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“Monica Crowley, who is slated to serve in a top national security communications role in Donald Trump’s presidential administration, plagiarized thousands of words of her 2000 dissertation for her Columbia University Ph.D.,” CNN reports.
“On Monday, Politico reported that it found more than a dozen examples of plagiarism in Crowley’s Ph.D. dissertation. CNN’s KFile has found nearly 40 lengthy instances of Crowley lifting paragraphs from numerous sources, including several scholarly texts, the Associated Press, and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.”
Dan Balz: “No president in memory has come to the brink of his inauguration with such a smorgasbord of potential problems and unanswered questions, or with the level of public doubts that exist around his leadership.”
“Has he been compromised by the Russians, the most explosive and newest of allegations? (He denied all as fake news.) Are he and his party in conflict over U.S.-Russia relations? Will he truly separate himself from his sprawling business empire in a way that avoids conflicts of interest? Can he and Congress find common ground on repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act? Will he live up to the promises he made as a candidate?”
“All presidents come to the Oval Office with questions about their ability to handle the complexities of the job. Obama arrived with limited experience on the national stage. George W. Bush took the oath after a contentious recount and controversial Supreme Court decision. Trump makes those situations look mild in comparison.”
Politico: “Rex Tillerson will only need Republican votes to become secretary of state — and the GOP was largely kind to him during Wednesday’s audition to be Donald Trump’s top diplomat. Everyone, that is, except for Marco Rubio. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is narrowly divided, with the GOP holding just a one-seat advantage. And most Democrats, if not all, sounded skeptical about Tillerson’s performance before the panel.”
“So Rubio may determine whether Tillerson’s nomination can successfully win committee approval — or come to a floor vote after being given an ‘unfavorable’ recommendation by the panel.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) plans to announce on Thursday that he will oppose a fellow senator, Jeff Sessions of Alabama, when his nomination as attorney general comes to a vote, saying he is not confident that Mr. Sessions would “serve as an independent check on the incoming administration,” the New York Times reports.
“Just hours after President-elect Donald Trump said he would not sell his vast business empire and would instead hand it over to a trust controlled by his two oldest sons, the government’s top ethics monitor said his plan was wholly inadequate and would leave the president vulnerable to ‘suspicions of corruption,” the New York Times reports.
“The unusual public criticism from Walter M. Shaub Jr., director of the Office of Government Ethics, followed Mr. Trump’s most detailed explanation yet of his plans to distance himself from the global business operations of the Trump Organization. No modern president has entered the White House with such a complicated array of holdings.”
Gabriel Sherman: “Judged on a policy basis, it was a disaster. Trump came across as just as unprepared and unfocused as he did during his shambolic campaign. He let his lawyer speak for nearly a quarter of the allotted time to explain why he wouldn’t be putting his company into a blind trust and instead would be turning it over to his sons Don Jr. and Eric. For visual effect, aides stacked manila folders on a table next to the lectern. Trump said they were filled with legal papers.”
“But observed as spectacle, Trump came away with a resounding victory. That’s because Trump won even before he stepped before the microphone, by making the media the story.”
ABC News: “Trump press conferences look like they’re going to be wild, if today’s events are any indication… Trump exchanges with the press appear unlikely to be dull affairs. They might also be extraordinarily combative, as with his repeated refusal to allow a CNN reporter to ask a question. This ride is going to be wild.”
Jonathan Chait: “Donald Trump’s first press conference since the summer was a surreal exercise in the assertion of immunity from accountability. He either ignored questions about his behavior, or dismissed the questions as illegitimate. He painted a chilling depiction of politics not as an ongoing process but as a one-time event, settled in his favor by the presidential campaign, once and for all.”
“It is abnormal, to say the least, for a president-elect to defend his behavior by pivoting to a contrast with the candidate he defeated. But invoking Clinton served a purpose that became clear as the press conference drew on. It defined any question he disapproved of as a challenge to his legitimacy, and thus a campaign matter, and thus by definition moot.”
President-elect Donald Trump said “the salacious allegations about what may have occurred in a Russian hotel room are unbelievable, in part because he is a germaphobe,” Politico reports.
Said Trump: “Does anyone really believe that story? I’m also very much of a germophobe, by the way, believe me.”
Rex Tillerson had terse exchanges with Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and other key senators during his confirmation hearing for the role of secretary of state, ducking questions on whether Russian leader Vladimir Putin is a “war criminal” or if the U.S. should sanction Moscow, Politico reports.
“The former ExxonMobil CEO was at times astonishingly candid, even curt, at one point telling a senator ‘a little of both’ when asked if he was refusing to answer a question or if he didn’t know the answer. Tillerson also struggled to clarify key issues, stating, for instance, that his company never lobbied against Russian sanctions, even though public records show the oil company repeatedly talked to lawmakers and the White House about the sanctions. And Tillerson would not say that he’d immediately back out of the nuclear agreement with Iran — a stance that puts him in opposition to GOP leaders.”
President-elect Donald Trump, “insisting he will not divest himself of his vast business empire as he prepares to assume the presidency, plans instead to turn over all of his business operations to a trust controlled by his two oldest sons and a longtime associate,” the New York Times reports.
“He will donate to the United States government all profits from foreign government payments to his hotels, the officials said, describing the arrangements as voluntary measures taken to answer concerns about potential conflicts of interest that would allow Mr. Trump to focus on running the country.”
Washington Post: “But Trump’s commitment will not resolve what federal officials and ethics advisors say is his most key conflict: His continuing ownership of his business, the Trump Organization. That will ensure Trump will still have a vested financial interest in a global private company when he takes office next week.”
President-elect Donald Trump is scheduled to hold a his first news conference in more than six months at 11 a.m. ET in New York City.
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“The ex-wife of President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to be labor secretary, Andrew Puzder, appeared in disguise on ‘The Oprah Winfrey Show’ as a victim of domestic violence, after having accused him multiple times of physically assaulting her in the 1980s,” Politico reports.
“Additionally, a 1988 petition… from the Circuit Court of St. Louis County provides previously unreported details of the alleged abuse: Puzder’s ex-wife, Lisa Fierstein, accused him of having ‘assaulted and battered [her] by striking her violently about the face, chest, back, shoulders, and neck, without provocation or cause,’ and that as a consequence she ‘suffered severe and permanent injuries.'”
Rick Klein: “’WITCH HUNT!’ President-elect Donald Trump declared on Twitter. The phrase was repeated – though the capitalization doesn’t translate – by a spokesman for the Kremlin. But what if something real emerges from the hocus-pocus? The dossier on supposed Russian dirt on Trump raises questions for Trump, though few should expect he will answer them to any satisfaction. The answers he gives Wednesday will be instructive (does praise for Putin disappear? does he question the motives of intelligence agencies?) though hardly conclusive.”
“That will leave the digging and the answering to Congress, where pressure will grow for a special, bipartisan, joint House-Senate committee. If the allegations were serious enough for Sen. John McCain to hand off to FBI Director James Comey, surely they demand special congressional attention. It’s a defining moment for Trump. Ditto for the legislative branch, as the nation sees either a massive smear or an unparalleled international scandal play off just days before a new president takes office.”
Justin Wolfers was at the annual conference of economists last weekend in Chicago and notes the major theme was a sense of anxiety about the incoming Trump administration.
“Over three days of intense discussions, I didn’t encounter a single economist who expressed optimism that Mr. Trump’s administration would be good for the economy. The optimists were those who thought Mr. Trump would not have the energy to actually implement his agenda; the pessimists’ thoughts veered toward disaster.”
“What we’ve done instead of trying to surround him with what people consider A-listers is we are going to surround him with the soft sensuality of the place. It’s a much more poetic cadence than having a circus-like celebration that’s a coronation.”
— Trump inauguration planner Tom Barrack, quoted by Politico.
“Monica Crowley, Donald Trump’s pick for a senior national security communications role, plagiarized multiple sources in some of her columns for the Washington Times… CNN’s KFile reviewed close to 50 of Crowley’s columns over the past five years, finding examples of plagiarism in seven.”
Previous reports have found that Crowley plagiarized her book and PhD dissertation.
Frank Bruni: “As the cabinet nominees submit to their inquisitions and Trump holds his first news conference since the election, there’s a surfeit of political spectacle this week.”
“But for sheer, jaw-dropping wonder, I doubt that any of it will improve on a typical Conway television interview, which is a circus of euphemisms, a festival of distractions and a testament to the stamina of a willed smile. She looks cheery when attacking, even cheerier when attacked and absolutely radiant when descending into a bog of half-truths and fictions. It’s always sunny on Conway’s side of the street.”
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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