BBC World News Government shutdown
Mica Mosbacher on BBC World News commenting on the Republicans lack of compromise and the government shutdown.
Common sense gun laws’
Conservative commentator Mica Mosbacher said that “common sense gun laws” could help with some of the lapses in the federal background check system.
Mosbacher said that, while she is a member of National Rifle Association (NRA) and fully supports Second Amendment rights, she acknowledged that there’s a “huge problem” with the vetting system in America.
“I have to say because I belong to the NRA, obviously I’m against any infringement on the second amendment rights,” Mosbacher told Hill.TV’s Krystal Ball and Buck Sexton on “Rising.”
“However, there is a huge problem in our vetting system,” she continued.
Mosbacher, a former co-chairman of the Republican National Committee’s finance team, added this is an area where “common sense gun laws could help,” arguing that the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) is “overloaded.”
The conservative commentator also noted a disconnect among states when it comes to gun laws, citing the 2017 shooting at a Las Vegas country music festival as just one example.
Shooter Stephen Paddock opened fire on thousands of of concert-goers in Las Vegas, killing 58 people and wounding nearly 500 people. Authorities later discovered that Paddock had amassed 47 guns of varying size, many of which were outfitted with bump stocks.
“There again was a disconnect among states and they failed to pick up that he was purchasing guns,” she told Hill.TV.
Mosbacher made these comments in response to a panel discussion about a clash between Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and the father of a Parkland shooting victim at a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday.
Gaetz called for Manuel Oliver to be removed from a hearing after he protested the Republican’s lawmakers comments on gun violence. Gaetz said that illegal immigration — not guns — is a major factor the behind the rise in gun violence in America over the past two decades.
But Mosbacher didn’t agree with the way the Republican lawmaker handled the situation, saying he could have been more sensitive to the father given that he was personally impacted by the issue.
“Obviously, that’s a violation of the rules in terms of standing up and protesting, however I think Matt Gaetz could have been much more sensitive with this topic, it is a hot button issue, especially those who’ve lost loved ones in the shootings,” she told Hill.TV.
Wednesday’s hearing came almost a year after a gunman opened fire at a high school in Parkland, killing 17 people.
‘Like negotiating with a BRICK WALL’ – Shutdown is all Pelosi’s fault says Trump advisor
Speaking on BBC Newsnight, Mica Mosbacher put the blame solely on Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats for the failure in reopening the Government. The government shutdown started when the Democrats refused to fund Trump’s border wall between the US and Mexico. The two parties have since failed to come to a resolution and as it stands, it has now gone to 34 days – the longest in US history.
Ms Mosbacher said: “It is imperative that the Democratic leadership come to the table.
“The issue is if the Democrats could meet in the middle and they could negotiate a win-win on both sides.
“Unfortunately the Democrats refuse to come to the table and Nancy Pelosi has taken hardline positions.
“In reality, it’s like negotiating with a brick wall.”
Ms Mosbacher’s comments follow after Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi blocked Trump’s plan for his State of the Union address.
The move is the latest in a series of seemingly tit for tat actions by both sides as due to Ms Pelosi blocking his speech, Trump grounded her military convoy which effectively cancelled Ms Pelosi’s engagements abroad.
Shortly after being sworn in as the Speaker, Ms Pelosi, Trump and Senate Minority Leader, Chuck Schumer met with Trump to discuss reopening the government.
However, after discovering that he would not get the $5billion (£3.8million) needed to build his border wall, Trump stormed out of the meeting after slamming his fist on the table.
Despite the back forth between the two Ms Pelosi has insisted that Trump will not be allowed to deliver his speech to the House and with that in mind Trump has said he would look for an alternative venue.
In response to being blocked by Ms Pelosi, Trump said: “What’s going on in that party is shocking.
“Her refusal is a great blotch on the country we all love.”
The arguments come shortly after a new poll revealed that Trump’s disapproval rating has risen to 57 percent.
With more money than poll support, O’Rourke sharpens campaign against Cruz
WASHINGTON — Up in the money chase, but down in the polls with two weeks to go, El Paso Democratic U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke has taken an assertive turn in his underdog challenge to Republican U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz.
Hit by a succession of Cruz attack ads — likely to be amplified by President Donald Trump’s rally Monday night in Houston — O’Rourke is fighting back with direct challenges to the Republican’s honesty.
Nowhere was it more evident than in their final debate Tuesday in San Antonio, when O’Rourke resurrected Trump’s “Lyin’ Ted” moniker from the 2016 Republican presidential primaries.
O’Rourke acknowledged two days later that taking a page from Trump’s playbook made him uncomfortable, even if he felt he was responding to misleading Cruz attacks suggesting that he wants to legalize heroin, take away people’s guns, or “open” the border.
“Perhaps, in the heat of the moment, I took a step too far,” O’Rourke said in a CNN town hall Thursday night in McAllen. “I don’t know that that’s the way I want to be talking in this campaign.”
But he also rolled out a series of television ads in the last week criticizing Cruz directly on education, health care and immigration, chastising his opponent for “selling paranoia and fear instead of solutions.”
O’Rourke’s new edge in the closing weeks of the race is a departure from the generally positive tone of his 18-month campaign, in which he has spoken little about Cruz, eschewed partisanship and appealed to voters’ hopes.
Many Republicans chalk it up to desperation.
“He’s taking it straight out of the Trump playbook, and the only problem is he’s not Trump,” said Texas fundraiser Mica Mosbacher, a Trump 2020 advisor and former Cruz co-chair for women.
Cruz accused O’Rourke of having “unleashed the dogs,” suggesting “their pollsters have told them they’re in trouble, and so the decision they’ve made is attack and go ugly and nasty.”
O’Rourke maintains his campaign does not use pollsters. Regardless, some Democrats say a more forceful line was always to be expected.
“I never expected anything different,” said Texas Democratic strategist Matt Angle. “If there was any kind of miscalculation within the campaign it was that somebody might have thought you wouldn’t challenge your opponent straight up.”
Political analysts say it is simply a sign that Election Day is drawing near, and that time is running out. In any campaign against a sitting senator, the conventional wisdom holds that it is up to the challenger to make the case that voters should fire the incumbent. Until now, that case has largely been made by outside groups such as the Fire Ted Cruz PAC, a group run by Dallas lawyer and Democratic donor Marc Stanley.
“We need to shake things up,” Stanley said in a recent fundraising pitch to supporters. “We need someone out there telling the truth about Ted Cruz.”
Tough-guy image
One web ad that went viral was produced by Texas native and “Boyhood” director Richard Linklater questioning Cruz’s Texas “toughness” over Trump’s insults to Cruz’s family during the 2016 GOP primaries.
O’Rourke’s ads, in contrast, have until recently featured soaring soundbites and extended montages of his travels around the state, emphasizing his willingness to “show up” in all 254 Texas counties — a fairly mild reminder of Cruz’s 99-county tour of Iowa during his 2016 White House bid.
Democratic consultants also believe that Cruz, known better for his partisan fervor than congeniality, provides a ready target for a more hard-edged approach.
“Nobody plays the role of the bad guy in a drama better than Ted Cruz,” Angle said.
Republicans say Cruz can stand on his conservative credentials alone.
“I used to say he may not be everyone’s favorite drinking partner, but he is Texans’ favorite designated driver,” Mosbacher said.
For O’Rourke, who has sworn to elevate his campaign above the meanness of modern politics, a more confrontational style is not without risk, undermining an upbeat, sunny disposition he has cultivated on the campaign trail.
“It clearly is a sign of desperation,” said Texas Republican Party Chairman James Dickey, who believes O’Rourke’s policy agenda is too liberal for the state.
Some Democrats say that with partisan divisions hardening in the race, and few undecided voters left to persuade, O’Rourke needs to super-charge his campaign by putting his differences with Cruz into sharper contrast.
“He’s doing exactly what he needs to do,” said Democratic strategist Harold Cook, former executive director of the Texas Democratic Party. “If there is room to get into the lead in this race, I think that’s the way he does it.”
O’Rourke’s new ads, however critical of Cruz, still emphasize policy differences, not personal attacks. There is none of the eerie music or grainy black-and-white imagery that is the hallmark of negative political advertising.
Trump TV Is Live — And More On-Message Than The President
Lara Trump’s Real News Updates and Real News Insights capture Donald Trump, as you might expect, in the most flattering light possible.
The president’s reelection campaign has for months been staging these newscasts and talking-head segments, hosted by his daughter-in-law and featuring a parade of pro-Trump commentators.
The shows — housed on the official Trump Facebook page — are intended as the antidote to mainstream media and make Sinclair and Fox News seem tame by comparison. In some ways, the segments are also an antidote to Trump himself, giving his supporters open range to parrot talking points on major issues, even as the president struggles to stay on message, as he did Thursday morning when he meandered through an unexpectedly long call-in to Fox & Friends.
Until recently, Lara Trump (married to Eric) was a backstage player in the family business, free of Jared and Ivanka’s palace intrigue. But she has been a visible campaign surrogate and has media background as a former associate producer for the tabloid show Inside Edition.
“I’m very proud to bring you what is really happening out there.”
“Now I work with the campaign, and I do a little what we call a real news segment, if you like to check out the Facebook page … it’s there every week,” she told hundreds of guests who gathered in January at Mar-a-Lago, her father-in-law’s exclusive resort in Palm Beach, Florida, to celebrate the first year of the Trump presidency. “I’m very proud to bring you what is really happening out there.”
The realness cannot be emphasized enough on Trump TV. Lara Trump, who tapes the shows from Trump Tower in New York and occasionally from Palm Beach, often signs off with, “That’s the real news for today.”
Episodes range from a few minutes for Updates of what the president did over the past week, to 10 minutes or longer for Insights from supporters. Regulars, who join via a remote feed, include Trump spokespersons such as Katrina Pierson (who already is working for the reelection campaign), Kayleigh McEnany (who has a similar role with the Republican National Committee), and Trump loyalists Diamond and Silk. Others are more spur of the moment: The guest for the recent “The Silent Majority Is Back” episode was booked after video of him protesting the cancellation of a gun show went viral.
“One of the ways President Trump won the election was by overcoming the biased, fake news media filter and speaking directly with the American people through social media, rallies, and other events,” Lara Trump said in a statement provided to BuzzFeed News. “Naturally, we have been following the president’s lead at the campaign. This enables us to maintain a meaningful connection with millions of Americans who are seeing the benefits of President Trump’s policies. We are especially pleased with the response to our Real News weekly updates and interviews with top media commentators, policy experts, and citizen advocates, as they also go beyond all of the fake news and convey real stories about the president’s success so far in Making America Great Again.”
Since the shows premiered last July, many have pointed out the factually flawed assertions and propaganda vibes. An unsurprising theme has emerged: Democrats are obstructionists, disruptors, and — generally speaking — very unfair to the president! Over the last month alone, episode titles have included “Resistant Democrats,” “Divisive Democrats,” and this week’s “Democrats Plotting Their Path Back to Power,” which featured McEnany.
“Now Kayleigh, it used to be that regardless of policy differences, Democrats would negotiate in good faith to get the best deal they could,” said Lara Trump, winding up one of her standard questions. “Today, extremist politics prevent that. Can you explain this to me?”
McEnany swung for the fences. “Difficult to explain, because it’s so absolutely insane,” she replied, as Trump arched an eyebrow and nodded her head in approval. “But what we’re seeing is the president, the ultimate dealmaker, coming up with good middle-of-the-road deals.”
Head-nodding is the default setting on “Real News.”
Head-nodding is the default setting on Real News. Trump routinely will interject with an “I agree!” or a “So great!” when a guest is on a roll. Sometimes she even answers her own questions: “Isn’t every week with President Trump even more exciting than the last? I really think so,” she said this month when introducing John Fredericks, a pro-Trump radio host.
Fredericks, more than happy to play along, replied, “It only gets better week by week.”
There’s clinical analysis.
“Gina, you understand the Democrats and their media really well, and you’re a behavioral psychology professional,” Lara Trump said in a segment with Gina Loudon, a Trump campaign media adviser who has a PhD in human development and goes by Dr. Gina. “Can you explain the thinking behind the ongoing resistance to President Trump despite all of his success?”
Dr. Gina’s diagnosis: “Yes, they’re scared to death of him.”
And there’s occasional disagreement about what ails America.
“Do you agree that Democrats are so wedded to the politics of division that they lose sight of the principles that are common to all Americans?” Lara Trump asked Pierson this month.
“You know, I think that you put it lightly,” Pierson responded. “This isn’t just losing sight of principles. We have to ask ourselves, ‘What principles do Democrats even stand for?’”
In this regard, Trump TV is more predictable and more on-message than Donald Trump. Congressional Republicans frightened about losing their majorities in this year’s midterms want nothing more than the president to consistently promote tax cuts and other policy achievements. But ask Trump to do that and he might literally toss aside the talking points — or call into Fox & Friends to talk about the investigative proceedings against Michael Cohen.
“It’s meant to provide very clear messaging on a topic,” Mica Mosbacher, a national adviser for the Trump 2020 campaign who has appeared as a guest on the show, told BuzzFeed News. “It allows [Lara Trump] to probe and go a little bit in-depth, and we think it’s refreshing because we don’t have multiple guests and don’t have individuals talking over each other.”
“We’re preaching to the choir.”
Mosbacher said their goal is to make sure Trump’s base has a clear idea of their messaging on key topics without the “distractions” and “white noise.” “What it allows us to do as a campaign is reach a targeted audience,” she said. “We’re preaching to the choir.”
Trump TV not only devotes high energy to selling the president’s policies, it also strives to inoculate him against criticism that he indulges too many of his reckless impulses.
“Tony, have you noticed how experts in Washington feared Trump’s tweets could start a nuclear war, yet he might just achieve a peaceful solution, with, of all places, North Korea?” Lara Trump asked retired Army Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer, a Trump supporter and former intelligence officer, during one episode. “Do you think the left is ever going to acknowledge the wisdom of the president’s strategy and this sort of chess that he’s playing, like you’re saying?”
Trump TV also is more diverse than the president’s cabinet: Many of the talking heads are minorities, women, and twentysomethings. (Madison Gesiotto is “one of the best millennial supporters of the president that I know of,” Lara Trump proclaimed in one episode.)
The effectiveness of this all is largely a mystery. The most popular episodes receive at least 600,000 views on Facebook, plus views on YouTube, Twitter, and other platforms — but obviously, there’s no public metric on how long people are watching.
Trump allies are nonetheless pleased with the performance. They see it as an extension of a social media strategy that combines Trump’s unfiltered, direct-to-the-voter tweets with the highly targeted Facebook advertising that was a key weapon during the 2016 campaign.
“Turn on CNN or MSNBC any night and you’ll struggle to hear pro-Trump voices,” said Harlan Hill, a campaign adviser and Real News guest who has taped other videos for the Facebook page. “If you look at the view counts on the videos, there’s a significant desire for the pro-Trump point of view. My latest video on there racked up over 1.1 million views in about 24 hours.”
It’s unclear if the media-obsessed president is among those who have watched.
Mosbacher said given Trump’s “time constraints,” it might be difficult for him to watch, but she added that everyone in his orbit is well aware of the shows. “I would say that the campaign is definitely coordinated in such a way that we’re staying on direct messaging,” she said, adding that even if Trump has not seen the segments, it wouldn’t be a problem. “There is nothing controversial — we’re just getting the plain truth and nothing but the truth out there.”
Mica Mosbacher Hits #1 Bestseller with Her Book “The Hurricane Factor”
http://eliteonlinepublishing.com/mica-mosbacher-hits-1-bestseller-with-her-book-the-hurricane-factor/
Mosbacher’s Inaugural Deja Vu
Houston oilman Robert Mosbacher isn’t surprised to be attending his second Bush inauguration. Only he thought it would be for the elder George Bush. “He strongly deserved a second term,” said the first President Bush’s former commerce secretary, campaign fundraiser and all-around good buddy after sharing breakfast with The Post’s Annie Groer. “If you’d asked me if I’d be coming to an inaugural now, I’d have said, ‘I don’t think so — there’s not a third term.’ ”
Well. Here Mosbacher is — tan, fit and 73 — celebrating the ascension of his close friend’s son. “I’m thrilled for Dubya,” he told us yesterday. “This time I’m here as an observer and to see old friends. Last time I was excited and probably nervous, trying not to do anything that might fall under the expression ‘screwing up.’ ”
Another big difference from last time around: Instead of making the scene with redhead Republican fundraiser Georgette Mosbacher, his attention-getting third wife, he’s in town with his fourth, Houston writer Mica McCutchen Mosbacher, whom he wed last July on her 47th birthday.
“Being a bank doesn’t mean you can do everything. If we stop learning, the game is over.” Read More
“She’s obviously beautiful, but she’s also bright and fun and interested in living life at my pace,” Mosbacher told Groer. Mica reciprocated: “He’s fit, he’s fun, he’s spontaneous, he’s kind, and he cares a whole lot about his family.” Widowed once and divorced twice, he has four grown children; she’s the mother of a 14-year-old boy from her first marriage.
The lovebirds were introduced two years ago at a party for yachtsman Buddy Melges at Houston’s Bayou Club. She accepted his dinner invitation. When he arrived to pick her up, she’d just finished jogging and was still in running gear. His opening line: “That’s an ugly brown jacket.” He proposed last April en route to an Astros game but warned her to “tell no one. I’m too old to be engaged.”
As for Georgette, whom he pays $32,000 a month in alimony, Mosbacher said he’s not worried about the prospect of crossing paths with her in this week’s swirl of parties: “It doesn’t matter. I wish her all the best.”
Mica and Robert Mosbacher.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/2001/01/19/mosbachers-inaugural-deja-vu/ce5ddcfb-5343-4b8f-bf1c-4bafe3f5562c/?utm_term=.63894c0efb84
