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Water Island is a small Island on the south side of St. Thomas, in the U.S. Virgin Islands. The island has its own source of fresh water and so has been relatively strategic since the pirate days. The island has mostly remained out of the news for most of its existence until relatively recently. However, in a Politico article published January 28, 2020, author Ben Schreckinger revisited a possibly “less-than-arms-length” deal between Joe Biden’s brother James Biden, and lobbyist Scott Green. As the Politco article details, “In 2005, Joe Biden’s brother bought an acre of land with excellent ocean views...

In January 2006, Hunter Biden was a lobbyist for William Oldaker, who had served as a campaign counsel and treasurer to Joe Biden. Jim Biden, Joe’s younger brother, called his friend Anthony Lotito for a favor. Hunter needed a new job. Joe was getting ready to run for the Democratic presidential nomination, and his son’s work for a Washington lobbying firm would be a problem. At least that was what Lotito later alleged in court filings. Jim and Hunter denied that a call like that ever took place. One way or another, the three of them decided in early 2006...

By BEN SCHRECKINGER August 02, 2019 Over his decades in office, ‘Middle-Class Joe’s’ family fortunes have closely tracked his political career.[cut]

On the eve of the midterms, President Donald Trump’s approval is falling, young voters are energized, and Republicans look poised to lose their House majority. It’s enough to make Democrats nervous, miserable wrecks. Haunted by memories of 2016, liberals around the country are riven with anxiety in the campaign’s homestretch. They’re suspicious of favorable polls and making election night contingency plans in case their worst fears come true. Some report literal nightmares about a Democratic wipeout. “We're kind of just in the bed-wetting phase now," said Democratic pollster John Anzalone, a Hillary Clinton campaign alumnus who spent election night 2016...

Starbucks founder Howard Schultz — who is contemplating a presidential run as a Democrat — recently attended a private gathering of political donors organized by Mitt Romney, according to a report at Politico. Politico’s Ben Schrekinger writes that the donors, “convened by” Romney, were unimpressed with the would-be candidate: Wall Street analysts are wary, and company leadership is nervous, about the effect a Democratic bid by its chairman emeritus could have on Starbucks’ business, given its bipartisan customer base. If that weren’t discouraging enough, his retirement last month set off a boomlet of pundits urging him not to run. And...

Former presidential nominee Mitt Romney recently hosted a donor meeting for former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz who has been reportedly considering a run for president as a Democrat in 2020. Politico’s Ben Schrekinger said the event did not go well and that many left uninspired by the potential nominee. “Will there be some segment of the customer base that decides, ‘I’m not going to go to Starbucks anymore should he become a candidate,” Mark Kalinowski, president of Kalinowski Equity Research, asked Politico. “You have to think about the employees. You have to think about the shareholders, everybody who might be...

**SNIP** Many people wanted to know whether two-time cancer survivor Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the oldest and perhaps the most liberal justice on the Supreme Court, had enough gas in the tank to outlast the Trump presidency, or whether Trump would get a chance to fundamentally alter the balance of the court by replacing her, a possibility he dangled successfully to entice wary Republicans to vote him. **SNIP** Since Trump’s election, Ginsburg’s continued survival has become a matter of severe anxiety for liberals, many of whom pressured her in vain to resign during the Obama years to ensure that a Democrat...

Beto O’Rourke is running to replace Ted Cruz. Literally. Sweat pours off his lean, 6’ 4”-frame as the El Paso Democrat jogs along the southern bank of the Trinity River surrounded by 300-odd supporters and curious voters jogging along with him. Incredibly, they have shown up at 8 a.m. on a Sunday to join him for a double shot of politics and cardio. In between panting breaths, O’Rourke explains to me the origins of this novel campaign event, which has him running several miles under the Texas sun, stopping in the middle to take questions and lingering at the end...

Candidates’ aides and allies want anti-Trump vendors barred from lucrative general-election contracts. Donald Trump’s campaign is considering hitting his Republican enemies where it hurts: Their wallets. As Trump moves to work in closer concert with the Republican National Committee apparatus, some campaign aides and allies are pushing him to block lucrative party contracts from consultants who worked to keep him from winning the nomination, according to four sources familiar with the discussions. “The Never Trump vendors and supporters shouldn’t be in striking distance of the RNC, any of its committees or anyone working on behalf of Donald Trump,” said a...

Donald Trump's campaign blocked a Politico reporter from attending the candidate's victory rally on Tuesday night, continuing a troubling trend of denying access to reporters who write critically about Trump and his campaign. Ben Schreckinger, who has been covering Trump for more than six months, was denied access to Tuesday night's "press conference" -- Trump did not actually take any questions -- despite the fact that the campaign had already given press credentials. In blocking Schreckinger, the Trump campaign appears to have been following through on a threat it made last week to exclude Politico reporters from campaign events because...

LAS VEGAS - It's going to be a long ride. Rather than anointing a presumptive nominee, the early voting states have narrowed the Republican primary to a three-man race heading into Tuesday's Nevada Caucuses and the 12-state delegate bonanza on March 1. Donald Trump leads nationally and in most state polls, but both Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio are armed with the rationales and the resources to stay in the race through at least March, if not right up to the Republican National Convention in July. Despite Trump's polling lead, there are significant obstacles to his running away with the...

In the last 24 hours, Donald Trump has said he “absolutely” would implement a database of American Muslims and that participation would “have to” be compulsory. Asked how that would differ from the registration of Jews in Nazi Germany, he responded only, “You tell me.” Is his campaign imploding? Fat chance.

"Colbert bests Trump."That was the title of a Politico story by Ben Schreckinger about Donald Trump's appearance last night on CBS's Late Show hosted by Stephen Colbert. Huh? Did Ben see the same show as everybody else because your humble correspondent was surprised at how amiable the interview was. You can see most of the interview  below and judge for yourself. Here is part of what Schreckinger wrote in trying to score liberal points at the expense of Trump in contrast to rather friendly reality:

Donald Trump’s eccentric presidential run is looking more like a standard campaign every day. While his Republican rivals have been hoping that Trump’s candidacy would fade after the initial buzz died down, he remains in first in the polls even after coming down from his September peak. Meanwhile, his campaign has been building the infrastructure necessary to put up a real fight in the earliest primaries and beyond.

MOBILE, Ala. — It was immigration, not segregation, that brought some 20,000 southerners — far fewer than predicted — out for Donald Trump on Friday night, but the ghost of George Wallace loomed large. Wallace, an avowed segregationist, was the last presidential candidate to win electoral votes as a third-party candidate. The threat of Trump doing so, propelled by a hardline immigration stance that many have condemned as racist, looms over the Republican Party now as it did over the Democratic Party then, even as the enthusiasm of his following, for once, fell far short of expectations. Wallace carried five...

Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban is so impressed with Donald Trump’s success that he is now considering running for office himself. “I love the fact that he has changed the game. … The idea of imperfect candidates with forceful ideas opens the door for a lot of people that would not have previously run,” said Cuban, cautioning that if he were to follow Trump’s example, “My positions would be far different.” Cuban — who in the past has feuded with his fellow rebel billionaire — is hosting a Monday mega-rally for Trump at his Dallas arena. The Republican frontrunner called...

HANOVER, N.H. — They think Donald Trump’s ideas are “disgusting.” They think he is making a mockery of the American political system and that even he doesn’t take his own candidacy seriously. And that is exactly why they say they plan to vote for him. Meet Trump’s protest voters. People who in the past might have gone to the polls only to register their disdain for politicians by writing in “Mickey Mouse” — or perhaps even “Donald Trump” — now have a Republican frontrunner to rally around. Like many sincere Trump supporters, they believe the system is totally screwed up....

Donald Trump says it’s not all about him. No, seriously. Campaigning in Nashville, Tennessee, Trump on Saturday paid homage to his supporters — claiming they are a part of “a movement” and using colorful language to beg for their support. “This is a movement,” said Trump, who often speaks about himself in campaign appearances. “I don’t want it to be about me. This is about common sense. It’s about doing the right thing.” Trump also paid tribute to his setting, a country music hotbed, and insisted there needed to be a greater emphasis on "law and order." And, as has...

Donald Trump might finally have crossed the line. Appearing on Saturday at the Family Leadership Summit in Ames, Iowa, the real estate mogul took his running feud with Arizona Sen. John McCain to a new level. “He’s not a war hero,” said Trump. “He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.” The remarks, which came after days of back-and-forth between McCain and Trump, were met with scattered boos.

In South Carolina, he confronts a changing Republican Party trying to bury its past.Donald Trump is campaigning Wednesday in a South Carolina where the Republican Party has been turning the page on a divisive racial past: The state boasts the first black Republican U.S. senator elected to Congress from the south in over a century, an Indian-American Republican governor, and a Republican-controlled legislature that voted in July to remove a Confederate flag from the grounds of its State House. So much for all that. As Trump prepared to attend events with Sen. Tim Scott and the state’s African American Chamber...