What a week it was. Will it get worse?
Members of the National Guard patrol outside the Capitol Building on Thursday. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
We close another tumultuous week with relative calm. It’s a calm after last week’s storm of an insurrection at the Capitol. We all hope it doesn’t mean the calm before another storm as Joe Biden is inaugurated next week.
Already, Washington, D.C., is on lockdown. In The Hill, Jordain Carney and Morgan Chalfant write, “Last week’s siege, in which a pro-Trump mob breached the Capitol and was overheard hunting for Vice President Pence and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), has set off a scramble to avoid a repeat as right-wing groups vow to try to storm the building on Jan. 20 when Biden, lawmakers and former presidents gather.”
As many as 20,000 National Guard troops could be called upon to protect the Capitol and the city heading into the inauguration. The New York Times’ Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Helene Cooper report, “Sixteen groups — some of them armed and most of them hard-line supporters of President Trump — have registered to stage protests in Washington, prompting deep concern among federal officials about an event that has historically been a packed celebration of American democracy.”
On top of all this, the Senate could meet next week to vote whether or not to convict Donald Trump after the House of Representatives voted to impeach the president for incitement of insurrection.
And, yes, this is “the calm.” We hold our breath hoping for no storms.
Politico’s guest writer draws criticism
Ben Shapiro. (Leah Hogsten/The Salt Lake Tribune via AP, Pool)
Politico Playbook, the popular newsletter that covers Washington politics, is taking lots of heat for turning over its Thursday newsletter to Ben Shapiro, the controversial right-wing podcaster/radio host and editor emeritus of The Daily Wire.
Playbook is in the middle of a transition. New writers will be taking over soon after its previous authors left to start another project. In the interim, Playbook has had guest writers filling in, including former New York Times editorial page editor James Bennett, PBS’s Yamiche Alcindor, documentarian Ken Burns, CBS News’ Weijia Jiang and MSNBC’s Chris Hayes and others. In fact, Politico chief Washington correspondent Ryan Lizza pointed out that Hayes is a left-leaning voice in a tweet Thursday morning:
“Yesterday we had one of the leading voices of the left guest-writing @playbookplus and today we have one of the leading voices of the right: @benshapiro”
While Shapiro’s day likely had been planned out well ahead of time, the timing couldn’t have been more awkward for Politico. Shapiro’s day was the day after President Trump was impeached. The timing wasn’t the only issue. Shapiro is loathed by many for bigoted comments like this one made in 2016 when he tweeted, “Trayvon Martin would have turned 21 today if he hadn't taken a man's head and beaten it on the pavement before being shot.”
Shapiro is not the first conservative voice to guest write the Playbook. Eliana Johnson, editor-in-chief of the Washington Free Beacon, was a guest writer earlier this week. But Shapiro is the most controversial.
In Thursday’s Playbook, Shapiro wrote, “Opposition to impeachment comes from a deep and abiding conservative belief that members of the opposing political tribe want their destruction, not simply to punish Trump for his behavior. Republicans believe that Democrats and the overwhelmingly liberal media see impeachment as an attempt to cudgel them collectively by lumping them in with the Capitol rioters thanks to their support for Trump.”
His comments and, really, the fact that he was writing for Playbook at all didn’t go over well with many readers.
“Pod Save America” co-host Dan Pfeiffer tweeted, “Politico sidelining their many talented, well-sourced Capitol Hill reporters to have Ben Shapiro co-author Playbook on the day after a historic impeachment vote was an unfortunate choice to say the least.”
Joe Lockhart, the CNN political analyst and former White House press secretary under Bill Clinton, tweeted, “Ben Shapiro is not a journalist. He’s a propaganda machine who uses Republican anger to make money for himself. He does it with lies that put our democracy at risk still going forward. Pretending he’s a journalist is unforgivable.”
“The Daily Show” digital producer Matt Negrin tweeted, “Yesterday we had a journalist who believes liberal ideas like ‘science is real’ and ‘covid is bad’ write playbook so today we’re giving it to a white supremacist who tells millions of people voter fraud is real and republicans are the real victim of last week’s terrorist attack.”
Wall Street Journal national politics reporter Sabrina Siddiqui tweeted, “I would appreciate if someone from @politico would read all the racist things Ben Shapiro has said about Arabs and Muslims here and then explain why they chose to give him a platform.”
NBC Peacock host Mehdi Hasan tweeted, “Politico handed over its Playbook today to Ben Shapiro, who used it to (falsely) accuse Bernie Sanders of inciting the shooting of Steve Scalise and to equate Bernie’s rhetoric with Trump’s. I kid you not.”
And Media Matters’ Eric Hananoki pointed out, “The Daily Wire co-founder and editor emeritus Ben Shapiro is the guest editor of Politico Playbook today. His company calls Politico ‘fake news.’”
Shapiro weighed in too, with this trolling tweet, “People losing their s*** over me writing @politico Playbook this morning are pretty much proving my point. So keep at it guys, you’re doing great!”
The First Lady
First lady Melania Trump. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Good reporting about first lady Melania Trump in this story by CNN’s Kate Bennett. Trump has been one of the more private first ladies and because not much is known publicly, we are mostly left with speculation.
But Bennett writes, “… if the last few weeks have proven anything, it is that she is more aligned with the President than most would assume.”
One source told Bennett, “She’s part of this. She can be silent, but she’s part of this.”
Kate Andersen Brower, author of “First Women: The Grace and Power of America’s Modern First Ladies,” told Bennett, “There’s never been any first lady as stubborn and defiant as Melania Trump.”
Bennett’s sources said Mrs. Trump is, unlike her husband, not sad to be leaving the White House. And, yet, some staffers were apparently so taken aback by her lack of emotion over last week’s riot at the Capitol that they turned in their resignations. Mrs. Trump also has not reached out to incoming first lady Jill Biden.
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