Everyone Plays to Type

Because that is what they do....

Apr 23, 2022

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Everyone is on their respective games, doing what they do.

1. Harry Styles and Lizzo are dressed to thrill Friday night at Coachella.

dee. @harrymoonchild

harry styles and lizzo performing 'i will survive' in pink feather coats. That's the definition of iconic

Note: For readers who don’t know who or what Harry Styles, Lizzo, or/and Coachella are – that is what Google and grandkids are there for. They can explain to you why this is the WWoN lede.

2. Donald Trump is forgiving and flexing, in an exclusive Friday night interview with the Wall Street Journal:

Former President Donald Trump said Friday evening his relationship with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy remains good, after a recording emerged of Mr. McCarthy telling other top GOP lawmakers that he would advise Mr. Trump to resign, several days after rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, Mr. Trump said he wasn’t pleased to learn of Mr. McCarthy’s comments in the House leadership call, but he said the California Republican ultimately never ultimately advised him to quit. He said that Mr. McCarthy quickly changed his stance “when he found out the facts,” and embraced him fully, a few weeks after the Jan. 10, 2021, call.
“He made a call. I heard the call. I didn’t like the call,” said Mr. Trump. “But almost immediately as you know, because he came here and we took a picture right there—you know, the support was very strong,” Mr. Trump said, pointing to a spot in the room where Mr. McCarthy had taken a photo with the former president in late January, an image seen as formalizing their rapprochement and confirming Mr. Trump continued dominance of the party.
“I think it’s all a big compliment, frankly,” Mr. Trump said of Mr. McCarthy and other Republicans who criticized him after Jan. 6 and then said they would still back him. “They realized they were wrong and supported me.”

Note: Mr. Trump has a rally in Ohio Saturday night, where he can riff to his heart’s content.

Tom Bosco @tomwsyx6

TRUMP VISIT: some new info... Rally will be outside at the DelCo fairgrounds, not inside Colosseum as in 2016. @DelRepublicans chair tells me to expect more people than '16 visit. @Jim_Jordan, @RepBalderson, @MikeCareyOH15 expected on hand. Chair not expecting a Gov endorse fr/DT

3. Kevin McCarthy is thinking the way to address his lying is by lying some more, always acting in manifest fear of both Donald Trump and the members of the House Republican Conference:

Mr. McCarthy’s prime concern on Friday, according to a person familiar with the situation, was about Republicans he thought would be upset by his private criticism of Mr. Trump — not those who might be alarmed by the fact that he had been exposed as a liar in denying it. As if to underline the point, Mr. McCarthy repeated the falsehood on Friday, telling reporters in Ridgecrest, Calif., “I never thought that he should resign.”
There were few expressions of outrage from Republican members of Congress about their leader — one who would be in line to succeed the president if he achieves his aspiration of being speaker of the House — having been caught in a falsehood. They appeared to be following the lead of Mr. Trump…. (New York Times)

Note: Mr. McCarthy has a coming attraction:

Mr. McCarthy’s office did not respond to requests for comment on Friday about the tape. He is scheduled to travel on Monday with a group of House Republicans to the southwestern border in Texas, where he is expected to hold a news conference and is likely to be pressed to publicly respond to the taped conversation. (New York Times)

4. The members of the House Republican Conference know their Kevin:

Some Republican lawmakers privately downplayed the significance of the taped conversation. They noted that Mr. McCarthy was not known as a truth-teller or someone who has been deeply loyal to Mr. Trump. Rather, he has built his reputation as a political operator whose approach is to fall in line with where a majority of his conference is heading.
The recording, those members said, merely revealed Mr. McCarthy for the person his conference knew him to be. And for now, there was no obvious alternative to challenge him in a race for speaker. (New York Times)

Note: Tom Cole, who knows his Kevin, is the Owl Eyes of the House Republican Conference:

Even his allies were uneasy about how breezily Mr. McCarthy disregarded the truth.
“You either say you don’t recall the conversation or that you don’t discuss private conversations and are disappointed in those who leak them,” said Representative Tom Cole of Oklahoma, who noted he did not think Mr. McCarthy was peril. (New York Times)

5. Democrats are approaching the midterms with fatalistic gloom:

The collective mood of Democratic insiders has darkened appreciably in recent weeks.
Pollsters and prognosticators are forecasting increasingly dire results for their party in the November midterm elections. Inflation, the No. 1 issue on the minds of voters, is accelerating. And despite a booming job market, the president’s average approval rating hasn’t budged since January, when it settled into the low 40s.
“Are you calling to ask me about our impending doom?” one Democratic strategist quipped at the outset of a recent phone call…
One sign of the alarm rippling through the party: Some Democratic politicians have begun creating distance between themselves and the president. Senate candidates are stampeding to break with the administration’s immigration policies, for instance. Other moves are more subtle, such as those of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, who quietly removed the president’s name from news releases about federally funded infrastructure projects.
“What you’re seeing is people feeling like it’s time to head for the lifeboats rather than trying to steer the ship,” said Robert Gibbs, a former White House press secretary who worked under Barack Obama. (New York Times)

Note: The president made it clear with all of the political speeches he gave on his West Coast swing that his posture towards a midterm strategy can be summed up by one of the classic Bidenisms: “Don’t compare me to the Almighty – compare me to the alternative.”

6. As Team Biden prepares for the Republicans to take over the House majority and launch 1,001 investigations, including into Hunter Biden, the president turns (inexorably and explicably) back to the singular communicator/strategist in the entire Blue firmament:

Anita Dunn, a former top Biden adviser who remains close to the president, is returning to the White House in a senior adviser role with a broad portfolio, and she is expected to be involved in part in responding to potential GOP probes, according to four people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss personnel moves. The White House declined to comment on Dunn. (Washington Post)

Note: So far, this is only implicitly a two-for-the-price-of-one deal including Dunn spouse Bob Bauer, but when they come for Hunter and The Big Guy, this will be an all-hands-on-deck situation.

7. The Dominant Media and Madison Cawthorn continue their dance of mutual satisfaction: