Fox News will not be offering former White House press secretary and communications director Sean Spicer a contract, Axios has confirmed.
Daily Archives
September 7, 2017
30 posts · Thursday
Klobuchar Is Not (Yet) Running for President
From a Cosmopolitan profile of Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN):
There, I spoke to an older couple who told me their daughter was good friends with Klobuchar in middle school. “We always knew she’d make it big in politics,” I remember the wife telling me. “She used to have a shirt she’d wear at sleepovers that said, ‘I’d rather be president.’ We knew she’d be in the White House someday.”
Klobuchar still has a 2018 reelection campaign to contend with before any presidential maneuvering can really begin. Yet despite the factors that weigh against Democrats this midterm — lower turnout in non-presidential years, more Democratic senators up for reelection than Republicans — Klobuchar is looking very safe in her seat.
New York Official Pushes To Rename Trump Park
“A New York lawmaker is proposing a bill to rename a state park named after President Donald Trump in honor of the woman run down by a white supremacist in Charlottesville last month,” BuzzFeed reports.
“Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who has fiercely criticized Trump, has remained silent on the question of honoring the president with signs for the park on highways north of New York City. The park itself has been closed since 2010, and was recently described as an ‘ugly and dilapidated… disaster.'”
A Still Very Divided Republican Party
“Donald Trump is presiding over a Republican Party that is divided over his presidency and the central issues that powered his successful 2016 campaign,” according to a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll.
Key finding: “Republicans who voted for Mr. Trump in the 2016 primary approve almost unanimously of the job he is doing as president, with some 98% backing him. But his approval rating among Republicans who voted for other primary candidates stands at 66%.”
“Asked how they felt about social changes of recent years that have made the U.S. more diverse and tolerant of different lifestyles, 63% of Trump primary voters said they were uneasy with the social changes, compared with 35% of Republicans who supported other GOP candidates in the primaries.”
Mueller Wants to Interview White House Staff
Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team “has approached the White House about interviewing staffers who were aboard Air Force One when the initial misleading statement about Donald Trump Jr.’s meeting with a Russian lawyer at Trump Tower was crafted,” CNN reports.
“The special counsel’s discussions with the White House are the latest indication that Mueller’s investigators are interested in the response to the Trump Tower meeting… Mueller’s questions could go to the issue of intent and possible efforts to conceal information during an obstruction of justice investigation.”
House Conservatives Plot Mischief for Fall
“Several influential House conservatives are privately plotting ways to use the legislative calendar this fall to push their hard-line agenda — including quiet discussions about possibly mounting a leadership challenge to House Speaker Paul Ryan,” the Washington Post reports.
“The group has gone so far as to float the idea of recruiting former House speaker Newt Gingrich or former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum as potential replacements for Ryan (R-Wis.) should there be a rebellion. The Constitution does not require that an elected member of the House serve as speaker.”
“While the chances that a non-House member could mount a credible threat to Ryan are exceedingly slim, the fact the group has even toyed with the idea underscores their desire to create trouble for GOP leaders if they believe their demands are not being addressed.”
Congressman Admits to Extramarital Affair
Rep. Tim Murphy (R-PA) publicly admitted to having an extramarital affair with “a personal friend,” issuing a statement about the relationship after the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette prevailed in a court motion to unseal a divorce action.
Said Murphy: “Last year I became involved in an affair with a personal friend. This is nobody’s fault but my own, and I offer no excuses. To the extent that there should be any blame in this matter, it falls solely upon me.”
Trump Raves About Coverage of Deal with Democrats
Politico: “In calls with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi Thursday morning, Trump raved about the positive news coverage it had received, according to people familiar with the calls, and he seemed very pleased with his decision. Trump specifically mentioned TV segments praising the deal and indicated he’d been watching in a call with Schumer, two people said. And he was jovial in a call with Pelosi and agreed to send a tweet she asked for about the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, these people said, while also mentioning the attention the deal had gotten. He indicated to both leaders he would be willing to work together again.”
Said one person familiar with the calls: “He seemed super upbeat.”
For members: Why Trump Cut a Deal with Democrats
Trump Gives Up Again on His Border Wall
Stan Collender: “There are two key and immediate implications.”
“The first is that the wall is less likely to ever be funded. No matter how much Trump rants about it and bellows in the future, congressional leaders are almost certain to consider the wall to be much less important to the president than he’s saying. The wall is now more likely to be thrown in as a sweetener to get Trump to agree to something than considered a must-have element of any agreement.”
“The second is that congressional leaders are now more likely to be take all of Trump’s other wants with at least a grain (if not a whole shaker) of salt. Everything will be assumed to be totally negotiable.”
Haley Turned Down Offer to Be Secretary of State
CNN: “Nikki Haley was under consideration to become Donald Trump’s secretary of state when she flew to New York to meet the President-elect for the first time since his election victory. The South Carolina governor was torn. The baggage from the 2016 campaign — she supported Marco Rubio in her state’s all-important presidential primary and later backed Ted Cruz — didn’t suddenly evaporate for Trump, who never forgets a slight.”
“But there was something more fundamental that bothered her: Her resume. Yes, Haley traveled abroad as governor and she was successful in bringing business into the state. But none of that could prepare her to lead American diplomacy in a world where North Korea was becoming more aggressive, the crisis in Syria was deepening, Venezuela was succumbing to a dictator and the war in Afghanistan showed no sign of easing. She told Trump no.”
Foreign Policy: Where’s Rex? U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley steps in as America’s de facto diplomat-in-chief.
The First White President
Ta-Nehisi Coates: “To Trump, whiteness is neither notional nor symbolic but is the very core of his power. In this, Trump is not singular. But whereas his forebears carried whiteness like an ancestral talisman, Trump cracked the glowing amulet open, releasing its eldritch energies.”
“The repercussions are striking: Trump is the first president to have served in no public capacity before ascending to his perch. But more telling, Trump is also the first president to have publicly affirmed that his daughter is a ‘piece of ass.’ The mind seizes trying to imagine a black man extolling the virtues of sexual assault on tape (‘When you’re a star, they let you do it’), fending off multiple accusations of such assaults, immersed in multiple lawsuits for allegedly fraudulent business dealings, exhorting his followers to violence, and then strolling into the White House.”
“Trump truly is something new — the first president whose entire political existence hinges on the fact of a black president. And so it will not suffice to say that Trump is a white man like all the others who rose to become president. He must be called by his rightful honorific — America’s first white president.”
When the Senate Worked for Us
Coming soon: When the Senate Worked for Us: The Invisible Role of Staffers in Countering Corporate Lobbies by Michael Pertschuk.
Putin Says Tillerson Has ‘Fallen Into Bad Company’
Russian President Vladimir Putin joked that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had veered off the path of cooperation and “fallen into bad company,” the Los Angeles Times reports.
“In recent weeks, Washington and Moscow have been engaged in a diplomatic tit-for-tat. Russia has ordered the culling of 755 staff members from the U.S. State Department’s Mission in Russia. Last week, the U.S. ordered the closure of Russia’s San Francisco consulate, a move Putin said this week he would instruct his foreign ministry to take up with the U.S. legal system.”
Said Putin: “I hope that the wind of cooperation, friendship and interaction will bring him to the right course in the end.”
Bonus Quote of the Day
“I think there’s going to be a rebellion against everybody, not just leadership. If we get to December and we’ve not repealed Obamacare, don’t build the wall… it’s not going to be pretty.”
— Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC), quoted by Axios.
Trump Jr. Explains Why He Wanted Russian Dirt
“Donald Trump Jr. told Senate investigators that he set up a June 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer because he was intrigued that she might have damaging information about Hillary Clinton, saying it was important to learn about Mrs. Clinton’s ‘fitness’ to be president,” the New York Times reports.
“But nothing came of the Trump Tower meeting, he said, and he was adamant that he never colluded with the Russian government’s campaign to disrupt last year’s presidential election.”
Republicans Have a Choice to Make on Immigration
Matt Bai: “Trump is not a guy who resents illegal immigration because it’s unsafe for the country and unfair to the hardworking, law-abiding immigrants who embrace our laws and ideals and who give up everything they’ve known for their children’s future. Trump is a guy who resents immigrants, period. He is a neo-nativist. His ‘America first’ actually means ‘Americans only.'”
“But Republicans, in particular, have a choice to make. They can hold firm to the traditional conservative argument, or they can allow their party to be transformed by Trumpism. They can stand up for our essential identity as a nation of immigrants, or they can blame outsiders for all that ails the society.”
Trump Suggested Scrapping Future Debt Ceiling Votes
Politico: “With Congress set to lift the debt ceiling into December as part of the deal, Trump floated the idea that the next time Congress votes to raise the debt ceiling, it could be the last. He said conversations should happen over the next three months, according to people in the room.”
“Schumer said such a move could not be accomplished now, but indicated he would talk to his caucus about considering structural changes to the debt limit in December, a conversation Trump supported.”
‘Bernie Is Not The Reason You Lost’
Seth Myers responds to Hillary Clinton’s assertion in her new book: “Bernie is not the reason you lost. You know how I know that? You beat Trump by 3 million votes. If you want to blame something ancient, blame the Electoral College.”
