“Bill O’Reilly, the former Fox News anchor, has been negotiating for a position with the Sinclair Broadcast Group, the nation’s largest television-station owner,” NBC News reports.
“Sinclair, known for its conservative commentary, is continuing with the talks despite the sexual harassment cases that cost O’Reilly his job at Fox earlier this year… Sinclair currently owns or operates 173 U.S. television stations.”
“House Republican leaders are in a mad dash to resolve a dispute between GOP tax writers and Republicans from high-tax states that has the potential to make Thursday’s budget vote a real nail-biter,” Politico reports.
“A handful of New York Republicans, along with a New Jersey lawmaker, are threatening to vote against the budget unless GOP leaders retreat from plans to eliminate a key federal deduction that people can take for the state and local taxes they pay.”
Texas House Speaker Joe Straus (R) announced “he will not run for re-election in 2018, a decision that has the potential to upend the political balance of power in the state,” the Texas Tribune reports.
“Straus, who has lately been the most powerful moderate Republican in the Texas Capitol, said he will serve until the end of his term.”
“His decision will immediately set in motion a scrum for control of the House, pitting arch-conservative members who have opposed him against more centrist Republicans who have backed Straus… Tea Party leaders and their allies have blamed Straus for killing controversial measures backed by the hard right, most notably a bill that would have regulated which bathrooms transgender Texans could use.”
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“I haven’t decided to run, but I’ve decided I’m not going to decide not to run. We’ll see what happens.”
— Former Vice President Joe Biden, in an interview with Vanity Fair, on running for president in 2020.
“Alexander Nix, who heads a controversial data analytics firm that worked for President Trump’s campaign, wrote in an email last year that he reached out to Wikileaks founder Julian Assange about Hillary Clinton’s missing 33,000 emails,” the Daily Beast reports.
“Nix, who heads Cambridge Analytica, told a third party that he reached out to Assange about his firm somehow helping the Wikileaks founder release Clinton’s missing emails… Assange told the Cambridge Analytica CEO that he didn’t want his help, and preferred to do the work on his own.”
“If the claims Nix made in that email are true, this would be the closest known connection between Trump’s campaign and Assange.”
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady (R-TX) “suggested a tax bill he is preparing to introduce could force changes to 401(k) plans and other retirement accounts, potentially bucking a promise from President Trump that those accounts would be left alone,” the Washington Post reports.
“Brady’s comments come just one week before he is planning to introduce his tax bill, which Republicans hope will lead to the most sweeping changes to the tax code in more than 30 years. But almost all of the key details of the tax bill remain a mystery. Again and again on Wednesday, Brady said the most pressing decisions have not been reached.”
Ross Douthat: “In the end, if you want Republican voters to reject Trumpism, you need to give them clear electoral opportunities to do so — even if you expect defeat, even if it’s all but certain.”
“If Corker really means what he keeps saying about the danger posed by Trump’s effective incapacity, he should call openly for impeachment or for 25th Amendment proceedings — and other anti-Trump Republicans should join him. If Flake really means what he said in his impassioned speech, and he doesn’t want to waste time and energy on a foredoomed Senate primary campaign, then he should choose a different hopeless-seeming cause and primary Trump in 2020.”
NBC News: “Diplomatic efforts between the United States and North Korea are in peril with Pyongyang shunning talks in response to President Trump’s increased public attacks on Kim Jong Un.”
“Joseph Yun, a top American diplomat to North Korea, has been warning of the breakdown in meetings on Capitol Hill and seeking help to persuade the administration to prioritize diplomacy over the heated rhetoric that appears to be pushing the two nuclear powers closer toward conflict.”
“It’s not that you have to just be with the president on policy, you can’t question his behavior and still be a Republican in good standing apparently in a Republican primary.”
— Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), in an interview on Morning Joe.
The Huffington Post runs an interesting interview with four career civil servants who quit their jobs rather than continuing to work under President Trump.
All of them, at some point over the course of the last nine months, had left their posts within the current administration, having decided that they could better serve their country from outside the government than from within. They weren’t happy about quitting, either. They were civil servants who wanted to remain civil servants, who, except for one, had worked under presidents of both parties. They had disagreed with superiors over the years, they had been fearful of new regulations and wary of political appointees, but they stayed on because that’s the nature of career work in government. This was different.
Rep. Al Green (D-TX) questions Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson at an oversight hearing.
Mike Allen: “So much media coverage centers on four Republican Trump critics… Lost in this: President Trump enjoys public support (despite private gripes) from most of the 49 other Senate Republicans and 239 House Republicans, including every person in elected leadership.”
“For all the warnings of how harshly history will judge the Trump enablers, that history will need to be told in an exceptionally long book — because the vast majority of Republicans are forever marked as Trump Republicans.”
Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) refused to rule out mounting a bid to unseat President Trump in 2020, insisting that such a decision is “a long way away,” Politico reports.
Said Flake: “That’s a long way away. I’m focused on my next 14 months in the senate, making sure that we get some good policy, there are some things that I want to accomplish in the short term.”
For members: Why Trump Will Probably Face a Primary Challenge
James Hohmann: “The conventional wisdom is that Corker and Flake will both be replaced by intellectually pliable apparatchiks who will reliably support Trump. This is more likely than not.”
“But the changeover won’t happen for 14 months. Flake and Corker will be in office until January 2019. That’s an eternity in politics. It’s more than enough time to derail some of the more unconservative elements of the Trump agenda. Remember, Republicans only have a two-seat majority in the Senate.”
“Moreover, in this environment, it’s totally plausible that Democrats could pick up the open seats in both Arizona and Tennessee. If you add Nevada, and assume that Democratic incumbents up for reelection in states Trump carried find a way to survive (a big if), the GOP would lose the majority. If Republicans lose the Senate in 2018 — which was inconceivable just a few months ago — they will probably also lose the House. If Trump feels put upon now, he has no clue how miserable the second half of his term would be.”
New York Times: “With divisions roiling the party, the prospect of a once-in-a-generation bill to cut taxes on businesses and individuals increasingly appears to be the last, best hope for a fractured establishment desperate to find common ground and advance an effort it has long championed as the pinnacle of Republican orthodoxy…”
“In the face of those divides, Republican leaders retreated to the only safe ground they have left: a partisan, fast-tracked tax bill, which party leaders hope to introduce next week in the House and deliver to Mr. Trump’s desk by Christmas. The stakes are rising by the day, as Republican donors and voters watch the intraparty dispute unfold and worry about the party advancing the legislative priorities it has long espoused, let alone holding its congressional majorities in the 2018 midterms.”
“Pressure is only increasing on Republican lawmakers, with conservative commentators and other observers saying failure on a tax bill is not an option.”
Playbook: “People involved in the race tell us Flake’s support completely disappeared after he released his book, Conscience of a Conservative: A Rejection of Destructive Politics and a Return to Principle. Republicans say they and Flake, himself, knew he was going to lose.”
Just before Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) announced he would not run for re-election, he told the Arizona Republic that “there may not be a place for a Republican like me in the current Republican climate or the current Republican Party.”
Said Flake: “Here’s the bottom line: The path that I would have to travel to get the Republican nomination is a path I’m not willing to take, and that I can’t in good conscience take… It would require me to believe in positions I don’t hold on such issues as trade and immigration, and it would require me to condone behavior that I cannot condone.”
Flake also has an op-ed in the Washington Post:
There is a sickness in our system — and it is contagious. How many more disgraceful public feuds with Gold Star families can we witness in silence before we ourselves are disgraced? How many more times will we see moral ambiguity in the face of shocking bigotry and shrug it off? How many more childish insults do we need to see hurled at a hostile foreign power before we acknowledge the senseless danger of it? How much more damage to our democracy and to the institutions of American liberty do we need to witness in silence before we count ourselves as complicit in that damage?
U.S. ambassador to New Zealand Scott Brown has admitted he has been investigated over allegations he made inappropriate comments on his inaugural trip to Samoa, of which he is also the U.S. representative, the Guardian reports.
Brown told reporters that the official complaints related to comments he had made at a party in the Samoan capital, Apia, where he told attendees they looked “beautiful” and could make hundreds of dollars working in the hospitality industry in the U.S. Brown said he had “no idea” the comments would be regarded as offensive.
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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