This is interesting: The President’s Man: The Memoirs of Nixon’s Trusted Aide by Dwight Chapin.
“As his personal aide and then Deputy Assistant in the White House Chapin was with him in his most private and most public moments. He traveled with him, assisted, advised, strategized, campaigned and learned from America’s most controversial president.”
With omicron cases spreading like wildfire, the White House is finally taking steps to make free antigen tests available to all. But in October, it dismissed a bold plan to ramp up rapid testing ahead of the holidays, Vanity Fair reports.
“The 10-page plan, which Vanity Fair has obtained, would enable the U.S. to finally do what many other countries had already done: Put rapid at-home COVID-19 testing into the hands of average citizens, allowing them to screen themselves in real time and thereby help reduce transmission. The plan called for an estimated 732 million tests per month, a number that would require a major ramp-up of manufacturing capacity.”
George Floyd will not be posthumously pardoned for a 2004 Houston drug charge because the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles withdrew its recommendation, the Dallas Morning News reports.
“United Airlines preemptively canceled more than a hundred flights scheduled for Friday… The airline’s statement acknowledged that the ‘nationwide spike in Omicron cases’ had directly impacted its flight crews and forced 112 cancellations,” the Daily Beast reports.
“Roughly an hour later, it emerged that Delta Airlines had pulled the plug on roughly 85 of its own Friday flights.”
CNBC: “Airlines have ramped up pressure on the CDC to lower the quarantine recommendation for breakthrough Covid cases.”
“The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol is focusing intently on Donald Trump’s actions that day as it begins to discuss whether to recommend that the Justice Department open a criminal investigation into the former president,” the Washington Post reports.
“Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-MS) said in an interview that of particular interest is why it took so long for him to call on his supporters to stand down, an area of inquiry that includes obtaining several versions of a video Trump reportedly recorded before finally releasing a message 187 minutes after he told his supporters to march on the Capitol during the rally that preceded the attack.”
Said Thompson: “It appears that he tried to do a taping several times, but he wouldn’t say the right thing.”
“The fringe factions of the right-wing have erupted in anger and confusion at former President Donald Trump’s enthusiastic lauding of the COVID-19 vaccine this week,” Insider reports.
“On two separate occasions, Trump advocated for people to take the COVID-19 vaccine this past week.”
Daily Beast: TrumpWorld becomes unglued over Trump’s praise of vaccine and booster shots.
Washington Post: “Now, nearly a full year into Biden’s term, as the virus has mutated its way through the Greek alphabet to the omicron variant, testing is in short supply in many places, leaving frustrated Americans waiting in long lines for tests — if they can get them at all.”
“That is feeding into a wave of concern, despondency and in some places near-frenzy at the likely approach of yet another spike in a pandemic the country has battled for nearly two years. This late-December disarray — crowded testing sites, empty drugstore shelves — is raising fresh questions about how Biden and his team have executed on his pledge to defeat the pandemic.”
“The U.S. and Russia moved closer to convening talks over tensions surrounding Ukraine, though American officials warned that Moscow is continuing to build up its forces for possible military action against its neighbor,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday that U.S. and Russian officials would meet in January in Geneva. The U.S. has also proposed talks, and the two sides are still trying to sort out differences over how to structure the negotiations and which channels to use, U.S. officials said.”
Financial Times: Ukraine crisis challenges Biden’s vow to confront autocrats like Putin.
Wall Street Journal: “Biden administration officials have sometimes expressed frustration with what they see as developments largely out of their control, from Democrats’ narrow majority in the Senate to the rise of the Omicron variant. Much of that frustration is directed outward—at the media, at Republicans and at other outside critics who some in the administration believe are eager to see Mr. Biden fail, according to the president’s allies.”
“Mr. Biden, for his part, has expressed annoyance both in public and in private with the way the media covers him, aides said.”
“Signs are mounting that the U.S. economy is losing some steam as the Omicron variant of the Covid-19 virus spreads rapidly through parts of the country,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“The number of diners seated at restaurants nationwide was down 15% in the week ended Dec. 22 from the same period in 2019, a steeper decline than in late November… U.S. hotel occupancy was at 53.8% for the week ended Dec. 18, slightly below the previous week’s level.”
Coming soon: How Are You Going to Pay for That?: Smart Answers to the Dumbest Question in Politics by Ryan Cooper.
“This question is designed to shut down policy pushes up front, minimizing any interference with the free market. It comes from neoliberalism, an economic ideology that has overtaken both parties.”
“I’ve done more reading in the last year than I’ve probably done in the last 15 years.”
— Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), quoted by National Journal, reflecting on his first year in the Senate.
“U.S. consumer prices rose 5.7% over the past year, the fastest pace in 39 years, as a surge in inflation confronts Americans with the holiday shopping season under way,” the AP reports.
When Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX) heard that Vice President Kamala Harris “was traveling to the border in June, he had his staff call her office to offer help and advice for her visit. He never received a call back,” the New York Times reports.
Said Cuellar: “I say this very respectfully to her: I moved on. She was tasked with that job, it doesn’t look like she’s very interested in this, so we are going to move on to other folks that work on this issue.”
“In the future, Mr. Cuellar said he would go straight to the West Wing with his concerns on migration rather than the vice president’s office.”
French First Lady Brigitte Macron is set to take legal action over an internet conspiracy theory that she is a transgender woman and was born male, the BBC reports.
“The Marine Corps discharged 66 Marines in the past week for refusing to get the coronavirus vaccine as mandated by the military, outpacing the other services at discipline related to the shots,” the AP reports.
“The latest Corps actions brought the total number of Marines booted out of the service for vaccine refusal to 169.”
“Lawyers for former president Donald Trump asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to block release of his White House records to a congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol,” the Washington Post reports.
“Trump wants the justices to reverse a unanimous ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, which rejected his assertions of executive privilege and request to keep secret roughly 800 pages of Trump’s papers. President Biden determined the material could be released to the committee.”
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.
