Credit: The Washington Post
Flake Rules Out 2020 Run:
Former Sen. Jeff Flake has signed on as a contributor to CBS and announced on "This Morning" he won't be challenging Trump for president because he doesn't see how he could win. "There really isn't a path, right now, that I can see," he said.
Well This Wasn't a Good Way to Start:
At a New York City Barnes & Noble -- a stop on his book tour for "From The Ground Up" -- former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz was heckled by a protester who yelled, "Don't help elect Trump, you egotistical, billionaire a**hole. Go back to getting ratioed on Twitter." As Politico's Alex Thompson noted, Schultz only has seven tweets, and every one of them has so far been ratioed. Oof.
When asked if he would drop out if polls found his third-party run would help re-elect Trump, Schultz said he was "not going to do anything to put Donald Trump back in the Oval Office," but stopped short of promising now to drop out.
The First Thing Harris Would do as POTUS:
During her CNN town hall last night, Harris said the first thing she'd do as president would be to pass a middle-class tax cut known as the LIFT Act. She also said she supports taxing the rich more ("People at the top 1% -- people who are making $10 million a year, who have $50 million a year, they need to pay more taxes"), the Green New Deal, and she said she wouldn't support building Trump's border wall under any circumstances. You can read our liveblog from the event here.
Beto's First Blog:
Before he had a Medium account, Beto O'Rourke ran an independent paper in El Paso. Mother Jones has a look at O'Rourke's short-lived alt weekly magazine, Stanton Street. In an opening issue letter from the editor, O'Rourke wrote the people felt neglected by the Gannett-owned El Paso Times, "beholden to a corporate board that meets in McLean, Virginia" and said it was inspired by his father, Pat O'Rourke. The magazine ran for 15 print issues and "offered its young publisher a crash course in city politics and community-building," and laid the foundation of his political career, Tim Murphy writes. Here's the opening paragraph of O'Rourke's welcome letter: | |
