I remain skeptical about Twitter. Also: Senior National Political Correspondent
@washingtonpost
.
@MSNBC
analyst. And fmr WaPo WH Buro Chief;
@nytimes
alum.
Fox News just cut away from
@PressSec
, saying the network could not in good conscience continue to air her false claims, for which she has provided no supporting evidence.
🎉🎈🎊 Today, amid all the grim news, I just found out that — 15 years after graduating from college — I’ve finally paid off my last student loan. So there’s that. 💰💵👏🏻
AMAZING!
More than one MILLION marchers for President
@realDonaldTrump
descend on the swamp in support.
Best base in political history — we LOVE you guys!!! ❤️🇺🇸
AFTER TWO FULL HOURS CHATTING W RUSH LIMBAUGH, it is Limbaugh who finally tries to wrap Trump, saying: "I know you’ve got a jam-packed day left on your schedule..."
Putin, a former KGB spy chief, has a pretty good poker face. BUT even he looks like he can't believe his luck, as Trump stands next to him, on foreign soil, and trashes his own intelligence agencies, and repeatedly praises Russia.
If Trump had actually tested negative for Covid — and we have no indication that he has — it seems like something he’d want his doctor to put out, clearly and asap. Or something to which he’d give the TWEET TREATMENT. And nothing like that has happened yet.
Trump just marched CDC director Redfield out to claim he was misquoted by the WaPo. But in fact, Redfield just confirmed the entire story — below — said he was quoted 100 percent accurately.
We warned you these psychotic freaks would turn on republicans once Trump lost. I’m not a Romney fan but he’s done nothing but adhere to his oath, and the MAGA trash does this to him.
Worth noting that Biden ran for office promising to restore democracy after 4 years of Trump. But today it was the British leader, NOT the American one, who spotlighted a key tenet of a flourishing democracy — respect for a free press — by taking questions from his press corps.
NEW: A volunteer on Kushner's coronavirus response effort was so worried by what they saw that they filed a complaint w House Oversight. W/
@yabutaleb7
After (unsuccessful) trips to our room at 2:30 am and 3 am, the 9-yr-old re-appeared at dawn, pushing the 2-yr-old ahead of her and urging, “Okay, now go get in their bed and say, ‘Wake up, Mommy and Daddy!’” 🎅🏻🎄
So excited to become the WaPo’s new WH Buro Chief — filling some v big
@PhilipRucker
shoes, right down to the elaborate, color-coded (!) White House duty rotation Google doc. And
#FF
the rest of our awesome team 👇
NEW: Trump is expected to give Rep. Devin Nunes the Presidential Medal of Freedom — the nation’s highest civilian honor — on Monday, and to give the same award to Rep. Jim Jordan next week.
💯🚨💯🚨The Washington Post just changed it’s parental leave policy: Now each parent gets 20 weeks — five months — of PAID leave. Yet another reason the Post is such a great place to work...
I just parallel parked in a way that would stun the MD DMV employee who failed 16-year-old me when I got stuck in the turnabout box. AND I WOULD LIKE SOME RECOGNITION. 😎
A brief, purely anecdotal look at why the country and economy are struggling to re-open: I took a Covid test last Monday. It has now been 10 days, and I still don’t have my results.
Pence in Tokyo said he’d just learned about the allegations of domestic abuse against Rob Porter this morning. He declined to answer a follow up about why he often seems out of the loop when it comes to controversial White House staff news.
An almost pathological inability to admit error. A penchant for magical thinking. A positive, self-reenforcing feedback loop from aides and Fox News.
@PhilipRucker
and I go inside Trump’s failure to grapple w coronavirus.
🍌🍌🍌Scenes from before 8 am: A request for a banana. A vigorous demand that the banana be cut. Tears when the banana was, in fact, cut — and a frantic effort to put the banana back together again. A totally untouched banana and a breakfast of pancakes. Fin. 🍌🍌🍌
We have talked a lot about the reasons for mask-wearing w our toddler skeptic.
Which has resulted in the inadvertent horror that now, whenever she sees a maskless person, she points and — wide eyed — exclaims: “That person is not protecting themselves or others!”
For those curious few: This is my first week back from maternity leave! I'm grateful for the four months I was able to spend w my daughter, and grateful to be back at work. So: Please send tips — sleep; news; etc; — my way...
....When today’s meetings are over, I will be heading back to Washington. We won’t be doing a press conference at the close of NATO because we did so many over the past two days. Safe travels to all!
Some brief anecdotal scene from the Trump rally here in Las Vegas: One woman drove in from San Diego. Another drove 16 hours from Elk City, Idaho. A man and his son flew down from Washington State. And everyone in the long line in 95 degree heat is nothing but wildly supportive.
Over the past three weeks, Trump has spoken for 13 hours at coronavirus pressers. In that time he has:
—Spent two hours on the attack.
—45 min praising himself/his team.
—9 min promoting hydroxychloroquine.
—Just 4.5 min offering sympathy for the victims.
Let this be instructive for the next time the president falsely claims “fake news” or fake sources... HE IS LITERALLY DENYING A SENIOR OFFICIAL WHO GAVE A WHITE HOUSE-SANCTIONED BACKGROUND BRIEFING. I am now returning to my regularly scheduled Memorial Day weekend...
The Failing
@nytimes
quotes “a senior White House official,” who doesn’t exist, as saying “even if the meeting were reinstated, holding it on June 12 would be impossible, given the lack of time and the amount of planning needed.” WRONG AGAIN! Use real people, not phony sources.
Things my toddler did during Dr. Conley’s news conference: Flipped backward off the couch; required MANY Eskimo kisses to stop crying; flipped the TV to HBO Latino — a channel I didn’t even know we had; accidentally purchased a movie. -30-
It is impeachment, and it is for life. It’s historical and it’s constitutional. It’s not something Trump can squirm his way out of, or cut a hush money check to make disappear. My latest on the indelible stain of impeachment that forever marks Trump—>
As a member of today’s White House traveling press pool, we actually have no idea if this is true — because we were not allowed to witness anything. We were told the president wanted to avoid a “photo opp” — though the White House did put out photos of their own...
Yet in the middle of this deadly pandemic that shows no obvious signs of abating, the president made clear that the paramount concern for Trump is Trump — his self-image, his media coverage, his supplicants and his opponents, both real and imagined.
Kayleigh McEnany, when corrected, says: “Well, that’s what I have written down.” Yet another example of the sloppiness of this White House, re the truth, which has utterly eroded its credibility not just w the media, but w the public.
"She also is a Rhodes scholar," Trump's
@PressSec
says of Amy Coney Barrett, who did not receive a Rhodes Scholarship to study at Oxford, but instead received her BA from Rhodes College in Tennessee.
So far, two strong, smart women in the White House press corps —
@Yamiche
and
@weijia
— have asked tough questions that held Trump accountable, and prompted some news.
💉💉💉My mom — who volunteers w hospice patients, doing reiki treatments — is getting her first dose of the vaccine today, in what is perhaps the only purely good news I’ve heard all week. 💉💉💉
Ivanka Trump appears to be trying to get involved in a talk among Macron, May, Trudeau and Lagarde (IMF head).
The video is released by French Presidential palace.
I just picked up two rapid at-home Covid tests at my local library in DC, and it was SUPER EASY and quick. Except for the parallel parking, which was catastrophic. But that may just be a me thing.
Inside Trump’s 20-day quest to overturn the election results, and wreak havoc upon the nation’s democracy. Sunday paper today, from me,
@PhilipRucker
,
@jdawsey1
+
@AmyEGardner
.
It’s not that Trump is struggling to unite the nation. It’s that unlike his predecessors, he’s simply uninterested in offering moral leadership during moments of crisis and tragedy. My latest w
@PhilipRucker
.
Worth noting that when McCarthy said “No one has read this transcript,” he surprised some of his own colleagues who knew he had been at the WH earlier this morning — for the explicit purpose of reading the transcript in advance of its public release.
Do House GOP leaders have no idea that the transcript has already been released? Kevin McCarthy just chastised a reporter -- "No one has read this transcript." Umm...
Me, explaining a somewhat questionable decision involving the toddler this morning: “There’s no right way to parent!”
The 10-yr-old, devastatingly: “But there is a wrong way.”
I am v eager to read the accountability stories of how the Uvalde police managed to handcuff a father, threaten other parents w tasers... but utterly fail to apprehend the shooter until after he'd murdered 19 children...and then mislead the public about it.
“A spokesperson for House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) did not immediately respond to a request for comment as to why GOP leaders rolled out their plan for America with a video featuring stock footage from Russia.”
NEW: House Republicans just rolled out their official "Commitment to America” plan for 2023 with an inspirational video chock full of scenes presented as exceptional imagery of America -- but that are actually stock footage from Russia and Ukraine.
After everyone from the White House press secretary to the vice president has vouched for his claim that "Middle Easterners" have infiltrated the caravan, Trump tells reporters he has no proof of “Middle Easterners” in there, but that there “very well could be.”
Trump looks...totally fine (and even — dare I say — presidential!) in a mask. I’m confused why it took so long for him to do the responsible thing, following his own CDC’s guidelines and modeling good behavior.
With farmers looking on in "Make Potatoes Great Again" garb, Trump called upon five of his aides—including a limping Larry Kudlow—to stand in front of TV cameras & vouch for his discipline in a meeting with Democrats.
@michaelcbender
on today's wild scene:
I would just like to the thank the bouncer who, after I forgot my wallet (w ID), finally let me into the bar after, approaching tears, I frantically showed him my baby sleep book and nursing tank top as proof that I was “definitely 21 — and, in fact, of advanced maternal age!”🍻
The Ted Cruz scandal had it all: The oversize canvas tote, awaiting its beach debut! The classic dad fleece half-zip! The 6 am scramble to book a return flight! The politician blaming his daughters! The police escort! The adorable puppy! The leaked texts!
Day one of an utterly lovely beach vacation save for one complicating twist: A toddler who FREAKS OUT when any part of her body comes in contact w... sand. 🏖
As Trump’s conditioned worsened, he and his team made the decision to send him to Walter Reed before he deteriorated further — and while he could still walk to Marine One on his own. Our latest on the White House Coronavirus Crisis.
Just your periodic and helpful reminder that just because the White House denies a story doesn’t mean it’s not true. The White House flipped out when we wrote McMaster was out last week — and, now he’s gone.
“What’s the downside of humoring him for this little bit of time? He went golfing this weekend... He’s tweeting about filing some lawsuits; those lawsuits will fail; then he’ll tweet some more about how the election was stolen; then he’ll leave.”
Snapshot from our home, 4 days before Election Day: The 9-yr-old— perhaps sensing her parents weren’t up to the task— got the 2-yr-old up, diaper changed, fully dressed, shouting out only occasional Qs like: “What do you normally do when she won’t wear the outfit you picked out?”
Worth noting that White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany — speaking on behalf of the White House and President Trump — so far has repeatedly been unable to take any unambiguous stance about the place of the Confederate flag in our society.
If you think Ted Cruz is a hero dad, here is the incomplete list of things I have successfully prevented my toddler from eating on this work-from-home snow day: A raw egg, a complete stick of butter, an Advil liquid gel. AND IT’S NOT EVEN 2:30 PM!
Trump said he could shoot people on 5th Avenue and still not lose votes. The non-hypothetical Q is: Can he allow his supporters to end up in the hospital w hyperthermia after his team bungled post-rally transportation, and still not lose votes?
Faced with the repeated White House lies on the WaPo story last summer that Trump did, in fact, dictate Don Jr.’s misleading statement... Giuliani, on ABC’s “This Week,” says: “This is why you don’t let the president testify!”
Trump team now acknowledges Trump “dictated” son’s misleading statement about Russian lawyer meeting. But after WaPo reported last July that Trump “personally dictated” it aboard Air Force One, Trump’s team denied.
Weird
@playbookplus
note: “LAST NIGHT, MCCARTHY took the newly elected Republicans to the White House...INTERESTING TO NOTE: President DONALD TRUMP did not come down to meet the group. He did send his well wishes.”
Trump’s lawyer said he had no idea Pence was in danger. But this is simply not true. 1. Sen. Tuberville told Trump. 2. Security protocol dictates that Trump’s team would have been alerted ASAP. 3. Chants of “Hang Mike Pence!” were all over cable news. 👇
How many people have found out they have Covid simply Bc of a White House test? An Ohio Gov, a Texas congressman, at least one member of the press... Underscores just how important widespread testing is.
WH testing protocols just led Ohio Gov. DeWine to learn he has the coronavirus. He was slated to greet Trump on the tarmac in Ohio today.
Note: These quick tests are designed to keep President Trump safe. But, Trump won’t say when these types of tests will be available for all.
Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.) compared impeachment to Pearl Harbor. It's also worth noting that he previously compared the Obamacare birth control mandate to Pearl Harbor. THE MAN HAS ONE HISTORICAL ALLUSION, AND HE KNOWS HOW TO USE IT!
Trump's first Tweet this morning — that he has never met or doesn't know any of the more than a dozen women who have accused him of sexual harassment — is simply false.
Note To Self: The next time the president gets impeached and holds a rally simultaneously... HIRE. A. DAMN. BABYSITTER. The idea that 50 mins is sufficient to get home, feed a baby, and convince her to go to bed an hour early because..."DEADLINE," is just insane decision-making.
In many ways, Pence's ability to — calmly, politely, firmly — go well over his allotted time demonstrates how he has fashioned himself as a more couth version of Trump.
“After yet another mass slaying, the question surrounding the president is no longer whether he will respond as other presidents once did, but whether his words contributed to the carnage.” Powerful
@PhilipRucker
on this weekend’s double mass shootings.
This morning my toddler informed me — w great enthusiasm — that when she grows up, she will “drink coffee!” and “go to the office!” And it occurs to me that we’re modeling some pretty grim behavior around here.
Trump did many things on foreign soil — I was there — but defending Biden was not one of them. And his team chuckled when he doubled down on his insults of the former Vice President.
I was actually sticking up for Sleepy Joe Biden while on foreign soil. Kim Jong Un called him a “low IQ idiot,” and many other things, whereas I related the quote of Chairman Kim as a much softer “low IQ individual.” Who could possibly be upset with that?