Tag: Mike

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Politics

Jim Jordan texted Mark Meadows argument for Mike Pence to reject Biden electoral votes

Jim Jordan texted Mark Meadows argument for Mike Pence to reject Biden electoral votes

Rep. Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC.

Saul Loeb | Pool via Reuters

Republican MP Jim Jordan conveyed a message to then White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows arguing that Vice President Mike Pence should reject certain Electoral College votes on Jan. 6 during the confirmation of Joe Biden’s presidential win over Donald Trump.

The text, which NBC News confirmed Wednesday was broadcast from Jordan, was one of several messages to Meadows a House special committee publicly shared this week as it pursued criminal disdain for Trump’s former chief of staff.

The text was written by Joseph Schmitz, a former Pentagon inspector general and former Trump campaign aide, and passed on to Meadows by Jordan, a source told NBC News. Schmitz could not be reached immediately to comment.

The message said that on Jan. 6, Pence was due to “cast all votes which he believed to be unconstitutional as there were no votes at all,” alleging that such an act would be consistent with “judicial precedence” and “guidance from.” Founding father Alexander Hamilton “stand. “

The legally questionable argument that Pence could unilaterally invalidate or deny a state’s votes was rejected by Pence himself, despite Trump urging him to do so.

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Schmitz’s argument, relayed by an incumbent member of Congress to the president’s chief adviser, reveals how Trump’s allies at all levels exchanged ideas about how the outcome of the democratic elections could be changed.

Jordan is a staunch ally of Trump who worked alongside Meadows in the conservative House Freedom Caucus. The Ohio legislature was one of dozen of Republicans in the House of Representatives who voted to challenge election results that favored Biden after the rioters were evacuated from the Capitol.

Jordan spokesmen did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request to comment on the text sent to Meadows.

The special committee is tasked with investigating the facts and causes of the deadly invasion of January 6, when hundreds of Trump supporters forcibly stormed the Capitol and forced Congress to flee their chambers. Many of the rioters were spurred on by Trump’s false claims that the 2020 elections had been “rigged” against him by widespread electoral fraud.

The House of Representatives voted Tuesday night to hold Meadows for disregarding Congress for defying the summons of the selected panel to request dismissal. The committee says Meadows created thousands of pages of records and agreed to answer questions before abruptly pulling back. Meadows has sued the selected panel for invalidating two of his subpoenas, arguing, in part, that Trump exercised executive privilege over his testimony.

The committee this week revealed some of Meadows’ records, including texts he received from Jordan and other lawmakers. They also shared messages sent to Meadows by Donald Trump Jr. and several pro-Trump Fox News presenters, who panicked over the Capitol uprising as it unfolded.

“He must condemn this s — as soon as possible. The Capitol Police’s tweet is not enough, ”Trump Jr. wrote to Meadows on Jan. 6, said Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., Vice chair of the special committee, during a meeting Monday night.

Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., Read part of Jordan’s message to Meadows at the meeting without naming Jordan as the sender.

“On January 6, 2021, Vice President Mike Pence, as President of the Senate, was supposed to call all votes that he deems unconstitutional because there were no votes at all,” reads the text, which was sent to Meadows by a person who only described Schiff as “Legislator”.

An accompanying graphic displayed this quote as a full sentence. Jordan’s office argued to NBC that Schiff misrepresented the message because it omitted some of the language Jordan sent to Meadows.

A select committee spokesman told CNBC that the graphic “accidentally” added a period to the end of the quote Schiff read during the meeting. “The special committee is responsible for the mistake and regrets the mistake,” said the spokesman.

The spokesman sent the full text messaging record “in the interests of transparency” to CNBC.

It states: “On January 6, 2021, Vice President Mike Pence, as President of the Senate, should call all votes that he deems to be unconstitutional, as there are no votes at all – according to the instructions of Founding Father Alexander Hamilton and ‘No legislative act,’ wrote Alexander Hamilton in Federalist No. 78, ‘may be valid against the Constitution.’ The Hubbard v. Lowe affirmed this truth: “That an unconstitutional law is not a law at all is no longer up for discussion.” 226 F. 135, 137 (SDNY 1915), appeal dismissed, 242 US 654 (1916). Because of this, an unconstitutional elector, like an unconstitutional law, is not a voter at all. “

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Politics

Mike Gravel, Unconventional Two-Time period Alaska Senator, Dies at 91

Mike Gravel, Unconventional Two-Term Alaska Senator, Dies at 91

Mr. Gravel drew much more national notice on June 29, 1971. The New York Times and other newspapers were under court injunctions to stop publishing the Pentagon Papers, a secret, detailed government study of the war in Vietnam.

He read aloud from the papers to a subcommittee hearing that he had quickly called after Republicans thwarted his effort to read them to the entire Senate. He read for about three hours, finally breaking down in tears and saying, “Arms are being severed, metal is crashing through human bodies — because of a public policy this government and all of its branches continue to support.” (In a major ruling on press freedom, the injunction against The Times was overturned by the Supreme Court the next day.)

Mr. Gravel acknowledged many years later that his political ambition had led him to express support for the Vietnam War at the start of his political career, although he said he had personally opposed it.

In his 1968 Democratic primary challenge to Senator Ernest Gruening, one of two senators to vote against the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which authorized President Lyndon B. Johnson to use conventional military force in Southeast Asia, Mr. Gravel said the North Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh and not the United States was the aggressor. In 2007, while running for president, he told an NPR interviewer, “I said what I said back in 1968 because it was to advance my career.”

He told Salon magazine the same year that Alaskans did not share Mr. Gruening’s opposition to the war at the time, and that “when I ran, being a realistic politician, all I had to do was stand up and not deal with the subject, and people would assume that I was to the right of Ernest Gruening, when in point of fact I was to the left of him.”

Mr. Gravel won that primary, stressing his youth (he was 38 to Mr. Gruening’s 81) and campaigning in the smallest of villages, where he showed a half-hour movie about his campaign. He went on to defeat his Republican rival, Elmer E. Rasmuson, a banker and former mayor of Anchorage, in the general election.

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Business

Slate Suspends Mike Pesca of “The Gist” After Debate Over Racial Slur

Slate Suspends Mike Pesca of "The Gist" After Debate Over Racial Slur

The online publication Slate has suspended a well-known podcast host after discussing with colleagues whether people who are not black should be able to quote a racist Slur in certain contexts.

Mike Pesca, the host of “The Gist,” a podcast about news and culture, said in an interview that he was suspended indefinitely on Monday after defending the use of the arc in certain contexts. He argued last week during a conversation with colleagues on the Slack interoffice messaging platform.

In a long line of messages, Slate staff discussed the resignation of Donald G. McNeil Jr., a reporter who said this month he had resigned from the New York Times after holding the arc during a discussion on racism at work had used as a guide for a student trip in 2019.

Mr Pesca, who is white, said he felt there were contexts in which the arc could be used, as shown in screenshots of the Slack conversation shared with The Times. Dan Check, Slate’s general manager, stepped in to end the discussion.

Katie Rayford, Slate’s spokeswoman, confirmed that “The Gist” had been suspended pending an investigation but did not want to comment on Mr. Pesca. “While I cannot address certain allegations that are being investigated,” Ms. Rayford said, “I can confirm that this was not a decision based on an isolated abstract argument on a Slack channel.”

Defector Media, a digital outlet focusing on sports and culture, previously reported on the suspension of Mr Pesca and the internal debate at Slate.

Mr Pesca investigated the dispute over the use of the bow in a 2019 podcast about a black security officer who was fired for its use. In a recording of the episode, Mr Pesca said he used the term while quoting the man but asked his producer to do a version without the term. After consulting with his producers and supervisor who protested his quote of the bow, they decided to use the version without it, he said.

“The version of the story with the offensive word was never aired and that’s how I think the editorial process should go,” Pesca said in an interview.

No action was taken against him following an investigation by the human resources department into his quote from the arch, Pesca said. He said he apologized to the producers involved.

In November 2019, Slate introduced a policy that requires podcast presenters and producers to discuss the use of racial terms in an upcoming episode in or from quoted material before it is recorded.

Mr Pesca said Mr Check, the executive director, and Jared Hohlt, editor-in-chief of Slate, raised the previous instance of his citing the sheet when they spoke to him after speaking with Slack. He added that they had mentioned another case where he used the term which he did not remember.

Mr Pesca, whose interview style at times seemed to epitomize Slates’ contrary brand, said he was told on Friday that he would be suspended for a week without pay. He was told on Monday the suspension was indefinite, he said.

Mr Pesca, who has worked at Slate for seven years, said he had “heart disease” for hurting his colleagues but added, “I hate the idea of ​​things that cannot be discussed and things that cannot be said can.”

Jacob Weisberg, Slate’s former chairman and editor-in-chief, who left the company in 2018 for the podcast start-up Pushkin, described Mr. Pesca as “a great talent and a fair journalist”.

“I don’t think he did anything that deserves discipline or consequence, and I think it’s an example of some kind of overreaction and lack of judgment and perspective that is unfortunately spreading,” said Weisberg.

Joel Anderson, a black Slate employee who hosted the third season of the Slow Burn podcast, disagreed. “It is an extremely small question for black employees not to hear that particular bow and not debate whether it is okay for white employees to use that particular bow,” he said.

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Politics

Dominion sues MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell over pro-Trump election conspiracies

Dominion sues MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell over pro-Trump election conspiracies

Mike Lindell, CEO of MyPillow, waits outside the west wing of the White House before entering Washington, DC on January 15, 2021.

Drew Angerer | Getty Images

Dominion Voting Systems sued Mike Lindell, CEO of MyPillow, Monday, accusing former President Donald Trump’s staunch ally of making false conspiracies about the 2020 election “because the lie is selling pillows”.

The $ 1.3 billion defamation lawsuit states that Lindell knew his repeated claims that the election had been “stolen” were not backed by evidence, but were held to help Trump’s supporters of the MyPillow purchase -To stimulate products.

The 115-page complaint, filed in federal court in Washington, DC, cites numerous statements Lindell made in television interviews and social media posts, as well as in a two-hour documentary that aired on conservative media in February.

“MyPillow’s defamatory marketing campaign – featuring promo codes like” FightforTrump “,” 45 “,” Proof “and” QAnon “- has increased MyPillow sales by 30-40% and has continued to mislead people to lie their choices in pillow purchases divert, “says Dominion’s lawsuit.

In a phone interview with CNBC, Lindell said, “I’m very happy that you finally filed the lawsuit.”

“My message to Dominion is that you finally did it because it’s going to be in the spotlight again,” said Lindell.

Lindell also denied Dominion’s claims that his company benefited from his efforts.

“They also say that I benefited from it, or that I used this for MyPillow to advertise and that’s not true. I lost 22 retailers,” Lindell said. “The culture for MyPillow has been canceled.”

The lawsuit against Lindell is just the latest effort by Dominion to seek redress for the “enormous damage” caused by the “viral disinformation campaign” against the electoral society whose systems were deployed in some areas of the US during the presidential election.

Last month, Dominion sued Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, accusing him of spreading similar conspiracies about the company to “get rich financially”.

Giuliani had called the lawsuit, which also claimed more than $ 1.3 billion in punitive and compensatory damages, as “intimidating the hateful left wing to obliterate and censor the exercise of freedom of speech and the ability of lawyers.” To vigorously defend customers. “

Smartmatic, another optional equipment company targeted after President Joe Biden’s victory in a series of conspiracies, filed its own billions of dollars in defamation lawsuit against the owner of Fox News in early February.

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Health

3M CEO Mike Roman expects robust Covid demand for N95s all through 2021

3M CEO Mike Roman expects strong Covid demand for N95s throughout 2021

Mike Roman, chairman and CEO of 3M, said Tuesday the industrial giant expects demand for its N95 respirators to be robust through 2021, even as Covid vaccine delivery raises hopes that the intensity the pandemic is gradually subsiding.

The medical masks are considered the best option to protect against infection and have been in need – and sometimes in shortage – throughout the health crisis. 3M, based in St. Paul, Minnesota, began increasing production of N95 about a year ago when the novel coronavirus, which first appeared in China in late 2019, was a global concern.

“We expect the demand for our N95 respirators to be strong later this year,” Roman said Tuesday on CNBC’s Squawk on the Street. “We see the demand and needs of healthcare workers and first responders at the forefront. That is still our priority. We are focused on serving their demand as well as some critical industries that need this N95 protection.”

Roman’s comments came after 3M reported better-than-expected fourth-quarter results. Sales of $ 8.58 billion beat Wall Street’s projections of $ 8.4 billion, while earnings per share of $ 2.38 were 23 cents above estimates.

For the full year, 3M saw 12.3% sales growth in healthcare, which includes respirators and products such as hand sanitizers. The company’s total revenue of $ 32.2 billion in 2020 increased 0.1% from 2019.

3M distributed 2 billion respirators worldwide last year.

In addition to the short-term need for masks, Roman said another factor likely to fuel continued demand is governments looking to replenish their stocks. For example, the Associated Press reported in August that the US government’s national supply of personal protective equipment for health workers was nearly depleted at the time.

3M’s shares rose about 3% to nearly $ 176 apiece on Tuesday – basically unchanged since the start of the year and down slightly over the past 12 months.

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Business

Twitter Bars MyPillow C.E.O. Mike Lindell: Stay Enterprise Updates

Mike Lindell, the executive director of MyPillow, helped fund a bus tour promoting Donald J. Trump's false electoral claims.

Here’s what you need to know:

Recognition…Erin Scott / Reuters

Twitter said it had permanently banned Mike Lindell, the CEO of bedding company MyPillow and close ally of former President Donald J. Trump, from his service.

Monday night’s move followed numerous tweets from Mr Lindell promoting debunked conspiracy theories about election fraud.

Mr. Lindell’s Twitter account, which had nearly 413,000 followers, has been permanently banned “for repeated violations of our Civic Integrity Policy,” said Lauren Alexander, a Twitter spokeswoman, in an email.

Corporate America has been quick to try to tone down the allegations made by Mr. Lindell, a major Republican donor and one of the loudest voices supporting Mr. Trump’s claims of electoral fraud in the November 3rd election. Kohl’s and Bed Bath & Beyond removed MyPillow products from their stores last week.

Mr. Lindell is also facing legal action over his allegations of electoral fraud against Dominion Voting Systems, the company at the center of one of the more outlandish conspiracy theories about electoral fraud.

The suspension of his account is the latest in a series of high profile bans on Twitter as the company permanently banned Mr. Trump from service for fears it would use the platform to incite more violence like storming the Capitol this month.

Following the attack on the Capitol, Twitter announced it had updated its rules to more aggressively monitor false or misleading information about the presidential election. As part of this move, Twitter suspended the accounts of more than 70,000 people who promoted content related to QAnon, a pro-Trump fringe group that the FBI has identified as a domestic terrorist threat.

Ms. Yellen is the first woman to hold a top position in the Treasury in her 232-year history.Recognition…Leah Millis / Reuters

The Senate confirmed Janet L. Yellen as Treasury Secretary Monday and put her at the forefront of addressing the fallout from the pandemic while advocating for President Biden’s economic agenda.

Ms. Yellen, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, was sustained by 84 votes to 15, with support from Republicans and Democrats. She is the first woman to hold the top job at Treasury in its 232-year history.

With the confirmation, she will now be in the middle of negotiating a potential $ 1.9 trillion economic aid package, which is the primary mission of Mr. Biden’s efforts to revitalize the economy. The size of the plan has already been questioned by some Democrats and Republicans.

Ms. Yellen was a clear advocate of continued government support to workers and businesses, and publicly warned that a lack of assistance to state and local governments could slow the recovery, much like it did after the great recession.

At her confirmation hearing and in written replies to lawmakers, Ms. Yellen reiterated Mr. Biden’s view that Congress must “act big” to keep the economy from stalling and defended the use of borrowed money to finance another aid package and families worse off.

“The auxiliary bill at the end of last year was just a deposit to get us through the next few months,” said Ms. Yellen. “We still have a long way to go before our economy fully recovers.”

Shoppers wait in front of a GameStop on Black Friday. An online community of traders appears to be driving the store's share price higher.Recognition…Go Nakamura for the New York Times

Little ones win in an epic competition between Wall Street traders betting against stocks and legions of petty investors.

On Monday, shares of ailing video game retailer GameStop rose, adding to a recent rally that rose shares by more than 300 percent in January alone and is a blatant example of the growing power of small investors in certain financial markets.

Stocks of companies like GameStop are breaking away from the factors that traditionally go into evaluating a company’s valuation – like growth potential or earnings. Analysts believe the company will post a loss from continuing operations of $ 465 million in 2020, on top of the $ 795 million it lost in 2019.

What seems to be fueling this surge is an online community of traders who gather in places like Reddit’s “Wall Street Bets” forum and exaggerate individual trades. Lately they have made buying short-term call options on GameStop stock – an aggressive bet that the stock will go up – a preferred position.

Market analysts and scholars say that a rush of new money on such short-term call options can create a kind of feedback loop that drives up underlying stock prices, as brokerage firms selling the options have to buy stocks themselves in order to hedge the contracts.

In the case of GameStop, these small investors have faced a different group of speculators. The company’s struggles have also made it a preferred target for short sellers betting on a stock to fall by selling stocks they don’t actually own. Short sellers benefit when a stock has fallen and they can buy back the same stock at a lower price.

With GameStop stocks rising, these investors are obviously losing a lot of money. And their rush to get out of trading by buying stocks can also result in a price spike known as a short squeeze.

On Monday, Wall Street Bets’s small traders and messaging site Discord encouraged each other to hold onto their positions while the short sellers raced to the exits.

“Am I late to get on the GME missile?” Wrote a Wall Street Bets commentator just after 10am

“No, buy the dip,” answered another.

At Discord, the message was clear.

“GME ONLY UP,” wrote one commentator.

Budweiser's Covid-19 awareness advertisement features two health workers who have been vaccinated.Recognition…Budweiser, via Associated Press

Budweiser, the beer giant whose commercials featuring Clydesdale horses, croaking frogs, and victorious pups made him one of the most popular Super Bowl advertisers, is skipping this year for the first time in 37 years to focus on raising awareness the Covid-19 vaccine.

Budweiser, an Anheuser-Busch company, announced Monday that it would donate portions of its advertising budget this year to the Ad Council, a nonprofit marketing group at the forefront of a $ 50 million commercial blitz to combat skepticism about coronavirus Vaccines. Instead of often posting a zippy big game commercial as it did in the weeks leading up to the game on February 7th, the beer company published its 90-second online vaccination ad entitled “Bigger Picture”. (Anheuser-Busch will continue to have a prominent role throughout the game, with ads for some of his other beer brands.)

Other Super Bowl stalwarts, including Coca-Cola, Hyundai, and Pepsi, will also be absent from the screen. When the pandemic disrupted the sports industry, many companies were reluctant to pay CBS around $ 5.5 million for a 30-second slot during a game that some feared could be delayed or even canceled.

In the Budweiser Covid-19 vaccination advertisement, actress Rashida Jones urges viewers to “turn our strength into hope” while the tune of “Lean on Me” is shown as inspiring images of the pandemic. Ms. Jones, who recorded her narrative while isolated from other people in a Hollywood facility, said in an interview that “obviously people want to be entertained, they want to see funny commercials,” but “the most important thing is that we do this next prioritize phase. “

The Super Bowl advertising season, which typically extends beyond weeks of airing of teasers, celebrity revelations, YouTube debuts, and celebratory live events, is more subdued as companies struggle to find an appropriate tone after a year of marketing missteps to accept.

“You can’t pretend everything is okay,” Ms. Jones said. “People can feel when brands use a moment.”

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Entertainment

‘Mike Nichols’ Captures a Star-Studded Life That Shuttled Between Broadway and Hollywood

‘Mike Nichols’ Captures a Star-Studded Life That Shuttled Between Broadway and Hollywood

When writer and director Mike Nichols was young, he had an allergic reaction to a whooping cough vaccine. The result was a complete and lifelong inability to grow hair. One way to read Mark Harris’ crisp new biography, Mike Nichols: A Life, is a gentle comedy about a man and his wigs.

He got his first set (hair, eyebrows) before going to college. It was dark. Nichols attended the University of Chicago, where Susan Sontag was also a student. One reason they weren’t together, Harris writes, is that “she was thrown off his wig.”

Nichols moved to Manhattan to do it as a comedian. A friend said she would go into his tiny apartment and “the smell of acetone” – wig glue remover – “would just slap you in the face.”

Nichols became famous in his mid-20s. His improvised comedy routines with Elaine May, whom he had met in Chicago, were fresh and irresistible. They went to Broadway in 1960, where Nichols met Richard Burton. He would meet Elizabeth Taylor through Burton.

On the set of Cleopatra, Taylor asked the production hairstyle designer, “Do you make personal wigs? Because I have a dear friend who’s doing a comic in New York and he’s wearing one of the worst wigs I’ve ever seen. “It wasn’t long before Nichols’ toupees were unrivaled.

“It takes me three hours every morning to become Mike Nichols,” he told actor George Segal. He had a sense of humor. He would tell how his son Max crawled into bed next to him and, when he only saw the back of his head, shouted: “Where is Papa’s face?”

I’ve talked about hair and the lack of it for too long. But growing up bald, said Nichols’ brother, “was the defining aspect of his childhood.”

Nichols’ talent as a director was his ability to locate and easily pull in the details that make up a character. If he had made a movie of his own life the wig scenes would have been great – satirical and melancholy. He may have put a bathroom mirror mount on the Beatles’ early cover of “Lend Me Your Comb”.

His awkwardness made him wary. He became a student of human behavior. When he finally got the chance to direct, it was like he’d been preparing for it all his life.

Nichols’ first two films were “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” and “The Graduate” – the first angry, daring and grown-up, the second defining the zeitgeist. At almost the same moment, he staged four successive hit pieces. Oscars, Tony Awards and a landslide of wealth followed.

He made up for his time as an outsider with all his might. He collected Arab horses and Picassos and made friends with Jacqueline Kennedy, Leonard Bernstein and Richard Avedon. He was a cocky prince who became a master of what Kenneth Clark liked to refer to as a “swimming bell,” a way of moving through elite society like a barge of silver and silk.

Nichols was born in Berlin in 1931 as Michael Igor Peschkowsky (or Igor Michael, it’s unclear). His father, a doctor, was a Russian Jew who changed the family name to Nichols after the family emigrated to the United States in the late 1930s. The family had some money, and one of Nichols’ father’s patients in New York was pianist Vladimir Horowitz. Nichols attended good schools in Manhattan, including Dalton.

Recognition…David A. Harris

At the University of Chicago he became an omnivore and movie viewer. His joke withered; People were afraid of him. May’s joke was even more devastating. They were made for each other. They were never really a romantic couple, Harris writes, although they may have slept together once or twice early on.

Harris is the author of two previous books, “Pictures of a Revolution: Five Films and the Birth of New Hollywood” and “Five Came Back: A History of Hollywood and World War II”. He’s also a longtime entertainment reporter with a talent for shooting scenes.

He’s at his best on Mike Nichols: A Life when he takes you on a production. His chapters on the making of three films – “The Graduate,” “Silkwood” and “Angels in America” ​​- are wonderful: smart, tight, intimate and funny. They feel that he could turn anyone into a book.

Nichols was a director of an actor. He was avuncular, a charmer, broad in his human sympathies. He was trying to figure out what an actor needed and provide it. He could put a well-polished fingernail on a tick that wanted to be a hook. But he had a steely side.

He fired Gene Hackman on The Graduate during the first week. Hackman played Mr. Robinson and it didn’t work out, partly because he looked too young for the role at 37.

Sacrificing someone early on could be a motivator for the remaining cast, he learned. He fired Mandy Patinkin at the beginning of the filming of “Heartburn” and brought in Jack Nicholson to play Meryl Streep’s faithless husband.

One reason the chapter in Nichols’ film about Tony Kushner’s play “Angels in America” ​​is so rich is because Harris, who is married to Kushner, had access to the playwright’s diary.

Nichols turned to projects like “Angels in America” ​​to bolster his serious side. But in everything he did, he found it funny. He knew instinctively that tragedy mostly speaks to the emotions while comedy touches the mind.

Nichols presided over a lot of crap with George C. Scott, expensive flops like “The Day of the Dolphin”; “The Fortune” with Nicholson and Warren Beatty; and “What planet are you from?” with Garry Shandling. Reading Harris’ accounts of the making of these films is like watching a cook strain his supplies.

Nichols’ Broadway flops included a production of “Waiting for Godot” with Steve Martin and Robin Williams. His mistakes shook him. He was battling depression (one of his vanity labels read “ANOMIE”) and had suicidal thoughts after being treated with Halcion, a benzodiazepine. Harris wrote that he had “an almost punitive need to prove the opposite to his critics.”

He had a manic side. He snorted his stake in cocaine and used crack for a while in the 1980s. You imagine him racing back and forth from the movie to Broadway on the latter as if coming through a series of constantly swinging cat doors.

Harris describes the numerous collaborations in his field with Streep and Nora Ephron. Nichols has been married four times. His last marriage to Diane Sawyer was ongoing.

Nichols was hard to get to know, and I’m not sure we’ll get him much better by the end of Mike Nichols: A Life. He was a man in constant motion, and Harris chases him with patience, clarity, and care.

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Politics

Some Republicans assume Trump is making an attempt to sabotage GOP, Mike Allen says

Some Republicans think Trump is trying to sabotage GOP, Mike Allen says

Axios co-founder Mike Allen told CNBC on Thursday that some Republicans believe President Donald Trump will hurt the party’s chances in next week’s Georgia Senate runoff.

“Republicans think a lot about President Trump sabotaging this race. He has done so much not to help these candidates,” Allen said on Squawk Box, referring to GOP Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue .

“I talk to Republicans and they look at what’s going on and they say, ‘You know, he has to think,’ I want to send a message, if I don’t vote, Republicans are in trouble, ‘” he added added Allen, a longtime Washington political reporter.

US President Donald Trump, First Lady Melania Trump and US Republican Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler arrive for a rally on December 5, 2020 in Valdosta, Georgia, USA.

Jonathan Ernst | Reuters

Allen’s comments come ahead of the crucial runoff elections on Tuesday that will determine the balance of power in the US Senate. Loeffler runs against Democrat Raphael Warnock, while Perdue’s opponent is Democrat Jon Ossoff. Trump was promoting Loeffler and Perdue earlier this month, and he will hold another rally in the state on Monday.

Republicans only need to win one of the races to get a 100-seat majority in the Senate. The GOP currently has a 50-48 advantage.

If both Democrats are victorious in Georgia, that would make the difference for their party, as Vice-President-elect Kamala Harris would be the casting vote. It would also mean the Democrats control both houses of Congress as well as the White House after President-elect Joe Biden was inaugurated on Jan. 20. Biden defeated Trump in the November 3 election, partly aided by his victory in Georgia. Biden was the first Democrat to win the state since 1992.

“Maintaining a Republican majority in the Senate was a priority for the president from the start,” Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh told CNBC on Thursday. “He will rally voters to support Senators Perdue and Loeffler and warn that their opponents are left-wing extremists who support higher taxes, the job-damaging Green New Deal and the amnesty for 11 million illegal aliens.”

Allen, who co-founded Politico before launching Axios in January 2017, said Republicans were initially confident that Loeffler and Perdue would defeat their Democratic challengers. “Georgia is still pretty red despite having won a president there, so Republicans said, ‘In the end, that might be fine.’ They’re not sure it’s okay anymore, and a lot has to do with the president, “Allen said.

Trump refused to give the election to Biden, falsely claiming that he lost the race due to massive election fraud. He also attacked numerous elected Republicans in Georgia, including Governor Brian Kemp, to help run the elections.

Trump has also pushed Congress to increase stimulus checks for Americans to $ 2,000 and hold a $ 900 billion coronavirus relief package that included $ 600 in direct payments for days before it was finally signed. He has continued his call for $ 2,000 checks, a proposal that is Democrat backed and not popular with Senate Republicans.

Ossoff and Warnock quickly took up Trump’s demand last week and used it to beat their opponents. However, Loeffler and Perdue have since endorsed Trump’s proposal for $ 2,000 checks.

“Republicans look at it and say like President Trump is saying something every day that either sums up these candidates or makes some of these … voters who may be sick of Trump anyway but who are Republicans in their bones are like every day he gives them a reason either not to come out or to choose to go the other way, “Allen said.

CNBC reached out to the Loeffler and Perdue campaigns and the White House to comment on Allen’s remarks.