“Sam Clovis was almost a comically bad nominee, even for this administration.”
— Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), in a statement.
Sean Spicer’s Secret Harvard Fellowship
Harvard Crimson: “Sean Spicer was publicly offered a Visiting Fellowship here at the Harvard Kennedy School—and then allowed to speak entirely off the record.”
“During his time on campus, Spicer had closed-door forums with select faculty and fellows, spoke in a few chosen classes, and attended invite-only meals with selected groups of students. In total, 11 events over three days, all off the record, none open to the general student body or public. Not a single word Sean Spicer spoke during his Visiting Fellowship at Harvard was on the record, nor could a single word could be heard without an explicit invite.”
Kid Rock Sold Merchandise for Fake Senate Run
BuzzFeed: “Kid Rock sold merchandise for a fake Senate campaign in Michigan for months, all the while encouraging rumors that he would run and teasing announcements. Now that the ‘campaign’ is officially over… the artist won’t say how much money he made from the ‘Kid Rock For Senate’ stunt or where it went.”
Bannon Pledges No War with House Republicans
“Top House GOP campaign strategists met with former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon on Friday morning — an indication party leaders are attempting to avert the divisive primaries that Bannon is organizing against Senate Republicans,” Politico reports.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders Makes the Heart Grow Fonder
Frank Bruni: “It hit me this week, around the time when Sarah Huckabee Sanders was blithely seconding Chief of Staff John Kelly’s Civil War revisionism, that I missed Sean Spicer.”
“I missed the panic in his eyes, which signaled a scintilla of awareness that he was peddling hooey. I missed the squeak in his voice, which suggested perhaps the tiniest smidgen of shame.”
“He never seemed to me entirely at home in his domicile of deception; she dwells without evident compunction in a gaudier fairyland of grander fictions. There’s no panic. No squeak. Just that repulsed expression, as if a foul odor had wafted in and she knew — just knew — that the culprit was CNN.”
Quote of the Day
“Lemme tell you, the one that matters is me. I’m the only one that matters, because when it comes to it, that’s what the policy is going to be.”
— President Trump, in an interview on Fox News, about unfilled State Department positions.
Perry Says Fossil Fuels Can Prevent Sexual Assault
Energy Secretary Rick Perry claimed that fossil fuels can help prevent sexual assault, NBC News reports.
Said Perry: “But also from the standpoint of sexual assault, when the lights are on, when you have light that shines, the righteousness, if you will, on those types of acts. So from the standpoint of how you really affect people’s lives, fossil fuels is going to play a role in that. I happen to think it’s going to play a positive role.”
GOP Tax Bill Would Politicize Churches
Think Progress: “The newly unveiled Republican tax reform bill includes a provision that will likely make leaders of the Religious Right very happy—by amending a part of the tax law that keeps churches from engaging in explicit political advocacy.”
“Embedded within the bill’s more than 400 pages is a small provision that would change an aspect of the so-called ‘Johnson Amendment,’ a provision of the tax codes that prohibits churches, faith communities, and other non-profits from outright endorsing political candidates.”
Trump Heads to Asia with a Weak Hand
“The president heads overseas during a time of what some experts see as a decline of U.S. influence in the region and they suggest that it is unlikely that Trump will be returning home with any clear wins,” NBC News reports.
“While Trump battles on multiple fronts and faces low approval ratings at home, some of the world leaders he will encounter on his swing through Japan, China, South Korea, Vietnam and the Philippines find themselves emboldened — and playing with a home turf advantage. Chinese President Xi Jinping, for instance, has been buoyed in recent weeks by his further consolidation of power and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s political party enjoyed a landslide election victory last week.”
First Read: “Trump heads into this Asia trip carrying about as weak of a hand as we can remember for any president visiting Asia.”
Sessions on the Hot Seat Again
First Read: “In a normal Washington, the attorney general would be out after this — especially since this isn’t the first time he’s been accused of misleading under oath. (Sen. Jeff Sessions would have already called for the resignation of Attorney General Jeff Sessions.) But in our politically paralyzed Washington — where the Trump White House and Senate Republicans are probably loathe to have confirmation hearings for another attorney general — Sessions might be able to survive if he begs for forgiveness.”
Haunted by Hillary
Mike Allen: “While many Democrats wish it weren’t so, Hillary Clinton just won’t go away. First it was her regret-and-resentment tour. Then the book. And now a rolling wave of 2016 recriminations.”
“As Democrats try to figure out 2020, it’s bad enough that they keep re-litigating the Clinton-Trump general election. But top Dems think it’s horrendous that the party is now re-litigating the Clinton-Sanders primary.”
“Clinton’s former high command says none of this breaks through in real America. But party insiders know that if they’re going to take back the House, Senate or White House, they need to look forward, not backward.”
Most Oppose the GOP Tax Plan
A new ABC News-Washington Post poll finds Americans oppose President Trump’s emerging tax plan by broad a 17-point margin, with 60% saying it favors the wealthy -– including six in 10 of the wealthy themselves.
“As details –- albeit still scarce -– have emerged, support and opposition have grown essentially in tandem.”
Senate Littered with Land Mines for GOP Tax Bill
Politico: “The fanfare surrounding the House GOP tax plan on Thursday masked a brewing storm in the other chamber. Senate Republicans will have to sway a host of GOP swing votes as they try to jam through their own tax overhaul with almost no margin for error. Fiscal hawks are squawking about how tax legislation could balloon the deficit. Moderates like Sen. Susan Collins of Maine are worried tax cuts will disproportionately favor the rich. Even an Obamacare-related row could bubble up and trip up passage.”
“While a small handful of Democrats might get on board, it’s more likely Republicans will have to go it alone — meaning they can lose just two GOP votes before their tax bill tanks.”
GOP May Add Individual Mandate Repeal to Tax Bill
Playbook: “There’s been a push in the Capitol in the last 24 hours to include a repeal of the individual mandate in the House Republican tax bill. We snickered in the speaker’s lobby when North Carolina Rep. Mark Meadows said there’s an ‘overwhelming consensus’ to gut the health care law as part of tax reform, but since then, we’ve heard it from a bunch of other lawmakers, and sources in Republican leadership aren’t shooting it down all together.”
“Let’s be honest: Republicans need as much revenue as they can get, since they’re slashing taxes so drastically, and repealing the individual mandate gives them $400 billion more to play with. Stay tuned.”
The Most Corrupt Administration In History?
Newsweek: “According to the presidential historian Robert Dallek, no American leader has acted with more unadulterated self-interest as Trump. Dallek says that in terms of outright corruption, Trump is worse than both Ulysses S. Grant and Warren G. Harding, presidents who oversaw the most flagrant instances of graft in American political history.”
Said Dallek: “What makes this different is that the president can’t seem to speak the truth about a host of things.”
Trump isn’t just allowing corruption, in Dallek’s view, but encouraging it: “The fish rots from the head.”
Trump Frustrated Justice Dept. Not Going After Clinton
President Trump talked to radio host Larry O’Connor about his campaign pledge to lock Hillary Clinton up.
Said Trump: “The saddest thing is that because I’m the President of the United States I’m not supposed to be involved with the Justice Department, I’m not supposed to be involved with the FBI, I’m not supposed to be doing the kinds of things I would love to be doing and I’m very frustrated by it. I look at what’s happening with the Justice Department, why aren’t they going after Hillary Clinton with her emails and with the dossier and the kind of money?”
Warren Says DNC Rigged Primary for Clinton
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) told CNN that she believes that the DNC was “rigged” in favor of Hillary Clinton during the 2016 primary.
Warren called that “a real problem.”
She added: “But what we’ve got to do as Democrats now, is we’ve got to hold this party accountable.”
Page Says He Told Sessions About Russia Trip
“Former Trump foreign policy adviser Carter Page privately testified that he mentioned to Jeff Sessions he was traveling to Russia during the 2016 presidential campaign — as new questions emerge about the attorney general’s comments to Congress about Russia and the Trump campaign,” CNN reports.
“Sessions’ discussion with Page will fuel further scrutiny about what the attorney general knew about connections between the Trump campaign and Russia — and communications about Russia that he did not disclose despite a persistent line of questioning in three separate hearings this year.”
