“This is alarming in every way. And then this went on,’“Okay, this is a little 25th Amendment.’ So 25th Amendment is a concept that is alive every day in the White House.”
— Michael Wolff, discussing his new book on Meet the Press.
“This is alarming in every way. And then this went on,’“Okay, this is a little 25th Amendment.’ So 25th Amendment is a concept that is alive every day in the White House.”
— Michael Wolff, discussing his new book on Meet the Press.
Boston Globe: “One American politician is currently dominating the cultural landscape, from social media to late-night television. His poll numbers look great, his Twitter posts are often among the most read in the world, and with every utterance, his impassioned base of supporters reacts with a fervor more typical for celebrities than former civil servants.”
“Meet Barack Obama.”
“The former president left office last January with favorable approval ratings, but historians, former staffers, and political observers now say his societal standing has reached a new echelon — and it’s partly due to his successor.”
Billionaire Tom Steyer told KQED that he bought 535 copies of Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury to be hand-delivered to every lawmaker on Capitol Hill.
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Jonathan Swan: “President Trump has been working the phones over the past several days telling allies they need to choose between him and former adviser Steve Bannon. For almost everyone it’s been an easy choice: Trump.”
” The White House has been encouraging its surrogates to go on TV and tear into Bannon; Trump has enjoyed the spectacle and the White House has kept close tabs on these performances. Hence the re-emergence of Anthony Scaramucci, who did a victory lap on TV this week ripping Bannon apart.”
Haroon Ullah: “Last year, Russia and its allies engineered a rift between truth and lies, fact and fake news, humans and bots – and the bots are winning. They’re winning because social-media firms profit from all traffic – whatever the source – and governments are simply too slow to counter this threat.”
“Russian disinformation – like its more overt Islamic State cousin – is designed to fuel animosities and exploit existing cleavages. The people behind it are not only hate-filled but also experts on audience segmentation. Although diametrically opposed to each other on social, ethnic, political and religious grounds, Russia and the Islamic State are ironically employing the very same techniques to further their respective agendas.”
“This battlefield – social media and the dark web – is the least understood piece of a new conflict. In essence, both the Russians and the Islamic State have weaponized information. The online ecosystem and their disaggregated strategy have kept them one step ahead of adversaries.”
Josh Marshall: “For public purposes, clinical diagnoses are only relevant as predictors of behavior. If the President has a cognitive deficiency or mental illness that might cause him to act in unpredictable or dangerous ways or simply be unable to do the job, we need to know. But My God, we do know! We see him acting in these ways every day – and not just in multiple news reports from an abundance of different news organizations. We see it with our own eyes: in his public actions, his public statements, his tweets.”
“All the diagnosis of a mental illness could tell us is that Trump might be prone to act in ways that we literally see him acting in every day: impulsive, erratic, driven by petty aggressions and paranoia, showing poor impulsive control, an inability to moderate self-destructive behavior. He is frequently either frighteningly out of touch with reality or sufficiently pathological in his lying that it is impossible to tell. Both are very bad.”
Think Progress: GOP leaders happily stand by Trump as he becomes increasingly unhinged.
David Frum says this morning’s presidential Twitter outburst recalls those words of Fredo Corleone’s in one of the most famous scenes from The Godfather:
“I can handle things. I’m smart! Not like everybody says, like dumb. I’m smart and I want respect!”
“Trump may imagine that he’s Michael Corleone, the tough and canny rightful heir—or even Sonny Corleone, the terrifyingly violent but at least powerful heir apparent—but after today he is Fredo forever. There’s a key difference between film and reality, though: The Corleone family had the awareness and vigilance to exclude Fredo from power. The American political system did not do so well.”
Meanwhile, James Fallows looks at how actual smart people talk about themselves.
President Trump again insisted that he was not under investigation by Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating Russian influence on the 2016 election, adding that “there’s been no collusion, there’s been no crime,” the New York Times reports.
Said Trump: “Everything I’ve done is 100 percent proper. That is what I do, is I do things proper.”
Meanwhile, CNN reports Trump appeared to say he’s still willing to meet with Mueller’s team over the Russia investigation.
Steve Bannon was only minutes away from attacking Fire and Fury author Michael Wolff over quotes attributed to the former White House chief strategist, but he decided not to do so after President Trump attacked him after the release of excerpts from the book, CNN reports.
Washington Post: “Long before voters decide in November who will control the House, the Senate and 36 governor’s seats across the country, the most wide-open primary season in decades will plunge the nation’s two major political parties into historic battles over who they are.”
“Races that Democrats once left uncontested are now brimming with candidates. Races in which Republicans had hoped to clear the field have grown crowded. And the power of national parties on both sides to moderate the conflicts remains low, as populist passions roil both the liberal and conservative grass roots.”
Coming soon: The Campaign Manager: Running and Winning Local Elections by Catherine Shaw.
Special counsel Robert Mueller “has recalled for questioning at least one participant in a controversial meeting with a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer at Trump Tower in June 2016, and is looking into President Trump’s misleading claim that the discussion focused on adoption, rather than an offer to provide damaging information about Hillary Clinton,” the Los Angeles Times reports.
“Investigators also are exploring the involvement of the president’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, who did not attend the half-hour sit-down on June 9, 2016, but briefly spoke with two of the participants, a Russian lawyer and a Russian-born Washington lobbyist. Details of the encounter were not previously known.”
Michael Wolff told BBC radio that his conclusion in Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House — that Trump is not fit to do the job — was becoming a widespread view.
Said Wolff: “I think one of the interesting effects of the book so far is a very clear emperor-has-no-clothes effect. The story that I have told seems to present this presidency in such a way that it says he can’t do his job. Suddenly everywhere people are going ‘oh my God, it’s true, he has no clothes’. That’s the background to the perception and the understanding that will finally end … this presidency.”
“President Trump has begun telling advisers that it will likely be impossible to advance legislation this year to reduce welfare spending and enrollment — a priority he previously embraced with the backing of House Speaker Paul Ryan and a number of conservative activists,” the Washington Post reports.
“In conversations with aides and outside advisers in recent days, Trump has said his supporters would embrace the idea — but that it remains unlikely because the votes will not be there in Congress and it would be a difficult undertaking in an election year.”
“Secretary of State Rex Tillerson says he fully intends to remain in the Trump administration through 2018, casting concerns about his future at the State Department as overblown,” Politico reports.
“Speculation surrounding Tillerson’s job security and a potential departure — a so-called Rexit — has run rampant since NBC News reported in October that he had called Trump a ‘moron’ during a meeting with Pentagon officials.”
Meanwhile, Tillerson insisted to CNN that he has never questioned Trump’s mental fitness.
Politico: “The Republican leader still has a slate of brutal GOP primaries looming in the first half of this year that could jeopardize his party’s hold on the Senate — even with Bannon out of the picture, assuming that his breakup with President Trump and the wealthy Mercer family lasts.”
“Still, McConnell’s team believes — probably with good reason — that their job in 2018 is now significantly easier without Bannon to marshal insurgent forces against incumbent Republican senators and cost the party crucial Senate seats. That’s precisely what they blame him for doing in Alabama, where the party nominated Bannon-backed Roy Moore only to watch him blow a seemingly can’t-lose race.”
“The White House on Friday presented Congress with an expansive list of hard-line immigration measures, including an $18 billion request to build a wall at the Mexican border, that President Trump is demanding in exchange for protecting young undocumented immigrants,” the New York Times reports.
“The request, which totals $33 billion over a period of 10 years for border security measures including the wall, could jeopardize bipartisan talks aimed at getting an immigration deal. Among the items on Mr. Trump’s immigration wish-list: money to hire 10,000 additional immigration officers, tougher laws for those seeking asylum, and denial of federal grants to so-called ‘sanctuary cities.'”
Washington Post: “With their votes needed to keep the government open, Democrats are looking to use their leverage in the spending talks to force the Republicans who control Congress to reach a deal on DACA.”
President Trump slammed reports questioning his mental stability in a series of tweets Saturday morning, writing he’s a “very stable genius,” CNN reports.
Said Trump: “Now that Russian collusion, after one year of intense study, has proven to be a total hoax on the American public, the Democrats and their lapdogs, the Fake News Mainstream Media, are taking out the old Ronald Reagan playbook and screaming mental stability and intelligence.”
He added: “Actually, throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart. Crooked Hillary Clinton also played these cards very hard and, as everyone knows, went down in flames. I went from VERY successful businessman, to top T.V. Star … to President of the United States (on my first try). I think that would qualify as not smart, but genius … and a very stable genius at that!”
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.
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