Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Sunday defended President Donald Trump’s new comments about Rep. Maxine Waters, saying he “likes making funny names.”
During Saturday night’s campaign rally in Pennsylvania, Trump dismissed the California Democrat as a “very low-IQ individual.”
Search for Hicks replacement turns into West Wing food fight
The top candidates emerging from inside the White House, multiple officials said, are director of strategic communications Mercedes Schlapp, a veteran of the George W. Bush administration who has become a Kelly ally in his battle against Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner; and Tony Sayegh, assistant secretary for public affairs at the Treasury Department.
.. There is also a broad internal base of support for press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders to take on the job, adding overall messaging strategy.. The communications shop has long been one of the rockiest departments in the West Wing, with the top job there viewed now as a thankless task of overseeing messaging for a message-resistant, Twitter-happy president... Trump likes to revive names from his original, campaign inner circle.. Jason Miller, a veteran of the 2016 campaign, has been floated internally as a potential candidate for the job. Miller was first tapped for the communications director job during the transition in 2016, but was unable to take the job for personal reasons. He has managed to remain a favorite of the president, though, for his Trump-defending commentary on CNN... the role Hicks played is not replaceable — she was one of Trump’s closest confidantes, serving as a resource for colleagues who relied on her help reading the president’s moods.
Trump’s new power couple
She’s a strategic adviser in President Donald Trump’s West Wing. He’s a lobbyist who moonlights as the head of the American Conservative Union, which hosts the annual Conservative Political Action Conference — a key gathering for Trump supporters.
.. Mercedes and Matt Schlapp, a power couple tailor-made for Trump’s Washington.
.. , Mercedes Schlapp — known as Mercy — is among the leading candidates to become communications director after the resignation last week of Hope Hicks... The move, said to be favored by White House chief of staff John Kelly.. Other internal candidates under consideration include Treasury spokesman Tony Sayegh and press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who could take on a dual role, as her predecessor, Sean Spicer, did... Schlapp, a former Fox News contributor.. Schlapp is also well-liked by the president, in part because her husband is so often on television defending him... A veteran of the George W. Bush White House and the Koch brothers’ Washington operation, Matt Schlapp was elected chair of the American Conservative Union.. “Matt has successfully been representative of the conservative movement and been able to defend Trump without looking like a sycophant.. in 2017, when Schlapp invited alt-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos.. This year, the conference hosted a range of speakers from what were once the fringes of the Republican Party, and even hosted French nationalist Marion Le Pen... “The sort of personality cult aspect of the Trump presidency … have caused people to have sort of a fire sale on long-established conservative principles,” Goldberg said.
.. “Those conservatives who are dubious about President Trump’s approach have withered down to next to nothing,”
.. “It’s not CPAC’s change of attitude toward Trump, it’s the American conservative activists who have changed their attitude toward Trump. … By the way, we agree with them.”
.. Schlapp’s lobbying firm, brought in more than $1 million in revenue in 2017 — up from $640,000 in 2016 and $600,000 in 2015.
.. “He has professionalized the conservative movement to be the backbone of the Republican president in power,” Lanza said. “I think he would have been equally successful if it were President Jeb or President Cruz
What does it take for Fox News stars to turn on Trump? We are finding out.
“Imagine if Barack Obama had said that,” said Tucker Carlson on Thursday night on his eponymous Fox News program. The host was referring to Trump’s remark in a Wednesday meeting with lawmakers regarding gun policy. “Take the guns first, go through due process second,” said Trump. Many were astonished, though they shouldn’t have been: Trump has no core convictions, just core whims.
.. “Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited,” decreed the Supreme Court in the landmark 2008 case District of Columbia, et al. v. Heller. “From Blackstone through the 19th-century cases, commentators and courts routinely explained that the right was not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.”
.. Carlson is gradually adjusting a year-long MO of deflecting negative stories about the president. Time and again, the quick-witted host found creative and entertaining ways of hammering liberals for this-or-that offense while Trump and his charges were stacking up scandalous headlines.
.. The pattern also unfolded in January, when Trump declared that he’d pretty much accept whatever immigration policies Congress promulgated.
.. “And yet, today, in a remarkable twist, the president held a televised meeting with the very swamp creatures he once denounced. He told them he trusted them to craft immigration policy without his input.”
.. How much outrage, how much pettiness, how many policy betrayals will conservatives stomach before reaching some very obvious conclusions about our president? Broken rudders on immigration and gun rights appear to be Carlson’s bridge-too-far betrayals.
.. Sean Hannity didn’t have the courage or the principle to face his viewers a la Carlson. Following Trump’s meeting with lawmakers, he gaslighted his audience by skipping over Trump’s embrace of gun restrictions and hammering “Democrats” for embracing them.
.. this was a wild thing. It was not cool for a lot of people who believe in the Second Amendment.”
.. Trump’s trampling of truth and decency didn’t much offend the prime-timers at Fox News. But stray from conservative orthodoxy on immigration and guns? That’s trouble.