| | | | | Welcome to The Point with Chris Cillizza – a brand new nightly politics newsletter! This new addition to your evenings will cut through the day's news and get right to The Point with analysis from Chris Cillizza and co-author Saba Hamedy. See something you like -- or don't? Or something that we can do better? Let us know. Send your thoughts to cillizza@cnn.com or saba.hamedy@cnn.com. | | | 5 questions Donald Trump Jr. needs to answer | | Here's what we know, according to The New York Times: Donald Trump Jr. met with a Russian lawyer in the summer of 2016 after receiving a promise that the attorney had negative information about Hillary Clinton.
Trump Jr. brought then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort and still Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner to the meeting at Trump Tower. He says he didn't tell either man about the nature of the meeting.
When initially questioned about the meeting by NYT, Don Jr. said it was primarily focused on adoptions. When pressed by the Times 24 hours after the initial story was published, Don Jr. changed his tune -- insisting that while he expected there to be information helpful to the Trump campaign passed along, he didn't know the name of the attorney doing the passing.
Er, OK. There's still LOTS more questions than answers on all of this. Here are five.
1. Why agree to meet someone whose name you don't even know?
Don Jr., as the near-certain presidential nominee's eldest son, was one of the most important people in the campaign. Not only that but he also brought Manafort and Kushner, arguably the other two most powerful staffers in the campaign, to the meeting too.
He did it all, according to his own statement, without even asking who he was meeting with. Or whether they might be a foreign citizen. Or what their motivation or dumping this negative Clinton information might be.
2. Why did Manafort and Kushner even go?
Remember that this meeting happened in June 2016 -- right in the heart of Trump's attempt to convince enough delegates to stay with him to avoid a contested convention fight. Kushner and Manafort theoretically had much better things to do than go into a meeting with an unknown person and about an unknown topic. Right?
3. Why did Trump Jr. change his story?
On Saturday, this meeting was primarily about adoptions. Trump Jr. never mentioned the 2016 election in his statement to the Times. By Sunday, once the Times reported that he expected dirt on Clinton, Don Jr. changed his story to fit those new facts. Why not just fully explain the situation from the start?
4. Why did no one disclose the meeting initially?
Kushner didn't disclose the June meeting with the Russian lawyer. He also didn't initially report his meeting with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak and the head of a state-owned Russia bank. In all his instances, his lawyers said it was an oversight -- nothing more.
Manafort, too, only recently told congressional investigators about the meeting with the Russian lawyer.
5. Trump Jr. said the information was useless. So, what was it?
According to his own recounting of the meeting, Don Jr. quickly concluded that the lawyer's assertions were "vague, ambiguous and made no sense."
OK. So, what were they? And, if Trump Jr. doesn't want to say, how are we able to know that the information passed along by the Russian lawyer didn't make it into the Trump campaign's messaging?
Make no mistake: This story isn't going away -- whether or not Don Jr. answers any of the questions outlined above. It'd be a lot better for his dad, however, if he started answering them ASAP. | | The Senate came back from its recess Monday and health care remains at the top of the agenda. But as CNN's MJ Lee and Ted Barrett reported earlier, "things are looking especially tough" for Republicans.
Republicans have at least 10 "no" votes for the current version of their health care plan, which is bad news for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (who can only afford to lose two GOP senators).
Some GOP lawmakers are not optimistic. Sen. John McCain CBS' John Dickerson on "Face the Nation" over the weekend that the health care proposal was "probably going to be dead." Maine Sen. Susan Collins told CNN she needs a "complete overhaul" of a health care bill "to get to a yes."
Protesters showed up in 13 different locations in House and Senate office buildings to demonstrate against GOP efforts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. On Monday, Republican Sens. Ted Cruz, Jeff Flake, Rob Portman and Lamar Alexander were greeted by protesters in or around their Capitol Hill offices Monday. Many held signs and chanted at their opposition, slogans such as "Save our lives, kill the bill" and "Come out and talk to us." As of Monday afternoon, Capitol Police had arrested 80 protesters — 21 in House office buildings and 59 in Senate buildings — and charged them with the misdemeanor of "Crowding, Obstructing, or Incommoding," Capitol Police spokeswoman Eva Malecki told CNN.
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump -- back from G20 -- has largely been absent in final health care sprint, CNN's Kaitlan Collins and Dan Merica reported. POTUS did, however, send a tweet Monday morning (screenshot above). | | One West Virginia resident really wants to "Make America Rock Again."
Kenton Tilford, 26-year-old political consultant and freelance writer, formally made a campaign committee called "Run the Rock 2020" on Sunday, according to FEC records.
Saba reached out to Tilford, who said the committee's overal goal is "to build a grassroots community of Americans to show to Mr. Johnson that his incredible popularity as an actor and public figure can translate into politics seamlessly. And I hope it influences him to take the plunge and run in 2020."
Tilford did not anticipate such buzz around the committee's creation. His voicemail box was full. When reached earlier in the day by CNN, his mom picked up the family's home phone and said "try calling around 3."
Speculation around the Rock as a potential presidential nominee began in May, when GQ published an article with the headline "Dwayne Johnson for President!"
Read more about Tilford's committee in Saba's story. | | | On Sunday, "The Defiant Ones," a documentary about the partnership between Dr. Dre and Apple exec Jimmy Iovine, debuted on HBO. In an interview with Uproxx about the film, director Allen Hughes said Dre was recently producing a new track for Eminem's album in the "11th hour. (!) In honor of Eminem's return potentially on the horizon, here's "Lose Yourself." | | Never underestimate student journalists.
After an aide accidentally leaked Defense Secretary James Mattis' cell phone number to the public, one high school newspaper saved the number, made the call and got the interview.
Mattis did an interview with The Islander, the newspaper at Mercer Island High School in Washington state. The interview touches on everything from Russia to advice for graduating seniors. "The only thing more bizarre than getting the private cell number of United States Defense Secretary James Mattis through a leak is having him call you back," Islander EIC Jane Gormley wrote in a separate piece reflecting on the experience of getting and conducting the interview. Reminder: Don't lose your faith in the media industry just yet because the future of journalism is bright. | |  POLL ALERT
| | Americans' impressions of how institutions -- including churches, colleges and the media -- affect the country are sharply divided by partisanship, according to a new poll from the Pew Research Center
CNN's Jennifer Agiesta, director of polling and election analytics, gives us her take on the numbers:
Some divisions are exactly as you'd expect based on each party's core beliefs: Democrats are more positive about labor unions, Republicans are more positive about banks. But the poll also finds shifts in how people who identify with each party feel about institutions that have traditionally been seen as neutral.
Perhaps most surprising is the change in the last two years in how Americans feel about colleges and universities. While Democrats see them as an overwhelmingly positive force (72% say they have a positive effect on the country), most Republicans take the negative side (58%). For the GOP, that's a near reversal in two years' time, while views among Democrats have held roughly steady. In September 2015, 54% of Republicans called colleges a positive, as did about 7 in 10 Democrats.
That Democrats and Republicans have different views on the news media isn't exactly the most shocking poll finding we've ever seen, but the gap in Pew's results between people who identify with each party is increasing, and rapidly. Over three surveys between 2010 and 2015, views of the news media among Democrats and Republicans followed the same trajectory, with Democrats less apt to see the media as having a negative effect on the way things were going in the US, but those in both parties shifting slightly more negative over time. That all changed starting in 2016. That year, Republicans' views shifted sharply more negative, and this year, Democrats views moved significantly toward positive views of the media.
From a polling perspective, there's a little bit of a question-wording conundrum here. When you ask people about the "national news media," you tend to get a more negative response than when people are asked about the media that they personally use. That doesn't mean impressions of the media generally don't hold water, just that what people are reacting to may be more the idea of "the media" than the news they personally consume. And that idea is one completely divided by partisanship. | | YOU GET A POLL! AND YOU GET A POLL! | | But wait, there's more: Another interesting poll released Monday suggests Gov. Chris Christie's approval rating post Beach-gate isn't too great. CNN's Ryan Struyk has more:
Chris Christie, how low can you go? The New Jersey governor hit just a 15% approval rating after his now-famous Fourth of July beach bash, according to a new Monmouth University poll.
Garden State residents offered a bipartisan, scathing review of Christie. Two in three reacted negatively when asked about Christie soaking up the sun last weekend -- and (a surprisingly low?) 6% used some form of profanity to describe Christie's vacation. Other popular words included disgusted, anger, disbelief, selfish, hypocrite and arrogant. A whopping eight in 10 say Christie puts his own political future before the good of the state. And the icing on the cake: A majority of New Jersey residents say the state is worse off because Christie was governor. | | | Gotta love a good Biden entrance. Thanks for reading. As always, remember to tell your friends -- and your enemies -- to subscribe. | | | Get the Nightcap, a comprehensive summary of the most important political news, delivered to your inbox daily. | | | | | |
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