Daily Archives
32 posts · Thursday
President Trump’s lawyer demanded that author Michael Wolff and his publisher immediately “cease and desist from any further publication, release or dissemination” of a forthcoming book, Fire and Fury, according to a letter obtained by ABC News.
The letter says they are looking into possible defamation of Trump and his family and invasion of privacy. It goes on to accuse the author of “actual malice.”
Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC) and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) write in the Washington Examiner:
Attorney General Jeff Sessions has recused himself from the Russia investigation, but it would appear he has no control at all of the premier law enforcement agency in the world. It is time for Sessions to start managing in a spirit of transparency to bring all of this improper behavior to light and stop further violations. If Sessions can’t address this issue immediately, then we have one final question needing an answer: When is it time for a new attorney general?
Sadly, it seems the answer is now.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions “is rescinding the Obama-era policy that had paved the way for legalized marijuana to flourish in states across the country,” the Associated Press reports.
“Sessions will instead let federal prosecutors where pot is legal decide how aggressively to enforce federal marijuana law.”
Axios has more from Michael Wolff’s book:
On the the July 8 preparation aboard Air Force One of the initial (and false) explanation about the Trump Tower meeting with Russians during the campaign, made under Trump’s personal direction: “Ivanka, according to the later recollection of her team, would shortly leave the meeting, take a pill, and go to sleep. Jared, in the telling of his team, might have been there, but he was ‘not taking a pencil to anything.”
“Nearby, in a small conference room watching the movie Fargo, were Dina Powell, Gary Cohn, Stephen Miller, and H. R. McMaster, all of whom would later insist that they were, however physically close to the unfolding crisis, removed from it.”
“Mark Corallo [former spokesman for Trump’s personal legal team] … privately confiding [to Wolff] that he believed the meeting on Air Force One represented a likely obstruction of justice — quit.”
Jonathan Swan: “Senior White House officials are debating whether Katie Walsh should be fired from Trump’s main outside group, America First, after comments she reportedly made to the author Michael Wolff.”
“The Wolff reporting on Walsh that infuriated West Wingers: Figuring out what Trump wants is ‘like trying to figure out what a child wants,’ Wolff quotes Walsh as saying. Walsh told me yesterday she never said those things, but Axios’ Mike Allen reported this morning that Wolff has tape recordings of his conversations with Bannon and Walsh.”
James Hohmann: “The fact that Trump’s lawyers sent a cease-and-desist letter last night to Bannon, arguing that he violated the employment agreement he signed with the Trump Organization and likely defamed the president, reflects the palpable concern about what he might say. The lawyers said Bannon must stop communicating either confidential and or disparaging information, as well as preserve all records in preparation for an ‘imminent’ lawsuit. This is a classic Trump tactic, but it can also be read as at least a tacit admission that there is some there there.”
Playbook: “The White House can’t argue simultaneously that the book is completely incorrect and Bannon violated a non-disclosure agreement. If he violated a non-disclosure agreement then something he said was right!”
As he did each year when he was president, Barack Obama shared a list of his favorite books of 2017:
Republican strategist Rick Tyler told MSNBC that Republican will turn on President Trump and impeach him should they lose heavily in the 2018 midterms.
Said Tyler: “When does the Republican Party turn? When they get wiped out. That’s what happens. If they get wiped out in 2018, the Republicans will absolutely turn on Donald Trump.”
He added: “And I think to the point where they will impeach him and they will get 67 percent of the vote in the Senate to impeach him, to do that. But it will require a wipe out.”
A second excerpt of Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House will be released today, according to CNN.
“The national news coverage of the book’s revelations — including shocking quotes from Steve Bannon — sent the book soaring on Amazon.com. By 3 p.m. ET, it was ranked #1 on the site’s best-selling books list. Twenty-four hours earlier, it had been ranked #48,449.”
Update: It’s up at the Hollywood Reporter.
Politico: “President Ronald Reagan was warming up for a national radio address on Aug. 11, 1984, when an open microphone caught him joking about nuclear war. ‘My fellow Americans, I am pleased to tell you today that I’ve signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever,’ Reagan quipped. ‘We begin bombing in five minutes.’ The international outcry that followed — newspapers condemned Reagan, and some Soviet forces were reportedly placed on alert — underscored one of the first rules of the American presidency: Don’t speak lightly about nuclear war.”
“To President Donald Trump’s critics, that is one of many norms he has recklessly shattered, most recently with a tweet on Monday in which Trump declared that his ‘nuclear button’ was ‘much bigger and more powerful’ than the one North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un, claimed in a recent speech to have on his desk. Democrats and foreign policy experts fiercely denounced Trump’s rhetoric as alarming and dangerous.”
HuffPost: Can anyone prevent Trump from issuing a nuclear strike? Not really.
Stephen Bannon called President Trump “a great man” on his radio show late Wednesday night and said he supported him “day in and day out,” the Washington Post reports.
“It was the most direct reference in the program, otherwise devoted to immigration, to the explosive day that had just passed as a result of the release of some searing book excerpts that quoted Bannon.”
Washington Post: “Bannon has in recent weeks also alienated his main financial backer, Rebekah Mercer, after he told several other major conservative donors that he would be able to count on the Mercers’ financial support should he run for president, a person familiar with the conversations said.
“The person said Mercer now does not plan to financially support Bannon’s future projects — and that she was frustrated by his moves in Alabama and some of his comments in the news media that seemed to stoke unnecessary fights. A person close to Bannon said he was not running for president. Bannon and Mercer declined to comment through representatives.”
Mike Allen confirms Bannon has told friends he’d run for president in 2020 if Trump does not.
From New York Magazine:
He conducted more than 200 interviews. In true Trumpian fashion, the administration’s lack of experience and disdain for political norms made for a hodgepodge of journalistic challenges. Information would be provided off-the-record or on deep background, then casually put on the record. Sources would fail to set any parameters on the use of a conversation, or would provide accounts in confidence, only to subsequently share their views widely. And the president’s own views, private as well as public, were constantly shared by others. The adaptation presented here offers a front-row view of Trump’s presidency, from his improvised transition to his first months in the Oval Office.
Mike Allen reports Wolff also “has tapes to back up quotes in his incendiary book — dozens of hours of them.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.