Opinion

I was days from turning 23 when I got the call that changed my life. My congressman's press secretary had passed out in his car at lunch, and he was fired on the spot. I was yanked from our district office in southwestern Pennsylvania and dropped onto Capitol Hill to take his job the next day.

The timing could not have been worse. My boss was about to become the first member of the House reprimanded in a decade, and the press was circling with excitement. One day I was in a district office. The next, I was a press secretary. I had once told the congressman during a drive through our district that someday I wanted to be his press secretary. I didn’t expect it to happen as fast as it did. And I was scared.

Because I had no idea what a press secretary actually did. It was the proverbial metaphor of being thrown into the deep end of the pool and learning how to swim....

Throughout his life of public vulgarity, chauvinistic misogynist and sexual abuser Donald Trump has always been unusually — and often inappropriately — fixated on beautiful blonde women.

Trump cheated on his first blonde wife, Ivana, with his second blonde wife, Marla, then cheated on his third (naturally brunette) wife, Melania, with blonde adult film star Stormy Daniels. Maybe that’s why Melania got her hair did to seem blonder?

Each of Trump’s blonde wives gave him a blonde daughter, but he’s always openly preferred First Daughter Ivanka to Second Best Daughter, the often-forgotten Tiffany....

Something stinks.

Astoria is one of my favorites on the Oregon coast, a small town of around 9,000 people with great restaurants and craft shops. Two of them, a coffee shop and ceramics studio, are owned by a small businessperson, Audrey Long, who’s mailed herself five postcards since August to test the mail. The results have been grim, particularly since Oregon is a 100% vote-by-mail state.

So far, only two of the postcards have arrived, and the first one took more than a month (and Oregon doesn’t even send out ballots until this week). Across the street from one of her shops, the town’s City Hall isn’t getting its mail reliably, either. And the same is true for the tenants of a 40-unit apartment building next door, according to reporting by Oregon Public Broadcasting....

The White House Communications Department always stretched the truth — it's been caught in a lie many more times than once.

But there was a period in which official White House communications came with a particular seriousness, gravitas, perfection in wording, and more often than not, the position of a president representing every American. Donald J. Trump blew up any notion of the American presidency acting as such, but it took Steve Cheung — one of the most important and dangerous officials that the average American has never heard of — to eviscerate trust built up over generations in official White House communications.

And we don't yet know the full impact, only that it's horrific and could get much worse, and sooner rather than later....

I’m allowing myself to believe that sane people may be in charge of Congress starting next January 20. I know, I know: Polls have gotten our hopes up before only to have them dashed on the rocky shores of political reality.

But this time it does seem as if congressional Republicans will finally get their comeuppance for their blind loyalty to Trump.

The sense of relief in the land is palpable....

After nearly two years of weaponizing the DOJ, featuring official investigations and/or terminations of every career officer who was assigned to investigate Trump’s crimes against the United States, Trump’s DOJ has begun rehabilitating the reputation of former President Richard Nixon.

Even though Nixon was caught engaging in a botched break-in at the Democratic National Committee, illegal wiretapping, and pocketing illegal campaign contributions, more than half a century later, Trump defenders are considering a new spin on the whole scandal: Nixon was the victim of lawfare. Just like Trump.

The only reason Republicans would recast Nixon as a victim is to soften perceptions of Trump’s rampant criminality, set to bite him in the a-- after the midterms. Republican Rep. Riley Moore of West Virginia says Nixon was “framed,” and wants to name an aircraft carrier after him, claiming that people are only now free to talk about “what an amazing president he was.” ...

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) suggested over the weekend that a Trump administration official may have quietly contacted a federal appeals judge to stall a contempt inquiry, and the legal analyst interviewing him declared that if so, “people are going to jail.”

In a clip flagged by political video aggregator Acyn Torabi from the Legal AF podcast, Whitehouse laid out a hypothetical involving D.C. Circuit Judge Neomi Rao, a Trump appointee.

“If some MAGA official communicated to Judge Rao or her chambers and that resulted in the administrative stay that held the door open and kept the facts from the Senate Judiciary Committee for his confirmation and stalled investigation into misconduct by the DOJ,” Whitehouse began, “ask any judge how big a deal that is.”...

Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) bragged about a road salt win at a Maine Senate debate, and her challenger's comeback had observers cheering.

On Tuesday, Collins faced Democratic challenger Troy Jackson in a debate weeks before the midterms. Asked what she would do about President Donald Trump's tariffs on Canada, Collins pointed to a specific victory.

"I was successful at getting road salt removed from the tariff list," Collins said. Jackson responded by pouncing on the answer....

Former MLB superstar Roger Clemens fact-checked President Donald Trump during his Texas rally Wednesday night.

Trump traveled to San Antonio, Texas, to stump for Republicans like Tano Tijerina in his race against Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX), whom Trump attacked for what he considered to be a "disloyal act" by not becoming a Republican after Trump pardoned him. At the rally, Trump invited Clemens on stage to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor, because Clemens had not yet been elected to the Hall of Fame.

In typical Trump fashion, the president also rattled off a fact about Clemens that the former big league pitcher was quick to correct. ...