2018: Top Dem Strategists Want Party to Double Down on
Stormy Daniels
Top Democratic
strategists reportedly want the party to double down on President Donald Trump’s
alleged affairs with Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal going into the 2018
midterms.
One top Democratic strategist told The Hill that playing up Trump’s affairs “will
help rev up our base.” Jim Manley, who was former Senate Majority Leader Harry
Reid’s top strategist, told the outlet that Democrats “shouldn’t shy away from
raising this issue to the extent they’re comfortable because it comes down to a
question of credibility.”
“This is consuming the
cable networks right now. It’s all people are talking about. Why shouldn’t we
add this to the arsenal and make voters realize you can’t trust someone who is
involved in any of these matters?” he reportedly said.
Another top Democratic
strategist told The Hill that Democrats should play up Karen McDougal’s and
Stormy Daniels’s interviews in which they said they had affairs with Trump
because “even a small drop in evangelical support for Republicans would be
devastating.”
“You want to dampen
Republican enthusiasm. We should take a lesson from the Republican playbook and
let an ‘all of the above’ strategy take hold from different messengers across
different targeted platforms,” the strategist reportedly added.
Trump’s approval ratings have actually risen since Daniels and
McDougal started going public and cable networks like CNN started their
wall-to-wall coverage of all things Stormy and Karen.
And a Morning Consult report found that Trump has not really lost
support from evangelical voters, 80 percent of whom voted for Trump in 2016.
In addition, a 2016 Public Religion Research Institute poll taken after the Access Hollywood tape was released found 72% of white
evangelicals believe that “an elected official who commits an immoral act
in their personal life can still behave ethically in their professional life, a
stunning 42-point jump in their opinion on this issue since 2011.”
Another Morning Consult poll this week found that nearly half of
those surveyed said Trump’s affair with Daniels “doesn’t change how they view
Trump,” up from nearly 40 percent who thought the same a month ago.
“The Stormy Daniels scandal has had little discernible impact on
voter opinions of President Trump this month,” Morning Consult Co-Founder and
Chief Research Officer Kyle Dropp told Politico.
Legacy media reporters and Democrats have been gushing over the
record ratings that 60 Minutes got
for its Stormy Daniels interview in which she described spanking Trump with
a Forbes magazine that had him on the cover and
alleged that someone threatened her in a parking lot to keep silent about her
affair.
But they have conveniently left out the fact that60 Minutes also lucked out by getting a phenomenal
lead-in.
60 Minutes aired
after much of the nation was transfixed by two of college basketball’s most
blue-blooded teams (Duke and Kansas) who played an epic overtime thriller that
determined the last Final Four spot in this year’s college basketball
tournament.
CBS could not have orchestrated a better lead-in, as many
viewers, including plenty of sports fans on the east coast who may not normally
watch the news program, just left their televisions on for the Daniels
interview after Kansas defeated Duke, arguably the most polarizing team in the
sport that draws plenty of eyeballs.
Though top Democratic
strategists want the party to play up Trump’s alleged affairs, House Minority
Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who most likely has the most to gain from this
year’s midterm elections, is reportedly not too enthusiastic about making 2018
all about Stormy and Karen.
“I don’t know that we
necessarily have to get involved in any of that,” Pelosi reportedly told
reporters last week.
_________________________
North
Korea’s Kim Jong Un to meet with South Korean president at border
North Korea's Kim Jung
Un will meet next month with South Korean President Moon Jae-in at a border
village in a high-profile meeting that could prove significant in global
efforts to resolve a decades-long standoff over Pyongyang's nuclear program.
The announcement was
made after officials met at the border village of Panmunjom. The Koreas plan to
hold another preparatory meeting on April 4 to discuss protocol, security and
media coverage issues during the April 27 meeting, according to a joint
statement released by the countries.
Few other details were
released.
March 29: South Korean Unification Minister
Cho Myoung-gyon, left, shakes hands with North Korean delegation head Ri Son
Gwon before their meeting at the northern side of the Panmunjom, North Korea.
(Korea Pool via AP)
The leaders of the two
Koreas have held talks only twice since the 1950-53 Korean War, in 2000 and
2007, under previous liberal governments in Seoul.
A top South Korean
official told reporters that setting up dialogue to eliminate Kim's nuclear
weapons program would be a critical point of the meeting.
Ri Son Gwon, chairman
of a state agency that deals with inter-Korean affairs, led the North’s three
delegates, saying the past 80 days have been filled with "unprecedented
historic events between the rivals,” referring to the Korea’s renewed talks
before the Winter Olympics and the agreement on the summit.
He also expressed
hopes for an outcome that would meet the "hope and desire of the
nation."
Thursday’s
announcement comes after a surprise
meeting between Kim Jong Un and Chinese President Xi Jinping this
week, which goal appeared to seek improving relations ahead of the North’s
planned talks with Moon and President Donald Trump.
In setting up separate
talks with Beijing, Seoul, Washington, and potentially with Moscow and Tokyo,
North Korea may be moving to disrupt any united front among its negotiating
counterparts. By reintroducing China, which is the North's only major ally, as
a major player, North Korea also gains leverage against South Korea and the
United States, analysts say.
Washington and Seoul
have said Kim previously told South Korean envoys that he was willing to put
his nukes up for negotiation in his talks with President Donald Trump. However,
the North has yet to officially confirm its interest in a summit between Kim
and Trump.
The
Associated Press contributed to this report.
