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$3.5 million
Former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort “took out a $3.5 million mortgage through a shell company just after leaving the campaign, but the mortgage document that explains how he would pay it back was never filed — and Manafort’s company never paid $36,000 in taxes that would be due on the loan,” NBC News reports.
“At certain times Donald Trump has seemed like a budding authoritarian, a corrupt Nixon, a rabble-rousing populist or a big business corporatist. … But as Trump has settled into his White House role, he has given a series of long interviews, and when you study the transcripts it becomes clear that fundamentally he is none of these things. … At base, Trump is an infantalist. There are three tasks that most mature adults have sort of figured out by the time they hit 25. Trump has mastered none of them. Immaturity is becoming the dominant note of his presidency, lack of self-control his leitmotif.”
“The White House has got to do something soon to bring itself under control and in order. It’s got to happen. Obviously they’re in a downward spiral right now and they’ve got to figure out a way to come to grips with all that’s happening.”
— Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN), quoted by the Tennessean.
“The early Democratic jockeying to take on President Donald Trump has not gone unnoticed on the other side of the aisle — and Republicans concede there are quite a few potentially formidable contenders. … In interviews with two dozen GOP operatives, strategists and officials around the country, Republicans placed the most credible Democratic candidates into categories: the rising congressional stars (Kamala Harris) and the pure political outsiders (Mark Cuban), the fiery progressives (Elizabeth Warren) and the pragmatic moderates (John Hickenlooper).”
64%
A new Gallup poll finds 64% of U.S. adults say same-sex marriages should be recognized by the law as valid. “Although not meaningfully different from the 61% last year, this is the highest percentage to date and continues the generally steady rise since Gallup’s trend began in 1996.”
300,000
Associated Press: “By one estimate, 300,000 eligible voters in the state lacked valid photo IDs heading into the election; it is unknown how many people did not vote because they didn’t have proper identification. But it is not hard to find the Navy veteran whose out-of-state driver’s license did not suffice, or the dying woman whose license had expired, or the recent graduate whose student ID was deficient.”
“How does it all end? Not well for Trump. I’m not too good at the tea leaves, I don’t think anybody is. I just can’t believe that there isn’t something there on the Russia matter, with Trump doing all that he’s doing. He’s throwing every signal out that he’s got a problem, and he’s trying to make it go away. So that’s why I say I can’t imagine it ending real well for him.”
— Former Nixon White House counsel John Dean, in an interview with New York Magazine.
“A President enabled by a spineless and supine Congress that fails to exercise its oversight powers isn’t a weak executive at all: he is a potential despot. Using his authority to hire and fire federal officials, he can rapidly remake the government to his own design, appointing loyalists to key positions, eliminating potential threats, and undermining alternative repositories of power. … Authoritarian leaders in foreign countries seize and maintain power this way. And, despite his bungling start, this is the project that Donald Trump appears to have embarked upon.”
59.6%
Pew Research: “The black voter turnout rate declined for the first time in 20 years in a presidential election, falling to 59.6% in 2016 after reaching a record-high 66.6% in 2012. The 7-percentage-point decline from the previous presidential election is the largest on record for blacks. (It’s also the largest percentage-point decline among any racial or ethnic group since white voter turnout dropped from 70.2% in 1992 to 60.7% in 1996.) The number of black voters also declined, falling by about 765,000 to 16.4 million in 2016, representing a sharp reversal from 2012. With Barack Obama on the ballot that year, the black voter turnout rate surpassed that of whites for the first time. Among whites, the 65.3% turnout rate in 2016 represented a slight increase from 64.1% in 2012.”
51%
A new NBC News/Survey Monkey poll finds 54% of Americans think President Trump’s dismissal of FBI Director James Comey was not appropriate, while 38% say it was appropriate. In addition, 46% think Trump fired Comey due to his handling of the Russia investigation, another 24% think the dismissal was due to the Clinton email investigation and 22% said it was something else.
