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From The Reporter’s Notebook
President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team announced Thursday that his former campaign manager Kellyanne Conway would join his incoming administration as counselor to the president, TPM’s Esme Cribb reported. The statement lauded Trump’s victory as a triumph that “shattered the glass ceiling for women,” citing Conway’s status as the first female campaign manager to work for a candidate who won the presidential election.
Agree or Disagree?
Josh Marshall: “This little episode captures it all: There are no conflicts. This is the plan. The conceptual framework of ‘conflicts of interest’ are guardrails meant to keep people who are not fundamentally corrupt from slipping into corruption. They lose any force or explanatory power they might have when you apply them to people using the presidency as a business model, the ultimate corporate ‘synergy.’ Bernie Madoff wouldn’t have been kept out of trouble by a better securities compliance or ethics lawyer. It was a criminal enterprise.”
Say What?!
“They can just keep dying.”
– Trump’s eccentric longtime doctor thinks the President-elect should fare just fine health-wise once he takes office, but doesn’t seem too concerned about what happens if he doesn’t.
BUZZING: Today in the Hive
From a TPM Prime member: “I think you may very well be right. Trump is anxious to both impress Putin and let everyone—including the US government—know that he’s in charge and can do whatever he wishes with impunity. Nuking some “terrorist stronghold” is just the way to do that. Whether or not that will provoke another world war, it will certainly terrify everyone.”
Related: Trump implied that recent attacks in Europe justified his campaign trail call to ban Muslim immigration to the United States.
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What We’re Reading
When everything is surreal, how do we process violence? (Jezebel)
Newsweek writer Kurt Eichenwald’s Twitter war. (The Daily Beast)
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