January 31, 2018 10:28 AM UTC

Get More Smarter on Wednesday (January 31)

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• by: Colorado Pols

It was starting to feel like January was never going to end. It’s time to Get More Smarter. If you think we missed something important, please include the link in the comments below (here’s a good example). If you are more of a visual learner, check out The Get More Smarter Show.

TOP OF MIND TODAY…

► The big political news in Colorado on Tuesday was the surprise announcement by former Congressman Tom Tancredo that he was dropping out of the race for Governor. In multiple interviews on Tuesday, Tancredo insisted that he could win the GOP Primary but no longer believed that it was possible for him to win a General Election. “It will be hard for any Republican to win this state,” said Tancredo in an interview with Denver7.

► President Trump delivered his first State of the Union address on Tuesday. It was, in a word, “odd.” Trump managed to talk less about himself than he normally does — and even made a call for bipartisanship — but as the Washington Post notes, we’ve seen this movie before:

No one wants to be Lucy with the football in “Charlie Brown,” and the chattering class seems to have finally concluded that there will always be a Teleprompter Trump and a Twitter Trump. He will oscillate unpredictably and erratically between the two personas.

The president will perennially struggle to be a unifying figure because he is so personally divisive. It’s a feature, not a bug. Frankly, it’s part of his enduring appeal to the GOP base.

According to a CNN poll, Trump’s speech was not well-received by Americans, leading to the lowest net-positive rating for a SOTU address in at least 20 years. Chris Cillizza of CNN breaks down six takeaways from the first Trump SOTU speech. 9News has more local coverage of the address.

► The Director of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) tendered her resignation today in the wake of reports that she recently bought significant shares of stock in…wait for it…a tobacco company. From NBC News:

The agency’s director, Dr. Brenda Fitzgerald, tendered her resignation following a Politico report that she had “bought shares in a tobacco company one month into the leadership of the agency.”…

…Fitzgerald declined to explain to Politico why she purchased thousands of dollars of Big Tobacco stocks after assuming leadership of the CDC on July 7.

An HHS spokesman confirmed “the potentially conflicting” stock purchases to Politico but said they were handled by Fitzgerald’s financial manager and that she subsequently sold them.

Critics like Richard Painter, who was President George W. Bush’s ethics lawyers from 2005 to 2007, told Politico that Fitzgerald’s purchases were “tone deaf” and “ridiculous.”

Fitzgerald served as head of the CDC for about seven months, which is pretty good for a Trump appointee.

► A train carrying Republican Members of Congress to a retreat in West Virginia collided with a trash truck near Charlottesville, Virginia.

Get even more smarter after the jump…

IN CASE YOU ARE STANDING NEAR A WATER COOLER…

► Dave Perry of the Aurora Sentinel takes a crack at criticism of a poll from the University of Colorado that we discussed last week:

What wigs out Dobson and others is that those polled in the CU study of about 800 said they really, really didn’t like Sen. Cory Gardner in November. Big surprise. Try as he might, Gardner couldn’t disguise his partisan sycophancy through round after round of trying to undermine Obamacare and Medicaid, which have an surprising tie to rural Republicans. And while the poll shows they disliked Gardner in November — 48 percent to 25 percent — Coloradans absolutely loathed President Donald Trump. Sixty-three percent thought Trump sucks, and 35 percent didn’t.

► Denver District Attorney Beth McCann is joining with other law enforcement officials around the country in challenging the Trump administration’s efforts to tie federal financial support to local immigration enforcement efforts. For example, the Mountain View Police Department outside Denver is still waiting for money to purchase new police radios.

► Legislation sponsored by Rep. Scott Tipton (R-Cortez) making it easier to conduct business via online banking accounts passed through the House of Representatives.

► Democratic gubernatorial candidate Cary Kennedy has picked up the support of Colorado’s largest teacher’s unions, the CEA and AFT.

► The State Senate passed an initial bill aimed at fixing a legislative error from 2017 that Republicans refused to address in a “special session” last October.

► An exploratory committee aimed at considering a Denver bid for a future Winter Olympic games wants to hear from local residents about their thoughts on the idea.

► …And another one bites the dust. As Politico reports, Republican Rep. Trey Gowdy of South Carolina says he will not seek re-election in 2018. Gowdy is the 36th incumbent Republican House Member to announce plans to walk away from office rather than face the voters in November.

► Republicans appear to be just fine with releasing a memo that could potentially damage national security in the interests of protecting President Trump.

► Count us as unsurprised that Ben Carson is facing a new scandal as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.

► Congressman Ken Buck (R-Greeley) says there is nothing to see here in regard to allegations of collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign in 2016.

Your Daily Dose Of ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

► First lady Melania Trump attended the State of the Union address on Tuesday night, but she arrived separately from the President and her choice of attire was a not-so-subtle slap in the face to the big orange man.

► Stormy Daniels, the former pornstar who allegedly carried on an affair with Donald Trump not long after Melania Trump gave birth to their first child, appeared on “The Jimmy Kimmel Show” on Tuesday and denied a denial of her tryst with the man who is now President.

ICYMI

► Republicans are inclined to keep donations acquired through casino magnate Steve Wynn, who has been accused by multiple women of sexual assault and harassment. Wynn resigned last week as the head of the Republican National Committee’s fundraising arm.

► The Catholic Church is fighting against legislation in Colorado intended to strengthen requirements for reporting child abuse. Because of course they are.

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