Politico: “The move illustrates how Republicans up and down the ballot are hitching themselves to Trump’s ever-expanding and newly professionalized 2020 political machine. With the president lining up a team of experienced political strategists, deploying an ambitious national field program, and exercising nearly universal control over the party apparatus, Republicans are eager to exploit his organization for their own benefit.”
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Pence Responds to Buttigieg Criticism
“Days after South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg directly attacked Mike Pence for his stance on LGBT issues, the Republican vice president denounced the comments,” Politico reports.
Said Pence: “He’s said some things that are critical of my Christian faith and about me personally. And he knows better. He knows me.”
Over the weekend, Buttigieg said: “If me being gay was a choice, it was a choice that was made far, far above my pay grade. And that’s the thing I wish the Mike Pences of the world would understand. That if you got a problem with who I am, your problem is not with me — your quarrel, sir, is with my creator.”
Trump Celebrates Fox Business Goof
“President Trump posted a tweet Thursday celebrating his poll numbers as shown in a Fox Business graphic,” USA Today reports.
“But there was a problem: the 55% approval number the graphic cited was actually the president’s unfavorable rating.”
Political Wire Straw Poll
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Avenatti Indicted on 36 Criminal Charges
“Attorney Michael Avenatti has been charged in a 36-count federal indictment alleging he stole millions of dollars from clients, did not pay his taxes, committed bank fraud and lied in bankruptcy proceedings,”, according to the Associated Press.
“The new charges do not include the New York extortion case alleging Avenatti demanded millions to stay quiet about claims he planned to reveal about Nike paying high school players.”
Los Angeles Times: “Avenatti stole millions of dollars from five clients and used a tangled web of shell companies and bank accounts to cover up the theft, the Santa Ana grand jury alleged in an indictment that prosecutors will make public Thursday.”
Only Russian Media Outlet Had Video of Assange Arrest
“WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange hadn’t been seen in public for many months before he was arrested and hauled out of the Ecuadorian embassy in London on Thursday,” CNN reports.
“It was a moment that global news organizations were desperate to show their audiences. Yet it wasn’t captured by leading UK broadcasters like the BBC, Sky News or Independent Television News… Instead, the only media organization with video of the controversial moment was an obscure outfit called Ruptly.”
“Ruptly, which has carved out a niche for itself by recording events around the world and selling the footage to other broadcasters, is a subsidiary of Russian state-backed media outlet RT.”
U.S. Indictment Unsealed Against Julian Assange
“Prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia unsealed a conspiracy charge against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who was arrested by British police Thursday in Ecuador’s London embassy with the permission of Ecuadoran authorities,” the Washington Post reports.
“The case accuses Assange of conspiring to commit computer intrusion for agreeing to break a password to a classified U.S. government computer when working with former U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, formerly known as Bradley Manning, who released hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables and war logs in 2010.”
Quote of the Day
“Only Congress can declare war. You do not have our permission to go to war with Iran.”
— Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), quoted by CBS News, to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
Benedict Blames Clerical Sex Abuse on 1960s
“Breaking years of silence on major church affairs, Pope Benedict XVI has written a lengthy letter devoted to clerical sex abuse in which he attributes the crisis to a breakdown of church and societal moral teaching and says he felt compelled to assist ‘in this difficult hour,'” the Washington Post reports.
“The 6,000-word letter, published in tandem Thursday by a Catholic outlet and an Italian newspaper, decries the 1960s sexual revolution, laments the secularization of the West and describes seminaries filled with ‘homosexual cliques.'”
It’s the Sexism, Stupid
Kate Manne: “Two white male presidential candidates — Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders — have led the Democratic field from the start, and two others — Beto O’Rourke and Pete Buttigieg — have basked in glowing coverage. Meanwhile, experienced female rivals — Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren — haven’t generated nearly the same media buzz, or led any recent polls.
“What’s going on here? The evidence is mounting that these patterns are the work of sexism and misogyny — albeit often unconscious, unwitting and the result of implicit bias.”
Julian Assange Arrested In London
“Julian Assange has been arrested at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, after the South American country withdrew asylum from the WikiLeaks founder,” The Guardian reports.
“Assange had been granted refuge at the embassy while on bail in the UK over sexual assault allegations against him in Sweden.”
Washington Post: “Video of the arrest showed a gray-bearded Assange being pulled by British police officers down the steps of the embassy and shoved into a waiting police van. Assange appeared to be physically resisting. His hands were bound in front of him.”
Playbook: “Assange’s arrest suggests that the arm of the Russia probe is long indeed. It also could scramble traditional political fault lines in Washington. In the Obama days, it was the left that defended the WikiLeaks enterprise, but many Democrats had soured on Assange by the 2016 campaign — and then they came to despise him. Meanwhile, some on the right like Fox News host Sean Hannity and candidate Donald Trump became his biggest fans. What will they say now?”
Ex-Obama White House Counsel Expects to Be Indicted
“Former Obama White House counsel Greg Craig expects to be indicted in the coming days on charges stemming from work he performed for Ukraine in 2012,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“Mr. Craig has refused to accept a plea deal, and the matter could be presented to a grand jury for indictment as soon as Thursday.”
New York Times: “Craig would become the first person who made his name in Democratic Party politics to be charged in a case linked to the special counsel’s investigation.”
Democrats Retool Opposition Research Effort
USA Today: “Responding to criticism that Democrats were too focused on Trump’s temperament and personal attributes during Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, the party’s main organizing arm says it’s making a major expansion of its opposition research team that will be ‘hyper-focused’ on the impact of Trump’s policies on local communities.
“A team of several dozen staffers have compiled an archive of thousands of documents obtained through local news and Freedom of Information Act requests that will be used to spotlight promises Trump made during visits to specific communities — and to ‘put a human face’ on what’s happened since then.”
Immigration Divides the White House
Politico: “As the president faces blowback from his slow motion decapitation of the Department of Homeland Security, Trump is presenting two public faces on immigration. He is offering rhetoric that undersells the dramatic moves underway in his administration to curb illegal immigration and asylum seekers from entering the country.”
“And he is toggling between Jared Kushner, who has spent months fashioning an immigration package that can attract bipartisan support and appease the business community, and Stephen Miller, who as a Senate aide was notorious for killing legislation like that.”
The Netanyahu Playbook
Roger Cohen: “His victory contains a warning for any Democrat still imagining that the 2020 election will bring an easy victory over Donald Trump. The Netanyahu playbook will be President Trump’s next year. Gather nationalist and religious voters in your camp, add in a strong economy, dose with fear, sprinkle with strongman appeal, inject a dash of racism and victory is yours — whatever indictments are looming.”
“It’s not that this could happen. It will happen, absent some decisive factor to upend the logic of it. Netanyahu is savvier than Trump, but they share a shrewd assessment of how to control and manipulate the politics of spectacle, as well as a fierce determination to stay out of jail. They campaign ugly.”
Stephen Collinson: “President Trump is celebrating Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israeli election victory like it’s his own — and in many ways, it is.”
GOP Border Hawk Rebukes Trump Over Cutting Aid
“Rep. Mike McCaul (R-TX), one of Capitol Hill’s highest-ranking Republicans and staunchest border security advocates, is now using his influence to push back on the Trump administration’s policies to address the influx of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border,” McClatchy reports.
“The move comes as Democrats are targeting McCaul’s district for the first time in his 15 years in Congress, putting him and other Texas Republicans in the new position of seeking distance from President Trump and his more controversial policies.”
“McCaul, now the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, railed against Trump’s plans to cut foreign aid to countries in Central America as ‘reckless’ and ‘ill-advised’ at a hearing Wednesday.”
Bibi Trump and Donald Netanyahu
Thomas Friedman: “There are two countries that I’ve been professionally, emotionally and intellectually involved with my entire journalism career — the United States and Israel. I’ve never been more worried about both, because President Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are essentially the same person, and they pose the same threat to their respective nations.”
“They are both men utterly without shame, backed by parties utterly without spine, protected by big media outlets utterly without integrity. They are both funded by a Las Vegas casino magnate, Sheldon Adelson. They are both making support for Israel a ‘Republican’’ cause — no longer a bipartisan one. And they each could shoot an innocent man in broad daylight in the middle of Fifth Avenue and their supporters would say the victim had it coming.”
“As a result, they are each free to cross red lines that their predecessors never dared to. Which is why I believe that four more years of Netanyahu, which is almost certain after Israel’s election on Tuesday, and six more years of Trump, which is a real possibility, will hasten the emergence of an America and an Israel where respect for civility, democracy, an independent judiciary and independent media are no longer examples for others to follow.”
Trump’s Sister Retires, Ending Probe Into Tax Schemes
“President Trump’s older sister, Maryanne Trump Barry, has retired as a federal appellate judge, ending an investigation into whether she violated judicial conduct rules by participating in fraudulent tax schemes with her siblings,” the New York Times reports.
“The status change rendered the investigation moot, since retired judges are not subject to the conduct rules.”
