* This one tweet pretty well sums up the Trump presidency. So I’m just going to put it out there because I don’t think it needs any further commentary.
Trump foreign policy has found its theme: The Withdrawal Doctrine. US has left/threatening to leave TPP, Paris accord, Unesco, NAFTA, JCPOA
— Richard N. Haass (@RichardHaass) October 12, 2017
* As I’m sure you heard, today Trump signed an executive order that furthers the process of “synthetic repeal” of Obamacare. It reminded me of the “six times Trump said executive orders were bad before he decided they were actually good.” Here’s his track record so far:
— Jim Campbell (@campbell_ji) October 12, 2017
* Speaking of this latest executive order, the White House seems to have accidentally admitted to some truth about it.
*Recently I wrote that the Virginia Governor’s race was a harbinger of things to come. It’s already started. In the New Jersey Governor’s race, Republican Kim Guadagno is running against Democrat Phil Murphy. Here’s an ad from the Guadagno campaign.
This stuff makes the whole Willie Horton affair look like child’s play.
* As I’ve said, Steve Bannon is the new Pied Piper for Republican candidates.
Top Senate recruits are wooing him by phone, and candidates for state legislature are cornering him at political rallies. Primary rivals are openly jockeying for the support of his network, and insurgent Republican hopefuls text him, dine with him and traipse to his Washington townhouse in the hopes of securing his blessing…
It’s not just the Senate—Bannon is backing Michael Grimm, the ex-GOP congressman who was jailed for felony tax fraud and is now seeking his old Staten Island House seat again. Bannon recently spent time with a Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate, Scott Wagner, who appeared with him at a conservative gathering in St. Louis and talked up spending “two hours on the plane with Steve Bannon. I was pretty emboldened before, but I can tell you right now I’m like 500 percent more emboldened.”
* You should read what Amy Walter has written about how Republicans are going to get “Pelosi-ed” in 2018. Here’s an example:
* Finally, this is likely to be the only time I comment on the whole Harvey Weinstein affair. You should take a look at what Emma Thompson said in this clip.
Emma Thompson tells us the Harvey Weinstein allegations are just the tip of the iceberg of a wider and systemic problem in Hollywood pic.twitter.com/VDxswrUP5Z
— BBC Newsnight (@BBCNewsnight) October 12, 2017
The kicker was when she talked about the “crisis of masculinity,” because that’s the transcendent theme that connects all the dots. I was reminded of the closing scene in “Tootsie” when Dustin Hoffman says, “I was a better man with you as a woman than I ever was with a woman as a man.” That captures why Hoffman once said that this film was never a comedy for him.
