GOP Operative Turned Advocate and Political Observer
On Friday evening I joined Chris Hayes on MSNBC to about the Montana special election and its implications for Republicans. An hour or two before the show, the Washington Post dropped a bombshell report that Jared Kushner had discussed secret back-channel communications with the Russians in a previously unreported meeting during the transition period. With the news coloring the rest of the show, the segment ended up being a bit of a mashup.
Over at Medium I wrote up a tweetstorm on the Russia/Comey imbroglio and why Republicans might be haunted by the Access Hollywood tape and its anticlimactic aftermath.
Surely this was it. The SS Trump had hit an iceberg, and Republicans were scrambling for life jackets. He had survived ugly moments before, but this was different.
Or was it? The ever observant Chris Stirewalt noted the terms in which most of disavowals had been couched. They had left themselves a rhetorical bread crumb trail just in case.
Surely not, I said. There’s no putting the toothpaste back in the tube.
In a way we were both right.
Full post here.
I joined Brian Beutler of The New Republic to break down the 2nd debate, the infamous Trump tape, and the state of the race on TNR’s Primary Concerns podcast: