(29:50 min)
Running negative ads that have enough of a kernel that you can keep a straight face, though others might say you were taking liberties
Ran ads arguing that an opponent sold ads for Penthouse (a scientific journal owned by Omni magazine, which owned Penthouse).
I “own” my ads. Every candidate signs off on the ads.
Defense: It was a very tough year, you can’t let opponent “hang around” after Labor day.
Implied that an opponent was drunk when accident occurred (knew had a few DUIs, but not necessarily then).
Are there any boundaries? Have you ever written a script that goes too far?
The voters set the limit. You can’t run ads that don’t work, that are not believable. Candidate have a brand. You can’t run ads contrary to their brand.
An opponent committed suicide.
Rush Limbaugh is my hero (42 min)
I would be to the right side of the Freedom Caucus.
Litmus Test: abortion, guns
Republican Base
- very conservatives: 20-50%
- somewhat conservative: 25%
- establishment: 25%
- 80% approval rating
- 1/3 of the party would leave with Trump
‘The Russians Have Succeeded Beyond Their Wildest Expectations’
Former intelligence chief James Clapper says President Trump is dead wrong about Russian interference in America’s elections. And they’re going to get away with it again, he warns.
.. “I mean, the Russians succeeded, I believe, beyond their wildest expectations. Their first objective in the election was to sow discontent, discord and disruption in our political life, and they have succeeded to a fare-thee-well. They have accelerated, amplified the polarization and the divisiveness in this country, and they’ve undermined our democratic system. They wanted to create doubt in the minds of the public about our government and about our system, and they succeeded to a fare-thee-well.”
“They’ve been emboldened,” he added, “and they will continue to do this.”
.. Trump’s rhetoric is “downright scary and disturbing,” Clapper agonized in an extraordinary monologue on live TV in August, amid Trump’s “fire and fury” threats toward North Korea. He questioned Trump’s “fitness for office” and openly worried about his control over the nuclear launch codes. In our conversation, Clapper didn’t back off one word of it, slamming Trump’s lies, “distortions and untruths.”
.. And he is certainly no liberal partisan: just ask Democrats like Oregon Senator Ron Wyden, who excoriated Clapper for what appeared to be misleading a Senate committee about the intelligence community’s surveillance of private U.S. citizens, information later revealed by Edward Snowden’s disclosures. (His testimony was “a big mistake,” Clapper now says, but not “a lie.”
.. a tough-minded former Air Force lieutenant general who once said, “I never met a collection capability I didn’t like.”
.. “It’s a very painful thing for me to be seen as a critic of this president,” he told me, “but I have those concerns.”
.. what he did when then-President-elect Trump first started attacking the intelligence community’s Russia findings. He didn’t publicly blast Trump—he called him on the phone.
.. more significant Russian arms-control violations of the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty. “If you look at what Russia is trying to do to undermine us, and the modernization of their strategic nuclear forces—and they only have one adversary in mind when they do that
.. appearing to lecture Americans on why only that small percentage of citizens who have served in the military could understand the nature of their sacrifice.
.. He took particular issue with White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ comment that Kelly’s word about the congresswoman should not be second-guessed because he had been a four-star general, a remark Clapper called “absurd.”
.. worried about the Trump era as the new age of militarized government, not only with Kelly as chief of staff but also a sitting lieutenant general, H.R. McMaster, as national security adviser, and a former general, James Mattis, as defense secretary. Clapper said that while he has “a visceral aversion” to generals “filling these political, civilian positions,” he’s nonetheless “glad they’re there.”
.. he fears that “some of this intemperate, bellicose rhetoric” between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un could lead to a “cataclysmic” war.
The risk, he said, came primarily from Kim miscalculating as a result of Trump’s heated words.
.. “Kim Jong Un doesn’t have any advisers that are going to give him objective counsel. He’s surrounded by medal-bedecked sycophants, who dutifully follow him around like puppy dogs with their notebooks open, ascribing his every utterance, and pushing back against the great leader is not a way to get ahead,” Clapper said. “And so I do wonder what Kim Jong Un’s ignition point is, when some insult that’s been hurled at him by the president will just ignite him.”
.. The 25th Amendment that people bring up is a very, very high bar for removal, and appropriately so. And if that were to happen—and let’s just say for the sake of discussion there were an impeachment, even less likely a conviction—all that would serve to do is heighten the polarization and the divisiveness, because the base will never accept that, and that would just feed the conspiracy theories.”
The Other Brother: Bob Weinstein Was an Abusive Boss
According to multiple former employees and business associates, he was a volatile and bullying executive
“In his element, he’s a really funny guy and people just want to be liked by him,” said Michael Neithardt, a former assistant of Mr. Weinstein’s. “But he was really socially awkward. The way he dealt with it was by just being a bully.”
.. People who have known both Weinsteins say they had a complicated relationship dating back to childhood that often involved Harvey belittling Bob, who frequently sought his older brother’s approval. As Bob’s Dimension unit became successful, he “became more confident and he’d stand up to Harvey more,” said a former Miramax executive.
After “Scary Movie 5” performed poorly in 2013, Harvey said to Bob, “Why would anyone make that movie?” recalled a person who witnessed the conversation.
“F— you,” this person recalls Bob responding. “I don’t work for you.”
Nonetheless, Bob would brook no criticism of his brother in his presence. Richard Potter, a former assistant of Bob Weinstein’s who rose to become a key executive at Dimension in the late 1990s, said that when he once went to tell Bob of what he considered threatening and unfair behavior by Harvey, Bob grew angry and said, “No one gets in between me and my brother.”
.. Bob Weinstein was less likely than his brother to blow his top, people who worked with the pair said.
“Bob didn’t yell the way Harvey did,” said Brendan Deneen, a former Miramax, Dimension and Weinstein Co. executive. “He was more snarky and cutting.”
.. At the 2000 premiere of “Scary Movie,” a Dimension executive attempted to introduce his wife to his boss. Bob Weinstein stuck out his arm and shoved the woman back
.. As Weinstein Co. has fallen apart in the past two weeks, some former employees have sought to distance themselves from Bob as much as Harvey. Others say Bob Weinstein had a softer side that only people who worked closely with him got to know.
.. “Bob was a tough taskmaster and a challenging boss, but also humane, with a great sense of humor,
.. Bob and Harvey Weinstein feuded on-and-off for many years, said people who worked with them. During one period around 2003, the two communicated only through handwritten notes, which assistants passed between them, according to a former employee. “It was literally an equivalent of a father saying, ‘Please tell your mother to pass the salt’,” the former employee said.
.. Their offices, once next door to one another, moved farther apart—first to separate floors and then to different buildings in Weinstein Co.’s Manhattan headquarters. In recent years, their families have rarely gotten together for holidays or other occasions outside of work, said one person familiar with the matter.
.. In about 2011, after an argument over how to allocate the studio’s resources between their respective movies, Harvey Weinstein punched his brother in the face in front of about a dozen other Weinstein Co. executives, knocking him to the ground, said two people who were present. “I’ve been assaulted!” Bob yelled, according to those people. Bob, who was bloodied, wanted to press charges, but was talked out of it, according to a person familiar with the incident.
.. “He had the pulse of what Americans wanted at one time,” said a former Dimension executive. “Can you get that back?”
Guns and the Soul of America
As David Frum points out in The Atlantic, the five years since the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School “have seen one of the most intense bursts of gun legislation in U.S. history.” More than two dozen states have passed new gun laws. And in almost all cases these laws have made it easier to buy or carry guns.
.. a single mass shooting leads to a 15 percent increase in firearm bills introduced in the same state’s legislature within a year.
.. In Republican states, they found, a mass killing “increases the number of enacted laws that loosen gun restrictions by 75 percent.”
.. It’s true that individual gun control measures, like banning bump stocks, have popular support, but, over all, the gun rights people are winning the hearts and minds of America.
.. As Tali Sharot notes in her book “The Influential Mind,” when you present people with evidence that goes against their deeply held beliefs, the evidence doesn’t sway them. Instead, they invent more reasons their prior position was actually correct. The smarter a person is, the greater his or her ability to rationalize and reinterpret discordant information, and the greater the polarizing boomerang effect is likely to be.
.. The real reason the gun rights side is winning is postindustrialization. The gun issue has become an epiphenomenon of a much larger conflict over values and identity.
.. A century ago, the forces of industrialization swept over agricultural America, and monetary policy became the proxy fight in that larger conflict. Today, people in agricultural and industrial America legitimately feel that their way of life is being threatened by postindustrial society. The members of this resistance have seized on issues like guns, immigration, the flag as places to mobilize their counterassault. Guns are a proxy for larger issues.
.. For many people, the gun is a way to protect against crime. But it is also an identity marker. It stands for freedom, self-reliance and the ability to control your own destiny. Gun rights are about living in a country where families are tough enough and responsible enough to stand up for themselves in a dangerous world.
.. The populist revolt is about halfway through taking over the Republican Party. It is winning victories on gun, immigration and trade policy. The way to fuel this populism is to feed the elites-versus-common-man narrative, as so many have self-righteously done this week.
.. Over a century ago, industrialization brought on a culture clash between agrarian populists and the genteel Victorian aristocrats. Theodore Roosevelt transcended the fight by inventing a new American nationalism. Meanwhile, the progressives cleaned up elite corruption and nurtured a square deal for those being left behind by technological change. Cultural leaders introduced new institutions and community forms, like the Boy Scouts and the Settlement House, that drew from both cultures and replaced them.
.. Today we need another grand synthesis that can move us beyond the current divide, a synthesis that is neither redneck nor hipster but draws from both worlds to create a new social vision. Progress on guns will be possible when the culture war subsides, but not before.