“Former President Bill Clinton is writing a new book about his post-presidential life,” the New York Times reports.
“It is unclear how much of the book, if any, will deal with Mrs. Clinton’s two campaigns for president, or if Mr. Clinton will address the criticisms of his policy record or his personal behavior. He has mostly avoided those topics in his public appearances.”
Maureen Dowd: “I’m looking around Scotiabank Arena, the home of the Toronto Maple Leafs, and it’s a depressing sight. It’s two-for-the-price-of-one in half the arena. The hockey rink is half curtained off, but even with that, organizers are scrambling at the last minute to cordon off more sections behind thick black curtains, they say due to a lack of sales. I paid $177 weeks in advance. (I passed on the pricey meet-and-greet option.) On the day of the event, some unsold tickets are slashed to single digits.”
“I get reassigned to another section as the Clintons’ audience space shrinks. But even with all the herding, I’m still looking at large swaths of empty seats — and I cringe at the thought that the Clintons will look out and see that, too.”
Town & Country magazine disinvited Monica Lewinsky from its annual philanthropic summit because Bill Clinton was attending, HuffPost reports.
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-MNY), who holds Hillary Clinton’s former seat, said that Bill Clinton should have resigned the presidency after his inappropriate relationship with an intern came to light nearly 20 years ago, the New York Times reports.
“Asked directly if she believed Mr. Clinton should have stepped down at the time, Ms. Gillibrand took a long pause and said, ‘Yes, I think that is the appropriate response.’ But she also appeared to signal that what is currently considered a fireable offense may have been more often overlooked during the Clinton era.”
“Bill and Hillary Clinton have decided to attend the inauguration of Donald Trump as the 45th President of the United States,” New York Magazine reports.
Politico: “The news comes as former President George W. Bush and his wife Laura also announced Tuesday that they will be attending the inauguration. Both former presidents, who are offered tickets to all inaugurations, had put off the decision about whether attend until the new year. Neither supported Trump’s election.”
“Watching a rival sworn in from up close has happened several times in American politics, including when outgoing vice presidents Richard Nixon in 1961 and Al Gore in 2001 watched from the risers as the men who had beaten them for the presidency raised their hands for the oath of office.”
Rick Klein: “John Podesta’s hacked emails have provided enough raw material to fill a bookshelf with campaign retrospectives. We now have a picture of fierce internal debates over how to handle Hillary Clinton’s paid-speech transcripts, emerging primary challenges from the left, and of course how to handle the matter of her email server. (‘There Is Just No Good Answer,’ Philippe Reines wrote to Podesta and several other top aides, with dramatic spacing for effect.)”
“But the peek behind the curtain is perhaps nowhere more revealing than in the warfare revealed between Chelsea Clinton and top Bill Clinton aide Doug Band over the Clinton Foundation and the web of personal and business connections that grew around it. A memo out this week via Wikileaks has Band describing what he labeled ‘Bill Clinton Inc.,’ describing his work to secure ‘in-kind services for the President and his family – for personal travel, hospitality, vacation and the like,’ in addition to highly paid speeches to private enterprises.”
“This is the kind of operation the Clintons’ critics have long warned about – with revolving doors, intersecting public and private interests, and opportunities for lined pockets all around. Donald Trump this week was criticized for taking a break from his campaign to attend to and hype business matters. Inside Clinton Inc., that doesn’t look so out of the ordinary.”
“Two chief fundraisers for the Clinton Foundation pressed corporate donors to steer business opportunities to former President Bill Clinton as well, according to a hacked memo published Wednesday by WikiLeaks,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“The memo, part of a cache of emails stolen from Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager, resurfaces an issue that she has had a hard time shaking: questions over the relationship between the Clintons’ charity work and their personal business.”
Eric Trump says it took “a lot of courage” for his father not to attack former President Bill Clinton on his extramarital affairs, NBC News reports.
Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway said Trump showed “presidential virtue” by not talking about the Clinton scandals.
“The scandals, of course, have been successfully revived by Trump and his allies this week — including in this article — by pretending not to talk about them.”
Bill Clinton’s former CIA chief, James Woolsey, will act as an adviser to Donald Trump’s campaign, The Hill reports.
Said Woolsey: “She demonstrated a complete lack of understanding and an inability to lead the agency she headed in such a way as to maintain its mission and security. Based on the emails thus far released we know that Secretary Clinton also lacks the ability to lead her senior managers while complying with and maintaining the basic protocols designed to protect our government’s sensitive and classified information.”
Bill Clinton said that Donald Trump’s promise to “Make America Great Again” is a racist dog whistle, according to RealClearPolitics.
Said Clinton: “If you’re a white southerner, you know exactly what it means.”
He added: “I’m old enough to remember the good old days. And they weren’t all that good in many ways.”
Chelsea Clinton said that she would prefer Bill Clinton be known as the “first gentleman” if Hillary Clinton wins the election but her father has his own ideas, Politico reports.
Said Chelsea: “He likes to harken back to his kind of Irish roots, he’d love to be called first laddie.”
Paul Begala told People magazine that John F. Kennedy Jr. sent Bill Clinton a fax during the height of the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
It read: “Dear Mr. President, I sat under that desk – there’s barely room for a 3-year-old, much less a 21-year-old intern. Cheers, J.K.”
Said Begala: “I showed the President and he laughed his butt off. It was so gutsy. And he was the perfect person to bring a little levity.”
Los Angeles Times: “He would push not just corporate hosts but also nonprofits and universities to pay fees well beyond what they were accustomed to. His aides would turn what had been a freewheeling format into tightly scripted events where every question from the audience was screened. He and Hillary Clinton would become so skilled at churning profits out of their lectures that they would net more than $150 million from speaking alone after he left the White House.”
“Contracts and internal emails connected to half a dozen speeches Clinton gave in the Bay Area soon after departing the White House offer a glimpse into the unusual demands and outsize expense reports associated with bringing him to town.”
Ryan Lizza: “If Bill Clinton was trying even subtly to influence the investigation, his attempt has backfired spectacularly. The disclosure of the meeting has raised questions about the integrity of the investigation. Lynch’s promise to accept without modification the recommendations of the F.B.I. has removed a potentially sympathetic voice from the process. And the enormous publicity over the event will increase the pressure on investigators not to show any leniency in the case. Whatever Bill Clinton thought he was doing, he has cast a pall over what should have been his wife’s most triumphant moment in politics.”
“Amid an ongoing investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of email and hours before the public release of the Benghazi report, Attorney General Loretta Lynch met privately with former President Bill Clinton,” ABC 15 in Arizona reports.
“The private meeting took place on the west side of Sky Harbor International Airport on board a parked private plane.”
“Gary Byrne, a former Secret Service agent who worked in Bill Clinton’s White House, tells a dramatic story in his upcoming book about how he personally helped a White House steward dispose of towels stained by semen and lipstick to protect the president from a sex scandal.”
“That story, as well as another Byrne tells about walking in on Bill Clinton making out with a TV journalist, is different from what he told investigators from Kenneth Starr’s Office of the Independent Counsel in 1998, a BuzzFeed News review of interviews, depositions, and grand jury testimony has found.”
“Bill Clinton’s schedule many days is more packed than Hillary’s, though by design it rarely registers on the national radar,” the Washington Post reports.
“This is the invisi-Bill campaign. The former president who flickers occasionally on cable news channels remains a big draw on the off-Broadway circuit of presidential politics. It is a low-altitude tactical deployment that leaves a light footprint, aiming to maximize his value as a political asset without stirring the negatives that also trail him.”
“His new duties have not come without stumbles, and they conjure the implications of a Clinton restoration. Presidential spouses are expected to exert their influence over china patterns, not China policy. No one, however, is under the illusion that Bill Clinton would remain cloistered in the East Wing. Still open to question is whether voters will welcome his return or worry about it.”
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.