum that created DACA, which has provided temporary protection against deportation and work authorization for hundreds of thousands of young, undocumented immigrants.