Hot Air and Newsmax noted White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest's refusal on Wednesday to discuss the idea of a presidential pardon, but neither site seems to be clamoring to “lock her up.”What was any of it all about?
On “Fox & Friends” Thursday morning, Rudy Giuliani — who could be the next attorney general — said, “I don't like to see America become a country in which we prosecute people . . . about politics.”
Giuliani wouldn't rule out the idea of continuing Clinton probes, but his post-election rhetoric was a far cry from his proclamation just a few weeks ago that the former secretary of state “should be in jail.”
This will be fun. Let's see how long we can go calling Trump on the most sensational Greatness he promised during the campaign. Every day someone should ask him how the wall is coming along. Did Mexico send the check yet? What day are we going to deport everybody? How?
Whoops. Uh oh. They might be serious about that one.
An immigration lightning rod joins Team Trump.Also it's worth noting Obama has deported more immigrants than any previous U.S. President. So we know how to boot people out of the country. America was already great at that. Maybe we should take some of this seriously.
Kris Kobach, the Kansas secretary of state and an ardent opponent of immigration, has been added to Mr. Trump’s transition team, according to local news reports.Mr. Kobach, who provided guidance on immigration policy to Mr. Trump during the campaign, will help the president-elect in the weeks before he takes office, according to the Wichita Eagle.He told the paper he did not expect to get an offer to serve in the Trump administration, but just having him in a formal role in the New Washington could send shudders through the nation’s immigrants. Mr. Kobach has been one of the loudest anti-immigration voices in the Republican Party for years. He added Mr. Trump’s call for a border wall along the southern tier into the Republican Party platform over the summer.
But okay how about these? Let's ask Trump every day how soon we're going to see that infrastructure plan. Or better yet when is he going to get around to renegotiating NAFTA? Didn't every news organization decide that, despite no coherent policy anyone could point to, Trump was an "economic populist"? How is that working out?
America chose a con man this year. All you need to see that is the difference between what it was America said it wanted and what is about to be delivered.
A senior person on President-elect Donald Trump's transition team contacted JPMorgan Chase & Co Chief Executive Jamie Dimon to see if he would be interested in being U.S. Treasury secretary, a person familiar with the matter said on Thursday.
It is unclear how Dimon responded, said the person, who was not authorized to speak publicly. Dimon has said multiple times in the past that he is not interested in the job - most recently in September.
JPMorgan spokesman Andrew Gray declined to comment.
CNBC earlier reported that Trump's advisers had discussed the idea of Dimon, 60, becoming Treasury secretary.
Dimon is viewed as a leader on Wall Street and his name has been floated for government positions in the past. On Wednesday, he sent a memo to staff calling for unity in the aftermath of the contentious election.
Despite lots of focus on Donald Trump’s remarks about women and Hillary Clinton’s emails, it appears that the election might again come down to jobs and GDP. According to early exit polls from Edison Research, the economy was the top issue with voters again in 2016. The economy, well, trumped foreign policy, immigration, and terrorism as the leading issue among voters.Voters were most worried about the economy. Specifically, according to Reuters, "72 percent agree 'the American economy is rigged to advantage the rich and powerful.'" So in this context, what is Trump's plan to Make America Great Again?
Tax cuts for rich people.
The second idea is taxing noncorporate business income at a lower rate than other individual income. Currently, both are taxed the same way on the owners’ individual returns. Mr. Brady said his team is working on a “final design.”The kicker is relying on the old Laffer Curve to magically make it all "revenue neutral."
The House plan and Mr. Trump’s plan are similar, in that they both lower individual and business tax rates, repeal the estate tax and rely on assumed economic growth to cover part or all of their budgetary costs.
Anyway, 2016 wasn't just a desperate, angry election for no reason. It was a desperate, angry election because people angry and desperate. The con man won because he at least pretended to be angry too. I would offer the hypothesis that a fair number of voters probably understood he was pretending. Donald Trump is not a difficult con man to see through, after all. But at least he was offering pretense. The other side was offering exactly nothing.
But the hate doesn’t stop there. One of the puzzles we’ll have to think through in the months ahead is why, faced with a populist revolt, the Democratic Party elite decided on Hillary Clinton, the human equivalent of a straight shot of technocracy, no chasers. No figure in American politics has cut a more awkward figure on the national stage since Nixon, and at least his political instincts were not—in the polite phrasing of Clinton apparatchik Neera Tanden—“suboptimal.”The issue here is twofold. It's bad enough that Clinton not really feel like "communicating to the masses" during the course of her campaign for President. But that solution she was finding in the meantime would probably have also involved Jamie Dimon. But, hey, at least nobody is coming to "lock her up" now. Nobody ever was.
Clinton’s failings as a candidate fit exquisitely with the central weakness of managerial liberalism. In the run-up to Clinton’s shellacking in the New Hampshire primary, her chief strategist asked, “do we have any sense from her what she believes or wants her core message to be?” She never found an answer, because she never wanted to. According to her campaign manager Robby Mook, “politics for her is, first and foremost, not an exercise in communicating to the masses. It’s about finding the right solution and then going after it.”
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