Archives for July 2017
A Week of Reckoning?
Andrew Sullivan: “We have become, at this point, inured to having an irrational president in an increasingly post-rational America. We’ve also come to tell ourselves that somehow (a) this isn’t really happening, (b) by some miracle, it will be over soon, or (c) at some point the Republican Party will have to acknowledge what they are abetting, and cut their losses. And yet with each particular breach of decency, stability, and constitutionality, no breaking point seems to have arrived, even as the tribalism has deepened, the president’s madness has metastasized, and the norms of liberal democracy are hanging on by a thread.”
“But surely this week must mark some kind of moment in this vertiginous descent, some point at which the manifest unfitness of this president to continue in office becomes impossible to deny.”
Scaramucci’s Self Help Books Are All Self and No Help
Daily Beast: “In addition to being the White House Communications Director, a hedge fund manager, a conference-thrower, a Harvard Law graduate, a Fox Business talking head, a Goldman Sachs alum, and a fancy gesticulator, Scaramucci is the author of three self-help books. You might say he wears many hats, if the hats weren’t so guaranteed to mess up his architectural hair.”
“Scaramucci’s writings are the sort of tepid airport business reads that are so aggressively meaningless and derivative that they make the reader worse at writing, and possibly worse at thinking. They invoke the feeling of being in an apartment that has been occupied by the same tenant for a year but remains decorated only with a Scarface poster over a lumpy black futon. But a perusal of two of his three published works gives an amusing look into what sort of person Scaramucci would like people to think that he is.”
Why the Mooch Matters
David Remnick: “Scaramucci, who was endorsed by Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, seems to have been installed to carry out Trump’s form of personnel management—to help demean and get rid of retainers who have proved disappointing or threatening to his interests. Sean Spicer. Reince Priebus. Steve Bannon. Jeff Sessions. And, ultimately, Robert Mueller.”
“In other words, the Mooch matters because the Mooch helps to clarify what matters most to the President and his family. What matters most is Trump’s grip on his base voters and his survival in office. Everything else—a sane health-care policy, the dignity of the transgender people who have volunteered to serve their country, a rational environmental policy, a foreign policy that serves basic democratic values, rule of law—is of tertiary interest.”
“Trump’s focus is not impossible to divine. He is increasingly anxious that Mueller and congressional investigators are exploring the details of his business transactions and financial holdings, and how they might have exposed him to being targeted by the Russian government.”
Brooks Used Notorious Filmmaker for Ad
The firm paid to make ads for Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) — such as one that used audio from the recent congressional shooting — was part of the crew behind such low-budget “classics” such as Thong Girl 3: Revenge of the Dark Widow, a 2007 video notorious for partially filming in the office of Mayor Don Wright, of Gallatin, Tennessee, Alabama Today reports.
Intel Sources Think Putin’s Media Czar Was Murdered
“Vladimir Putin’s former media czar was murdered in Washington, DC on the eve of a planned meeting with the U.S. Justice Department, according to two FBI agents whose assertions cast new doubts on the US government’s official explanation of his death,” BuzzFeed reports.
“Mikhail Lesin’s battered body was discovered in his Dupont Circle hotel room on the morning of November 5, 2015 with blunt-force injuries to the head, neck, and torso. After an almost year-long ‘comprehensive investigation,’ a federal prosecutor announced last October that Lesin died alone in his room due to a series of drunken falls ‘after days of excessive consumption of alcohol.’ His death was ruled an ‘accident,’ and prosecutors closed the case.”
Why a Membership Model? – Part 6
I’ve explained several times why I moved Political Wire to a membership model but the basic reason is that the digital ad market has collapsed.
Here’s more proof from the Wall Street Journal:
Procter & Gamble said that its move to cut more than $100 million in digital marketing spend in the June quarter had little impact on its business, proving that those digital ads were largely ineffective.
News publishers just can’t rely on advertising anymore. It doesn’t work for advertisers and it creates a terrible experience for readers.
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Rubio Stakes Out Role as Human Rights Champion
USA Today: “Rubio’s office maintains a spreadsheet of hundreds of political prisoners or human rights victims from more than 30 countries… The senator himself adds to the list when he comes across news accounts of particularly moving examples. He directs his office to advocate for some of them using back-channel communications with the State Department. More prominent dissidents might be strategically featured in hearings or floor speeches, often timed to coincide with a prominent anniversary, or the president’s trip to a country with a documented pattern of human rights abuses. On occasion, he’s had the opportunity to make his case directly to Trump and other world leaders.”
GOP Support for Trump Is Starting to Crack
David Leonhardt: “The capitulation of McConnell and Ryan has created an impression — especially among many liberals — that congressional Republicans stand behind the president. McConnell and Ryan, after all, are the leaders of Congress, and they continue to push for the legislation Trump wants and to permit his kleptocratic governing.”
“But don’t be fooled: Republican support for the president has started to crack.”
“Below the leadership level, Republicans are defying Trump more often, and McConnell and Ryan aren’t always standing in their way. You can see this defiance in the bipartisan Senate investigation of the Russia scandal. You can see it in the deal on Russian sanctions. And you can see it in the Senate’s failure… to pass a health care bill.”
Trump’s War on the 1960s
Leonard Steinhorn: “Donald Trump and his supporters may be waging battles against the press, immigrants, voting rights, the environment, science, social welfare programs, Planned Parenthood and what they label political correctness and the deep state.”
“But to them these are mere skirmishes in a much larger conflict. The president has essentially declared an all-out war on the American 1960s.”
“What he and his followers hope to do is not necessarily turn back the clock to the 1950s, but rather restore a social order, value system and ‘real America’ that they believe was hijacked by the liberal culture, politics, thought leaders and policy priorities that emerged from the ’60s.”
Trump Organization Implements Loyalty Code
CBS News has obtained a new confidentiality agreement rolled out after the election.
“The Trump Organization is requiring employees at all levels to sign it, or else they will lose their jobs. Employees must agree to keep secret any information they learn about anyone in the ‘Trump family’ and extended family, including their ‘present, former and future spouses, children, parents, in-laws.”
What Is a Leak?
Hadas Gold gives White House communication director Anthony Scaramucci some tips about leaks:
What is not a leak? A public disclosure form available to anyone who requests it, as my colleague Lorraine Woellert did on Tuesday, obtaining and publishing Scaramucci’s financial disclosure form which he was required to file when he joined the government last month. The information is publicly available to anyone who asks.
Another thing that’s not a leak, you yourself telling reporters that someone is going to be fired. On Tuesday Scaramucci told my colleague Tara Palmeri that Assistant Press Secretary Michael Short was going to be let go. But then he told other reporters that “the fact that you guys know about it before [Short] does really upsets me as a human being and as a Roman Catholic.”
What is a leak then? Well it could be what Scaramucci did with Lizza. Lizza said Scaramucci did not request the conversation be off-the-record or on-background but it’s clear that he thought it was at least somewhat private because he tweeted last night “I made a mistake in trusting a reporter. It won’t happen again.” Some people have suggested that Scaramucci, being new to Washington and politics, wasn’t aware of the norms. But even if he did think he was talking privately, he initiated a phone call with someone he knew to be a reporter during which he was talking about internal feuds, trashing his colleagues, his own conversations with the president and that Priebus would be forced to resign soon. That is leaking.
Tweet of the Day
Let’s Not Forget Murkowski
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A Low Moment for McConnell
First Read: “As for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, last night’s defeat is probably as low of a moment as we can remember for him. Don’t be surprised if the health care process – no hearings, no subcommittee work, no regular order – cost him capital with his fellow Republican senators, who might demand more input in running the Senate GOP ship.”
The Mooch Is Muzzled
White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci “has told associates he plans to dramatically pare back his interactions with journalists following his jaw-dropping comments to The New Yorker,” Axios reports.
“Scaramucci’s aggressive entrance rattled West Wing staffers, and, like any aide representing President Trump on TV, he runs the risk of upstaging POTUS, who insists on being the star of his own show.”
McCain Has Never Forgotten
James Hohmann: “There is nothing Trump can do any more that will get to McCain. Battling an aggressive form of brain cancer, the maverick was willing to vote ‘no’ on the ‘skinny repeal’ amendment so that other GOP colleagues who were also opposed to the measure could vote ‘yes’ to save face with the conservative base. To this day, Trump has never apologized for saying that the former fighter pilot was not a war hero because he got captured in Vietnam. It gets less attention, but the president also besmirched the Arizona senator’s character by repeatedly accusing him of not taking care of other veterans. McCain has never forgotten.”
Is the GOP Health Care Effort Really Dead?
Playbook: “It is not completely clear. Talk to Hill Republicans and the big problem is this: House Republicans do not believe Senate Republicans can pass anything substantial — period. And the idea that a bi-cameral negotiation — called a “conference committee” — would have somehow produced a compromise was also a bit of a fantasy.”
“Repealing and replacing Obamacare is still the party’s central tenet — and has been for nearly a decade. But it will have to start anew, now. And it will continue to eat up much of the party’s time and energy on Capitol Hill. Obamacare was on life support many times in 2009-2010. Democrats eventually got it through… There will definitely be a push to starve the law of funding.”
Sam Baker: “Conservatives were particularly stung by last night’s defeat, and said they would keep up the pressure for some sort of action on repeal. But, realistically, it’s hard to see leaders in either chamber wading back into such a bruising fight any time soon.”
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