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Navigating the Nonsense

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Trial Balloon · Ep. 189: Navigating the Nonsense

Former Fox Anchor Says Trump Tried to Kiss Her

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Juliet Huddy, a former Fox & Friends Weekend anchor, told a radio show that Donald Trump once tried to kiss her on the lips unexpectedly after a business lunch.

“As Trump said goodbye to her in the elevator, in the presence of his security guard, he leaned in and tried to kiss her on the lips.”

Said Huddy: “I was surprised that he went for the lips.”

A few years later, Trump appeared on her syndicated show and off-air, to a studio audience Trump laughed about the pass in the elevator: “I tried hitting on her but she blew me off.”

Franks Overheard Talking About Setting Up PAC

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KMSP-TV overheard Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ) — just hours before his resignation from Congress — talking to someone on the phone about setting up a $2 million political action committee to go after the issue of the filibuster.

When confronted, Franks refused to discuss the issue.

Tax Bill Could Make ‘Dark Money’ Tax Deductible

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“For the first time in American politics, anonymous ‘dark money’ political donations could become tax-deductible. That’s if a provision currently being debated between House and Senate negotiators makes it into the final tax bill,” CNN reports.

“The issue at hand started with the ‘Johnson Amendment,’ named after then-Sen. Lyndon Johnson’s 1954 measure that prohibits nonprofit groups who maintain tax-exempt status, including churches and charities, from directly participating in politics.”

“But efforts to repeal the Johnson Amendment have resulted in language that would ease political speech rules for all nonprofits. The results, critics say, could effectively let people deduct de-facto political donations and further hide those donations and spending from the public.”

How Trump Works to Undermine Mitt Romney

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Washington Post: “Before Ronna Romney McDaniel took over as Republican National Committee chairwoman earlier this year, President Trump had a request: Would she be willing to stop using her middle name publicly? Though she had used her maiden name for years in Michigan, where her grandfather had been governor, McDaniel dropped ‘Romney’ from most official party communications and has rarely used it since.”

“The moment offers a window on Trump’s complicated and often tense relationship with Mitt Romney.”

“Those tensions were on display again this week, when White House aides scripted a trip to Utah with a single political goal in mind: to convince Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) to run for reelection and thwart Romney from mounting his own bid for the seat, according to a senior White House official involved in the preparations.”

Tweet of the Day

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Rep. Steve King (R-IA) on Twitter:

Diversity is not our strength. Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban, “Mixing cultures will not lead to a higher quality of life but a lower one.”

Prominent Judge Accused of Sexual Misconduct

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“A former clerk for Judge Alex Kozinski said the powerful and well-known jurist, who for many years served as chief judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, called her into his office several times and pulled up pornography on his computer, asking if she thought it was photoshopped or if it aroused her sexually,” the Washington Post reports.

FBI Warned Hope Hicks About Russian Emails

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“FBI officials warned one of President Trump’s top advisers, Hope Hicks, earlier this year about repeated attempts by Russian operatives to make contact with her during the presidential transition,” the New York Times reports.

“The Russian outreach efforts show that, even after American intelligence agencies publicly accused Moscow of trying to influence the outcome of last year’s presidential election, Russian operatives were undaunted in their efforts to establish contacts with Mr. Trump’s advisers.”

“There is no evidence that Ms. Hicks did anything improper.”

Franks Resigns Effectively Immediately

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Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ) issued a statement saying he would resign immediately, instead of staying on until January 31, 2018 as he said yesterday.

Politico has the background story: “Franks allegedly made unwanted advances toward female staffers in his office and retaliated against one who rebuffed him.”

“The sources said Franks approached two female staffers about acting as a potential surrogate for him and his wife, who has struggled with fertility issues for years. But the aides were concerned that Franks was asking to have sexual relations with them. It was not clear to the women whether he was asking about impregnating the women through sexual intercourse or in vitro fertilization. Franks opposes abortion rights as well as procedures that discard embryos.”

The AP reports Franks offered one staffer $5 million to act as a surrogate.

Bonus Quote of the Day

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“You have to tend to this garden of democracy, otherwise things can fall apart fairly quickly. And we’ve seen societies where that happens.”

— Former president Barack Obama, quoted by CNN.

Susan Collins ‘Got Rolled’

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Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) wouldn’t say whether she’ll support the final tax package in the absence of guaranteed passage of the health-care bills, Bloomberg reports.

“Collins’s promise came from Senate Majority Mitch McConnell — who can’t always deliver a vote in his own chamber, let alone the one across the capitol. It’s by no means clear that either of the health care bills Collins bargained for will get anywhere in the House, where conservatives regard at least one of the measures with disdain.”

Said Democratic lobbyist Jim Manley: “She got rolled. Despite the fact that she’s a veteran legislator, as far as I’m concerned she got rolled here. The promises she extracted from the Senate leadership aren’t worth the piece of paper they’re written on.”

Email to Trump Referred to Information Already Public

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“A 2016 email sent to President Trump and top aides pointed the campaign to hacked documents from the Democratic National Committee that had already been made public by the group WikiLeaks a day earlier,” the Washington Post reports.

Axios says this reporting “massively changes the significance of this story” and “caps off a week of huge reporting blunders on the Russia probe after ABC News mischaracterized Michael Flynn’s planned testimony and Reuters and Bloomberg misreported the target of a Mueller subpoena of Deutsche Bank.”

Dina Powell Will Leave White House Soon

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“Dina Powell, deputy national security adviser for strategy, announced she will leave the White House early next year — the first in an expected wave of senior West Wing departures,” Mike Allen reports.

Washington Post: “She and Trump have discussed her departure and are working on an arrangement for Powell to continue advising the administration on Middle East policy from outside the government.”

Moore Accuser Admits She Altered Yearbook Inscription

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“One of the women who accused Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore of making advances on her when she was a teen and he a local prosecutor admitted Friday to writing part of the yearbook inscription she offered as proof, a new crack in her story that gives Moore an opening to attack her credibility,” Fox News reports.

“Beverly Young Nelson told ABC News she added the date and place in the inscription in her high school yearbook that she and famed attorney Gloria Allred presented as proof the then-30-something Moore sought an inappropriate relationship with her in the late 1970s. Nelson still insisted that Moore wrote most of the message and signed the inscription, but said she made “notes” to it.”

What If Republicans Don’t Care If Trump Is Guilty?

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Eugene Robinson: “We need to prepare for the eventuality that the Mueller probe catches President Trump, family members and associates red-handed — and Republicans in Congress refuse to do anything about it.”

“This is beginning to look like a possible or even probable outcome. With a cravenness matched only by its arrogance, the GOP is Trump’s party now. It no longer has any claim to be Lincoln’s.”

Democrats Will Recommend Changes to Primary System

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“A Democratic Party working group will meet in Washington, D.C. today and tomorrow to finalize a formal list of recommended reforms for the party,” ABC News reports.

“Sources close to the commission who have seen working drafts of its current report tell ABC News the panel plans to recommend dramatic cuts to the individual voting power of superdelegates and new rules around caucuses and primaries to improve access for voters and recordkeeping.”

Nate Silver: “Eliminating most unbound superdelegates + highly proportional delegate allocation + potentially huge Democratic field = high probability of a brokered convention.”

Trump Tells Far More Lies Than Most People

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Bella DePaulo: “I spent the first two decades of my career as a social scientist studying liars and their lies. I thought I had developed a sense of what to expect from them. Then along came President Trump. His lies are both more frequent and more malicious than ordinary people’s.”

“Trump told 6.6 times as many self-serving lies as kind ones. That’s a much higher ratio than we found for our study participants, who told about double the number of self-centered lies compared with kind ones.”

“The most stunning way Trump’s lies differed from our participants’, though, was in their cruelty. An astonishing 50 percent of Trump’s lies were hurtful or disparaging.”

Taegan Goddard

Taegan Goddard

Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire -- which for more than two decades has been one of the nation's most influential political news sites.

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