News Muncher - category jackie calmes

2 days, 9 hours ago

Column: Jimmy Carter, Joe Biden and revisionist presidential history

LA Times

The Joint Chiefs of Staff pay their respects around the flag-draped casket of former President Carter as he lies in state at the Capitol on Tuesday. From my novice reporter days in Texas beginning midway through his single term, through my years in Washington covering presidencies and presidential campaigns into a new century, Republicans made Carter’s name synonymous with failure …

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6 days, 9 hours ago

Opinion: Don't forget what happened four years ago on Jan. 6

LA Times

Pro-Trump forces versus the police on Jan. 6, 2021. Who didn’t know that attacking the Capitol was illegal? Four years ago on Jan. 6, not even most Republicans would have imagined this 2025 anniversary: The West Front of the Capitol — where rioters battled outnumbered police to breach the building, marauding and hunting for lawmakers — is currently getting gussied …

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Opinion: Politics past will haunt Washington in 2025. It won't be pretty

LA Times

President-elect Donald Trump sits in the White House Oval Office during his meeting with President Biden after the Nov. 5 election. Having first made U.S. history by ousting a speaker in the just-concluded Congress — former Bakersfield Rep. Kevin McCarthy — some House Republicans are already predicting that Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana won’t survive the new one. First Musk …

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3 weeks, 2 days ago

Opinion: A peaceful transfer of power — you can thank Harris and Biden

LA Times

Did you miss it? Gabriel Sterling, the top Georgia election officer who four years ago publicly and presciently warned Trump that “someone’s going to get killed” because of his provocations, and who endured death threats himself, said of the electors’ meeting this week, “To be honest, I forgot about it.” As Trump declared in last month’s victory speech, “It’s time …

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4 weeks, 2 days ago

Opinion: Christopher Wray just broke the first rule of dealing with Donald Trump

LA Times

For someone who played a tough-talking executive on TV — “You’re fired!” — Donald Trump sure goes out of his way to avoid such confrontations. Just after Thanksgiving, Trump posted 159 gushing words to announce that uber-loyalist grifter and fellow revenge seeker Kash Patel was his choice to be FBI director, and zero words acknowledging that Wray, Trump’s first-term pick …

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1 month ago

Opinion: Trump's predatory Cabinet choices are added proof that #MeToo is over

LA Times

Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for secretary of Defense, speaks with reporters. “It’s a very scary time for young men in America, when you can be guilty of something that you may not be guilty of,” Trump told a Mississippi rally during that October six years ago. So now, as Trump crafts a Cabinet again, he’s explicitly rejecting the …

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1 month ago

Column: The backlash on the backlash against the Hunter Biden pardon

LA Times

Days later I’m still seething that President Biden gave a “full and unconditional” pardon to his troublesome surviving son. With the pardon of Hunter Biden, who’d pleaded guilty to tax evasion and was separately convicted of lying about his drug addiction on a gun application, Joe Biden put his family ahead of his fealty to the animating pledge of his …

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1 month, 2 weeks ago

Calmes: This Thanksgiving, I'm grateful for Sen. Mitch McConnell

LA Times

A coping mechanism I’ve adopted since the election of Donald Trump, a man more deserving of prison than the presidency, is to look for reasons for even the slightest optimism about the nation’s governance over the next four years. McConnell may be stooped with age, but he’s suggesting publicly and privately that he’ll rise to the occasion as leader of …

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1 month, 2 weeks ago

Elon Musk's budget-cutting promises defy arithmetic

LA Times

President-elect Donald Trump’s designated debt-busters, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, last week wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal providing the fullest accounting yet of their plans to cut “waste, fraud and abuse” — that most well-worn and oft-broken of political promises. Indeed, an omission from the dynamic duo’s piece suggests that they — and Trump — may have …

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1 month, 3 weeks ago

Opinion: Who's the vice president-elect? Elon Musk or JD Vance

LA Times

President-elect Donald Trump with, left to right, Elon Musk, Donald Trump Jr. and Sen. Ted Cruz at a SpaceX test flight in Texas on Tuesday. There was no room for him at the four-top table where the real power bros — Donald Trump, of course, son Don Jr., world’s wealthiest man Elon Musk, and supposed health nut Robert F. Kennedy …

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Opinion: Trump's initial choices could make for a Cabinet of avengers

LA Times

President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for attorney general is Matt Gaetz, who resigned from the House of Representatives when the nomination was announced. As Donald Trump rolled out his Cabinet choices last week, the strategy that consigliere Steve Bannon described during the president-elect’s first term naturally popped to mind: “Flood the zone with s—.” Overwhelm the media, the public and political …

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1 month, 4 weeks ago

Calmes: Democrats, learn the lessons and move on

LA Times

After months of obsessing over the presidential contest, it was jarring last week to tune in to the annual Veterans Day commemoration at Arlington National Cemetery and see President Biden center stage. That he selfishly didn’t give way until far too late in 2024 helped doom Democrats’ chance of keeping the White House, and thus dealt a blow to his …

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2 months ago

Opinion: Trump and our disappearing checks and balances

LA Times

If ever a U.S. president needed the checks and balances that the founders established, it’s law-breaking, oath-violating Donald Trump. Republican Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, House speaker in 2017 and 2018, broke with Trump in 2016 over the “grab ’em by the pussy” tape, but became accommodating enough once Trump was president. As Punchbowl News reported : “Now Trump gets …

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2 months ago

Calmes: Coming soon to Washington — America's dark ages

LA Times

I can’t do better than those words, uttered last year by Donald Trump’s longest-serving White House chief of staff, retired Marine Gen. John F. Kelly, when he dolefully contemplated Trump returning to power. Politics Donald Trump elected as the United States’ 47th president The presidential race between Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican former President Trump is at the …

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2 months, 1 week ago

Opinion: What do women want? Not Donald Trump

LA Times

Women of America, how do you feel about a man who says he’ll be your protector “like it or not”? According to Rutgers University’s Center for American Women and Politics, “Women have registered and voted at higher rates than men in every presidential election since 1980,” and the gap has grown every four years. But women are concerned instead about …

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2 months, 1 week ago

Opinion: If Harris falls short, blame Democrats and the media on this issue

LA Times

The Harris-Biden economy is “firing on all cylinders” despite the pandemic and policy mess Trump handed them. Here’s one that’s certain to be cited if Kamala Harris loses: the perception among many voters, even those with no love for Donald Trump, that he’d be a better manager of the economy. And yet, just over a week earlier, the Journal reported …

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2 months, 2 weeks ago

Calmes: The Top 10 reasons to vote for Kamala Harris for president

LA Times

Last week, I listed the top 10 reasons to vote against Donald Trump. Harris is “a strong, committed public servant … running to put people together,” Republican former Rep. Fred Upton of Michigan said last week, in joining more than 30 former party colleagues in condemning Trump. Harris wouldn’t treat the Justice Department as her personal law firm, as Trump …

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2 months, 2 weeks ago

When Donald Trump cites history, we need to watch out

LA Times

Yet again Donald Trump has provided a reminder of the irony in his slogan “Make America Great Again” — besides the fact that America is great. One of the most recent examples of Trump’s warped views is his promise that if elected he’ll employ the rarely used Alien Enemies Act of 1798, intended as a wartime measure, “to target and …

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2 months, 3 weeks ago

Opinion: Top 10 reasons not to vote for Donald Trump

LA Times

Former President Trump speaks at the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation dinner in New York on Thursday. 1: 10: As president, he violated his oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution.” Ask Mike Pence, who forfeited his place as Trump’s ticket mate to Ohio Sen. JD Vance because Pence wouldn’t violate the Constitution; Vance would. Gen. William Barr said …

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2 months, 3 weeks ago

Opinion : Trump promies mayhem. Take him seriously and literally

LA Times

Trump on a video monitor at an event in Atlanta this week. Trump told interviewer Maria Bartiromo that he isn’t worried about election day chaos from his supporters or foreigners but from “radical left lunatics.” Never fear, he said: “I think it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard or, if really necessary, by the military.” …

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2 months, 4 weeks ago

Opinion: The GOP assault on election integrity has already begun

LA Times

Drop box voting in Arizona in 2022. If you needed just one fact to show that in the world’s greatest democracy one of the two major parties is perversely devoted to suppressing and even subverting the vote, you couldn’t do better than this: The senior counsel for the Republican National Committee’s “election integrity team” — Orwellian doublespeak come to life …

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3 months ago

Opinion: When Trump talks 'bad genes' and 'racehorse theory,' he is telling us who he is

LA Times

Then-President Trump at the Bemidji, Minn., Regional Airport after a rally at which he told the mostly white audience “you have good genes in Minnesota.” Donald Trump’s fascination with genetics, especially his own “good genes” of the white European sort, as well as the “bad genes” of the you-know-which types, has always been creepy. And Trump’s White House chief of …

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3 months ago

Column: Jack Smith’s filing shows that Trump is already starring in a Jan. 6 sequel

LA Times

Special counsel Jack Smith’s Jan. 6 case, unsealed last week, is as valuable as a reminder of what Trump did before the election as what he did afterward. Here’s how special counsel Jack Smith opens the narrative against Trump: “Although his multiple conspiracies began after election day in 2020, the defendant laid the groundwork for his crimes well before then.” …

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3 months, 1 week ago

Living life instead of obsessing about politics? The news will break through

LA Times

Even if everyday life gets in the way of following politics, you’ve probably heard something about North Carolina Lt. Gov. But it’s my avocation as well, covering “the art of power,” as Nancy Pelosi titled her recent book, and the drama of American democracy. Robinson denied the allegations, but Trump ghosted him anyway, even as the Harris campaign, in video …

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Articles for Jackie Calmes

Column: Jimmy Carter, Joe Biden and revisionist presidential history

Opinion: Don't forget what happened four years ago on Jan. 6

Opinion: Politics past will haunt Washington in 2025. It won't be pretty

Opinion: A peaceful transfer of power — you can thank Harris and Biden

Opinion: Christopher Wray just broke the first rule of dealing with Donald Trump

Opinion: Trump's predatory Cabinet choices are added proof that #MeToo is over

Column: The backlash on the backlash against the Hunter Biden pardon

Calmes: This Thanksgiving, I'm grateful for Sen. Mitch McConnell

Elon Musk's budget-cutting promises defy arithmetic

Opinion: Who's the vice president-elect? Elon Musk or JD Vance

Opinion: Trump's initial choices could make for a Cabinet of avengers

Calmes: Democrats, learn the lessons and move on

Opinion: Trump and our disappearing checks and balances

Calmes: Coming soon to Washington — America's dark ages

Opinion: What do women want? Not Donald Trump

Opinion: If Harris falls short, blame Democrats and the media on this issue

Calmes: The Top 10 reasons to vote for Kamala Harris for president

When Donald Trump cites history, we need to watch out

Opinion: Top 10 reasons not to vote for Donald Trump

Opinion : Trump promies mayhem. Take him seriously and literally

Opinion: The GOP assault on election integrity has already begun

Opinion: When Trump talks 'bad genes' and 'racehorse theory,' he is telling us who he is

Column: Jack Smith’s filing shows that Trump is already starring in a Jan. 6 sequel

Living life instead of obsessing about politics? The news will break through