As predicted China will assume world leadership as the US steps back. The Chinese leader is playing it well, claiming that China is not grasping for power, but is simply willing to fill the vacuum created by Trump.
While I was reading this article, CNN was replaying Trump’s childish whining about media coverage of his crowd size as he stood in front of the wall of heroes at the CIA. The contrast between the maturity and seriousness of the two leaders could not have been more graphic.
Saturday, Trump was at his buffoonish worst. Sunday was better. If he is going to try to impose tariffs or otherwise start a trade war, I would prefer he make the attempt as a buffoon.
Why am I not shocked that the so-called “women’s march” was orchestrated and in large part financed, by a man? So much for the “grass roots” effort they keep touting. And most of these suckers fell for it.
“In the pre-dawn darkness of today’s presidential inauguration day, I faced a choice, as a lifelong liberal feminist who voted for Donald Trump for president: lace up my pink Nike sneakers to step forward and take the DC Metro into the nation’s capital for the inauguration of America’s new president, or wait and go tomorrow to the after-party, dubbed the “Women’s March on Washington”?
The Guardian has touted the “Women’s March on Washington” as a “spontaneous” action for women’s rights. Another liberal media outlet, Vox, talks about the “huge, spontaneous groundswell” behind the march. On its website, organizers of the march are promoting their work as “a grassroots effort” with “independent” organizers. Even my local yoga studio, Beloved Yoga, is renting a bus and offering seats for $35. The march’s manifesto says magnificently, “The Rise of the Woman = The Rise of the Nation.”
It’s an idea that I, a liberal feminist, would embrace. But I know — and most of America knows — that the organizers of the march haven’t put into their manifesto: the march really isn’t a “women’s march.” It’s a march for women who are anti-Trump.
As someone who voted for Trump, I don’t feel welcome, nor do many other women who reject the liberal identity-politics that is the core underpinnings of the march, so far, making white women feel unwelcome, nixing women who oppose abortion and hijacking the agenda.
To understand the march better, I stayed up through the nights this week, studying the funding, politics and talking points of the some 403 groups that are “partners” of the march. Is this a non-partisan “Women’s March”?
Roy Speckhardt, executive director of the American Humanist Association, a march “partner,” told me his organization was “nonpartisan” but has “many concerns about the incoming Trump administration that include what we see as a misogynist approach to women.” Nick Fish, national program director of the American Atheists, another march partner, told me, “This is not a ‘partisan’ event.” Dennis Wiley, pastor of Covenant Baptist United Church of Christ, another march “partner,” returned my call and said, “This is not a partisan march.”
Really? UniteWomen.org, another partner, features videos with the hashtags #ImWithHer, #DemsInPhily and #ThanksObama. Following the money, I pored through documents of billionaire George Soros and his Open Society philanthropy, because I wondered: What is the link between one of Hillary Clinton’s largest donors and the “Women’s March”?
I found out: plenty.
By my draft research, which I’m opening up for crowd-sourcing on GoogleDocs, Soros has funded, or has close relationships with, at least 56 of the march’s “partners,” including “key partners” Planned Parenthood, which opposes Trump’s anti-abortion policy, and the National Resource Defense Council, which opposes Trump’s environmental policies. The other Soros ties with “Women’s March” organizations include the partisan MoveOn.org (which was fiercely pro-Clinton), the National Action Network (which has a former executive director lauded by Obama senior advisor Valerie Jarrett as “a leader of tomorrow” as a march co-chair and another official as “the head of logistics”). Other Soros grantees who are “partners” in the march are the American Civil Liberties Union, Center for Constitutional Rights, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. March organizers and the organizations identified here haven’t yet returned queries for comment. ”
—————————-
“Linda Sarsour, one of the organizers behind Saturday’s Women’s March, being held in Washington, D.C., was recently spotted at a large Muslim convention in Chicago posing for pictures with an accused financier for Hamas, the terrorist group.”
“Salah Sarsour, who is also a board member of American Muslims for Palestine, served as a bodyguard of sorts at the convention for Sumeyye Erdogan Bayraktar, the daughter of Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
While it is unclear if Salah and Linda are related (though they share the same surname, she has suggested in the past on social media that they are not and did not respond to requests for comment), she has other family ties to alleged Hamas operatives. Though she avoids discussing it now, Sarsour has acknowledged in past interviews that she has cousins serving prison time in Israel because of their work for Hamas.
Sarsour has denied having any contact with the terror group. She told The New York Times in 2012 that she would not have been appointed an Obama “Champion of Change” if she had.
The activist has risen to national attention recently. She served as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention, and she is one of four lead organizers for the Women’s March.”
——————————
Please, Obama would certainly love her type of “change”, and would probably give her bonus points for her connections.
A Facebook friend posted a story bragging that there had been no arrest at the woman’s march. Kind of a low bar. As far as i know in nearly 8 years there still hasn’t been an arrest at a Tea Party event.
KBells, Our young ladies wanted a good seat at the rodeo. I think the initial impetus behind those other marches was a desire not to be sexually assaulted by a rich New Yorker.
Depends who you ask. I watched an interview last night that talked to about 8 women on why they were there. 5 gave completely different reasons than the others, and 3 had no clue, except that it was for women, and they’re women, so they went. Oh, and they don’t like Trump. That was the only consistent reason stated, all the rest of the answers were all over the place.
However, if Obama had been caught on tape bragging about how he was allowed to rob convenience stores because he was famous and then had been elected following that revelation, a number of our friends would have protested.
Wow – this woman actually wanted the man sitting next to her on a flight to be removed from his seat b/c his beliefs are different from hers. It only got worse from there…
If Trump had been caught on tape bragging about doing anything illegal, he would have been arrested. Those women on the stage were beside themselves with rage because they were unsuccessful in putting the most notorious grabber, snatcher, groper and worse the WH has ever housed, back into that residence as First Gentleman. If they had succeeded, our ladies on the Mall would have been beside themselves with joy.
Some people can perceive no difference in the two men. I do. I think there is a big difference, especially when you consider their family relationships. Trump’s name is exceedingly important to him. He is always looking for ways to build material things, and he keeps his family close in that process. There is some safety in that because it helps keep the focus where it belongs.
However, eventually time will tell. If it exists, it is hard to hide debauchery when your home is the White House. Ask Clinton.
Too much of this political activity is gnawing at my should– not in a good way and from both sides.
I, personally, have to be careful because I go to cynicism so quickly and then I’m not polite. I can’t really avoid the politics, but I’m trying to be careful.
Someone in Bible study yesterday commented, “what can it be like to not believe God is in control? You turn to politics, then, and invest all your hopes and dreams there. You can’t help but be depressed, outraged and discouraged when things don’t go the way you think they should.”
I think it’s important, for the good of our soul and their’s, that we keep that comment in mind when evaluating the political world.
At least it is for me– they are not the enemy. We have good news.
Debra, So what is the big difference “when you consider their family relationships”? Is it that Trump divorced two wives in the midst of his series of affairs and sexual assaults while Clinton stayed unfaithful to one woman?
So don’t elect him as an elder or deacon in your church. He keeps his family close to him physically. They actively participate in his business affairs. Focus matters.
My estimate of human nature is not high. We are a proud, arrogant, unfaithful lot to begin with—and that’s just from my morning trip to the bathroom mirror. Faithfulness in public affairs only happens with much grace, in my opinion. On that I depend heavily.
Here is the deal, folks. When you nominate and elect Bill Clinton’s twin as President, don’t be shocked or surprised when the left responds to your man’s personal misbehavior as least as harshly as we responded to Clinton’s.
If you didn’t like Donald Trump’s inaugural speech, criticize away.
If you’re concerned about what President Trump may do, feel free to sound off.
If you want to march in protest, as hundreds of thousands of women did Saturday in Washington and other major cities, be my guest.
(Although Madonna’s declaration that she’s often thought of “blowing up the White House”–and dropping F-bombs on live TV–received no media pushback.)
But the level of vitriol on social media is out of control. Rather Madonna-like, you might say.
I’ve taken to calling these outbursts a case of Trump Trauma, and they were surging over the inaugural weekend. …
… And yes, I’m fully aware that people said and posted all kinds of ugly and untrue garbage about Barack Obama, and I spoke out against that too.
I guess on one level it’s venting. On another it’s playing to your crowd, to the friends you assume will agree.
But Trump is our president for the next four years. It would be nice even if those who oppose him personally and politically wished him well, for the good of the country. But online, at least, that’s not the world we live in.
______________________________
“It was a sleepy Wednesday morning last June when Ted Cruz tipped his hand.
John McCain had sponsored an amendment to expand the FBI’s online surveillance capabilities, and it was a no-brainer for the many devout constitutionalists on Cruz’s Senate staff. Rand Paul and Mike Lee—two reliable Republican allies in the fight for civil liberties—were adamantly opposed, and it was presumed throughout the upper chamber that Cruz would be too. When the vote came, however, the Texas senator stunned his colleagues by siding with McCain and the GOP leadership. The amendment failed to advance, but Cruz’s vote sent tremors through his Senate office. The previous month he’d quit the 2016 race and returned to Congress, yet he was still in campaign mode, anatomizing daily decisions on calls with his political team. This particular vote—which was influenced, several sources recall, by data suggesting Cruz’s flirtation with libertarianism made him vulnerable on national security during the GOP primary —was the first clear indication that he was making the necessary course corrections to run again, and lent credence to a rumor on Capitol Hill: that his presidential brain trust would annex his Senate office in preparation for reelection in 2018 and a second shot at the White House in 2020.
Any doubts were erased two weeks later when Cruz called a meeting and informed his Senate staffers of a major personnel change. David Polyansky, one of Cruz’s most trusted campaign advisers—and a loyalist of campaign manager Jeff Roe—was being installed as chief of staff despite having no prior legislative experience. Just as notable was the news that Paul Teller, whom Polyansky was replacing, would join several presidential staffers at a newly created non-profit designed to keep the campaign machinery humming by maintaining engagement with massive lists of nearly 500,000 donors and some 5 million activists and supporters. Cruz, banking on a Hillary Clinton victory, wasn’t waiting for the election result to position himself as her chief GOP challenger in 2020, and his team was making no secret of its plan to wage what would effectively be a continuous campaign for the presidency.
And then Donald Trump won the White House.
The ripples are visible across the Republican Party, but nowhere has the shock of Trump’s conquest been felt more acutely than inside the Texas senator’s sprawling electoral enterprise. Having spent the past two years constructing the most sophisticated operation in politics—an outfit that raised more cash than any Republican primary candidate in history—Cruz now has little choice but to garage it. There is no space inside Trump’s GOP for a rival political apparatus of that scale, nor is there money to sustain it.
Cruz can do plenty to engage donors himself; he hosted a reception last Wednesday at the Newseum in Washington for dozens of major contributors to his campaign. And he’ll continue to strategize with his senior team even as they take on new and different projects: They met in D.C. for seven hours Saturday at the office of attorney Chuck Cooper, discussing everything from his flawed media strategy in 2016 to Trump’s potentially unhelpful impact on the 2018 midterms. But for now, everyone understands that Cruz’s pursuit of the presidency is on hiatus. This explains why Roe wanted the job of White House political director; why more than half a dozen former staffers have secured administration posts; and why, according to multiple sources, his non-profit is cutting its staff to zero. The 125 square-foot office Cruz’s team rented last summer at 300 New Jersey Ave., against a breathtaking backdrop of the Capitol, will soon be vacant. The group will be repurposed to assist Cruz with some issue advocacy, but no longer is it a presidential campaign-in-waiting. Its two employees—Teller and Bryan English, Cruz’s Iowa director, who moved his family to D.C. to help run the new organization—expected they’d be joined by a host of new colleagues in the run-up to 2020. Instead, both are looking for work.
Boxing up that office will be the physical manifestation of the abrupt reversal of fortune for Cruz—from potential GOP heir apparent to just another senator with visions of living at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. “Every cycle is different, and the game continues to change,” says Rick Tyler, the former communications director for Cruz’s 2016 campaign. “But the prospects for Ted Cruz becoming president drastically dimmed on November 9.”
… I’ll use a baseball analogy: Saturday night was the top of the first, and Sean got to bat. Today is the bottom of the first, and the press’s time to hit. And they’re going to press Sean to back up the accuracy of the facts and the statistics and the broader points he was making. And if Sean can’t back it up, it’s going to be a tough day for him. If he can back it up, or if he just wisely acknowledges his statistics about the Metro were either incorrect or incomplete, he can emerge all the better.
But this is also why I do, at the end of the day, have faith in our process. The press secretary and the president get to make whatever assertions they want. It’s the press’s job in an impartial and fair way to challenge those assertions. And then we’ll see if the press secretary can or cannot back it up. The process actually works. I just think it should be toned down a notch or three. This is a long-term relationship; don’t burn out in the top of the first inning. ..
______________________________________
The people who voted for him don’t have the time or money to go traipsing off to inaugurations or protests. They are busy working to support their children, whom they did not abort.
While those of us seeking entertainment are fixated on the backsides of Michelle, Barack and Melania, or comparing photos of inaugurations past, President Trump is busy doing exactly what his supporters elected him to do. :–)
President Donald Trump gathered the CEOs of several top US companies at the White House on Monday and put them on notice: Move your manufacturing operations overseas and you’ll face a “substantial border tax.”
Trump promised the group of Fortune 500 CEOs hailing from companies including Ford, Dell and DOW Chemical that he planned to cut corporate taxes “massively” and slash regulations to give companies incentives to stay in the US, but he also warned them they would face a steep border tax to sell their products in the US if they take their manufacturing abroad.
“A company that wants to fire all of its people in the United States and build some factory someplace else and then thinks that that product is going to just flow across the border, that’s not going to happen,” Trump said….
If I was one of those US executives, I would smile and say all the right things. I would then scrap any plans for any new US plants. Trump is making every new US plant like a new federal employee: difficult to get rid of if things go bad.
Why doesn’t Trump just start buying his own silly hats and ties from US manufacturers?
Wandering Views 
As predicted China will assume world leadership as the US steps back. The Chinese leader is playing it well, claiming that China is not grasping for power, but is simply willing to fill the vacuum created by Trump.
While I was reading this article, CNN was replaying Trump’s childish whining about media coverage of his crowd size as he stood in front of the wall of heroes at the CIA. The contrast between the maturity and seriousness of the two leaders could not have been more graphic.
Saturday, Trump was at his buffoonish worst. Sunday was better. If he is going to try to impose tariffs or otherwise start a trade war, I would prefer he make the attempt as a buffoon.
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Why am I not shocked that the so-called “women’s march” was orchestrated and in large part financed, by a man? So much for the “grass roots” effort they keep touting. And most of these suckers fell for it.
http://nytlive.nytimes.com/womenintheworld/2017/01/20/billionaire-george-soros-has-ties-to-more-than-50-partners-of-the-womens-march-on-washington/
“In the pre-dawn darkness of today’s presidential inauguration day, I faced a choice, as a lifelong liberal feminist who voted for Donald Trump for president: lace up my pink Nike sneakers to step forward and take the DC Metro into the nation’s capital for the inauguration of America’s new president, or wait and go tomorrow to the after-party, dubbed the “Women’s March on Washington”?
The Guardian has touted the “Women’s March on Washington” as a “spontaneous” action for women’s rights. Another liberal media outlet, Vox, talks about the “huge, spontaneous groundswell” behind the march. On its website, organizers of the march are promoting their work as “a grassroots effort” with “independent” organizers. Even my local yoga studio, Beloved Yoga, is renting a bus and offering seats for $35. The march’s manifesto says magnificently, “The Rise of the Woman = The Rise of the Nation.”
It’s an idea that I, a liberal feminist, would embrace. But I know — and most of America knows — that the organizers of the march haven’t put into their manifesto: the march really isn’t a “women’s march.” It’s a march for women who are anti-Trump.
As someone who voted for Trump, I don’t feel welcome, nor do many other women who reject the liberal identity-politics that is the core underpinnings of the march, so far, making white women feel unwelcome, nixing women who oppose abortion and hijacking the agenda.
To understand the march better, I stayed up through the nights this week, studying the funding, politics and talking points of the some 403 groups that are “partners” of the march. Is this a non-partisan “Women’s March”?
Roy Speckhardt, executive director of the American Humanist Association, a march “partner,” told me his organization was “nonpartisan” but has “many concerns about the incoming Trump administration that include what we see as a misogynist approach to women.” Nick Fish, national program director of the American Atheists, another march partner, told me, “This is not a ‘partisan’ event.” Dennis Wiley, pastor of Covenant Baptist United Church of Christ, another march “partner,” returned my call and said, “This is not a partisan march.”
Really? UniteWomen.org, another partner, features videos with the hashtags #ImWithHer, #DemsInPhily and #ThanksObama. Following the money, I pored through documents of billionaire George Soros and his Open Society philanthropy, because I wondered: What is the link between one of Hillary Clinton’s largest donors and the “Women’s March”?
I found out: plenty.
By my draft research, which I’m opening up for crowd-sourcing on GoogleDocs, Soros has funded, or has close relationships with, at least 56 of the march’s “partners,” including “key partners” Planned Parenthood, which opposes Trump’s anti-abortion policy, and the National Resource Defense Council, which opposes Trump’s environmental policies. The other Soros ties with “Women’s March” organizations include the partisan MoveOn.org (which was fiercely pro-Clinton), the National Action Network (which has a former executive director lauded by Obama senior advisor Valerie Jarrett as “a leader of tomorrow” as a march co-chair and another official as “the head of logistics”). Other Soros grantees who are “partners” in the march are the American Civil Liberties Union, Center for Constitutional Rights, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. March organizers and the organizations identified here haven’t yet returned queries for comment. ”
—————————-
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More on the players behind this sham…….
http://dailycaller.com/2017/01/21/womens-march-organizer-recently-met-ex-hamas-operative-has-family-ties-to-terror-group/
“Linda Sarsour, one of the organizers behind Saturday’s Women’s March, being held in Washington, D.C., was recently spotted at a large Muslim convention in Chicago posing for pictures with an accused financier for Hamas, the terrorist group.”
“Salah Sarsour, who is also a board member of American Muslims for Palestine, served as a bodyguard of sorts at the convention for Sumeyye Erdogan Bayraktar, the daughter of Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
While it is unclear if Salah and Linda are related (though they share the same surname, she has suggested in the past on social media that they are not and did not respond to requests for comment), she has other family ties to alleged Hamas operatives. Though she avoids discussing it now, Sarsour has acknowledged in past interviews that she has cousins serving prison time in Israel because of their work for Hamas.
Sarsour has denied having any contact with the terror group. She told The New York Times in 2012 that she would not have been appointed an Obama “Champion of Change” if she had.
The activist has risen to national attention recently. She served as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention, and she is one of four lead organizers for the Women’s March.”
——————————
Please, Obama would certainly love her type of “change”, and would probably give her bonus points for her connections.
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A Facebook friend posted a story bragging that there had been no arrest at the woman’s march. Kind of a low bar. As far as i know in nearly 8 years there still hasn’t been an arrest at a Tea Party event.
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By the way, what do they want?
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I knew before I opened 7:22 that I would see Soros’ name in there somewhere.
@ 7:50: Girls just like to be pretty.
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KBells, Our young ladies wanted a good seat at the rodeo. I think the initial impetus behind those other marches was a desire not to be sexually assaulted by a rich New Yorker.
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KBells,
Depends who you ask. I watched an interview last night that talked to about 8 women on why they were there. 5 gave completely different reasons than the others, and 3 had no clue, except that it was for women, and they’re women, so they went. Oh, and they don’t like Trump. That was the only consistent reason stated, all the rest of the answers were all over the place.
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Thought you all would find this interesting: http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2017/01/politics/trump-inauguration-gigapixel/
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The women looked bad and they acted bad.
However, if Obama had been caught on tape bragging about how he was allowed to rob convenience stores because he was famous and then had been elected following that revelation, a number of our friends would have protested.
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Wow – this woman actually wanted the man sitting next to her on a flight to be removed from his seat b/c his beliefs are different from hers. It only got worse from there…
http://www.theamericanmirror.com/video-passengers-cheer-woman-berating-trump-supporter-kicked-off-plane/
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If Trump had been caught on tape bragging about doing anything illegal, he would have been arrested. Those women on the stage were beside themselves with rage because they were unsuccessful in putting the most notorious grabber, snatcher, groper and worse the WH has ever housed, back into that residence as First Gentleman. If they had succeeded, our ladies on the Mall would have been beside themselves with joy.
Some people can perceive no difference in the two men. I do. I think there is a big difference, especially when you consider their family relationships. Trump’s name is exceedingly important to him. He is always looking for ways to build material things, and he keeps his family close in that process. There is some safety in that because it helps keep the focus where it belongs.
However, eventually time will tell. If it exists, it is hard to hide debauchery when your home is the White House. Ask Clinton.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Too much of this political activity is gnawing at my should– not in a good way and from both sides.
I, personally, have to be careful because I go to cynicism so quickly and then I’m not polite. I can’t really avoid the politics, but I’m trying to be careful.
Someone in Bible study yesterday commented, “what can it be like to not believe God is in control? You turn to politics, then, and invest all your hopes and dreams there. You can’t help but be depressed, outraged and discouraged when things don’t go the way you think they should.”
I think it’s important, for the good of our soul and their’s, that we keep that comment in mind when evaluating the political world.
At least it is for me– they are not the enemy. We have good news.
LikeLiked by 7 people
I’m talking about my soul in the first sentence . . .
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Debra, So what is the big difference “when you consider their family relationships”? Is it that Trump divorced two wives in the midst of his series of affairs and sexual assaults while Clinton stayed unfaithful to one woman?
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Amen, michelle.
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So don’t elect him as an elder or deacon in your church. He keeps his family close to him physically. They actively participate in his business affairs. Focus matters.
My estimate of human nature is not high. We are a proud, arrogant, unfaithful lot to begin with—and that’s just from my morning trip to the bathroom mirror. Faithfulness in public affairs only happens with much grace, in my opinion. On that I depend heavily.
(I’m out the door—more later.) :–)
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Which is why we are called to pray for those in authority.
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Amen and amen, again.
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Here is the deal, folks. When you nominate and elect Bill Clinton’s twin as President, don’t be shocked or surprised when the left responds to your man’s personal misbehavior as least as harshly as we responded to Clinton’s.
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Debra, Chelsea stayed very close to Bill and their family “business”. Neither she nor the Young Trumps are dummies. They all like the gravy train.
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Oh how true this is.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/01/23/online-ugliness-inauguration-sparks-anti-trump-vitriol-on-social-media.html
_______________________________
If you didn’t like Donald Trump’s inaugural speech, criticize away.
If you’re concerned about what President Trump may do, feel free to sound off.
If you want to march in protest, as hundreds of thousands of women did Saturday in Washington and other major cities, be my guest.
(Although Madonna’s declaration that she’s often thought of “blowing up the White House”–and dropping F-bombs on live TV–received no media pushback.)
But the level of vitriol on social media is out of control. Rather Madonna-like, you might say.
I’ve taken to calling these outbursts a case of Trump Trauma, and they were surging over the inaugural weekend. …
… And yes, I’m fully aware that people said and posted all kinds of ugly and untrue garbage about Barack Obama, and I spoke out against that too.
I guess on one level it’s venting. On another it’s playing to your crowd, to the friends you assume will agree.
But Trump is our president for the next four years. It would be nice even if those who oppose him personally and politically wished him well, for the good of the country. But online, at least, that’s not the world we live in.
______________________________
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http://www.lifenews.com/2017/01/23/president-donald-trump-signs-executive-order-to-defund-international-planned-parenthood/
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Unlike the old Ted Cruz, the new Ted Cruz seems much more willing to work with the establishment, since his dreams have been dashed a bit…..
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/01/meet-the-new-ted-cruz-214681
“It was a sleepy Wednesday morning last June when Ted Cruz tipped his hand.
John McCain had sponsored an amendment to expand the FBI’s online surveillance capabilities, and it was a no-brainer for the many devout constitutionalists on Cruz’s Senate staff. Rand Paul and Mike Lee—two reliable Republican allies in the fight for civil liberties—were adamantly opposed, and it was presumed throughout the upper chamber that Cruz would be too. When the vote came, however, the Texas senator stunned his colleagues by siding with McCain and the GOP leadership. The amendment failed to advance, but Cruz’s vote sent tremors through his Senate office. The previous month he’d quit the 2016 race and returned to Congress, yet he was still in campaign mode, anatomizing daily decisions on calls with his political team. This particular vote—which was influenced, several sources recall, by data suggesting Cruz’s flirtation with libertarianism made him vulnerable on national security during the GOP primary —was the first clear indication that he was making the necessary course corrections to run again, and lent credence to a rumor on Capitol Hill: that his presidential brain trust would annex his Senate office in preparation for reelection in 2018 and a second shot at the White House in 2020.
Any doubts were erased two weeks later when Cruz called a meeting and informed his Senate staffers of a major personnel change. David Polyansky, one of Cruz’s most trusted campaign advisers—and a loyalist of campaign manager Jeff Roe—was being installed as chief of staff despite having no prior legislative experience. Just as notable was the news that Paul Teller, whom Polyansky was replacing, would join several presidential staffers at a newly created non-profit designed to keep the campaign machinery humming by maintaining engagement with massive lists of nearly 500,000 donors and some 5 million activists and supporters. Cruz, banking on a Hillary Clinton victory, wasn’t waiting for the election result to position himself as her chief GOP challenger in 2020, and his team was making no secret of its plan to wage what would effectively be a continuous campaign for the presidency.
And then Donald Trump won the White House.
The ripples are visible across the Republican Party, but nowhere has the shock of Trump’s conquest been felt more acutely than inside the Texas senator’s sprawling electoral enterprise. Having spent the past two years constructing the most sophisticated operation in politics—an outfit that raised more cash than any Republican primary candidate in history—Cruz now has little choice but to garage it. There is no space inside Trump’s GOP for a rival political apparatus of that scale, nor is there money to sustain it.
Cruz can do plenty to engage donors himself; he hosted a reception last Wednesday at the Newseum in Washington for dozens of major contributors to his campaign. And he’ll continue to strategize with his senior team even as they take on new and different projects: They met in D.C. for seven hours Saturday at the office of attorney Chuck Cooper, discussing everything from his flawed media strategy in 2016 to Trump’s potentially unhelpful impact on the 2018 midterms. But for now, everyone understands that Cruz’s pursuit of the presidency is on hiatus. This explains why Roe wanted the job of White House political director; why more than half a dozen former staffers have secured administration posts; and why, according to multiple sources, his non-profit is cutting its staff to zero. The 125 square-foot office Cruz’s team rented last summer at 300 New Jersey Ave., against a breathtaking backdrop of the Capitol, will soon be vacant. The group will be repurposed to assist Cruz with some issue advocacy, but no longer is it a presidential campaign-in-waiting. Its two employees—Teller and Bryan English, Cruz’s Iowa director, who moved his family to D.C. to help run the new organization—expected they’d be joined by a host of new colleagues in the run-up to 2020. Instead, both are looking for work.
Boxing up that office will be the physical manifestation of the abrupt reversal of fortune for Cruz—from potential GOP heir apparent to just another senator with visions of living at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. “Every cycle is different, and the game continues to change,” says Rick Tyler, the former communications director for Cruz’s 2016 campaign. “But the prospects for Ted Cruz becoming president drastically dimmed on November 9.”
It’s a bitter dose of reality.”
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Michelle, wonderful news!
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Let’s see…..
Defunded international PP
Abandons the job killing TPP
Announces a hiring freeze for federal workers
Moves to destroy the Obamacare mandate….
Looks like a good first week already. 🙂
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Interesting thoughts from a former press secretary on Sean Spicer’s, um, rather rocky debut
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/01/23/how-sean-spicer-messed-up-and-how-he-can-make-it-right-from-a-guy-whos-been-there/?utm_term=.d142a748d16c
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… I’ll use a baseball analogy: Saturday night was the top of the first, and Sean got to bat. Today is the bottom of the first, and the press’s time to hit. And they’re going to press Sean to back up the accuracy of the facts and the statistics and the broader points he was making. And if Sean can’t back it up, it’s going to be a tough day for him. If he can back it up, or if he just wisely acknowledges his statistics about the Metro were either incorrect or incomplete, he can emerge all the better.
But this is also why I do, at the end of the day, have faith in our process. The press secretary and the president get to make whatever assertions they want. It’s the press’s job in an impartial and fair way to challenge those assertions. And then we’ll see if the press secretary can or cannot back it up. The process actually works. I just think it should be toned down a notch or three. This is a long-term relationship; don’t burn out in the top of the first inning. ..
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There is also a photo of Trump walking into the White House ahead of Melania. The Obamas each have a hand on her back as they escort her in.
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None of that is important.
The most important thing is how many people attended the inauguration ceremonies.
Don’t you people keep up with the news?
😉
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The people who voted for him don’t have the time or money to go traipsing off to inaugurations or protests. They are busy working to support their children, whom they did not abort.
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https://scontent.fzty1-2.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/16142307_1568492666495807_5831875741259227101_n.jpg?oh=ad063549055352c52b8fe102ebe31ef8&oe=59061233
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That’s the link to the photo I mentioned.
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A friend of mine, who is not a fan of Trump at all, still made the point that popularity numbers do not equal truth.
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While those of us seeking entertainment are fixated on the backsides of Michelle, Barack and Melania, or comparing photos of inaugurations past, President Trump is busy doing exactly what his supporters elected him to do. :–)
http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/23/politics/trump-business-leaders-border-tax/
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If I was one of those US executives, I would smile and say all the right things. I would then scrap any plans for any new US plants. Trump is making every new US plant like a new federal employee: difficult to get rid of if things go bad.
Why doesn’t Trump just start buying his own silly hats and ties from US manufacturers?
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This was good news. We’ll see how things play out when the heat gets turned up.
https://www.google.com/amp/thehill.com/homenews/senate/315537-trump-gop-set-to-battle-on-spending-cuts%3Famp?client=safari
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DJ, If y’all decide to pull out, you can borrow one of my Confederate flags.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.yahoo.com/amphtml/news/more-californians-dreaming-country-without-trump-poll-192311764.html?client=safari
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I’ll just have to move “back” to the United States
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DJ – Please do it legally. We’d hate to have to deport you.
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haha — I’ll have to get over or under or around that wall with my dogs and Annie Oakley …
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And maybe towing my new bathroom along, too. I’m not leaving that behind after all this
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