Year: 2017

Cruz Counting on Money, Not Personality, to Win

Buck Banks

$5.2 million

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) “is sitting on a war chest of more than $5 million as he prepares for potentially stiff challenges in both a Republican primary and in the general election,” Politico reports. “The Texas Republican raised about $1.738 million in the first three months of this year across his Senate reelection campaign, his political action committee and the Ted Cruz Victory Committee. He now has $5.2 million across those three committees, and $4.8 million of that is in his Senate reelection account.”

Why Trump Should Keep Bannon Close

Buck Banks

“If Bannon is cut loose, the old Washington adage of ‘better to have your enemy inside the tent pissing out’ will come into play. The coverage of Trump in the Bannon/Mercer echo chamber will go from ‘gushing hagiography’ to ‘more in sorrow than in anger’ to ‘Trump is now a globalist cuck shill for the ZOG’ faster than Andrew Breitbart can rotate in his grave. … Another reason firing Bannon is fraught with risk: Bannon is running the Russia pushback operation from inside the White House. He’s up to his ample ass in the Nunes shenanigan with NSC staffer Ezra Cohen-Watnik and White House Counsel’s Office staffer Mike Ellis. Bannon doesn’t just want to protect Trump over the Russia allegations; he wants to protect Russia, a nation he sees as an essential ally in his new alliance of white Christian nations against the Muslim horde. Does Trump really want Bannon, angry and in the wind, declaring his own jihad?”

— Rick Wilson

What Really Goes on at White House Press Briefings

Buck Banks

White House press secretary Sean Spicer speaks during the administration’s daily press briefing in Washington, D.C., on March 28. Joshua Roberts/Reuters
White House press secretary Sean Spicer speaks during the administration’s daily press briefing in Washington, D.C., on March 28.
Joshua Roberts/Reuters

Slate’s Seth Stevenson offers a great insider’s view of the ongoing trainwreck that is Press Secretary Sean Spicer in his article, “The Daily Show.”

The real problem in the briefing room isn’t the kind of questions getting asked, who’s being allowed to ask them, or how they’re phrased. It’s the posturing of the press secretary and the brazenness of his lies. Consider that, during contentious moments in past administrations, press secretaries managed to remain collegial from the podium. Even deferential.

It’s long, but well worth reading to get, as Paul Harvey used to say, “the rest of the story.” Because all we citizens ever see of it is the snippets on TV or the theater of the absurd quotation outtakes.

Stevenson gives a more well-rounded view of the proceedings — but Sean Spicer is still a “keg-shaped bully” and a liar.

April 29 Is Judgement Day for Trump Administration

Buck Banks

100

President Trump “has far more than three years left in his first term. But inside his pressure-cooker of a White House, aides and advisers are sweating the next three weeks,” Politico reports. “The symbolic 100-day mark by which modern presidents are judged menaces for an image-obsessed chief executive whose opening sprint has been marred by legislative stumbles, legal setbacks, senior staff kneecapping one another, the resignation of his national security adviser and near-daily headlines and headaches about links to Russia. … The date, April 29, hangs over the West Wing like the sword of Damocles as the unofficial deadline to find their footing— or else.”

Trump Has Already Spent $24 Million on Travel

Buck Banks

$24 million

President Trump’s trips to his luxury Florida resort “have already cost the US taxpayer at least $24 million — roughly as much as Barack Obama spent on travel in the first two years of his presidency,” the Independent reports. “In total, Mr Obama’s travel bill over the eight years of his presidency came to $97 million — an average of $12.1 million a year.