on the 12th it was announced that Vladimir Putin’s chief of staff, Sergei Ivanov, was leaving his position as head of the Presidential Administration (AP) and taking up the new and rather less pivotal job of presidential representative for transport and the environment. In his place, Putin elevated one of Ivanov’s deputies, the essentially-unknown 44-year old Anton Vaino. Whatever Vaino’s strengths, this points to the way Putin is hollowing out his inner elite, surrounding himself with fewer but also less substantial peers, who are unlikely to challenge his worldview and opinions.
.. A shrewd and polished operator, Ivanov seemed at once ambitious and indispensable (asked whom he trusted back in 1999, Putin’s immediate response: “Sergei Ivanov”).
.. But his departure could also be part of Putin’s clearing of the old guard in advance of the 2018 presidential elections. The Kremlin was caught by surprise when the rigged presidential elections in 2011 led to the “Bolotnaya protests”. This time, although they do not seem to know quite what to expect, there is a clear intention to be ready, come what may
.. Putin, less trusting of the elite, is taking the opportunity to install a new cadre of officials who are younger and have more to prove and less to lose.
.. he is recruiting disproportionately from the people he knows. Given his cloistered lifestyle, that often means bodyguards, personal assistants, and the like. Vaino, for example, was head of his personal protocol office (and even memorably carried his umbrella from time to time).
.. The inexorable logic of Putin’s personalised, de-institutionalised and essentially ruthless regime is that he must periodically devour his favourites — where Yakunin and Ivanov go, other past cronies such as Rosneft head Igor Sechin and deputy prime minister Igor Shuvalov may well follow — as they become tiresome, embarrassing or a threat.
.. What makes this iteration more noteworthy and worrying than most, though, is that it takes place at a volatile time when Putin himself is increasingly willing to sacrifice the immediate interests of the Russian people for his vision of a powerful, “sovereign” Russia and his own historical legacy. In their own self-interested and sometimes wrong-headed way, the boyars are one of the few checks and balances.
RNC considers cutting cash to Trump
GOP officials lay the groundwork to blame their nominee if Clinton wins.
Publicly, Republican Party officials continue to stand by Donald Trump. Privately, at the highest levels, party leaders have started talking about cutting off support to Trump in October and redirecting cash to save endangered congressional majorities.
.. Since the Cleveland convention, top party officials have been quietly making the case to political journalists, donors and GOP operatives that the Republican National Committee has done more to help Trump than it did to support its 2012 nominee Mitt Romney, and that therefore Trump has only himself and his campaign to blame for his precipitous slide in the polls, according to people who have spoken with Republican leadership.
Pence: I’m not Trump’s ‘clean-up crew’
Asked by Fox host Chris Wallace whether the campaign would lift that ban, Pence responded, “I don’t think Donald Trump is having any problem getting press at this point. He gets a lot an awful lot of attention.”
.. Asked whether stylistic differences like Trump’s statements about Khizr and Ghazala Khan, the parents of a slain American soldier, after they criticized him during last month’s Democratic National Convention, or Trump’s remarks questioning NATO’s mutual-defense commitments give Pence pause, the governor reiterated that he’s honored to stand shoulder to shoulder with Trump.
“Look, he’s not someone that spent a lifetime in politics. He speaks his heart and he speaks his mind,” Pence added. “And I truly do believe, this good man is going to be a great president of the United States.”
Fox News Names 2 Insiders to Top Posts
The inquiry has expanded into whether other executives knew of any improper behavior and failed to act on it.
On Friday, Fox also announced that its longtime chief financial officer, Mark Kranz, would retire. His departure was linked to his oversight of the network’s finances during a period when financial settlements were made with women who had complained of harassment
.. Mr. Shine, 53, has been with Fox since shortly after the channel debuted in 1996. He is a favored figure among some veteran anchors, including Mr. Hannity, who first recommended him to Mr. Ailes for a job. A Long Island native, Mr. Shine cut his teeth at the network producing Mr. Hannity’s program and working closely with personalities like Bill O’Reilly.
.. “I could not be happier with the new management team at Fox News Channel,” the anchor Greta Van Susteren, who also worked closely with Mr. Shine, wrote on Twitter on Friday. “Each is well liked and well respected; Thank you Rupert!”
..Still, Mr. Shine was considered one of Mr. Ailes’s most loyal lieutenants. And his name, along with those of other executives, surfaced in recent accounts by two women who came forward to describe difficult experiences at Fox News.
Andrea Tantaros, a daytime host, told The New York Times that when she complained to Mr. Shine about being harassed by Mr. Ailes, he told her, “Don’t fight this.” Through a spokeswoman, Mr. Shine said that Ms. Tantaros never complained to him about Mr. Ailes harassing her.