Despite the #CAPS winning last night, most of us showed up for work today. One would have hoped that our venerable editor-in-chief Steve Hayes, a serious Capitals fan, would have given us the day off. Alas, he did not. The Caps lead the series 3-1 against the expansion franchise Vegas Golden Knights. As a Cleveland fan, I am pessimistic. I’ve seen one of my teams come back from a 3-1 deficit, and win it all, and I’ve seen another blow a 3-1 lead. It’s unclear whether Steve is on a plane to Vegas today, but the office is pulling for his team.
Today, the Philadelphia Eagles were supposed to go to the White House. But they didn’t. What’s the deal? Listen to Jonathan V. Last on our podcast, and read the Washington Examiner’s Jim Antle over at The Week. What I was interested in knowing was how the White House somehow found 1,000 fans who could pass U.S. Secret Service background checks in such short order. Weird!
The Reagan Time Masheen. Longtime Reagan biographer Craig Shirley has found a time masheen. In it, he’s gone back in time to see how the Gipper might react to Twitter and President Trump’s media strategy. Rather than speculate, Shirley should have bought a copy of Gray’s Sports Almanac.
D’s Get Degrees. For all of the antagonism House and Senate members took from Heritage Action, the political arm of the Heritage Foundation, it’s weird that their bulldogs are bailing to accept jobs for members of Congress. Earlier this year, Mike Needham left Heritage Action to become Marco Rubio’s chief of staff. Now, Heritage Action’s VP Dan Holler has also left… to be deputy chief of staff to Marco Rubio. Per Heritage Action’s latest rating, Rubio earns a 77 percent rating.
It’s always been a question as to whom think tanks and activist groups would award a 100 percent rating, because it’s always a conscious choice. Right about now, it’s Mike Lee, who is the standard bearer. But it used to be Ted Cruz. Back then, Rubio got a 93 percent rating to Ted Cruz’s 100 percent.
So, what gives? Odd for folks who propagate a rating of elected officials not to leave for the best among them.
Speaking of Ted Cruz… He is on our bad side, if we’re being honest. Our reporters Haley Byrd and Andrew Egger wrote a story sharing the reactions of Republican senators to President Trump’s Twitter claim that he could, in theory, pardon himself.
Cruz, a Harvard-educated lawyer, was unable to offer a definitive response to our reporters. In fact, he paused for 18 seconds before offering a nothingburger. Later that night, Cruz took to Twitter to slam Haley as “dishonest” for her reporting.
At 11:59 p.m. on Monday, Cruz concocted an 18 Tweet thread fully explaining his views. Only sort of. Our story, which ran hours earlier, was based on audio of Cruz and other senators hours earlier.
It’s odd, really, that a lawyer with a law degree from Harvard would need more than half a day to answer a seemingly simple question. Trump tweeted his view of self-pardons at 8:35 a.m., while Cruz, walking between votes, was asked at 5:38 p.m..
Senators are routinely aware that when leaving their office and headed to votes, they’ll be asked about issues of the day by reporters. Especially the biggest story of the day, which was that President Trump told Americans he could absolve himself from anything with a pardon.
We asked Cruz’s Senate office if he would clarify whether our reporting was dishonest, which he clearly suggested, or whether he was referring to another outlet’s reporting. Despite an off-the-record call, Cruz’s office declined to offer a statement at press time.
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