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“He’s the president. I work with the president in delivering on our promises. What I told the president the week after the election, I said, ‘Mr. President, I want to do everything humanly possible to roll up my sleeves and lead the fight in the Senate to deliver on our promises.’”
— Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), declining to say whether he views President Trump as a friend or a foe, describing him as simply “the president,” the Washington Post reports.
50% to 41%
A new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll finds Democrats hold a 9-point lead among likely voters over Republicans in congressional preference, 50% to 41%. However, the same poll also shows President Trump at his highest job rating yet as president, 47% to 49%.
“He’s easily dislikable. I don’t think anybody could spend a lot of time with him and walk away feeling inspired or encouraged or believe that he in some way knows what it means to to live their life. They realize they can’t package him in that way.”
— Florida gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum (D), telling the Tampa Bay Times that rival Ron DeSantis (R) is “a uniquely unlikeable candidate.”
“Is there anything that qualifies Jared Kushner to be dealing with any of these issues? He’s an unsuccessful real estate developer who inherited millions of dollars and married the president’s daughter. He’s completely unqualified. This is gross nepotism and it’s just an embarrassment that he has any power at all.”
— Jeffrey Toobin, quoted by The Hill.
$1.06 billion
“Democratic candidates running for Congress this year collectively raised more than $1?billion for their campaigns — a record-shattering sum that highlights the party’s zeal to retake the House and Senate and underscores the enormous amount of money flowing into the midterm races,” the Washington Post reports. “The $1.06?billion raised through the end of September surpasses the nearly $900?million collected by Republican candidates for Congress in 2012 — previously the largest haul registered by a single party by this point in the election cycle.”
5%
President Trump “said he will ask all cabinet departments to cut their budgets by 5 percent next year, after the federal budget deficit swelled to its highest level since 2012 during the first full fiscal year of his presidency,” Bloomberg reports.
61%
A new Gallup poll finds that 61% of Americans favor stricter laws on the sale of firearms, down modestly from March, when 67% said this shortly after the Parkland, Florida, school shooting on February 14.
“I think it’s totally appropriate for people to look at me and say if I were to run for office again, ‘Well God darn you’re old.’ … Well, chronologically, I am old.”
— Joe Biden, saying that it would be “totally legitimate” to question his age if he mounts a White House bid in 2020, CNN reports.
92
“House Democrats aren’t just beating Republicans at the fundraising game—they’re annihilating them,” the National Journal reports.“Ninety-two Republican incumbents were outraised by a challenger in the third quarter of 2018, a sharp increase from the 56 outraised in the second quarter. And that topline doesn’t even fully capture the scope of Democrats’ cash advantage. More than 50 of those members were outraised at least 2-to-1 and 31 were outraised 3-to-1 or more.”
47%
Deadline: “The newsmag’s 1.8 rating among 18-49 year olds and 11.3 million viewers, while the strongest showing of any non-NFL program Sunday night, marks a 47% dive in the demo and 43% in total viewers, relative to Trump’s most recent previous 60 Minutes sit-down. … Trump had bagged a 3.4 demo rating, and 20M viewers overall, in his November 13, 2016 interview on the CBS newsmag, broadcast shortly after his election. That time, unlike this past Sunday, Trump enjoyed no NFL lead-in support.”
