RELEASED BY "What's News" vk.com/wsnws TELEGRAM: t.

me/whatsnws

V O L . 1 3 • N O . 7 3 | T H U R S D A Y, S E P T E M B E R 1 2 , 2 0 1 9 | P O L I T I C O . C O M

Why the GOP shouldn’t breathe ‘I love Bernie, Biden camp thinks Matt
a sigh of relief after N.C. win but …’ the media just doesn’t get it Wuerker
Republicans held on to a district Trump carried Sanders needs to The ex-VP’s allies say neither detractors The cartoonist’s
by 12 points in 2016, while Democrats’ sagging convince voters he can in the media nor his rivals on the stump daily take on the
rural performance also drew notice. win a general election. understand the root of his appeal. world of politics.
PAGE 8 PAGE 18 PAGE 16 PAGE 22

Hoyer reverses
after inquiry
messaging flub
The No. 2 Democrat backtracks later, saying
he misunderstood an impeachment question
BY SARAH FERRIS,
HEATHER CAYGLE,
LAURA BARRÓN-LÓPEZ
AND ANDREW DESIDERIO
House Democratic leaders still
can’t get their impeachment mes-
saging straight.
Majority Leader Steny Hoyer on
Wednesday backtracked after say-
ing Democrats were not conduct-
ing an “impeachment inquiry,” a
PATRICK SEMANSKY/AP remark that directly contradicted
Sept. 11 remembrance at the Pentagon top House investigators and sowed
further confusion about Demo-
Donald Trump marked his third Sept. 11 anniversary as president, honoring victims, first responders and crats’ strategy.
U.S. troops at a Pentagon event. He also warned militants, saying, “If anyone dares to strike our land, we
will respond with the full measure of American power and the iron will of the American spirit.”
The No. 2 Democrat later re-
leased a statement that said he
misunderstood a question from
reporters, shortly after he told re-
porters that he did not believe the
House is conducting an impeach-
ment investigation — a direct con-
tradiction of the language in the
House’s own court cases against
President Donald Trump, and one
that senior Democrats fear could
hurt their standing with the federal
judiciary.
“I thought the question was in
IMPEACHMENT on page 12

Kennedy warned against

Senators make last-ditch plea to Trump on guns challenging Sen. Markey
BY BURGESS EVERETT
AND MARIANNE LeVINE
President Donald Trump spoke
for 40 minutes with three leading
senators Wednesday about ex-
panding background checks during
gun sales, keeping alive the Sen-
ate’s long-running gun negotia-
tions with the White House for at
least one more day.
Trump is expected to be briefed
on Thursday by White House of-
ficials on his options, according
to two GOP officials familiar with
the matter. And Sens. Joe Man-
chin (D-W.Va.), Chris Murphy (D-
Conn.) and Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) said
Trump could signal to the Hill what
package he could support as soon
as Thursday.
The senators described Trump
as engaged and inquisitive on the
speakerphone with them as they
made a last-ditch bid to get the
president to support expanding
background checks to cover private
sellers on the internet, advertise-
ments and gun shows. Trump has
been reluctant to commit to any
piece of legislation, but the sena-
tors said he’s doing enough to keep
their hopes alive.
“We’ll know hopefully by to-
morrow if there’s something we
can agree on, and once we agree
on something, we’re going to hold
to it and fight for it,” Manchin said.
Trump “can support something we
all can agree on is what I took out
of it.”
“We’re getting to the witching
hour, and we’ll know soon within
the next day or two about whether
the White House is willing to put a
substantive background checks bill
on the table,” Murphy said.
But Toomey, who is lobbying re-
luctant members of his own party
to support a new version of legis-
lation he wrote with Manchin in
2013, was more cautious on both
the timeline and the president’s
stance. Trump said they are “go-
ing to take a look at a lot of different
things.”
“He did not make a commitment
GUNS on page 13
BY BURGESS EVERETT
AND HEATHER CAYGLE
Joe Kennedy doesn’t have to just
beat incumbent Ed Markey to win
a Senate seat. He’ll also have to
trounce Chuck Schumer, Elizabeth
Warren, Senate Democrats’ cam-
paign arm — and maybe Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez. Kennedy Markey
The 38-year-old congressman
and grandson of Robert F. Kennedy “That kind of intraparty fighting
will confront a buzz saw of Wash- is not good in the long term. And I
ington Democrats if he takes the don’t think it will be good for Joe
leap to challenge the Massachu- Kennedy,” Sen. Jeanne Shaheen
setts senator, a move that would (D-N.H.) warned. “I’m a survivor
create a massive distraction for the of the [Ted] Kennedy-[Jimmy]
party in a safe Democratic state Carter fight. I know how long those
amid a battle for both the White sentiments last.”
House and the Senate majority. MASSACHUSETTS on page 15

PAID ADVERTISEMENT

Business Roundtable CEOs are calling on Congress

to lead on nationwide data privacy policy.
Learn more at privacy.brt.org
 RELEASED BY "What's News" vk.com/wsnws TELEGRAM: t.me/whatsnws

2 | POLITICO | T H U R S D A Y, S E P T E M B E R 1 2 , 2 0 1 9

“The answer we were pursuing

Boris / CAR-T Researcher

No two cancers are alike. The same goes for cancer treatments. Innovative immunotherapies
like CAR-T can now reprogram patients’ immune systems to destroy the disease.

Innovation.org
 RELEASED BY "What's News" vk.com/wsnws TELEGRAM: t.me/whatsnws

T H U R S D A Y, S E P T E M B E R 1 2 , 2 0 1 9 | POLITICO | 3

was right here inside my body.”

Justin / CAR-T Patient

Fighting cancer has never been more personal.

This is the future of medicine. For all of us.
 RELEASED BY "What's News" vk.com/wsnws TELEGRAM: t.me/whatsnws

4 | POLITICO | T H U R S D A Y, S E P T E M B E R 1 2 , 2 0 1 9

Consumers deserve
consistent privacy
protections nationwide.
American consumers, their devices and data constantly travel
across state lines. Without a national privacy law, consumers will
have inconsistent privacy protections from state to state.

Consumers deserve consistent privacy protections nationwide,

no matter where they are or what they’re doing — from banking,
shopping online, reading the news or communicating with friends.
The security of their personal data shouldn’t depend on where
they live, work or travel.

That’s why Business Roundtable CEOs, who operate in virtually every

corner of the U.S. economy and whose companies touch virtually
every American consumer, sent a letter to Congress this week
calling on policymakers to lead on nationwide data privacy policy.

Learn more at privacy.brt.org


Trump brings up failed Taliban
peace talks in Sept. 11 remarks
President Donald Trump on
Wednesday made his remarks
at a memorial service marking
the anniversary of the Sept. 11
attacks to bring up his dashed
peace talks with the Taliban.
Speaking at a ceremony at
the Pentagon, the president
reiterated his position that
he wants to bring the ensuing
military conflict in the Middle
East to an end, but pointed to a
deadly Taliban attack in Kabul,
Afghanistan, last week to
justify his sudden cancellation
of peace talks that were set to
take place at Camp David last
weekend.
“We do not seek confl ict.
But if anyone dares to strike
our land, we will respond with
the full measure of American
power and the iron will of
the American spirit, and that
spirit is unbreakable,” he said
during an otherwise standard
speech commemorating the
18th anniversary of the Sept. 11
attacks.
“We had peace talks scheduled
a few days ago,” he continued.
“I called them off when I learned
that they had killed a great
American soldier from Puerto
Rico and 11 other innocent
people.”
Trump alleged that the Taliban
had conducted the attack in
Kabul to gain leverage in the
talks and “to show strength. But
actually, what they showed is
unrelenting weakness.”
Reactions were mixed to
Trump’s revelation over the
weekend that he’d planned
to bring Taliban and Afghan
leaders to the U.S. to fi nalize a
peace deal that had been reached
in principle earlier in the week.
While some lamented Trump
upending the yearlong peace
talks, others asserted that the
U.S. should never have been
negotiating with terrorists in
the fi rst place, let alone inviting
them to a storied location like
Camp David.
The plan even divided the
White House and is said to
have been a major factor in
Tuesday’s ouster of national
security adviser John Bolton.
Bolton, a policy hawk who
clashed with Trump frequently,
vocally opposed the talks, as
did Vice President Mike Pence,
according to several media
reports.
And while Trump maintained
that he’s looking to strike a
peace deal, he also issued an
explicit warning to the Taliban,
claiming that in the wake of last
week’s attack “we have hit our
enemy harder than they have
ever been hit before and that will
continue.”
To applause from the audience
of officials, Sept. 11 survivors
and family members of victims,
Trump went on: “And if for any
reason they come back to our
country, we will go wherever
they are and use power the likes
of which the United States has
never used before — and I’m
not even talking about nuclear
power. They will never have seen
anything like what will happen
to them.”
— Caitlin Oprysko
RELEASED BY "What's News" vk.com/wsnws TELEGRAM: t.me/whatsnws
9/11 remembrance, and a threat
President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump hold a moment of silence Wednesday at the White
House on the 18th anniversary of 9/11. The president later spoke at a ceremony at the Pentagon. “The last
four days, we have hit our enemy harder than they have ever been hit before, and that will continue,” Trump
said, apparently referring to the Taliban. “And if for any reason they come back to our country, we will go
wherever they are and use power the likes of which the United States has never used before.”
‘Mr. Tough Guy’: Trump delivers
vicious takedown of Bolton
President Donald Trump on
Wednesday savaged former
national security adviser
John Bolton one day after
unceremoniously dismissing
him via Twitter — blasting his
hawkish ex-aide’s hard-charging
brand of diplomacy and partly
blaming him for launching the
Iraq War.
In a winding assessment
of his tenure atop the White
House’s National Security
Council, delivered to reporters
assembled in the Oval Office,
Trump alternated between
vicious criticism of Bolton and
an insistence that they had
maintained a warm working
relationship.
“John is somebody that I
actually get along with very
well. He made some very
big mistakes,” Trump said,
repeatedly referencing Bolton’s
invocation of a “Libya model” for
North Korean denuclearization in
April 2018.
“It set us back, and frankly,
he wanted to do things not
necessarily tougher than me,”
Trump said. “You know, John’s
known as a tough guy. He’s so
tough, he got us into Iraq. That’s
tough.”
Trump again claimed later in
his remarks that it was he, not
Bolton, who at times advocated
for a more muscular foreign
policy approach, despite Bolton’s
perceived proclivity for military
intervention and championing
of the 2003 invasion of Iraq from
FORTY FIVE
A daily diary of the Trump presidency
within former President George
W. Bush’s administration.
“You know, John wasn’t in
line with what we were doing,
and actually, in some cases, he
thought it was too tough what we
were doing,” Trump said. “‘Mr.
Tough Guy.’ You know, ‘You have
to go into Iraq.’ Going into Iraq
was something that he felt very
strongly about.”
Trump caught much of
Washington and seemingly
some senior members of his
administration off guard on
Tuesday when he tweeted the
news of Bolton’s ouster.
“I informed John Bolton last
night that his services are no
longer needed at the White
House,” the president wrote
online. “I disagreed strongly with
many of his suggestions, as did
others in the Administration, and
therefore … I asked John for his
resignation, which was given to
me this morning.”
White House press secretary
Stephanie Grisham on Tuesday
backed up the her boss’ story,
saying that Bolton and Trump
met in the Oval Office on Monday
night before the president
departed for a rally in North
Carolina. It was then that Trump
asked for Bolton’s resignation,
she said.
But Bolton offered a different
account in his own tweet posted
shortly after Trump’s messages
on Tuesday: “I offered to
resign last night and President
Trump said, ‘Let’s talk about it
tomorrow.’”
Trump stuck to his version of
T H U R S D A Y, S E P T E M B E R 1 2 , 2 0 1 9 | POLITICO | 5
EVAN VUCCI/AP
events on Wednesday, recounting
that “John came to see me the
night before” his ouster and
pointing to the chair in the Oval
Office where Bolton allegedly sat.
“I told him, ‘John, you have too
many people. You’re not getting
along with people. And a lot of
us, including me, disagree with
some of your tactics and some of
your ideas. And I wish you well,
but I’d like you to submit your
resignation,’” Trump said.
— Quint Forgey
Trump slams poll showing him
trailing several 2020 Democrats
President Donald Trump on
Wednesday dismissed a survey
showing him trailing several of
his top 2020 Democratic rivals
in head-to-head matchups,
and blamed “never ending
Fake News” for his dismal
performance in public polling
ahead of next year’s election.
The broadsides appeared on
the president’s Twitter feed
roughly a half-hour before he
and fi rst lady Melania Trump
walked out of the White House
to participate in a moment
of silence on the South Lawn
commemorating the 18th
anniversary of the Sept. 11
attacks. He is scheduled to
attend an observance ceremony
at the Pentagon later in the
morning.
“In a hypothetical poll, done by
one of the worst pollsters of them
all, the Amazon Washington
Post/ABC, which predicted I
would lose to Crooked Hillary
by 15 points (how did that work
out?), Sleepy Joe, Pocahontas and
virtually all others would beat me
in the General Election,” Trump
wrote online.
An ABC News/Washington
Post survey released Wednesday
showed Trump lagging behind
former Vice President Joe Biden,
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders,
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth
Warren, California Sen. Kamala
Harris and South Bend, Ind.,
Mayor Pete Buttigieg in potential
general election contests.
Biden enjoyed the most
significant advantage over
Trump among all adults polled,
16 percentage points ahead of the
president, while Sanders led by
12 points, Warren by 11 points,
Harris by 10 points and Buttigieg
by 6 points.
Among registered voters,
Biden is out in front of Trump by
15 points, Sanders by 9 points,
Warren and Harris by 7 points,
and Buttigieg by 4 points —
though Buttigieg’s advantage
is within the survey’s range of
sampling error.
“This is a phony suppression
poll, meant to build up their
Democrat partners. I haven’t
even started campaigning yet,
and am constantly fighting
Fake News like Russia, Russia,
Russia,” Trump tweeted.
Although the president
claimed he has not begun
campaigning for reelection, he
has held regular campaign-style
rallies across the country dating
back to the transition period
before his inauguration, and his
2020 campaign manager has been
in place since February 2018.
“Look at North Carolina
last night. Dan Bishop, down
big in the Polls, WINS. Easier
than 2016!” Trump continued,
pointing toward the Republican
state senator’s victory Tuesday
in the closely watched special
election for North Carolina’s 9th
Congressional District.
“If it weren’t for the never
ending Fake News about me,
and with all that I have done
(more than any other President
in the fi rst 2 1/2 years!), I would
be leading the ‘Partners’ of
the LameStream Media by 20
points,” he concluded. “Sorry,
but true!”
Trump most recently railed
against polls by news outlets on
Tuesday, after an ABC News/
Washington Post survey reported
his job approval rating dropping
to 38 percent — a decrease of 6
points from a peak of 44 percent
approval in July.
“One of the greatest and most
powerful weapons used by the
Fake and Corrupt News Media is
the phony Polling Information
they put out,” he charged in a
tweet. “Many of these polls are
fi xed, or worked in such a way
that a certain candidate will look
good or bad. Internal polling
looks great, the best ever!”
The ABC News/Washington
Post national poll was conducted
Sept. 2 to Sept. 5, including a
random sample of 1,003 adults.
The overall margin of error is
plus or minus 3.5 percentage
points, and the margin of
error among the sample of 877
registered voters is plus or minus
4 percentage points.
— Quint Forgey
 RELEASED BY "What's News" vk.com/wsnws TELEGRAM: t.me/whatsnws

6 | POLITICO | T H U R S D A Y, S E P T E M B E R 1 2 , 2 0 1 9

Your data.
Your choice.

zíČü'ííÉá½³³íČçćÎ¥ĀùíĘ½ŚČáćííáĀćÎ¥ć
keep your data private, safe, and secure.
g.co/privacy
 RELEASED BY "What's News" vk.com/wsnws TELEGRAM: t.me/whatsnws

T H U R S D A Y, S E P T E M B E R 1 2 , 2 0 1 9 | POLITICO | 7

Choose what
data gets saved.
Activity Controls let you decide what
data is used to personalize your
experience on Google services. From
the things you search to the places you
go, you control what data gets saved.

Choose how long

your data is saved.
Auto-delete lets you choose a
time limit for how long your search,
browsing, and location history are
saved. Data older than the limit you
choose will be continuously and
automatically deleted from
your account.

Choose to delete
your data altogether.
My Activity lets you see everything
you’ve searched, viewed, and watched
using Google services. Delete any
activity you don’t want saved to
your account.
 RELEASED BY "What's News" vk.com/wsnws TELEGRAM: t.me/whatsnws

8 | POLITICO | T H U R S D A Y, S E P T E M B E R 1 2 , 2 0 1 9

Why GOP shouldn’t breathe a sigh of relief after N.C. win

Republicans narrowly
held on to a district
Trump carried by
12 points in 2016
BY STEVEN SHEPARD,
LAURA BARRÓN-LÓPEZ
AND ALEX ISENSTADT
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Republicans
went all-in to keep hold of a key
congressional district in a special
election Tuesday, and they won —
but they still have good reason to be
concerned about the result.
While the GOP can celebrate the
election of a new congressman, Dan
Bishop, his 2-percentage-point vic-
tory in a district President Donald
Trump carried by 12 points in 2016
continues a worrisome trend for the
party, which suffered heavy losses in
the 2018 midterms and has not seen
the political environment improve
as Trump gears up for reelection.
Trump cannot win a second term
without improving his political
position, and Democrats know it,
casting Bishop’s narrow win as a
sign of progress in North Carolina.
But Democrats also saw worrying
trends of their own on Tuesday, as
their candidate Dan McCready ben-
efited from a surge in metropolitan
support that would have brought
them victory — if not for an even
stronger swell in rural support for BRIAN BLANCO/GETTY IMAGES
Bishop and the GOP. Dan Bishop celebrates after winning North Carolina’s 9th District seat on Tuesday. Bishop based his win in a red district on improved turnout in exurban
In short, Tuesday’s results out- and rural areas. “Trump’s support in these mixed rural-suburban districts is really strong,” said David McIntosh, president of the Club for Growth.
lined the path to 2020 victory for
both parties, cut along the fun-
damental trend of politics in the take the House last year. And next it’s hard to argue with results: Mc- includes parts of Charlotte and a spirited primary race from a self-
Trump era: cities and suburbs year, it will decide whether Trump Cready had carried the surround- its southern suburbs, 56 percent funding opponent accusing him of
swinging more and more Demo- gets another term or a Democrat ing county, Cumberland County, to 43 percent, up from a 10-point insufficient loyalty to Trump, in
cratic, while the president’s ap- takes the White House for four by more than 4 percentage points win in 2018. Those are some of the addition to the challenge of seek-
peal brings exurbs and rural voters years. last year. But Bishop won it by the same trends that led the party to ing reelection in a swing state.
deeper into the GOP fold. Trump Trump’s election-eve rally for narrowest of margins on Tues- lose Michigan, Pennsylvania and Republicans were quick to trum-
pushed harder on one side of the Bishop brought thousands to Fay- day, also making improvements in Wisconsin in the 2016 presidential pet the success of their coordinated
scale to win in 2016; Democrats etteville on Monday night on the neighboring counties far from the race, even if stronger numbers in effort — from last-minute visits
pushed back on the other side to eastern edge of the district, and Charlotte suburbs where McCready metropolitan areas can put new from Trump and Vice President
was strongest. states on the map for the party. Mike Pence, all the way down to
“Trump’s support in these mixed “If we don’t connect with rural the congressional leaders and the
rural-suburban districts is really voters — if we don’t show up in constellation of official and outside
strong,” said David McIntosh, 2020 and win these places back — groups and super PACs — in push-
president of the conservative Club then Trump wins,” Montana Gov. ing Bishop across the finish line.
for Growth and a former Indiana Steve Bullock, a candidate for the That may not be replicable in
congressman. Democratic presidential nomina- November 2020 all the way down
Robert L. Allbritton Republicans agreed the party’s tion, tweeted late Tuesday night. the ballot. But Trump’s robust
PUBLISHER & EXECUTIVE CHAIRMAN fortunes are tied to Trump’s in Kellyanne Conway, the former campaign operation — which he
Patrick Steel 2020 — and argued the results on GOP campaign pollster now work- continues to build as Democrats
CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER Tuesday suggested that might not ing as a counselor to Trump in the fight for their party’s nomination
be a bad thing. White House, touted Trump as the — will be formidable, despite the
Matthew Kaminski “The rest of the party is going to difference-marker, boosting “en- president’s low political standing
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF live or die based on how the presi- thusiasm, optimism and turnout” compared with past incumbents.
dent, in ’20, performs,” said Pat- for Bishop with Monday’s rally. “The White House, Republican
Carrie Budoff Brown rick Sebastian, a GOP consultant in “The haters waste so much time leadership and all our Republican
EDITOR
the state. “If Trump can win North trying to insult and impede the and conservative partners were
CONGRESSIONAL STAFF Carolina by a point or two, that’s president that they fail to grasp there for us every step of the way
BEN WEYL CONGRESS EDITOR HEATHER CAYGLE, KYLE CHENEY, excellent news for the party.” the political currency he conveys in because they all understood what
DAVID KIHARA SENIOR EDITOR ANDREW DESIDERIO, BURGESS EVERETT, Meanwhile, Democrats were tight races like this,” Conway said. was at stake in this election,”
JOHN BRESNAHAN CONGRESSIONAL BUREAU CHIEF SARAH FERRIS, MARIANNE LeVINE, quick to find the silver lining in Mc- The president took even more Bishop said in his victory speech
MELANIE ZANONA REPORTERS Cready’s narrow defeat. Rep. Cheri credit for Bishop’s win, writing in Tuesday night.
NEWSPAPER STAFF Bustos of Illinois, the chairwoman a victory lap on Twitter that Bishop For McCready, who campaigned
BILL KUCHMAN ASSISTANT MANAGING EDITOR SUSHANT SAGAR COPY DESK CHIEF of the Democratic Congressional was trailing and “asked me for help, for this House seat for 27 months —
M. SCOTT MAHASKEY DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY ANDY GOODWIN, JUDAH TAYLOR, Campaign Committee, noted that [and] we changed his strategy to- launching a campaign in 2017, suf-
MATT WUERKER EDITORIAL CARTOONIST ROBIN TURNER COPY EDITORS there are nearly three dozen GOP- gether, and he ran a great race.” fering an apparent defeat in 2018
held House seats that are less Bishop’s embrace of the presi- only to run again in 2019 when the
Republican-leaning than North dent — in the closing days of the previous election was voided amid
For corrections or questions regarding the newspaper, email bweyl@politico.com or dkihara@politico.com. Carolina’s 9th District. campaign, he repeatedly decried credible allegations of ballot fraud
POLITICO serves the United States Senate and SEPTEMBER’S PUBLISHING SCHEDULE “We fell an inch short tonight, the treatment Trump had received — he sounded some of the same bi-
House of Representatives, the White House but it took more than $6 million in from Democrats and the news me- partisan notes that twice brought
and offices of the executive branch, Cabinet departments and
federal agencies, the Supreme Court, lobbyists and special outside Republican spending and a dia and said he would go to Con- him close to winning a congres-
interest groups, the media, airline and rail passengers, paid last-minute Trump rally to scrape gress as a vocal Trump defender — sional seat Democrats haven’t held
subscribers and select nonpaid recipients. Reproduction of
this publication in whole or in part is prohibited except with the by in a district that the president also serves as a playbook for other since the 1960s.
written permission of the publisher. POLITICO is nonideological carried by 11.9 points,” Bustos said. Republicans. “We may not have won this cam-
and nonpartisan.
Democrats did increase their “Republicans should be watch- paign, but that does not mean we
POLITICO is published Tuesday through Thursday when
Congress is in session, and on Wednesday when Congress is in margins in and around Charlotte ing: Run with the president and were wrong,” McCready said in his
recess for one week or less, by POLITICO LLC. Subscriptions are in the election, but they were win,” Conway said. concession speech. “And as long
$200 per year or $350 for two years for domestic subscribers,
and $600 per year overseas. POLITICO is printed at Evergreen POLITICO.com swamped by Bishop’s stronger per- That could include vulnerable in- as there are people who thrive off
Printing and Publishing Co. Inc., Bellmawr, N.J. POSTMASTER: PHONE (703) 647-7999 • FAX (703) 647-7998 formance east of the city. McCready cumbents like GOP Sen. Thom Til- our division, there is still work to
Send change of address to POLITICO, P.O. Box 36, Congers, NY 1000 WILSON BLVD., 8TH FLOOR
10920-0036. © POLITICO LLC, 2018. ARLINGTON, VA 22209 won Mecklenburg County, which lis of North Carolina, who is facing be done.”
 RELEASED BY "What's News" vk.com/wsnws TELEGRAM: t.me/whatsnws

T H U R S D A Y, S E P T E M B E R 1 2 , 2 0 1 9 | POLITICO | 9

Because the whole world

fits right in your arms,
providing you access to
medicine is our mission.

Mylan congratulates the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation on its

2019 ALC and supports its mission of advancing the global black community
by informing policy and educating the public.
At Mylan, delivering better health for a better world isn’t our job. It’s our mission.

MYLAN and the Mylan Better Health for a Better World logo are registered trademarks of Mylan Inc.
©2019 Mylan N.V. All Rights Reserved.
NON-2019-1248

10 | POLITICO | T H U R S D A Y, S E P T E M B E R 1 2 , 2 0 1 9
White House moves to ban flavored e-cigarettes
Vaping-related illness
that has sickened 450
and is tied to six
deaths prompts action
BY ADRIEL BETTELHEIM,
ADAM CANCRYN
AND SARAH OWERMOHLE
The Trump administration is
finalizing a ban on flavored e-
cigarettes after the outbreak of a
vaping-related illness that’s sick-
ened 450 people and resulted in at
least six deaths.
“We can’t allow people to get
sick and we can’t have our youth
be so affected,” President Donald
Trump said during an Oval Office
meeting with Health and Human
Services Secretary Alex Azar and
acting Food and Drug Administra-
tion Commissioner Ned Sharpless.
“People are dying from vaping, so
we’re looking at it very closely.”
Democrats and an increasing
number of Republicans in Con-
gress have pressed for flavor bans,
age restrictions and other curbs on
the sale of vaping products. They’ve
urged the FDA to move faster to in-
vestigate and regulate e-cigarettes,
which manufacturers have touted
as devices to wean people from tra-
ditional cigarettes but have led to
what the FDA calls an “epidemic”
of youth vaping of nicotine.
Public health officials haven’t
established a firm cause for the
vaping-related respiratory ill-
nesses. Counterfeit or black-market
vapes might be playing a role, but
legal vapes haven’t been ruled out.
Many of the cases have been linked
to vaped forms of marijuana and
one of its compounds, CBD.
Capitol Hill Democrats swiftly
backed the administration’s move,
calling it long overdue and further
evidence that the growing e-ciga-
rette market needs tight oversight.
Democrats, led by Sen. Dick Durbin
of Illinois, had harshly criticized
the administration’s response to
Senators back Trump’s wall despite move to shift military funding
BY MARIANNE LeVINE
AND JAMES ARKIN
Vulnerable Senate Republicans
are standing with President Donald
Trump and his efforts to build the
wall. And it may cost them.
Last week, the Trump adminis-
tration unveiled its plan to divert
$3.6 billion in military construc-
tion funding to build the president’s
border wall, a move that came
after Trump declared a national
emergency in February to access
the funds. Among the states with
projects the administration plans to
raid are Colorado, Arizona, North
Carolina, Texas and South Carolina
— all of which have senators up for
reelection in 2020.
But Democrats are seeking to
pressure Republicans into going
on the record with their support
for Trump’s national emergency
by forcing another vote disapprov-
ing of it in the next month. Under
federal law, Democrats can bring
up the disapproval vote every six
months.
Republicans insist the money
will be replenished later on and re-
iterated their support for the border
RELEASED BY "What's News" vk.com/wsnws TELEGRAM: t.me/whatsnws
“We can’t allow people to get sick and we can’t have our youth be so affected,” President Donald Trump said
Wednesday during an Oval Office meeting with health officials, adding, “People are dying from vaping.”
the respiratory illness, hammering
the FDA for weeks over its delays in
taking decisive action.
“It’s been clear for years that
an epidemic of youth e-cigarette
addiction was building,” Sen. Jeff
Merkley of Oregon said. “It should
never have taken multiple deaths
and hundreds of cases of teenagers
with lung disease.”
Administration health officials
have for months expressed con-
cerns about the spread of e-ciga-
rette use, and they raised alarms
about companies’ marketing claims
and product safety well before re-
ports of vaping-related illness first
made waves last month.
Former FDA Commissioner Scott
Gottlieb, who left the administra-
tion in the spring, pushed an ag-
gressive anti-smoking agenda with
wall, and as of now, it doesn’t ap-
pear that anyone will change their
vote.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.),
who is up for reelection in 2020
and whose state will see military
money diverted for the wall, said
he’s confident the money for those
projects will be restocked.
“I’m willing to divert funding
for the wall since we couldn’t get
a legislative outcome we can deal
with these projects later in the next
budget cycle,” Graham said. “But
I’m willing to divert the funding
and absorb some pain to get the
wall moving forward.”
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) also
said this week that the two proj-
ects in his state affected by Trump’s
military construction diversion
would still get funding on time,
adding that he will vote against the
resolution of disapproval. Earlier
this year, Tillis published an op-
ed in The Washington Post, say-
ing that he would vote against the
emergency declaration but reversed
his stance and voted to back Trump
after coming under pressure from
within his party.
Azar’s backing, despite griping
from some congressional Repub-
licans who had lobbied for a more
sympathetic approach to the vap-
ing industry. Azar’s allies have said
he’s had a particularly strong in-
terest in public health, including a
deeply cynical view of tobacco and
e-cigarettes.
Azar “saw the work that Gott-
lieb was doing as very much part
of his own legacy,” one person
familiar with the situation said,
adding that industry giant Juul’s
attempts to curry favor with the
Trump administration won over
few officials at HHS.
Vaping industry groups were
quick to condemn the administra-
tion’s move. The Vapor Technology
Association said there is no indi-
cation that its members’ products
Tillis said when he wrote the op-
ed he “had less concerns with what
we were doing here and more con-
cerns with the precedent we would
set for future precedents and I still
stand by that.” He added that he
still wants to work with Sen. Mike
Lee (R-Utah) on making changes to
the law governing national emer-
gencies, even though he continues
to support the current one. Lee last
week criticized Trump’s decision
to divert military funding to build
the wall.
Sen. Martha McSally (R-Ariz.)
also plans to vote again for the na-
tional emergency. Others say the
onus is on Democrats, arguing that
the minority has insufficiently sup-
ported funding for border security
measures.
“We wouldn’t be in this posi-
tion if Democrats would just vote
for border security funds but since
they won’t do it then the president
is exercising these extraordinary
powers,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-
Texas). Cornyn downplayed con-
cerns about military construction
projects in his home state, saying
that passing the funding to replen-
ALEX WONG/GETTY IMAGES
are to blame for recent cases of lung
illness, adding that flavored vaping
products have been shown to be one
of the most effective smoking ces-
sation tools.
“Barring flavors would be a pub-
lic health travesty,” the group said
in a statement.
The administration’s announce-
ment came as preliminary findings
from a national youth tobacco sur-
vey indicate a continued rise in
vaping, especially of nontobacco
flavors. HHS said preliminary data
shows that more than a quarter of
high school students had used e-
cigarettes in the past 30 days, and
the overwhelming majority of
youth e-cigarette users cited the
use of popular fruit and menthol
or mint flavors.
Mint and menthol were not
ish them down the road would
amount to a drop in the bucket for
total defense appropriations.
“We all have parochial concerns
about our states but border secu-
rity is part of national security, so
my constituents want to make sure
we do our job,” Cornyn said. “And
if the Democrats won’t cooperate
then we’re going to have to do the
best we can without them.”
Democrats plan to attack Re-
publicans politically for support-
ing Trump’s wall over projects
in their home states. Democratic
challengers bashed Republicans
last week when the list of military
projects affected was announced.
Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto of Ne-
vada, who chairs the Democratic
Senatorial Campaign Committee,
referenced a Denver Post editorial
criticizing Sen. Cory Gardner for
failing to speak out against Colo-
rado funds being diverted.
“I think, from my perspective,
at the end of the day we should all
be fighting for our states on issues
that matter and no matter what
the president is doing if it’s going
to harm our communities then we
covered by FDA restrictions an-
nounced last fall that limited sales
of flavored vaping products in con-
venience stores and gas stations.
Azar said the administration
within weeks would prioritize
requirements subjecting flavored
products, including mint and men-
thol, to pre-market reviews. The
administration has been develop-
ing a rule requiring all e-cigarette
makers to submit their products for
review by May 2020 or pull them
off the market.
Manufacturers would have to
show the administration their
products don’t pose a public health
threat. They would also need to
demonstrate why any flavored prod-
ucts should stay on the market. E-
cigarette manufacturers that submit
products for review can keep their
products on the market for a year
while the FDA evaluates them.
“The Trump administration
is making it clear that we intend
to clear the market of flavored e-
cigarettes to reverse the deeply
concerning epidemic of youth
e-cigarette use that is impacting
children, families, schools and
communities,” Azar said.
The agency in March acknowl-
edged that many flavored vapes
would likely be discontinued in
response to the looming regula-
tory deadline and sales restrictions.
Senate Finance Chairman Chuck
Grassley (R-Iowa) on Wednesday
endorsed the administration’s fo-
cus on vaping, but stopped short of
backing a sweeping ban. Grassley
has long expressed concern about
presidents’ use of executive pow-
ers, preferring that Congress pass
legislation instead.
“I’m concerned about the rise in
underage vaping and the ability for
devices to be tampered with in ways
that might be especially hazardous
to users’ health,” he said, adding
that he’s already discussed the is-
sue with members of his panel. “It’s
something we’re looking into in the
Finance Committee.”
should be standing up against it,”
Cortez Masto said. “At least from
what I’ve seen from The Den-
ver Post it’s having an impact,
absolutely.”
W h e n a s k e d We d n e s d a y
whether he’d support the national
emergency declaration, Gardner
responded: “I haven’t seen the
resolution of disapproval, but I
mean, the Democrats refuse to
fund the border.”
In March, the majority of Repub-
licans voted against a resolution
disapproving of Trump’s national
emergency declaration. Twelve
Republicans broke with Trump,
including Sen. Susan Collins of
Maine, who is also up for reelection.
Republicans insist they aren’t
concerned about the political im-
plications of continuing to support
the border emergency.
“Senate Democrats have shirked
all responsibility when it comes to
dealing with the crisis at the border
and have failed to join Republicans
in providing the necessary funds
to protect our country,” said Jesse
Hunt, a spokesman for the National
Republican Senatorial Committee.

Democrats decry double standard in fact-checking
Microscopic evaluation of Dems’ data points
equates them with Trump’s whoppers, they say
BY MICHAEL CALDERONE
On Friday, The Washington
Post’s Fact Checker column award-
ed three Pinocchios to President
Donald Trump for his boast that
he’s already built large sections of
a border wall, which the newspaper
called “the false claim Trump most
often repeats.” The Post counted
nearly 200 instances of Trump
making it.
The Fact Checker also recently
gave three Pinocchios to Democrat
Bernie Sanders for saying “500,000
Americans will go bankrupt this
year from medical bills” — when
the study on which the claim was
based cited medical costs only as
a contributing factor in 500,000
bankruptcies a year, and other stud-
ies had a somewhat lower figure.
A false equivalence? Sanders’
team seems to think so — and
they’re not alone among Democrat-
ic presidential campaigns fuming
over fact-checkers who appear to
give their esoteric policy disputes
and faulty recollections the same
weight as Trump’s daily whop-
pers and his spreading self-serv-
ing myths like that of millions of
fraudulent voters.
The issue is of no small concern,
Democratic strategists say.
Trump’s bold lies and spreading
of disinformation — which have
been regularly cited by almost ev-
ery mainstream news organiza-
tion — are a core part of their case
against him. But when those same
outlets begin parsing Democrats for
using questionable data and mak-
ing exaggerations, they create the
impression that everyone’s a fibber.
When it comes to lying, Democrats
say, Donald Trump once again has
broken the bounds of politics as
usual, and the media is only help-
ing him by enforcing the old rules.
The issue popped up again last
week when Sen. Kamala Harris said
during a CNN climate town hall
that she once sued Exxon Mobil. A
fact-checker at the network rightly
pointed out that she only investi-
gated Exxon, while suing other
oil companies. Harris’ campaign
responded not by challenging the
point of fact, but fact-checking it-
self in the Trump era.
“Trump spent the morning po-
tentially illegally teasing out jobs
numbers and lying about a massive
hurricane’s trajectory, but sure,
let’s spend our time on whether, as
Attorney General, Kamala ‘sued’
vs. ‘investigated’ Exxon,” Ian
Sams, her press secretary, wrote.
“When parsing word choice is given
the same treatment as intentional
lies … it blurs the very lines ‘fact
checkers’ are supposed to help keep
drawn.”
In interviews with POLITICO,
several prominent fact-checkers
said they don’t believe their job has
changed when it comes to holding
politicians accountable for their
words on the stump and in TV
studios, despite Trump’s persis-
tent falsehoods.
“T wo wrongs don’t make a
right,” said PolitiFact editor Angie
Drobnic Holan.
But this traditional part of the
primary vetting process has come
under fire in 2020, with critics
questioning the utility of high-
RELEASED BY "What's News" vk.com/wsnws TELEGRAM: t.me/whatsnws
lighting technical errors or dis-
puting policy talking points given
the unprecedented volume and fre-
quency of Trump’s bogus claims.
They’ve ranged from the danger-
ous, like spreading unfounded con-
spiracy theories about the Clintons’
involvement in the death of Jeffrey
Epstein, to the bizarre, such as in-
sisting he was named Michigan’s
“Man of the Year.”
“In the Trump era, most fact-
checks on words uttered by those
other than Trump are tantamount
to criticizing the captain of the
Titanic for not signaling before
ramming into an iceberg,” Nathan
Barankin, a senior Harris adviser,
recently tweeted.
Beyond the Harris team’s gripes,
the news media’s focus on former
Vice President Joe Biden’s factual
errors, or gaffes, has drawn com-
parisons to the fervent coverage of
Hillary Clinton’s emails in the 2016
election, while Sanders’ campaign
has taken aim at the Post for pub-
lishing “factually inaccurate ‘fact-
check’ articles.” That critique has
been echoed in progressive outlets
like The Nation and The Intercept.
“When fact checkers rightly call
Trump a liar for saying ‘the noise
(from windmills) cause cancer,’ &
then feel obligated to be ‘balanced’
by calling Bernie a liar for correctly
saying Wall Street got a ‘trillion
dollar bailout,’ Democracy Dies in
Darkness,” Sanders senior adviser
Warren Gunnels tweeted Saturday,
appropriating the Post’s slogan
while sharing The Intercept story.
The Post’s Fact Checker team,
led by editor and chief writer Glenn
Kessler, has catalogued more than
12,000 false or misleading claims
made by Trump in office. The presi-
dent’s tendency to continue making
false claims in the face of evidence
even prompted them to add the
“Bottomless Pinocchio” label to
its standard scale of one-to-four
Pinnochios.
But their decision to grant the Pi-
nocchios to Sanders’ claim about
500,000 people going bankrupt
each year from medical bills pro-
voked a fierce reaction. The Sanders
campaign disputed the designation
in a letter to the Post’s top editor
that also included a demand for a
retraction.
“The overall premise of the piece
is absurd,” Gunnels wrote on Aug.
31 to Post Executive Editor Marty
Baron. “The Post’s Fact Checker
issued Senator Sanders ‘three pi-
nocchios’ for accurately citing a
peer-reviewed editorial published
in the American Journal of Public
Health.”
“In what world does this merit
one so-called ‘pinocchio’ let alone
three?” wrote Gunnels, adding that
the Post’s rating falsely attacked
Sanders, tarnished the reputation
of the author of the editorial, and
misled “the public on one of the
most serious problems facing the
American people.”
Post Managing Editor Cameron
Barr responded that the study in
question did not determine what
causes bankruptcies, as Sanders
claimed, but “only factors that
contribute to them.” Barr also re-
jected the campaign’s accusation
that there is “a pattern of bias”
T H U R S D A Y, S E P T E M B E R 1 2 , 2 0 1 9 | POLITICO | 11
MICHAEL CIAGLO/GETTY IMAGES
Washington Post fact-checkers awarded Sen. Bernie Sanders three
Pinocchios for saying medical bills cause “500,000 bankruptcies a year,”
when his source said only that they “contributed” to that many bankruptcies.
against it. addition to adjudicating whether
But The Nation’s Jeet Heer sug- a claim is true or partially true.
gested The Post’s fact-checking He acknowledges the pinocchio
is ideologically slanted, writing scale is “not scientific,” but said
that the paper has “fallen into the he aims to be internally consistent
habit of accusing Bernie Sanders of when providing that “bottom line
misleading the public even in cases assessment.”
where the evidence is strongly on Kessler described the Fact
the side of the Vermont senator.” Checker’s mission as writing
For instance, Heer noted that “about important issues of poli-
the Fact Checker took issue with cy” and “to provide an entree into
Sanders for saying accurately in the demystifying or explaining policy
first Democratic Debate that three issues to people.”
billionaires — Bill Gates, Warren Trump’s falsehoods that are
Buffett and post-owner Jeff Bezos — deemed to be more trivial may not
have “more wealth than the bottom rise to the level of a standalone fact-
half of America.” check, he said, even though they’re
Kessler and his team acknowl- included in the Post’s database. For
edged in its June 28 fact-check that instance, Trump’s false claim that
Sanders “snappy talking point is Hurricane Dorian was headed for
Alabama did not merit a separate
Fact Checker analysis.
Given the Fact Checker’s empha-
“We need to be clear sis on correcting the data behind
serious policy matters, rather than
… that there is no blurted-out falsehoods, Democrats
equivalence between running for president are likely to
be in its crosshairs throughout
the frequency of the campaign. Kessler noted that
they’re now “getting lots of ques-
the dishonesty from tions about what Democrats are
the president and saying.”
Democratic candidates are es-
from anyone in the pecially visible right now, with
Democratic field.” 10 candidates hitting the debate
stage on Thursday night in Hous-
— Daniel Dale CNN ton, a week after the same group
addressed how they’d tackle the
climate crisis during CNN’s seven-
hour town hall marathon. CNN’s
based on numbers that add up,” Daniel Dale and his colleagues fact-
but suggested it’s “a question of checked candidate claims at that
comparing apples to oranges.” event, including Harris’s on Exxon.
Because “people in the bottom Dale, who began doggedly fact-
half have essentially no wealth, as checking Trump three years ago
debts cancel out whatever assets while a reporter at the Toronto
they might have,” the comparison Star, has continued that role since
to Gates, Buffett and Bezos “is not joining CNN in June. He recently
especially meaningful.” broke down the venues in which
In an interview with POLITICO, Trump made more than 328 false
Kessler said he thought the apples- claims in a six-week period. Dale
to-oranges point was an “uncon- and his CNN colleagues found
troversial observation” in their that Trump made at least 22 false
roundup of Democrats’ claims dur- claims in Monday’s rally in North
ing the first debate. After pushback Carolina.
on Twitter, Kessler updated the “We need to be clear and di-
post with a response from Univer- rect about the fact that there is no
sity of California-Berkeley profes- equivalence between the frequency
sor Emmanuel Saez, who he wrote of the dishonesty from the presi-
had “agreed with our assessment.” dent and from anyone in the Demo-
(PolitiFact, for its part, didn’t as- cratic field,” Dale told POLITICO.
sess whether Sanders’ comparison But even as Trump has uttered
was meaningful or not, but con- “an unprecedented barrage” of
cluded it was true). false claims by historical standards,
Kessler said his fact-checking Dale said, it “does not mean that we
team tries to provide context in abandon fact-checking everyone,
that we allow the bar to sink so low
that it vanishes.” He said “facts still
matter even if the Democrats are
not making up phone calls from the
Boy Scouts or misdescribing altered
maps when they get things wrong.”
Pol iti Fact’s Hola n sa id the
Democrats are currently running
against one another and it would
be “a huge disservice to the vot-
ing public, the primary voters, for
fact-checkers to pull their punches
in any way.”
Holan suggested primaries were
a less partisan time to fact-check
than the general election. “The vot-
ers ostensibly are all on the same
team,” she said. “They’re looking
at the field of candidates. They’re
trying to make decisions about
which is the best one to represent
their interests.”
But fact-checking during the
2020 Democratic primary, espe-
cially relating to Biden’s flubs, has
revived criticism of the media from
the previous general election. CNN
contributor Bianna Golodryga said
Sunday on the network that cov-
erage “brings back memories from
how Hillary Clinton was covered
and some of the treatment she
received.”
Brookings Institution senior fel-
low Jonathan Rauch recently sug-
gested that the media, in an effort
to seek balance, “helps Trump and
normalizes his behavior by promot-
ing false equivalents like Hillary’s
emails and Biden’s gaffes.”
Biden has lately faced a flood of
negative headlines after several
misstatements, from false claims
about when he began publicly op-
posing the Iraq war to mangling
the details of an anecdote about a
soldier’s heroism in Afghanistan.
Rauch tweeted that the Post’s
article on Biden having conflated
three accounts into the soldier’s
story was “pretty innocuous,” and
yet he noted it appeared on Page
One while an article on Trump’s
Sharpie-altered map of Hurri-
cane Dorian’s trajectory landed
on page 10. (The Post’s article on
Biden did mention Trump’s 12,000-
plus false or misleading claims in
office, though not until the 17th
paragraph.)
The Atlantic’s James Fallows
agreed with Rauch’s critique and
suggested the media “have to”
avoid creating a false equivalence
with Trump.
“I think you can see the effects in
2016, where substantial numbers of
non-‘base’ people thought: What
the hell, they’re both crooks (DJT
HRC), why bother to get out and
vote,” he wrote.
During an interview last week
with CBS late-night host Stephen
Colbert, Biden said, “It’s fair to
go after a political figure for any-
thing.” Still, he suggested the gaffes
he’s made are not about “substan-
tive issues” and pale in comparison
to Trump’s actions. “I don’t get
wrong things like, you know, we
should lock up kids in cages at the
border,” he said.
The Biden campaign has admit-
ted mistakes, though, such as tell-
ing The Fact Checker on Monday
that the candidate “misspoke by
saying that he declared his opposi-
tion to the [Iraq] war immediately.”
Kessler wrote that Biden was
“on his way to Four Pinocchios
until his staff acknowledged that
he misspoke.”

12 | POLITICO | T H U R S D A Y, S E P T E M B E R 1 2 , 2 0 1 9
New Democratic dance: The impeachment sidestep
IMPEACHMENT from page 1
regards to whether the full House is
actively considering articles of im-
peachment, which we are not at this
time,” Hoyer wrote in a statement.
“I strongly support Chairman
Nadler and the Judiciary Com-
mittee Democrats as they proceed
with their investigation ‘to deter-
mine whether to recommend ar-
ticles of impeachment to the full
House,’ as the resolution states,”
he continued.
Earlier, when pressed whether
he agreed with Judiciary Chairman
Jerry Nadler’s characterization that
the House had begun an impeach-
ment inquiry, Hoyer said, “no.”
“The delineation ought to be
whether they’re considering a
resolution of impeachment,” Hoyer
said. “I don’t want to be simplistic
about it, but I don’t want to quibble
on words either.”
Hoyer’s initial comments un-
dercut Nadler (D-N.Y.), who has
said — and argued in court filings
that Hoyer himself signed off on —
that an impeachment investigation
is ongoing.
And minutes earlier, House
Democratic Caucus Chairman
Hakeem Jeffries of New York had
declined to say definitively whether
the House is conducting an im-
peachment investigation.
The comments from Hoyer and
Jeffries come as Speaker Nancy
Pelosi has also sidestepped ques-
tions about impeachment and has
avoided espousing the Judiciary
Committee’s position on the issue.
Privately, several senior Demo-
crats have expressed concerns that
the conflicting descriptions could
undermine their efforts in court,
which depend on federal judges
formally recognizing the House’s
impeachment authority in order to
grant lawmakers access to critical
grand jury information and to un-
lock testimony from key witnesses.
The muddled messaging from top
House Democrats has some built-
in strategic advantages, defenders
argue: It allows Pelosi to satisfy
progressives’ demands to more
aggressively investigate the presi-
Republicans and Democrats hammer Trump’s judicial nominee
BY MARIANNE LeVINE
Republicans and Democrats on
Wednesday castigated President
Donald Trump’s nominee to the
powerful Second Circuit Court of
Appeals for dodging their questions
and over his prior controversial
writings.
Senate Judiciary Chairman Lind-
sey Graham (R-S.C.) in particular
chided Steven Menashi for not
being more forthcoming during
his confirmation hearing after the
nominee wouldn’t provide specifics
on how or whether he helped shape
Trump’s immigration policy. Me-
nashi currently serves as associate
counsel to the president.
In the weeks leading up to his
confirmation hearing, liberal judi-
cial groups railed against Menashi
for his writings, highlighting his
comments on “ethnonationalism.”
Graham criticized Menashi for
his editorial in the New York Sun
on trial lawyers that the senator
said suggested such lawyers took
advantage of the public.
RELEASED BY "What's News" vk.com/wsnws TELEGRAM: t.me/whatsnws
Majority Leader Steny Hoyer backtracked after saying Democrats were not
conducting an “impeachment inquiry,” a remark that contradicted House
investigators and sowed further confusion about Democrats’ strategy.
dent, while giving cover to vulner-
able moderates who have tried to
avoid the politically charged issue
altogether.
Earlier Wednesday, several
vulnerable freshmen privately
confronted Nadler about the im-
peachment messaging, according
to multiple sources present.
The sit-down with Nadler —
which included more than a dozen
Democratic freshmen — was part of
a routine series of meetings Assis-
tant Speaker Ben Ray Luján of New
Mexico holds with new members.
While the huddle was described as
cordial, several freshmen, includ-
“You said something about trial
lawyers that I particularly don’t
like,” said Graham, who asked
Menashi whether he had ever rep-
resented a client in court. Graham
cited his own experience as a plain-
tiff’s lawyer and said that he “didn’t
have time to do frivolous lawsuits.”
Menashi responded that the edi-
torial was written before he went to
law school and “should not be seen
as representative of [his] views as
an attorney.”
Graham further questioned Me-
nashi’s writings, referring to an
article he wrote for the University
of Pennsylvania Journal of Inter-
national Law about ethnonation-
alism and the State of Israel and
asked whether he understood “why
we respect other people’s faiths in
America.”
Menashi said he merely intended
to point out “that many states that
are well known as liberal democra-
cies have a linguistic or ethnic ba-
sis” and that “Israel was not out of
the norm.”
ZACH GIBSON/GETTY IMAGES
ing Rep. Xochitl Torres-Small of
New Mexico, and New York Reps.
Anthony Brindisi and Max Rose,
told Nadler they are concerned the
widespread confusion is overshad-
owing their policy agenda and could
cost them the House.
“We keep talking about how we
need to be able to walk and chew
gum at the same time, but if you
look at someone in real life who
is chewing gum and walking, you
don’t see them chewing gum at all,”
Rose said, according to multiple
sources in the room.
Freshman Rep. Katie Hill of Cali-
fornia who represents a swing dis-
Some of the most heated mo-
ments in the hearing took place
when senators grilled Menashi
about his work for the White House.
Menashi, for the most part, refused
to provide many details.
“I’m just asking if you have
worked or advised on the ad-
ministration’s policy of separat-
ing families at the border,” asked
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.),
the committee’s ranking member.
“I’m not asking what, just whether
you’ve done it.”
Graham even interjected on
Feinstein’s behalf after Menashi
responded briefly to similar ques-
tions from Republican Sen. Josh
Hawley of Missouri.
“Mr. Menashi, we’re not going to
do this. You’re not going to answer
his questions and not answer hers,”
Graham said.
After Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.)
described the hearing as a “worth-
less exercise,” Graham advised
Menashi to be more forthcoming
and said Democrats were asking
trict, said freshmen in tough dis-
tricts told Nadler that they’re tired
of Democrats being “characterized
as the party of impeachment.”
“Everyone is frustrated that im-
peachment discussions take up all
the oxygen in the room,” said Hill,
who was also in the meeting. “But
beyond how we each talk about it
in our own communities, and paid
communications, we cannot con-
trol the national media narrative.”
Some moderates have been
spooked by new polling by the
Democratic Congressional Cam-
paign Committee, which found
that the public was more aware of
Democratic investigations than the
bills they’ve passed.
The national poll found that
“just 10% said investigating Trump
should be a top priority for Con-
gress, but 54% said that they be-
lieve it’s the top priority of Demo-
crats in Congress,” according to the
polling results, which was obtained
by POLITICO.
“The message was sent by mul-
tiple members to the chairman that
his efforts are sucking the air out
of the room and they are not being
cogently presented to the Ameri-
can people,” said one member in the
room. “They are being presented
with elitist legalese.”
“All the while we’re not doing
nearly enough on health care and
infrastructure and we’re losing
trust of American people,” the
member added.
Before Hoyer misspoke, Jeffries,
a top member of the House Judi-
ciary Committee, said he would
wait until after the panel voted on
a resolution Thursday formalizing
the procedures for its impeachment
investigation.
“I don’t want to get caught in
semantics,” Jeffries told reporters
Wednesday. “We all agree, from
Speaker Pelosi through every single
member of the House Democratic
Caucus, that we have a constitu-
tional responsibility to hold an
out-of-control executive branch
accountable.”
Despite these remarks, articles of
impeachment have already been re-
him questions only about narrow
subject matters.
Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) also
voiced frustration with Menashi
after the senator asked a hypotheti-
cal question about school shoot-
ings and social media, as well as
the nominee’s views on the Bill of
Rights.
“Counsel, you’re a really smart
guy, but I wish you’d be more forth-
coming,” Kennedy told Menashi.
“This isn’t supposed to be a game,
we’re supposed to try to understand
not how you’re going to rule but
how you’re going to think.”
When Menashi offered to be more
open, Kennedy said he was out of
time and Menashi “took a lot by not
answering my questions.”
Menashi had a few Republican
allies during his confirmation hear-
ing. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) intro-
duced the nominee and praised him
for his credentials, which include a
degree from Stanford Law School
and a stint clerking for Supreme
Court Justice Samuel Alito. Hawley
ferred to the House Judiciary Com-
mittee, and in recent court filings,
House lawyers have noted that the
panel is considering whether to
recommend those articles, or a
revised version, to the full House.
As a member of the Bipartisan Legal
Advisory Group, Hoyer signed off
on the lawsuits.
Additionally, in July, the com-
mittee began officially telling fed-
eral courts that it was considering
whether to recommend articles of
impeachment against the president.
“[The] investigation includes
consideration of whether the Judi-
ciary Committee should exercise
its Article I powers to recommend
articles of impeachment,” House
lawyers wrote in a lawsuit seek-
ing testimony from former White
House counsel Don McGahn.
“Articles of impeachment al-
ready have been introduced and
referred to the Judiciary Commit-
tee in this Congress,” the lawsuit
continues.
Hoyer on Wednesday addressed
concerns from the caucus — par-
ticularly from moderates — that
talk of impeachment could swamp
the party’s ambitious agenda going
into 2020.
“The fear is that you will be ex-
clusively focused on it, to the exclu-
sion of all the other things we need
to do in the Congress of the United
States,” Hoyer said.
Pressed on what, exactly, he
would consider a formal impeach-
ment inquiry, Hoyer said it would
need to be a specific action by the
committee, or a formal floor vote
on the House.
“Impeachment consideration
is a resolution that is drafted and
under consideration by the com-
mittee, and or voted to proceed
by the House,” Hoyer told report-
ers. “In either event, I don’t think
that’s what happened. We don’t
think that’s what happened. I don’t
think we can explain it better than
that — that they’re continuing the
search for truth.”
Kyle Cheney contributed to this
report.
expressed sympathy for the media
scrutiny Menashi has faced over his
writings.
Prior to his hearing, CNN report-
ed that as a student at Dartmouth,
Menashi criticized “Take Back the
Night” marches that intend to draw
awareness to and stop sexual vio-
lence against women.
In his writings, Menashi said that
such marches “charge the majority
of male students with complicity
in rape and sexual violence (every
man’s a potential rapist, they say;
it’s part of the patriarchal culture),”
and argued there’s “no similar lee-
way for men.”
M S N B C’s R a c hel M a d d ow
also highlighted his article on
ethnonationalism.
The Judicial Crisis Network, a
conservative judicial group, came
to Menashi’s defense. Prior to
the hearing, Carrie Severino, the
group’s chief counsel said Menashi
would be “an outstanding judge”
and expressed confidence he would
be confirmed.

Trump denies asking aide to
push agency on Dorian’s path
President calls the
entire hurricane
scandal a hoax by
the ‘fake news media’
BY CAITLIN OPRYSKO
President Donald Trump denied
that his acting chief of staff Mick
Mulvaney was operating under
his orders when Mulvaney report-
edly directed Commerce Secretary
Wilbur Ross to pressure a federal
agency to rebuke scientists who
had contradicted Trump’s hurri-
cane claims.
“No, I never did that — I never
did that,” Trump told reporters
in the Oval Office on Wednesday,
dismissing the entire scandal as “a
hoax by the fake news media.”
“When they talk about the hur-
ricane and when they talk about
Florida and Alabama, that is just
fake news,” the president went on.
“Right from the beginning, it was
a fake story.”
The so-called fake news ema-
nated from Trump’s own Twitter
account, when on Sept. 1 he warned
that Alabama was among the states
that “will most likely be hit (much)
harder than anticipated,” a claim
that was misleading based on the
forecast path of the storm at that
time.
The National Weather Service in
Birmingham quickly countered his
assertion on social media, writing
that “Alabama will NOT see any
impacts from Dorian. We repeat,
no impacts from Hurricane Dorian
will be felt across Alabama.”
But recent media reports sug-
gest the Trump administration
took pains to minimize the presi-
dent’s i naccu rate assertions,
and that Trump himself kept the
spotlight on a gaffe that might
have easily just blown over. And
on Wednesday, House Democrats
piled on when they announced
an investigation into reports that
the National Oceanic and Atmo-
spheric Administration had come
under pressure by Ross to issue a
statement disavowing the NWS
Birmingham tweet.
Democrats on the House Sci-
ence Committee and its oversight
subcommittee on Wednesday
demanded the White House and
Commerce Department turn over
Presidential muscle is needed to push through any gun bill
GUNS from page 1
to support any particular bill or any
particular thing, but he did strongly
convey an interest in doing some-
thing meaningful,” Toomey said.
“There was a discussion about
having a step forward one way or
another tomorrow but that’s not
carved in stone.”
Mike Braun (R-Ind.), one of
the new senators whom Toomey
is courting, said Wednesday he’s
willing to lobby Trump for tighter
background checks and red flags
and “anything that’s not going to
impact a law-abiding citizen.”
Congressional and administra-
tion officials could not offer a firm
timeline for action from the presi-
RELEASED BY "What's News" vk.com/wsnws TELEGRAM: t.me/whatsnws
President Donald Trump tweeted on Sept. 1 that Alabama would be hit by
Hurricane Dorian, a claim that was wrong based on the forecast at the time.
any documents relating to an un-
attributed Sept. 6 statement put
out by NOAA in which the agency
chastised NWS Birmingham for
speaking “in absolute terms that
were inconsistent with probabili-
ties from the best forecast products
available at the time.”
They also asked for information
regarding an agencywide directive
put out in the wake of Trump’s
tweet urging employees not to
contradict the president.
Both NOAA missives sparked
backlash within the science com-
munity, which warned of the
dangers of politicizing weather
forecasts and jeopardizing the
credibility of its forecasters.
And the president apparently
stewed on the subject for almost a
week, at one point displaying a map
to reporters that had been altered
with a Sharpie to show Alabama
in the hurricane’s path, tweeting
and retweeting numerous out-
dated maps purported to support
his claims.
But The New York Times re-
ported this week that top offi-
cials within the administration
took more concrete steps to back
dent. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas)
said he expects something this
week, but a White House official
insisted no date has been selected
for the rollout of gun legislation
and no decision has been made on
when the proposal would come
out.
The confusion over the timeline
only further muddled what’s been a
wide-ranging debate that has yet to
make any concrete progress. Trump
met with the top GOP congressio-
nal leaders at the White House on
Tuesday afternoon, but although
firearm legislation was discussed,
neither firm policy nor rollout dates
were decided upon.
“When that happens, I’m not
CHIP SOMODEVILLA/GETTY IMAGES
Trump. On Monday, the news-
paper reported that after initially
being rebuffed, Ross threatened
firings at NOAA if the agency’s
acting administrator did not work
to fix the perception that NOAA
was contradicting Trump. And
earlier Wednesday, the Times
reported that Mulvaney directed
Ross to enact that pressure.
“As this story unfolds in the
press, a number of actions stand
out as a troubling politicization
of crucial weather information,”
the lawmakers wrote, adding that
they are “deeply disturbed by the
politicization of NOAA’s weather
forecast activities for the purpose
of supporting incorrect statements
by the president.”
House Science Chairwoman
Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Texas)
and Oversight and Investigations
S u b c om m it te e C h a i r wom a n
Mikie Sherrill (D-N.J.) gave Ross
until Sept. 20 to come up with
the information and documents
requested, arguing that it is “es-
sential” that the forecasts pro-
duced by the federal government
“remain free of political influence
and suppression.”
sure. They were driving toward
the end of the week,” said Senate
Majority Whip John Thune, who at-
tended the meeting. “There is an
amount of inertia toward trying
to get to a plan, but I don’t want to
make any guarantees about when
it comes.”
While other senators, like Lind-
sey Graham (R-S.C.) are working
on providing grants for states to
expand ”red flag” laws and Susan
Collins (R-Maine) has legislation
to crackdown on straw purchas-
ers, the group of three senators
made clear to the president that
any package should center around
background checks.
“We all agree people in those cat-
T H U R S D A Y, S E P T E M B E R 1 2 , 2 0 1 9 | POLITICO | 13
Trump still pushes Fed
on rate cut, bashing chair
and others as ‘Boneheads’
BY QUINT FORGEY
President Donald Trump on
Wednesday morning called on
the Federal Reserve to slash inter-
est rates “down to ZERO,” admon-
ishing Chairman Jerome Powell and
other leaders of the U.S. central
bank as “Boneheads.”
“The Federal Reserve should get
our interest rates down to ZERO,
or less, and we should then start to
refinance our debt,” Trump tweet-
ed. “INTEREST COST COULD BE
BROUGHT WAY DOWN, while at
the same time substantially length-
ening the term. We have the great
currency, power, and balance
sheet.”
The message marked the first
time the president has publicly
suggested negative interest rates,
a step the U.S. has never taken but
that has been implemented in Ja-
pan and some European nations.
Such a move would likely exhaust
much of the Federal Reserve’s fire-
power to fight a future recession at
a time when the U.S. economy is
still growing.
David Kotok, chief investment
officer at Cumberland Advisors,
said that “zero and then negative
interest rates have created a mon-
strosity in Europe,” and warned
Trump’s demand “to follow Eu-
rope into this quagmire would
harm every saver, every insurance
company, every bank” in the U.S.
“Trumpanomics of Fed bash-
ing and trade war are an economic
menace to the United States,” he
added.
Trump continued his rant in an-
other post, writing online: “The
USA should always be paying the
lowest rate. No Inflation! It is only
the naïveté of Jay Powell and the
Federal Reserve that doesn’t allow
us to do what other countries are
already doing. A once in a lifetime
opportunity that we are missing
because of ‘Boneheads.’”
Trump has leveled increas-
ingly harsh broadsides against his
handpicked Federal Reserve chief
in recent weeks, as Powell has de-
clined to explicitly commit to the
campaign of aggressive cuts to the
Fed’s benchmark rate as the presi-
dent has sought.
After Powell pledged last month
that the Federal Reserve would “act
egories should not have firearms.
This is a commonsense way to make
it much more difficult for those
folks to get it. That’s the case that
I made to the president,” Toomey
said of the conversation. Officials
from the Justice Department were
also on the call, senators said.
Republicans have been loath to
expand background checks in pre-
vious attempts, and just Toomey
and Collins remain as GOP sup-
porters of the background checks
bill from 2013. But members of
both parties see an opportunity for
Trump to take the lead and push
a bill past the Senate’s 60-vote
threshold — and potentially rein-
vigorate a debate that’s fallen along
MARK WILSON/GETTY IMAGES
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome
Powell has incurred President
Donald Trump’s ire as the economy
faces signs of a recession.
as appropriate” to support the re-
cord U.S. economic expansion, but
did not hint of an imminent reduc-
tion in the benchmark rate, Trump
savaged the chairman on Twitter —
pondering whether Powell or Chi-
na’s communist leader Xi Jinping
was America’s “bigger enemy.”
Trump, who has maintained
he has “the right to fire” Powell,
expressed regret last week over
his decision in November 2017 to
nominate him as chairman, tweet-
ing: “Where did I find this guy Je-
rome? Oh well, you can’t win them
all!” Powell said in July he would
not leave his post if the president
attempted to oust him.
Trump has also complained
about U.S. interest rates in relation
to those of other countries, claim-
ing that fellow heads of government
at last month’s G-7 summit in Biar-
ritz, France, were indeed “giddy”
about their interest costs, and
charging that the Federal Reserve
“cannot ‘mentally’ keep up with the
competition” abroad.
Trump’s intense criticisms of
the Fed chairman come as the U.S.
economy stares down financial
warning signs of a possible reces-
sion, but Powell said last week that
the central bank is “not forecasting
or expecting” such a crisis.
Victoria Guida and Ben White
contributed to this report.
partisan lines for years.
“If this is a compromise, it’s go-
ing to be a compromise. It’s going
to have some Republican ‘no’ votes
and some Democratic ‘no’ votes,”
Murphy said. “If I end up agreeing
to something that’s not … universal
background checks, that’s going to
be a heavy lift on the Democratic
side.”
The House has passed a univer-
sal background checks bill but the
proposal being discussed is nar-
rower, offering more exemptions
for friends and family to do gun
sales with no background check.
Anita Kumar contributed to this
report.
RELEASED BY "What's News" vk.com/wsnws TELEGRAM: t.me/whatsnws

Kennedy primary could divide Hill Dems
MASSACHUSETTS from page 1
With Kennedy flirting with the
race and leading in early polls, Mar-
key has moved quickly to shore up
support from both the Washing-
ton establishment and prominent
progressives. Rep. Ro Khanna
(D-Calif.) has endorsed him, and
Schumer said the party is “fully
behind Sen. Ed Markey.” Kennedy
called Schumer about the race, but
the Senate minority leader didn’t
divulge what was said.
Markey also asked Ocasio-
Cortez for her support, accord-
ing to a source familiar with the
matter. The liberal firebrand said
endorsing Markey is “in the realm
of possibility.”
Kennedy isn’t without allies.
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona,
a moderate Democrat who served
with Kennedy in the House, is urg-
ing him to run and told Markey of
her decision on the Senate floor
Wednesday afternoon.
“Joe Kennedy is an outstanding
champion for his state,” Sinema
said. “He’s a fresh thinker who can
bring people together to get things
done. He will make a terrific U.S.
senator, and I couldn’t be more
proud to support my friend.”
But the support of Schumer and
moderate Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.
Va.) for Markey, along with the in-
cumbent’s close relationship with
Ocasio-Cortez as original co-
sponsors of the ”Green New Deal,”
demonstrates that the potential
Senate race won’t revolve around
ideological conflicts like the GOP’s
tea party wave of a decade ago.
Instead, the contest is shaping
up to be generational: The youth-
ful Kennedy and his famous fam-
ily brand against Markey’s 40-plus
years of service and lengthy liberal
record.
“I don’t understand how any-
one wants to run against him — I
mean he is the progressive leader on
climate in the United States Con-
gress,” Khanna, a leading liberal
lawmaker, said of Markey. “The
progressive base is 100 percent
for Markey — it’s 110 percent for
Markey.”
“I would tell Joe to wait,” Man-
chin, the Senate’s most conserva-
tive Democrat, said. “Those type of
fights when two people are aligned
ideologically? What’s the fight?”
The Massachusetts delegation
is behind Markey, save for three
members who have yet to weigh in,
including progressive star Ayanna
Pressley, who upset longtime Rep.
Mike Capuano in a primary last
fall. Kennedy’s challenge to the
old guard has perplexed senators,
who see him as trying to climb the
political ladder at the expense of his
state’s seniority.
But many of his House colleagues
are quietly rooting for him, eager
to demonstrate one of their own
can advance without waiting un-
til senators retire or their longtime
leaders depart the top rungs of the
House Democratic Caucus.
And Markey’s supporters in the
Senate aren’t trashing Kennedy.
After all, he could be a future col-
league or presidential candidate
given his lineage and reputation
as an ascendant voice in the party.
“Ed has been a great partner in
the Senate, and I was glad to en-
dorse him last February. Joe is do-
ing a terrific job in Congress. They
both are longtime friends,” Warren
RELEASED BY "What's News" vk.com/wsnws TELEGRAM: t.me/whatsnws
Rep. Joe Kennedy (left) and Sen. Ed Markey take part in an anti-Trump rally in Boston in 2017. Kennedy is
weighing a primary challenge to Markey, but the Democratic establishment is firmly behind the incumbent.
said in an interview. Warren was
Kennedy’s professor at Harvard
University.
In an interview on Wednesday,
Markey touted his endorsement
from NARAL Pro-Choice America,
the League of Conservation Vot-
ers, senators and state lawmak-
ers. Asked about polls showing
Kennedy with an edge, he replied:
“I’m getting tremendous support.”
“So far, the response I’m get-
ting is overwhelmingly positive,”
he said. “I’ve led on climate change,
led on gun reform, led on repro-
ductive rights and protections for
women. … People are grateful.”
“That kind of intraparty fighting is not good in the
long term. And I don’t think it will be good for Joe
Kennedy. I’m a survivor of the [Ted] Kennedy-[Jimmy]
Carter fight. I know how long those sentiments last.”
— Sen. Jeanne Shaheen
Markey said he hasn’t spoken to
Kennedy recently.
Kennedy is expected to make a
decision by the end of the month,
according to a campaign aide. Ken-
nedy spokeswoman Emily Kaufman
said the congressman is still delib-
erating but is “encouraged” by his
support.
“If he decides to run, it will be
based on the people of Massachu-
setts — and them alone,” Kaufman
said.
Despite Kennedy’s famous last
name, he’s kept a low profile since
arriving in the House in 2013. He
has resisted calls to join House
leadership, focusing instead on
elevating younger members of
a caucus run by septuagenarian
leaders. He did deliver the State
of the Union response last year, a
job usually reserved for the party’s
rising stars, although his speech is
mostly remembered for the promi-
nent smudge of lip balm that some
viewers mistook for drool.
After nearly 40 years in the
House, Markey won a special elec-
tion to replace John Kerry in 2013
and is a leading liberal lawmaker
in the Senate, though not neces-
sarily a partisan firebrand. He has
one of the thickest accents in Con-
gress, sometimes referred to as Ed
“Mahkey.” He voted “present” on
war with Syria shortly after being
sworn in, annoying “literally ev-
eryone,” as Boston magazine put it.
Several House Democrats were
reluctant to weigh in on the poten-
tial primary. Some said privately
they’re convinced Kennedy is
running. And they offered effu-
sive praise for the four-term law-
maker, who has developed a cadre
of friends on both sides of the aisle.
“Joe Kennedy might be the most
popular member of the Class of 2012
in both parties,” Rep. Scott Peters
(D-Calif.) said. “Massachusetts and
the country will find a good place
for Joe Kennedy to serve. It may not
be in House leadership, but he has
a great future.”
T H U R S D A Y, S E P T E M B E R 1 2 , 2 0 1 9 | POLITICO | 15
GETTY IMAGES FILE PHOTO 2017
As the heir to a dynasty, Ken-
nedy appears an instant front-run-
ner in any statewide race. There’s
private skepticism among some
Democrats that the Democratic
Senatorial Campaign Committee
will spend money in a primary in
a state seen as uncompetitive in
a general election, though DSCC
Chairwoman Catherine Cortez
Masto said the party is behind
Markey. The primary would be in
September 2020 — poor timing for
party unity.
Kennedy has a double-digit
lead in early polls in a potential
race against Markey. And he could
potentially scare Markey into re-
tirement or position himself for the
next Senate vacancy if Warren be-
comes president.
But Markey isn’t surrendering,
and there’s really no room to his left
for Kennedy to pursue. He’s tell-
ing fellow senators that he is not
retiring and will run hard against
Kennedy, according to those who
have spoken with him.
“It’s ambition,” Senate Minor-
ity Whip Dick Durbin said of Ken-
nedy’s motivation. “For Ed’s sake, I
don’t want a primary. … He’s clear-
ly running for reelection. And I’m
going to help him in any way I can.”
The show of support from top
Democratic leaders and progres-
sives suggests there’s some worry
that Markey could lose to Kennedy
or at a minimum drain money from
the party’s coffers. So if Kennedy
runs, Democrats are preparing for
a wild ride.
“That’s life in a blue state,” said
Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), a former
DSCC chairman. “The Kennedy
name probably has a little bit of
stroke in Massachusetts. So chanc-
es are it might be” competitive.
Melanie Zanona contributed to this
report.
POLITICO INFLUENCE
Welcome to PI. Tips: tmeyer@
politico.com and dbeavers@
politico.com. You can
also follow me on Twitter:
@theodoricmeyer.
Manchin’s chief of staff
heads to K Street
Patrick Hayes, who’s chief of
staff to Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.
Va.), is leaving the Hill for K
Street. He’ll start Thursday
as senior vice president for
government affairs for Altice, a
cable and telecommunications
company based in New York.
Hayes rose through the ranks
in Manchin’s office and is a
former aide to former Sen. Evan
Bayh (D-Ind.). Manchin, who
considered running for governor
against GOP Gov. Jim Justice
next year in West Virginia, ruled
out a run last week and plans to
stay in the Senate.
Former Ryan tax aide will lobby
for Puerto Rico coalition
George Callas, a former tax
aide to former House Speaker
Paul Ryan, has registered
to lobby for a new coalition
called Concerned Residents of
Puerto Rico. “Some people on
the Hill have been interested
in having the [Internal
Revenue Service] provide
Congress with what we believe
is protected, confidential
taxpayer information” under
the tax code, Callas wrote in an
email to PI. “We believe that
discussions about appropriate
tax incentives to encourage
economic activity in Puerto
Rico should not be pursued
by circumventing statutes
that exist to protect American
taxpayers from having their
legal right to privacy violated.”
Q The coalition is made up of
“individuals and families who
live in Puerto Rico,” Callas said.
He declined to specify which
lawmakers or congressional
aides had requested tax
information related to Puerto
Rico.
Jobs report
Q Scott Styles is rejoining
the Bockorny Group in a role
focused on external and client
relations. He was a managing
director at FTI Consulting.
Q SBL Strategies has hired
Josh Novotney as a partner. He
was vice president of federal
government affairs at Arena
Strategies.
Q Sally Rose Larson is
joining the Digital Media
Association as vice president
of government relations on
Sept. 23. She was a Republican
staffer on the House Judiciary
Committee. The Digital Media
Association described her
in a news release as “one of
the small handful of Capitol
Hill staffers who led efforts
to pass the landmark Music
Modernization Act” — a bill
backed by the trade group.
Q The public affairs firm Kivvit
has hired two: Vince Frillici
as managing director and Joe
Malunda as principal. Frillici
led his own consulting firm,
Frillici Strategies; Malunda was
a senior account supervisor at
Edelman.
— Theodoric Meyer
 RELEASED BY "What's News" vk.com/wsnws TELEGRAM: t.me/whatsnws

16 | POLITICO | T H U R S D A Y, S E P T E M B E R 1 2 , 2 0 1 9

SEAN RAYFORD/GETTY IMAGES

For a team in command of the Democratic primary, at least for now, Joe Biden’s campaign is awfully resentful of how the presidential hopeful is being covered. “I don’t know of anybody who
has taken as sustained and vitriolic a negative pounding as Biden and who has come through it with the strength he has,” said one top adviser to Biden.

Joe Biden’s camp thinks the media just doesn’t get it

His allies say detractors in media, and rivals
on the stump, don’t get the root of his appeal
BY RYAN LIZZA
The first thing you notice at a
Joe Biden event is the age: Many
of the reporters covering him are
really young. Biden is not. The press
corps, or so the Biden campaign
sees it, is culturally liberal and
highly attuned to modern issues
around race and gender and social
justice. Biden is not. The report-
ers are Extremely Online. Biden
couldn’t tell you what TikTok is.
Inside the Biden campaign, it
is the collision between these two
worlds that advisers believe explain
why his White House run often
looks like a long series of gaffes. For
a team in command of the Demo-
cratic primary, at least for now,
the campaign is awfully resentful
of how the presidential hopeful is
being covered. And yet supremely
confident that this team, not the
woke press that pounces on Biden’s
every seeming error and blight in
his record, has a vastly superior
understanding of the Democrat-
ic electorate. This is the central
paradox of Biden’s run: He’s been
amazingly durable. But he gets no
respect from the people who make
conventional wisdom on the left.
“I don’t know of anybody who
has taken as sustained and vitri-
olic a negative pounding as Biden
and who has come through it with
the strength he has,” said a top
Biden adviser. “So why isn’t the
argument not that he’s a ‘fragile
front-runner,’ but instead why is
this guy so strong? How is he able
to withstand this? Because it is un-
relenting. Every story that has been
written about Biden for a month has
been negative! I would ask Warren
and Sanders and these folks: He’s
been pummeled for months. For
months! So why is he going to fall
apart now?”
In mid-June, when I spent a few
days on the Biden campaign trail,
one of the biggest stories on Twit-
ter to circulate about his swing
through eastern Iowa was about
a young female activist who said
she felt intimidated by Biden when
she asked him a question about his
reversal on the Hyde Amendment.
A photo of the encounter went vi-
ral, with almost 25,000 likes and
retweets. To many influential com-
mentators on lefty Twitter, where
Biden is sometimes accorded only
slightly more respect than Donald
Trump, it was a disrespectful and
blatant act of Biden mansplaining.
Vice reported breathlessly, “In the
photo, Biden, the current Demo-
cratic front-runner, is pointing
his finger in Cayo’s face with his
eyebrows raised.”
During another stop, at a diner
in Eldridge, Biden’s only comment
that made news was a cringe-in-
ducing remark to a 13-year-old
girl’s brothers: “You’ve got one job
here, keep the guys away from your
sister.” He’s been using a version
of this avuncular bit of shtick for
years, but this time it created a fu-
rious Twitter outrage cycle. (Biden
seems to have learned a lesson and
abandoned the line.)
On the same trip, Biden spoke at
a midday event in Clinton, Iowa.
At one point, he discussed the ben-
efits of electric scooters as a trans-
portation solution in city centers,
and he explained that after a rider
hops off a scooter, he plugs it in. He
pantomimed someone inserting a
power cord into an outlet which, as
anyone who has used one knows,
is not what you do. Reporters,
myself included, snickered at the
micro-gaffe.
To many Biden supporters, who
polls consistently show are older,
more working class, and more cul-
turally conservative, these alleged
gaffes are eye-rolling examples of
the absurdity of the press or the
woke left. They think the young
activist in eastern Iowa should
toughen up, that the throwaway
line to the 13-year-old is endearing,
and that Biden’s lack of precision
when he speaks, about scooters or
so many other things, is a sign of his
authenticity. And they grouse that
Biden is held to a standard President
Donald Trump is not held to.
How Democrats see such epi-
sodes is at the heart of the Demo-
cratic primary. One side views
these typical Biden campaign-trail
moments as evidence of a politician
well past his prime — casually sex-
ist in a way that might have gone
unremarked in, say, 1973 when he
first joined the Senate. His support-
ers see them as good examples of
why he’s the lovable Democrat best-
suited to beat Trump. What is clear
is that the critics, who are louder
and more visible online and on cable
TV, have had absolutely no impact
on changing Biden’s status as the
steady front-runner in the race.
This woke-working class divide
is at the heart of the most salient
fact about the Democratic prima-
ries: Nothing has damaged Biden.
Biden entered the race with about
30 percent support nationally, and
he has that same 30 percent today.
Perhaps this could all begin to
change tomorrow night in Houston,
when for the first time Biden and his
two closest competitors, Elizabeth
Warren and Bernie Sanders, will be
on the same debate stage. But so far,
just as the press has been unable to
disrupt Biden’s bond with his core
30, his Democratic opponents seem
similarly at a loss to understand,
let alone undo, Biden’s enduring
appeal.
•••
Given Biden’s resilience and con-
sistent lead in the national polls, his
advisers range from bemusement to
rage in their frustration with how
he has been treated by the press and
many liberal elites.
They brandish the many predic-
tions of his demise as evidence of
their more sophisticated under-
standing of the Democratic elec-
torate. “He’s still leading the race
nationally. He’s leading in Iowa. It
looks like he’s in a dead heat in New
Hampshire,” said the top Biden ad-
viser. “I don’t know why the story
in New Hampshire isn’t how Ber-
nie Sanders went from 60 to 14.
And why is it that Biden is beating
Warren in Massachusetts? And he’s
way ahead in South Carolina. And
this is all on the back end of really
the most vicious press I think any-
one’s experienced. So that to me is
a statement of strength. And any-
one who’s sitting around waiting
for him to fall apart — you know
what, it hasn’t happened yet.”
To Biden’s advisers and allies,
the gap between a press corps, as
well as the wider online political
class, that is largely in its 20s and

30s and a candidate who would be
78 at his inauguration explains a lot
about why the pundits and Twitter
activists are so confounded by the
former vice president’s resilience.
“You have a press corps in which
most of them were in college when
Barack Obama ran for president
and they have fundamentally no
understanding and experience in
how politics works,” said a well-
known Democrat backing Biden.
“They have not really covered a true
Democratic primary ever because
there hasn’t been one since 2008.
The 2016 race didn’t become a real
primary until very late and the
press corps never thought Bernie
would win. And Bernie never got
the treatment from the press corps
that opponents like him typically
get. So they haven’t seen this kind
of race.”
This dynamic has produced what
Beto O’Rourke might call a ‘fu—-
-you’ attitude inside Biden world
toward the press and liberal social
media influencers who drool over
Elizabeth Warren’s every policy
paper and see Biden as hopelessly
square.
The well-known Democrat said
of the Biden press corps, “They
view this party as dominated by
woke millennials and through the
lens of coastal issues. They are
products, increasingly, of fairly
elite schools and they don’t talk to
a lot of voters who don’t look and
talk like them except their parents,
who also tend to be similar to them.
Occasionally they are shocked to
learn they have relatives who voted
for Donald Trump. And they were
not on the ground in the Midwest
primaries for governor races in 2018
in Michigan and Ohio and Wis-
consin where more moderate and
older and more experienced can-
didates won against young cool left
— often people of color — primary
opponents.”
They are, this person argued, ob-
sessed with a Democratic Party that
exists only on Twitter. She point-
edly noted that there are Democrats
“outside of those 18,000 voters in
Queens,” referring to the total vote
share — it was actually closer to
17,000 — for Alexandria Ocasio-
Cortez in her June 2018 primary
victory. “And by the way, those
didn’t even tend to be the economi-
cally disadvantaged people of color
who live in that district. They were
the, quote, ‘new people,’ if you talk
to anyone from New York.”
Her point was that the AOC phe-
nomenon “is emblematic of what
most reporters think is going on
nationally.”
To Biden world, it’s the media’s
cultural affinity for this new New
Left that explains why the Biden-
will-soon-collapse storyline has
such staying power.
“I get this question all the time:
Why does the press hate him so
much?” she said. “And the answer
is because they are younger and
they want someone cooler.”
•••
Last Saturday, 19 of the Democrats
running for president spoke at an
all-day convention of the New
Hampshire Democratic Party in
Manchester. The event attracts
the state’s most important activ-
ists, as well as a good smattering of
Democratic political junkies from
around the Northeast, and cam-
paigns are under pressure to create
some theatrics with supporters and
signage and post-convention par-
RELEASED BY "What's News" vk.com/wsnws TELEGRAM: t.me/whatsnws
ties in nearby parks and beer halls.
On stage before the party del-
egates, several candidates began
to make a more robust case against
Biden. Elizabeth Warren owned the
room, and the day, with an electric
performance that also showcased
her campaign’s ability to organize.
She brought in many supporters
from Massachusetts and outfitted
them with inflatable thunder sticks,
producing a well-choreographed
but authentic audience response
that her campaign immediately
used for a promotional video. (“We
did the same thing with Dukakis
in ’88,” one longtime Democratic
strategist noted about busing in
supporters from the neighboring
state.)
Biden’s message is that Trump
represents a unique threat that
requires Democratic voters to be
careful and ultimately risk averse
in choosing a nominee to face him
—an unmistakable warning not to
elect someone too far to the left,
such as Warren or Sanders.
Warren’s response remains sub-
tle, for now. “There is a lot at stake
and people are scared,” Warren told
the crowd on Saturday. “But we
can’t choose a candidate we don’t
believe in because we’re scared.
And we can’t ask other people to
vote for someone we don’t believe
in. I am not afraid. And for Demo-
crats to win, you can’t be afraid
either.”
T he assu mption embedded
in Warren’s line is that many of
Biden’s supporters aren’t really
enthusiastic about him, that they
are backing him out of some mis-
guided sense of obligation and
fear, which also might explain his
modest crowds and the lack of any
Biden thunder-stick moments in
this campaign.
This line of attack drives people
inside the Biden campaign mad. To
them, it smacks of elitism and sug-
gests that Warren and her most vo-
cal supporters believe that Biden’s
voters, who polls consistently show
are more likely to be working class
and people of color, are somehow
not smart enough to understand
why they support him.
“This gets back to the vitriol of
the left,” said the prominent Demo-
crat. “They seem to feel like, ‘Why
don’t you dumb voters see what we
see? If we yell at you enough, will
you start to listen to us?’”
“The party is older than people
think. It’s more centrist than people
think,” said the senior Biden ad-
viser. He noted that Biden’s favor-
ability rating among Democrats has
been in the mid-70s since the start
of this race.
“But they say he’s out of step
with the party! Well, he’s the only
person to demonstrate substantial
support across a multiracial coali-
tion. So actually, he is most in step
with the party. But no one ever sees
it that way because that is not the
world as seen through Twitter.”
Speaking early in the day on Sat-
urday, Biden gave his typical stump
speech about beating Trump and
rebuilding the middle class, but
the only thing that really made any
news was when, at one point, he ac-
cidentally said “hump” instead of
“Trump.”
Other candidates have begun
beta testing a more direct anti-
Biden message, and the intensity of
the message seems closely correlat-
ed with how poorly the candidate’s
campaign is faring. “Democrats are
long past believing that we want to
be led by folks that supported the
Iraq war and are long past a genera-
tion of politicians that couldn’t do
anything about the income stag-
nation that exists in this country,”
Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet
told me in an interview backstage.
“When you hear the vice president,
who I’ve nothing but the highest
regard for, say that if we just get
rid of Trump it will all go back to
normal, which is what he’s saying,
it misses the 10 years that I’ve been
in the Senate when it’s never been
normal. And for the last six years
of the Obama administration, he
couldn’t get anything done.”
Like others, Bennet argued that
the polls are misleading and would
get more volatile as voters focused
more closely on the race. “If his-
tory is any guide, the people that
are leading today are not going to be
the people that win in Iowa and win
in New Hampshire,” he insisted,
adding with self-deprecation: “And
I’m prepared to let history be our
guide since I’m at 1 percent today.”
After his speech, South Bend,
Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg and his
husband, Chasten, played cornhole
and ate ice-cream at a nearby park
while mixing with supporters. In an
interview, he made an anti-Biden
case that put him somewhere be-
tween Warren and Bennet.
“Every single time Democrats
have won, it’s somebody who’s gen-
erally viewed as outside of Wash-
ington, typically somebody from a
new generation and somebody with
a different approach,” he told me,
noting the victories of Kennedy,
Carter, Clinton and Obama. “And
every time we’ve tried to do some-
thing very conventional, and very
safe and had a very established
Washington nominee, every time
we’ve come up short. This is not
just a pattern. This has essentially
been an iron law for the last 50 or
60 years.”
The Biden camp scoffs at the gen-
erational argument. “The last guy
who tried this was out of the race
in a week, that congressman from
California,” said the senior Biden
adviser, who couldn’t remember
the name of 38-year-old Eric Swal-
well, who tried in vain to create a
viral moment about generational
change during the first debate. “He
was going to pass the torch.”
Swalwell told me he was wrong
that this is the right moment for
that message and doubted that a
candidate like Buttigieg would be
any more successful than he was.
“I felt like I was in a bad traffic jam
with no offramp and no way to get
ahead,” he said in an interview
Most of Joe Biden’s opponents seem afraid to directly confront an issue
that the talk about generational change tiptoes around: his age.
T H U R S D A Y, S E P T E M B E R 1 2 , 2 0 1 9 | POLITICO | 17
about his short-lived campaign.
“And certainly the lead car was the
vice president. I don’t know if this
is a generational election because of
who the president is. Beating him is
so important because of who he is
and what a threat to democracy he
is. It is still early and there are still
other generational candidates, but
my sense is that this isn’t a ‘Don’t
Stop Thinking About Tomorrow’
election. The stakes are so high
with this president that there is a
fear of rolling the dice.”
Perhaps the one line of attack
that just might work against Biden
is, at least for the moment, the only
area of criticism considered strictly
off limits by almost every cam-
paign. Most of Biden’s opponents
are scared to directly confront the
one issue that both his gaffes and all
the talk about generational change
tiptoe around: his age.
I rode with Steve Bullock, the
governor of Montana, to the con-
vention arena. He is supremely
confident and polished and in the
back seat of his SUV discussed his
successes as governor, his frustra-
tions about being excluded from the
next debate, and his concerns about
the leftward lunge of his party. The
only time he seemed to hold back
was when I raised the issue of
whether Biden is really up for the
job. “I think that’s one for the vot-
ers to figure out more than me,” he
said. (His campaign manager esca-
lated the rhetoric slightly in a memo
sent to reporters on Tuesday that
read: “There is a growing fear that
the candidates promising revolu-
tions are out of step with general
election voters while others fear
Vice President Biden may be un-
able to take down Trump.”)
In the afternoon, the issue of
Biden’s age and mental acuity
suddenly burst open in the airless
media room where most of the can-
didates, though not Biden, spoke
with reporters after their speeches.
I asked Rep. Tim Ryan, who the pre-
vious day had been quoted as saying
that Biden was “declining,” wheth-
er he meant declining in the polls
or mentally declining and he made
it clear he meant the latter. Pressed
further by another reporter, he
would only say, “There’s a lack of
clarity” when Biden speaks. (“You
know, with Ryan, if he declines any
more he’s going from like 1 to zero,”
the senior Biden adviser told me in
response.)
But Ryan was alone in raising
the issue. Afterward, I visited Amy
Klobuchar in her suite and, she too
refused to engage on the subject
TOM BRENNER/GETTY IMAGES
when I mentioned Ryan’s remarks.
“I’m running my own campaign,”
the Minnesota senator said through
bites of an apple, explaining why
she wouldn’t discuss Biden or any
of her other opponents. After five
minutes of pressing her about how
to differentiate herself from Biden,
she essentially ended the interview.
Like several other candidates, her
strategy remains one of waiting for
Biden’s collapse rather than trying
to trigger it.
But offstage, in the backrooms of
the SNHU Arena and nearby hotel
lobbies where activists and aides
gathered, the discussion frequently
turned to whether Biden is up to the
task of facing Trump.
“The narrative that Biden has
staying power is bullsh--,” said a
senior adviser to one of Biden’s ri-
vals. “It is just too f---ing early. Did
we not learn anything from 2016
that polls are sh--? The dude does
not know what is going on. He is
not in fighting shape to beat Trump.
You put him onstage together with
Trump, and they’re both gonna for-
get sh--, but Trump is sharper. The
dude is just old, and it’s showing
and they’re fighting every day to
make the case that’s not happen-
ing, but it is.”
But only Bakari Sellers, a former
South Carolina state legislator and
supporter and informal adviser to
California Sen. Kamala Harris,
was willing to say the quiet part
out loud.
“Joe Biden has been running for
president since before I was born,”
Sellers said. “Joe Biden is nearly
80 years old and he’s running to
be president of the United States.
My dad was president of an HBCU
and will be 75 this year, and his
doctors told him he couldn’t do it
anymore. He didn’t have the energy
and strength to lead that campus
anymore. Doesn’t mean he wasn’t
a great man and a great leader and a
great visionary. But it is a justifiable
conversation.”
Sellers went further and lumped
Sanders and Warren into the de-
bate about age. “The three front-
runners are all older than Ronald
Reagan was when he took over,”
he said. “Democrats are afraid of
criticism, which is silly to me. But
we are going to have a contentious
primary on vigor and issues about
fitness to be president.”
Then he paused and added, “But
at the end of the day, I’ll take a
90-year-old Joe Biden over Don-
ald Trump.”
The tricky part about attack-
ing Biden is that few Democratic
voters have any hostility toward
Biden personally. The most ag-
gressive public attack against him
was by Harris in the first debate,
when she confronted him about
his past positions on busing and
working with segregationist sena-
tors. She juiced her fundraising in
the days following the debate and
received a spike in national polls,
but her numbers soon settled back
down to where they were, at about
7 percent. Biden’s advisers now fre-
quently mention the episode as a
cautionary tale for others.
“Kamala going after Biden didn’t
really work out for her, so I’m curi-
ous to see how many try that again
on Thursday,” said a Democrat
close to the Biden campaign. “How
do you tear down the front-runner
that everyone actually likes?”
He added, “Do I believe that Joe
Biden is the future of the party? No.
But he’s the right person to beat this
president in 2020.”
 RELEASED BY "What's News" vk.com/wsnws TELEGRAM: t.me/whatsnws

18 | POLITICO | T H U R S D A Y, S E P T E M B E R 1 2 , 2 0 1 9

‘I love Bernie, but’: Sanders struggles to close the sale

He’s going all-out to
convince voters he can
win — but Warren has
made more headway
BY HOLLY OTTERBEIN
MANCHESTER, N.H. — Virtually every
poll since 2016 has shown Bernie
Sanders would beat Donald Trump.
But Sanders’ aides know that
some Democrats don’t buy it:
Doubters just can’t picture the
people of, say, rural Pennsylvania
putting a 78-year-old democratic
socialist in the White House. It
strains their very idea of America
itself.
“We still have work to do,” Faiz
Shakir, Sanders’ campaign man-
ager, told POLITICO. “Amongst the
Democratic primary electorate, in
some pockets, there’s fear of how
he’s going to campaign on ‘Medi-
care for All’: ‘Are people going to
get nervous and run away from it?’”
Sanders’ aides have long be-
lieved that convincing voters he
can oust Trump is key to winning
the primary. It’s been a central part
of their strategy since the earliest
days of their 2020 campaign, and
they’ve crafted a campaign tour,
speeches and digital P.R. push
aimed at winning the argument.
But after months of work, they’re
still running up against voters who
support Sanders’ bid but just can’t
see it happening, no matter what
the poll numbers say.
“I love Bernie,” said Gloria Hoag,
a New Hampshire delegate, at the
state Democratic Party’s annual
convention last weekend. “But I
don’t know if he can beat Trump
because he’s so far to the left. We
need someone who’s a little more
moderate.”
Democrats are petrified that
Trump will win a second term,
and many are telling pollsters that
they care more about whether can-
didates can take him on than their
policy positions. Joe Biden is the
front-runner in part because so
many voters are looking at the pri-
mary through the eyes of a pundit.
Elizabeth Warren, who is tied with
Sanders for second place accord-
ing to RealClearPolitics’ polling
average, has risen in the polls as
she’s convinced larger numbers of
Democrats she can win.
But Sanders hasn’t had as much
success convincing more voters he
has what it takes to defeat Trump,
possibly complicating his path to
the nomination.
At a canvassing kickoff in New
Hampshire on Saturday, Sanders’
campaign co-chair, Ben Cohen,
pinpointed the problem. He wanted
to be sure that the hundreds of vol-
unteers and staffers in the crowd
heard what he said before they left
to knock on voters’ doors.
“For so many people out there
that are going to vote in this pri-
mary, the most important issue is
beating Trump,” said Cohen, the
co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s. “And
for most people, the general idea
that’s out there in the mainstream
is that the person who is going to
beat Trump is the centrist, Biden.
But the reality is that in poll after
poll after poll, Bernie beats Trump.”
Sanders hammered away at the
same message minutes later: “We
are defeating Trump in every na-
tional poll that has ever been done,”
Sen. Bernie Sanders and his wife Jane (left) campaign at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines on Aug. 11. The Vermont senator and his aides point to a
phalanx of polls showing that he would beat President Donald Trump to rebut doubts about his electability.
he told his army of supporters. Sanders is facing a challenge for
Sanders has tried to convince multiple reasons, Democratic opera-
Democrats that he’s their best tives said: He is seen by some voters
fighter largely through data, but he as simply too liberal to beat Trump,
has attempted other approaches at more the leader of a robust move-
times. The Vermont senator took a ment than a commander in chief.
four-day “electability tour” in April Republicans would try to scare cen-
through Pennsylvania, Wisconsin ter-left suburban voters by painting
and Michigan — the Rust Belt states him as a leftist radical, skeptics of
that were critical to Trump’s 2016 the Vermont senator have said.
victory — as well as other parts of While Sanders leads Trump in
the Midwest to demonstrate that he both national and battleground
can win over working-class voters. state polling, Biden is further ahead
But it’s Warren who has made — which could be important to
the biggest gain in perceived elect- Democrats in an election in which
ability recently. The percentage of they see no room for error. It’s also
voters considering her who think possible Sanders isn’t talking about
she would probably oust Trump electability the right way.
has gone from 39 percent to 55 per- “His message tends to focus on
cent in the past three months — a what he wants to do and where he
“[Donald Trump] campaigned as a fake Bernie Sanders.
The way you beat him is with a real Bernie Sanders.”
— Faiz Shakir Sanders campaign manager
16-point leap — according to poll- wants to take the country on is-
ing by CBS/YouGov. Other surveys sues. It’s not so much a compari-
paint a similar trajectory. son with Trump,” said Jeff Link, a
For Sanders, the polling is more Democratic strategist in the first-
mixed. He got good news this week in-the-nation caucus state of Iowa.
when CBS/YouGov found that 58 “That’s probably why he hasn’t
percent of voters eyeing him believe moved a lot. … Certainly, Biden
he would probably beat Trump, up talks about Trump more.”
from 50 percent in June. But ac- Sanders’ aides believe that the
cording to polls by the Economist/ media is also hurting his cause.
YouGov, 52 percent of likely Demo- P undits portray Biden as the
cratic voters currently think Sand- electable candidate, they argue,
ers would probably win an election dismissing polls showing Sanders
against Trump — the same number would defeat him as well.
as those who did so in June. Despite the fact that Warren has
Biden, meanwhile, remains made more gains in the area re-
ahead of Warren and Sanders in cently, Sanders’ aides think he’ll
perceived electability in numer- win the nomination because vot-
ous polls. ers will come to see Sanders as the
candidate best positioned to both
defeat Trump and deliver change.
Medicare for All is a key part of
that. Though they admit some vot-
ers are wary of a general election
backlash over it, his staffers think
more and more people will even-
tually gravitate toward his candi-
dacy precisely because of his far-
reaching health care proposal. In
their view, Trump won, in part, by
parroting Sanders’ populist plans,
such as cutting prescription drug
prices and negotiating pro-worker
trade deals.
“He campaigned as a fake Bernie
Sanders,” Shakir said. “The way
you beat him is with a real Bernie
Sanders.”
It’s striking how differently the
leading Democratic candidates talk
about electability. Biden has put
the issue at the center of his cam-
paign, and his first TV ad in Iowa
used a number-driven approach. It
trumpeted: “All the polls agree: Joe
Biden is the strongest Democrat to
do the job.”
Instead of talking about polls,
Warren has sought to upend the
way voters think about electability
altogether. In the second primary
debate in July, she quipped, “I re-
member when people said Barack
Obama couldn’t get elected. Shoot,
I remember when people said Don-
ald Trump couldn’t get elected.”
Kamala Harris has taken a simi-
lar approach, arguing that pundits
CHIP SOMODEVILLA/GETTY IMAGES
dismiss African American and fe-
male voters when considering who
can win the Midwest: “It’s short-
sighted. It’s wrong,” she said.
In his most successful moments,
Sanders’ efforts to prove he’s elect-
able have gone viral. During a Fox
News-hosted town hall earlier this
year that was held in a Pennsylvania
county that backed Trump, audi-
ence members cheered when they
were asked if they wanted to switch
to Sanders’ Medicare for All plan.
The intended message was clear:
Sanders’ populism can defeat
Trump in the battleground states
that matter.
Other times, his efforts have
fallen flat. Ahead of the first de-
bate, Sanders’ campaign signaled
that he would take on Biden over
electability. But Sanders failed to
aggressively confront Biden, and in
the run-up to the second debate, his
team settled on a different strategy:
put Medicare for All center stage.
Mark Longabaugh, a top strat-
egist for Sanders during his 2016
presidential bid, said the conven-
tional wisdom on electability gets
it backwards: The first step is for a
candidate to make the sell to vot-
ers on values and issues. Then, if a
candidate succeeds on that front,
the rest comes naturally. Warren,
he said, is probably seen as more
electable by voters these days be-
cause she’s won their support — not
the other way around.
“This whole electability thing is
overblown,” he said. “I remember
the early feedback we got in 2015
in Iowa and New Hampshire: A lot
of people said they loved Bernie’s
message, absolutely loved it, but
they just assumed Clinton was go-
ing to win. Over time, as the cam-
paign developed and his standing
progressed, they stopped saying
that. Because they liked him.”
 RELEASED BY "What's News" vk.com/wsnws TELEGRAM: t.me/whatsnws

T H U R S D A Y, S E P T E M B E R 1 2 , 2 0 1 9 | POLITICO | 19

Trump, Bolton broke up because of course they did

The national security
adviser had his own
agenda and never
jelled with POTUS
BY ELIANA JOHNSON
Fox News host Tucker Carlson
had been lobbying President Don-
ald Trump to fire John Bolton for
months, telling him it was foolish to
keep on his team a top adviser who
did not share his views on pressing
national security issues.
Carlson and a host of others,
including several senior admin-
istration officials, frequently told
Trump that Bolton, a career hawk
with a reputation as a vicious bu-
reaucratic infighter, not only wasn’t
on his team but was using the news
media against him.
Trump, who became a fan of his
then-future national security ad-
viser while watching his frequent
television appearances on Fox, told
these people he enjoyed Bolton’s
presence in negotiations because
he believed he spooked U.S. ad-
versaries like Iran. But he chafed
at reading about and watching news
reports of Bolton’s disagreements
with administration policy on ev-
erything from talks with North Ko-
rea to pulling troops out of Syria to
angling for a sitdown with Iranian
leaders.
“Where there is public disagree-
ment like that and it keeps going
on from one issue to another, I do
think there is a cumulative ef-
fect on the human psyche, and it
probably leads to less communica-
tion,” said Gen. Jack Keane, a for-
mer Army vice chief of staff who
talks frequently with the president
and other senior administration SEAN GALLUP/GETTY IMAGES
officials. President Donald Trump’s third national security, John Bolton, was never a natural fit in the White House. Serious and cerebral, he used a team of like-
Ultimately, it was hearing me- minded loyalists to push own his policy priorities — which were sometimes, but not always, those of his boss.
dia accounts about how Bolton had
advised the president to scuttle a
meeting with Taliban leaders at decessor, H.R. McMaster, had Bolton has served effectively in sent to Mongolia at the time that morning.”
Camp David that proved a break- worked to adhere to a traditional the senior ranks of previous ad- Trump was having his last meet- While Bolton’s deputy, Charles
ing point for Trump, according process in which the president is ministrations, but after Trump ing with Kim Jong Un, which is, Kupperma n, was on T uesday
to sources inside and outside the presented a range of options on key passed over him to be secretary of you know, being sent to Mongo- named acting national security
administration. In the president’s issues, along with a list of risks as- State during the transition in 2016, lia is kind of a joke, right?” said adviser, few in the White House
telling, he had taken his own coun- sociated with each option, Bolton Bolton widely acknowledged that David Rothkopf, who has written believed the longtime Bolton aco-
sel in arriving at the decision to call operated differently, preferring in- this was likely to be his last — and extensively about the NSC. Trump lyte would remain in that position
off the meeting and end negotia- stead to give the president his own most senior — government post. brought Carlson with him instead. for the long term, and the president
tions, and he was infuriated to hear guidance in private. While many That meant that unlike some of his Even Bolton’s dismissal instantly said he would name a permanent
Bolton credited with influencing his had griped that McMaster held too colleagues, most notably Pompeo, became a matter of dispute be- replacement next week.
decision. many meetings, under the Bolton who is 55, he had little to lose by tween the two men — going public Among the names being floated
Bolton’s exit is a stark illustra- regime, Secretary of State Mike aggressively pursuing some of his just moments after the president for the position are Stephen Biegun,
tion of how Trump has grown in- Pompeo at one point joked with own policy priorities, be it sticking announced his departure. Bolton the U.S. special representative for
creasingly confident in his own colleagues about jump-starting it to Iran or dismantling the Inter- fumed privately to allies that North Korea, who has been previ-
judgment on national security — ously considered for the position,
and how he’s developed a greater and retired Army Col. Douglas
sense of urgency to follow through Macgregor, a frequent guest on
on his campaign promise to re- Carlson’s program.
duce U.S. entanglements abroad. “The handwriting’s been on the wall for a long time. You can think back to John Bolton Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.)
Bolton saw things differently and literally being sent to Mongolia at the time that Trump was having his last meeting with told Fox News’ Bret Baier on Tues-
made little secret of it. Both men day evening that the president had
were equally firm in their con- Kim Jong Un, which is, you know, being sent to Mongolia is kind of a joke, right?” also said he was considering the
victions, and the conflict proved — David Rothkopf Author vice president’s national secu-
irreconcilable. rity adviser, Keith Kellogg; Brian
A Bolton spokesman did not re- Hook, the special envoy for Iran;
ply to a request for comment. This and Ricky Waddell, an assistant to
account is based on conversations the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
with nearly a dozen administra- his own National Security Coun- national Criminal Court, even if the Trump had mischaracterized the Staff and an NSC veteran.
tion officials and people close to cil process to fill the Bolton void. president didn’t share them. events that led to his exit and pub- But critics cautioned that the
the president. Bolton, the president’s third na- As with previous top foreign licly to reporters seeking to illumi- president’s fourth national secu-
Bolton’s critics, including Carl- tional security adviser, was never policy aides, including McMaster nate the nature of their dispute. rity adviser is likely to have little
son, used the incident to urge the a natural fit in the Trump White and Rex Tillerson — and even Jim While the president wrote in a sway with the president.
president to act. He was a leaker, House. Serious and cerebral, the Mattis, who resigned of his own vo- tweet that he had asked for Bolton’s “The next national security ad-
they told him. Others in the admin- 70-year-old Yale University- lition — substantive disagreements resignation on Monday evening, viser of the United States is going
istration feared the same, at times trained lawyer immediately went and stylistic differences simply led Bolton told A BC News’ Jona- to be Donald Trump, just like the
excluding Bolton and his allies from about assembling a team of like- the president to seek Bolton’s ad- than Karl that Trump was “flatly current national security adviser of
sensitive meetings for fear they minded loyalists capable of pushing vice less frequently. wrong.” the United States is, in fact, Donald
would weaponize the information his policy priorities — which were “The handwriting’s been on the “He never asked me to resign di- Trump,” Rothkopf said. “The next
exchanged to their advantage. sometimes, but not always, those wall for a long time. You can think rectly or indirectly,” Bolton said. national security adviser is going to
While Bolton’s immediate pre- of his boss. back to John Bolton literally being “I slept on it and resigned this have [the job] in name only.”

20 | POLITICO | T H U R S D A Y, S E P T E M B E R 1 2 , 2 0 1 9
Trump delivers campaign pitch to wary HBCU leaders
President touts low
unemployment rates
and poverty levels
for African Americans
BY MAYA KING
President Donald Trump told
leaders of historically black colleges
and universities of his “fierce dedi-
cation to strengthening HBCUs.”
He insisted his “administration’s
commitment is bigger and better
and stronger than any previous
administration by far.”
“This nation owes a profound
debt of gratitude to its HBCUs,”
he said Tuesday in a speech to
more than 40 representatives from
HBCUs gathered in Washington
for the White House Initiative on
Historically Black Colleges and
Universities.
His remarks were greeted warm-
ly by an audience that nevertheless
took pains afterward to separate
itself from the other portion of
the president’s remarks to them —
Trump’s campaignlike pitch tout-
ing himself to African Americans.
Pointing to what he said were
record-low unemployment and
poverty rates for African Ameri-
cans, Trump at one point asked
who on a presidential debate stage
“is going to beat these numbers?”
“I think it’s important to stay fo-
cused on the money and not on the
message,” said Austin Lane, presi-
dent of Texas Southern University,
which will host Thursday’s Demo-
cratic presidential debate. “We’re
here to find out, most importantly,
if there’s money to access, where is
it and how do we get it.”
Administration officials issue stark warning on mortgage finance
BY KATY O’DONNELL
The U.S. housing finance sys-
tem is worse off today than it was
on the cusp of the 2008 financial
crisis, Republican lawmakers and
Trump administration officials
warned on Tuesday.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,
the two government-controlled
enterprises that stand behind half
the country’s mortgages, are too
undercapitalized, and lending
standards have actually deterio-
rated since the housing crash, the
officials said.
“This whole thing is a car wreck.
It’s a dumpster fire,” Sen. John
Kennedy (R-La.) said at a Senate
Banking Committee hearing on the
White House’s proposal to over-
haul the way the nation finances
mortgages.
“We spent $190 billion of tax-
payer money, and we’re in worse
shape,” he said, referring to the
bailout of Fannie Mae and Fred-
die Mac, which were seized by the
Treasury a decade ago to stave
off catastrophic losses during the
crisis.
The hearing kicked off what
promises to be a highly conten-
tious debate over the plans released
last week by the departments of
Treasury and Housing and Urban
Development to scale back the fed-
eral government’s massive role in
the mortgage market. Republicans
are focusing on what they say are
growing risks in the system, while
RELEASED BY "What's News" vk.com/wsnws TELEGRAM: t.me/whatsnws
President Donald Trump listens to White House Opportunity and Revitalization Council Executive Director Scott
Turner speak on Tuesday during the National Historically Black Colleges and Universities Week Conference.
Several HBCU students and
community members have been
critical of their leaders for work-
ing with the Trump administration,
saying they’re getting too close to
a presidency that has continually
insulted the black community.
HBCU leaders defend their decision
to maintain the relationship, saying
working with the administration is
key to securing the federal funding
necessary to keep their universities
running.
Democrats are mostly concerned
about providing affordable housing.
The Treasury blueprint would
overhaul Fannie and Freddie before
releasing them from government
control. A major component of the
plan is building the companies’
capital so they would be able to
withstand an economic downturn
without turning to taxpayers again.
Right now, the companies are
allowed to retain only a combined
$6 billion in capital despite own-
ing or guaranteeing $5.5 trillion of
mortgages.
“I will tell you as a safety-and-
soundness regulator, when I look
at a $3 trillion institution that is
leveraged 1,000 to 1, it keeps me up
at night,” Federal Housing Finance
Agency Director Mark Calabria,
the companies’ regulator, told the
committee.
“If we do nothing, this is going to
end very badly,” he added.
Fannie and Freddie are less
equipped for a downturn now than
they were before the crisis, Senate
Banking Chairman Mike Crapo
(R-Idaho) said. Before 2008, he
said, the companies held 45 cents
in capital for every $100 in mort-
gages; today that figure is 19 cents.
T reasu r y Secreta r y Steven
Mnuchin, HUD Secretary Ben
Carson and Calabria all agreed
with Crapo’s assessment that the
GSEs “are systemically important
companies [and] that they continue
to be too big to fail.”
“With every administration,
we pledge to work well,” said
Katara Williams, chief of staff
for the Southern University sys-
tem, which pointed to the Trump
administration’s role in securing
loan forgiveness for the more than
$300 million in aid it received
alongside other Louisiana HBCUs
in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
“Any advancement that we can get
in terms of providing additional ac-
cess through scholarships or grants
“This whole thing is a car wreck,” Sen. John Kennedy said of federal
mortgage lenders during a Senate Banking hearing Tuesday.
But when Sen. Mark Warner (D-
Va.) pressed Mnuchin and Calabria
on whether the Financial Stability
Oversight Council, the regula-
tor created after the crisis to spot
emerging risks in the financial
system, should subject Fannie and
Freddie to greater oversight, they
rejected the idea.
“Before we raised public capital,
we would make sure we understood
that there was enough capital so
that they did not need to be desig-
nated” as “systemically important”
by FSOC, Mnuchin said.
CHIP SOMODEVILLA/GETTY IMAGES
… we’re very grateful.”
In the administration’s earliest
days, Trump said he would make
HBCUs a “top priority.” But the rela-
tionship has been inconsistent. Lit-
tle more than one month into office,
he moved the White House Initiative
on HBCUs from the Department of
Education to the White House —
something black leaders called for
under the Obama administration.
Proponents of the move saw it as
a good-faith decision by Trump and
ANDREW HARNIK/AP
“It appears to me from your ad-
ministrative proposals, we could
end up with a system that actually
doesn’t end too-big-to-fail and
doesn’t increase affordable access
to credit — that is a grave concern
to me,” Warner said. The adminis-
tration’s plan, he said, is “going to
put us right back to where we were
prior to 2008.”
Mnuchin disputed Warner’s
characterization; he and Calabria
emphasized that the White House
plan includes reforms to reduce the
risk in the companies’ portfolios.
a sign that he was open to listening
to their leaders and delivering re-
sults. More than half of the admin-
istrative offices for the initiative,
however, remain in the Department
of Education.
Like most university leaders,
HBCU presidents have courted
presidential administrations re-
gardless of their political leanings.
On average, historically black insti-
tutions rely on the federal govern-
ment for half of their total annual
revenue.
That’s left HBCU leaders in a bind
when it comes to their relationship
with Trump. They’re leery of alien-
ating the administration even as the
president maintains an approval
rating among African Americans
of just 9 percent, according to the
most recent CNN/SSRS poll.
Aware of the potentially nega-
tive optics of appearing too close to
the president and his administra-
tion, one HBCU president who re-
quested anonymity told POLITICO
that while HBCU leaders actively
attended the week’s business meet-
ings, they did not participate in a
public photo opportunity.
Most sought to keep the focus
on the challenges facing their in-
stitutions — not on the president’s
rhetoric.
“This conference is separate
from the president’s vision,” said
Anthony Jenkins, president of West
Virginia State University, who said
he did not attend Trump’s remarks
because of a scheduling conflict.
The president’s support, he con-
tinued, “Is one part of a piece of
pie. It is one sliver of what needs
to be done. It’s going to take a com-
prehensive, joint effort.”
As it stands, underwriting stan-
dards at Fannie and Freddie have
“gotten worse, not better,” Calabria
said, pointing to a “massive expan-
sion” of loans with high debt-to-
income ratios in recent years.
“What you’re describing today
sounds even more dangerous than
the conditions that we had prior
to the last crisis,” Sen. Martha
McSally (R-Ariz.) said. “How is it
that reforms haven’t been made in
order to prevent us being in similar
conditions?”
Carson said reforms at the Fed-
eral Housing Administration have
brought down delinquency rates.
Efforts to reduce risk, though,
would inevitably result in fewer
people getting mortgages — a point
Democrats on the committee made
repeatedly.
When Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.)
pressed the officials to identify
people who would not be able to get
mortgages under the plan, Mnuchin
said “there may be certain people
today who really shouldn’t get a
mortgage because they can’t af-
ford them.”
Carson agreed.
“Certainly there are some people
who probably should not be mort-
gage owners — in many cases very
disabled people, elderly people,
people who are drug-addicted, who
are not going to be able to make the
payments,” Carson said. “We have
other programs for individuals like
that.”

RICH
LOWRY
I
n the “fi re and fury” phase of
Donald Trump’s presidency,
everyone worried that he’d
impulsively start a war with
North Korea.
The worry should have been
he’d, almost on a whim, step
across the Korean DMZ in a
chummy photo-op with Kim Jong
Un.
Richard Nixon famously had
his ”mad man” theory of bringing
our adversaries to heel by
impressing on them his bellicose
unpredictability. They’d better
talk, otherwise the crazed anti-
communist Nixon might shake
off the reins of his advisers and
nuke somebody.
It’s easy to see the inherent
appeal of this theory to Trump,
who has cited it in congratulating
himself for avoiding war with
North Korea. But the president,
despite the occasional over-
the-top threat, is not a natural
madman in this Nixonian sense.
He’s not a mad bomber; he’s the
mad negotiator.
Does a South Korean
delegation have an offer from
Kim to negotiate directly, with
little or no preparation and
RELEASED BY "What's News" vk.com/wsnws TELEGRAM: t.me/whatsnws
The mad negotiator
fuzzy goals? By all means, let’s
accept it, and make the meeting a
captivating show. Is U.S. envoy
Zalmay Khalilzad nearing a
deal with the Taliban? Let’s get
leaders of the insurgency, not just
to Washington, but to the storied
retreat of U.S. presidents, Camp
David. Will Trump and Iranian
President Hassan Rouhani both
be at the upcoming U.N. General
Assembly meeting? Let’s talk.
Trump has taken the old
Obama statement from a
2008 primary debate that he’d
be willing to meet without
precondition with the leaders
of rogue states, and made it an
animating principle of his foreign
policy.
This is why the Russia
conspiracy theorists have always
been off the mark. They’ve
long believed — and still can’t
shake the sense — that Vladimir
Putin “must have something”
on Trump to account for the
president’s unwillingness to
offend the Russian leader and
eagerness to come to some sort of
unspecified arrangement. By this
reasoning, the Taliban, Kim Jong
Un, Chinese President Xi and
Rouhani all must have something
on Trump, too.
Trump sees the best in even
the world’s most dismal actors
because he sees them, no matter
how hostile or bloodstained, as
Get POLITICO Magazine’s newsletter featuring the best stories
of the week and our Friday Cover delivered to your inbox!
OPINION
potential negotiating partners.
Indeed, the more hostile and
bloodstained they are, the more
alluring they seem — because
any deal would be ever more
epic, more dramatic, and more
validating of Trump’s image as
the ultimate dealmaker.
Trump is often interpreted in
Jacksonian terms, and rightly so.
And yet, he goes well beyond a
traditional Jacksonian’s instinct
to leave the world alone until,
when a threat emerges, he feels
compelled to pound it into sand.
This has occasionally been
Trump’s rhetoric on North Korea
and Iran, and his action regarding
ISIS. But he’s a Jacksonian as
real-estate developer; he doesn’t
want to leave the world alone
— or pound it into sand — so
much as have attention-getting
ribbon cutting ceremonies after
audacious deals that prove the
doubters wrong.
The M.O. of a publicity-
conscious real-estate guy is, once
you’ve cut the deal, even if it
isn’t really the best one ever, you
insist it is. Your building is almost
entirely sold out, rich and famous
people are buying there, the prices
are above market rates, etc. This
is what is known as puffery, and
Kim has been the beneficiary of
it.
Even though Kim’s missile
program continues apace and the
T H U R S D A Y, S E P T E M B E R 1 2 , 2 0 1 9 | POLITICO | 21
prospect of him denuclearizing
is as distant as ever, Trump still
insists they are great friends and
he is a promising young man.
There are, to be sure, things to
be said for Trump’s dealmaking-
fi rst approach. When it comes to
China, for example, there is at
least a colorable case for making
a trade deal the priority over
anything else right now.
Thanks to his flair for the
dramatic and his belief in
walking away from the table
as a tactic, Trump has been
willing to blow up his most
dubious diplomatic gambits —
namely, the deal that was in the
offi ng during the Kim summit
in Vietnam and the proposed
Taliban visit to Camp David.
From one point of view, Trump
is an exaggerated version of the
mistake many U.S. presidents
tend to make. Because getting
elected president means by
defi nition that they have better-
than-average persuasive skills,
presidents often have an outsized
view of their own ability to
personally sway other leaders.
Obviously, though Trump
takes it to another level. The
problem with his worldview is
that, counter to its supposed
hard-bitten realism, it depends
on the idea that ultimately,
yes, we can all get along,
assuming the right dealmaker
POLITICO.COM/SIGNUP
is in the Oval Office. But foreign
actors, especially the worst,
have interests and ideological
commitments that they can’t
simply be talked out of and
aren’t susceptible to clever
workarounds. Not everything is a
negotiation.
The very fact of a presidential
meeting is a propaganda victory
for the likes of Kim or the
Taliban. And perception can’t
substitute for reality the way it
might in New York real estate.
If a New York newspaper is
persuaded by happy talk to run a
favorable item about a property,
it might significantly affect
the property’s prospects. By
contrast, we can say warm things
about Kim, and it doesn’t change
what he’s doing or alter any of his
fi xed goals.
No tool of foreign policy,
including diplomacy, should be
deployed indiscriminately and
thoughtlessly. Trump views
himself as primarily a dealmaker,
which doesn’t mean that every
deal is worth having or even
pursuing. There’s lot of space
between “fi re and fury” and
hosting terrorists at Camp David.
Some hands aren’t worth
shaking, some ribbons not worth
cutting.
Rich Lowry is editor of National
Review.
 RELEASED BY "What's News" vk.com/wsnws TELEGRAM: t.me/whatsnws

22 | POLITICO | T H U R S D A Y, S E P T E M B E R 1 2 , 2 0 1 9

MATT WUERKER

CARTOON CAROUSEL

MICHAEL RAMIREZ CREATORS NATE BEELER CAGLECARTOONS.COM

 RELEASED BY "What's News" vk.com/wsnws TELEGRAM: t.me/whatsnws

T H U R S D A Y, S E P T E M B E R 1 2 , 2 0 1 9 | POLITICO | 23

Inform.
Empower.
Connect.

No One
Rises To The
Top Alone.
Take the Next Step with Women Rule
There is no shortage of capable women in the world, but
leadership requires support, knowledge, community and
opportunity.

Together with our founding partners Google and the Tory

Burch Foundation, Women Rule seeks to create opportunities
for women to advance their leadership skills, knowledge and
networks. We offer carefully tailored programming, events
and content, powered by the POLITICO newsroom, as well
as the support and connection of a growing and dedicated
community of influential women.

No one rises to the top alone, and Women Rule is here to

help you take the next step in your leadership journey. We
encourage you to get started today. Sign up for the Women
Rule newsletter, and get plugged in to the Women Rule
community and to all of the amazing things it offers.

Learn more at
politico.com/womenrulecommunity




 
 
 RELEASED BY "What's News" vk.com/wsnws TELEGRAM: t.me/whatsnws

24 | POLITICO | T H U R S D A Y, S E P T E M B E R 1 2 , 2 0 1 9

MONICA VERDOZA
AIR FORCE VETERAN
Lead Program Manager
CEO Communications

SERVING THOSE WHO SERVED –

More than AND HIRING THEM, TOO
1 in 5 In keeping with our military roots, USAA places a priority on hiring veterans
and spouses of those currently serving. This commitment doesn’t stop at
of our employees our doors. We also work with advocacy groups and other companies to
are veterans or champion the undeniable value these men and women bring to any workplace.
military spouses USAA does more because no one cares more.

USAAJOBS.COM/MILITARY
No Department of Defense or government agency endorsement. USAA is an EOE/AA/Disabled/Veterans employer. USAA means United Services Automobile Association and its affiliates. ©2019 USAA. 264922-0919