Trump’s 2.0 Team: A Pop Quiz
Plus: The Teflon Endures: Jack Smith Ends Trump Prosecutions
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BILL KRISTOL & ANDREW EGGER: We Don’t Want to Jinx It, But . . .
JVL: Can Someone Please Explain to Me Why RFK Jr. Matters? 🔐
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BILL LUEDERS: Trump’s 2.0 Team: A Pop Quiz
DONALD TRUMP IS MAKING HISTORY with how quickly he is assembling a team to bring about his dark vision for America. It is a dizzying array of TV personalities, wealthy hangers-on, bigots, lunatics, and sycophants unlike anything that anybody has ever seen before, to put it in Trumpian terms. The once and future president is, as David Remnick of the New Yorker put it, “uninterested in conventional notions of expertise.” There are so many truly bad picks that it’s hard to keep track. Perhaps this quiz will help. Answers appear at the end.
SAM STEIN: Hegseth Once Chided Trump For Taking Military Advice From TV Personalities
YEARS BEFORE HE WAS A weekend TV host chosen by Donald Trump to serve as secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth was chiding Trump for getting military advice from people on TV.
In a 2015 Fox News interview unearthed by The Bulwark, Hegseth was asked to respond to a separate Trump interview on Meet The Press, in which the then-presidential candidate was asked who he turned to for military expertise.
🎥 PODCASTS AND VIDEOS 🎧
Bulwark Podcast with Tim Miller: Bill Kristol: We Were Right To Be Alarmed [YouTube]
Bulwark+ Live:
The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood: Comcast Is Spinning Off Its Cable Assets: What Does that Mean?
George Conway Explains it All (to Sarah Longwell): Depraved Trump's Morally Bankrupt Cabinet [YouTube]
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JILL D. LAWRENCE: The ‘Son of a Bitch’ Is Back. So What Comes Next?
AS WE LEARNED ON ELECTION DAY, it has been all too easy for too many to forget what America was going through when President Joe Biden ran—and won—by promising to restore both the soul of the nation and grounded, reassuring leadership.
He delivered. Yet we’ve ended up back where we started.
KIM WEHLE: The Teflon Endures: Jack Smith Ends Trump Prosecutions
ONCE AGAIN, DONALD J. TRUMP HAS ACHIEVED the impossible: With his re-election, he has managed to kill two federal criminal indictments stemming from his egregious misconduct during his first term in office. On Monday, Special Counsel Jack Smith moved to dismiss the four-count indictment pending against Trump in Washington, D.C., for his role in the effort to overturn the 2020 election, including the January 6th insurrection. Minutes later, Smith moved to withdraw his appeal of Judge Aileen Cannon’s preposterous dismissal of the indictment the special counsel filed in Florida around Trump’s taking classified material and hiding it at Mar-a-Lago.
🚨OVERTIME🚨
Happy Monday! Hope you had a restful (or at least productive, if not) weekend. We prepared for our first Ohio Thanksgiving… lots of visitors and knocked out the family photograph for Christmas cards. The Cincinnati Bureau is coming together, and the “Me Wall” is perhaps a little too glorious.
Up next? Christmas decorations. And boy, do we have plans. Maybe not as intense as this guy in my neighborhood who has a literal airplane on his front lawn as part of his decorations.
It’s here… The 2024 Bulwark Thanksgiving Cookbook. Made… by us, the Overtime readership.
Your Abuelita… And many other things are about to get 25% more expensive, as Trump promised 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico (Reuters). (Abuelita is my recommended hot chocolate brand for houses full of screaming children over the holidays. It is the best for batch hot chocolate.)
How to help Patrick Fealey… Whose Esquire piece prompted a number of you to write in what many of us were thinking: can we do anything to help? Yes! There is a GoFundMe that was started by some folks who were local and wanted to help.
The D.C. Council banned turning right on red citywide… It won’t be enforced. (WaPo)
Back in Cleveland… The Saint Ignatius Wildcats are in the news. As soccer state champs, and for the school’s St. Joseph of Arimathea Pallbearer Ministry (TODAY).
Highly recommend… Jim Gaffigan’s The Skinny (Hulu). One thing I have earmarked for our visitors is Beatles ‘64 on Disney+. It looks pretty great.
Conservativism’s vital champion… George F. Will helped lead the 1970s conservative flowering, with ideas that will long outlast the current moment, Mona Charen writes in The Washington Post 🎁.
Nancy Mace, now targeting transgender lawmaker… called herself ‘pro-transgender rights’ in 2023 (CNN)
Brooklyn Diocese Demotes Monsignor… Who Sent Millions to Adams Advisor (The City NYC) How, pray tell, does one participate in a $2 million scheme involving a politician and church money and remain a priest? Bizarre.
Devoted Aide Who Keeps Good News Flowing… Will Follow Trump to the White House (NYTimes). The Human Printer gets a promotion.
Elon Musk Admits It… He’s throttling links, and News Twitter will leave for a place that doesn’t do that, so won’t you join us on BlueSky?
Tech support questions? Email members@thebulwark.com. Questions for me? Respond to this message.
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Editorial photos provided by Getty Images. For full credits, please consult the article.
