A lot of cabinet noise today, and so far as we can tell, the top contenders for State are Rudy Giuliani and Donald Trump’s clenched right fist with a pair of googly eyes slapped on the index finger and lipstick painted around a hole formed by it and his thumb. Trump says he wants to drain the swamp, but then why do we keep coming back to the thought that the Capitol Hill Club will be the most rockin’ place to be over the next four years? And there’s growing tension between Trump Tower and the press over access to the president-elect. Might we suggest some rapprochement wherein the two sides can bond over what little work they both did in preparation for a Trump win? This is HUFFPOST HILL for Wednesday, November 16th, 2016:
CLINTON POSTMORTEM - Maybe the campaign should’ve incorporated more glass ceiling video effects. Sam Stein: “[L]]ost in the discussion is a simple explanation, one that was re-emphasized to HuffPost in interviews with several high-ranking officials and state-based organizers: The Clinton campaign was harmed by its own neglect. In Michigan alone, a senior battleground state operative told HuffPost that the state party and local officials were running at roughly one-tenth the paid canvasser capacity that Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) had when he ran for president in 2004. Desperate for more human capital, the state party and local officials ended up raising $300,000 themselves to pay 500 people to help canvass in the election’s closing weeks. By that point, however, they were operating in the dark. One organizer said that in a precinct in Flint, they were sent to a burned down trailer park. No one had taken it off the list of places to visit because no one had been there until the final weekend. Clinton lost the state by 12,000 votes.” [HuffPost]
TRANSITION TEAM WORKING ON MUSLIM REGISTRY, BORDER WALL - When they came for the immigrants I said nothing, because both sides / When they came for the Muslims I said nothing, because omg look at those obnoxious hipster protesters in L.A. Mica Rosenberg and Julia Edwards Ainsley: “An architect of anti-immigration efforts who says he is advising President-elect Donald Trump said the new administration could push ahead rapidly on construction of a U.S.-Mexico border wall without seeking immediate congressional approval. Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who is reportedly being considered for the post of attorney general, said in an interview that Trump’s policy advisers had also discussed drafting a proposal for his consideration to reinstate a registry for immigrants from Muslim countries. Kobach, who media reports say is a key member of Trump’s transition team, said he had participated in regular conference calls with about a dozen Trump immigration advisers for the past two to three months.... Kobach told Reuters last Friday that the immigration group had discussed drafting executive orders for the president-elect’s review ‘so that Trump and the Department of Homeland Security hit the ground running.’” [Reuters]
Good thing we spent so much of the election focused on emails: “Donald Trump’s transition team appears to have deviated from its own ethics rule barring lobbyists whose work for Trump would overlap with any matters on which they lobbied in the previous year. According to a copy of Trump for America Inc.’s ‘Code of Ethical Conduct’ obtained by POLITICO.... But at least eight transition team members have done work that appears to flout that internal rule, Senate records show.” [Politico’s Isaac Arnsdorf]
EARMARK VOTE POSTPONED - Postponed, not scrapped. Deirdre Walsh and Ted Barrett: “House Speaker Paul Ryan successfully lobbied his Republican colleagues Wednesday to postpone a vote on a proposal to bring back earmarks. ‘We just had a ‘drain the swamp’ election,’ Ryan told members, according to a GOP source in the room. ‘Let’s not just turn around and bring back earmarks two weeks later.’ House GOP members applauded and agreed to put off the issue until the first quarter of 2017, when they have more time to have detailed plan to oversee spending bill talks. Earlier Wednesday, House Republicans appeared to be ignoring President-elect Donald Trump’s call to reform Washington when they scheduled the vote on whether to overturn their own ban on earmarks ― billions of dollars for pet projects tucked into spending bills.” [CNN]
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SCHUMER ELECTED DEMOCRATIC LEADER, LEFT AND CENTRIST WINGS GET SLOTS - Ed O’Keefe and Mike DeBonis: “Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) was elected as the next leader of Senate Democrats on Wednesday, establishing him as one of his party’s most senior officials in Washington and Democrats’ primary partisan counterweight to a Trump administration.… In a gesture to his party’s progressive wing, Schumer added Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to a junior role in his newly expanded leadership team.… Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) will serve as party whip and Schumer’s chief deputy, maintaining a role he held under outgoing Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.). Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) will serve as the third-ranking Democrat, forgoing a challenge to Durbin but assuming a new title of assistant Democratic leader.... Schumer also expanded the Democratic leadership team to 10 members, with Sens. Sanders, Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) and Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) adding to the team’s ideological, geographic and gender balance. Baldwin is also the first lesbian senator to hold a leadership role.” [WaPo]
HATCH THROWS WATER ON FILIBUSTER REPEAL - More to the point, can we repeal the Senate? Michael McAuliff: “Asked by The Huffington Post about ending the filibuster, he was blunt. ‘Are you kidding?’ he said with some vehemence. ‘I’m one of the biggest advocates for the filibuster. It’s the only way to protect the minority, and we’ve been in the minority a lot more than we’ve been in the majority. It’s just a great, great protection for the minority.’ Hatch, the most senior member of the GOP, presides over the Senate every morning as the president pro tempore, making him third in the line of succession to the White House. He’s also chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. Hatch’s unequivocal support for the filibuster does not guarantee there won’t be changes to it, however. Asked about reforming the minority party blockade, famous filibusterer Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) responded, ‘We’ll see.’” [HuffPost]
Here’s a great rundown of all the times Trump falsely accused the New York Times of inaccurate reporting.
GIULIANI WAS ALL FOR UNDOCUMENTED WORKERS - It’s not like they were *homeless,* God forbid. Andrew Kaczynski: “Rudy Giuliani has a long record of defending and advocating for undocumented immigrants as mayor of New York City, a CNN KFile review of his public statements as mayor reveals.… ‘Some of the hardest-working and most productive people in this city are undocumented aliens,’ Giuliani said at a 1994 press conference. ‘If you come here and you work hard and you happen to be in an undocumented status, you’re one of the people who we want in this city. You’re somebody that we want to protect, and we want you to get out from under what is often a life of being like a fugitive, which is really unfair.’ Appearing on WABC in 2001, Giuliani said, ‘The city of New York, quite frankly, is quite tolerant of undocumented immigration and this shouldn’t surprise you because I’ve been the mayor for a long time and outspoken on this issue, even nationally, I happen to agree with that.’” [CNN]
AUTHORITARIAN REGIME HAS SOLID TROLL GAME - Jessica Shankleman: “China couldn’t have invented global warming as a hoax to harm U.S. competitiveness because it was Donald Trump’s Republican predecessors who started climate negotiations in the 1980s, China’s Vice Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin said.… Ministers and government officials from almost 200 countries gathered in Marrakech this week are awaiting a decision by President-elect Trump on whether he’ll pull the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement to tackle climate change. The tycoon tweeted in 2012 that the concept of global warming ‘was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.’ China’s envoy rejected that view.” [Bloomberg]
SAD MEDIA NEWS - Daniel Marans: “ Univision Communications, the parent company of several major TV channels and news sites, is laying off between 200 and 250 workers as part of a company-wide restructuring, The Washington Post reported on Wednesday. The layoffs amount to 6 percent of the media company’s workforce, the Post reported. The changes ‘are in response to difficult times, challenging times,’ Isaac Lee, Univision Communications’ chief news, entertainment and digital officer, told the Post. The company lost $30.5 million in the third quarter of this year. Univision Communications owns the popular Spanish-language television channel Univision, the African American-focused news site The Root, Fusion Media, and Gizmodo Media Group, the group of sites formerly known as Gawker Media.” [HuffPost]
BECAUSE YOU’VE READ THIS FAR - Here’s a deer who hasn’t heard about the election.
GEORGIA UPDATE - Atlanta Journal-Constitution: “House Bill 3, authored by state Rep. Jason Spencer, R-Woodbine, would bar women from wearing a burqa and veil when posing for the photo on their Georgia drivers’ license. The bill would also subject female Muslim garb to the state’s anti-masking statute – which originally was aimed at the Ku Klux Klan. Spencer said his legislation was intended to apply to women who are driving on public roads, but the wording suggests the restriction might also apply to any kind of public property. The legislation would insert this new line into the state’s anti-masking bill: ‘For the purposes of this subsection, the phrase ‘upon any public way or property’ includes but is not limited to operating a motor vehicle upon any public street, road, or highway.’” [AJC]
COMFORT FOOD
- Every utterance of “some kind of...” on “Star Trek: Voyager.” Aspiring screenwriters beware.
- Japanese baseball player *literally* hits a ball through a stadium roof.
- The internet is swooning over hot young Joe Biden. Get ‘em, Diamond Joe.
TWITTERAMA
@MEPFuller: Tim Huelskamp seems to doubt that Trump is gonna “drain the swamp.”
“Washington is kinda laughing about that.”
@emmaroller: *400+ hate crimes in the past week*
Conservative media shrugs
*a college student poops in the wrong bathroom*
THIS IS VIOLENCE
@kate_sheppard: If your election lasts longer than 4 years please contact your doctor.
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