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.”
This is the must read story of the day:
4 hours a day of TV. No one touches the remote but him. And this detail -about the crack of dawn tweets: “Less frequently, he makes his way up the hall to the ornate Treaty Room, sometimes dressed for the day, sometimes still in night clothes”
— Erin Burnett (@ErinBurnett) December 9, 2017
New York Times: “For other presidents, every day is a test of how to lead a country, not just a faction, balancing competing interests. For Mr. Trump, every day is an hour-by-hour battle for self-preservation. He still relitigates last year’s election, convinced that the investigation by Robert Mueller, the special counsel, into Russia’s interference is a plot to delegitimize him. Color-coded maps highlighting the counties he won were hung on the White House walls.”
“Before taking office, Mr. Trump told top aides to think of each presidential day as an episode in a television show in which he vanquishes rivals. People close to him estimate that Mr. Trump spends at least four hours a day, and sometimes as much as twice that, in front of a television, sometimes with the volume muted, marinating in the no-holds-barred wars of cable news and eager to fire back.”
A new SurveyMonkey poll finds that “minor differences in the methods used to model or select the likely electorate produce wildly varying estimates in Alabama. Data collected over the past week, with different models applied, show everything between an 8 eight percentage point margin favoring Jones and a 9 percentage point margin favoring Moore.”
“The same survey data also reveal the underlying tensions behind the volatile results: Alabama Democrats are angry and energized, while a significant but critical minority of Republicans are conflicted between a nominee they dislike and a President they support.”
“Jones leads by wide margins when we simply ask voters if they plan to vote… An alternative, which favors Moore, defines likely voters as those with a self-reported history of voting in lower turnout elections.”
“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… Then along came Pres. Trump. His lies are both more frequent and more malicious than ordinary people’s.” https://t.co/TAkocC2iyi
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) December 9, 2017
“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.”
Roy Moore’s supporters often tout his popularity with Christian conservatives—but what do Alabama’s pastors really think of Roy Moore? https://t.co/e4PISPdjeZ
— The New Yorker (@NewYorker) December 9, 2017
“The Trump administration has rejected a sweeping Russian proposal seeking a mutual ban on foreign political interference,” BuzzFeed News reports.
“Putin dispatched Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov to Washington for a July 17 meeting with Under Secretary Tom Shannon, the No. 3 official at the State Department. … [T]hree U.S. administration officials, including one inside the meeting, said Ryabkov handed over a document containing a bold proposal: A sweeping noninterference agreement between Moscow and Washington that would prohibit both governments from meddling in the other’s domestic politics.”
Vice News: “Twelve conservative voters gathered inside a Birmingham coffee house Thursday for a candid discussion about the Alabama senate race.”
“Republicans negotiating a final GOP tax bill are reconsidering proposals to shrink the plan’s corporate tax cut amid ferocious opposition from Senate Republicans as well as outside conservative and business groups,” the Washington Post reports.
“Both separate bills that passed the House and Senate would lower the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 20 percent. But lawmakers negotiating the final bill have considered raising the corporate rate to 22 percent, raising new revenue that they would use to offset other changes they plan to make in the final package.”
No, Roy Moore’s accuser didn’t forge his yearbook signature. https://t.co/71tUtewPgm
— Vox (@voxdotcom) December 9, 2017
Associated Press: “Revealing that they know every word Manafort changed in a recently published op-ed, prosecutors for the special counsel argued Friday that the former Trump campaign chairman’s attempt to mount a public relations campaign to defend himself while under house arrest ‘raises serious concerns about his trustworthiness.’”
“Writing in Microsoft Word, Manafort changed several sections of the essay, going line-by-line for over 30 minutes on the night of Nov. 29, court papers show.”
“Each change was tracked in the document, which prosecutors later compared to talking points Manafort drafted last year to respond to news reports about his consulting work in Ukraine. They found they mirrored his edits, and appeared to show he had a ‘public relations campaign’ in mind to help his case.”
Ex-FBI special agent: “There is a lot of anger in the FBI (the entire intelligence community, for that matter) over how this president will say nary a negative word about the Russians, but will insult us every chance he gets.” https://t.co/pdG7FdJDzf
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) December 9, 2017
Dan Balz: “For Republicans, there likely can be no truly good outcome. If Moore wins, the party will have preserved the seat but will be saddled with a new senator under a cloud of allegations, including assaulting a teenager many years ago as well as a pattern of pursuing teenagers half his age when he was in his 30s. If he wins and is sworn in, he probably will face an ethics investigation that will keep the controversy alive until his fate is resolved and perhaps much longer than that. For the Republicans, it’s a hot mess.”
“If Moore loses, the GOP would be spared his presence in the Senate. But the result will have inflamed the anti-establishment forces led by former White House chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon, deepening antagonisms that continue to roil the party… Additionally, a Jones victory would put the Republican majority at greater risk in 2018.”
This is how many billions of dollars each of the 15 richest families in America will save if we repeal the estate tax https://t.co/mvp2gtwSkm pic.twitter.com/YvYxkBpHUT
— Mother Jones (@MotherJones) December 10, 2017
Politico: “The departures of AP and Fox from the 20-year alliance of news organizations that have commissioned and reported national and state exit polls doesn’t necessarily sound the death knell for exit polling. The four remaining networks in the pool — ABC News, CBS News, CNN and NBC News — are locked into the current exit poll regime through the next presidential election.”
“But they will be facing unprecedented competition — from the AP and Fox News, among others — and the future beyond 2020 remains uncertain.”
A depressing look back at the year in class warfare: https://t.co/NFgqTSaLuj pic.twitter.com/DpPj0XHhnW
— The New Republic (@newrepublic) December 9, 2017
President Trump has agreed to record a robocall for Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore (R), “the president’s most direct involvement in Alabama on behalf of the embattled candidate to date,” Politico reports.
“The call is expected to go out to Alabama voters on Monday, a day before the election.”
Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie’s new memoir of the 2016 campaign is an extended love letter to the president. https://t.co/LW4yIiIjoL pic.twitter.com/JVLP3AkVGd
— The New Republic (@newrepublic) December 9, 2017
I watched the Vice News clip yesterday. I was going to write about it, but had no words.