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Former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. | Victor J. Blue/The New York Times/Redux Pictures | When former Gov. Andrew Cuomo denied accusations of sexual harassment, Democratic consultant Lis Smith believed him. She'd helped him get elected to a third term, and after news of the allegations broke, she agreed to advise him on how to navigate the media storm. Cuomo could be flirtatious, and he occasionally made jokes of a sexual nature, Smith writes. But "he'd been a champion of the #MeToo movement — and in those days, I'd never heard so much as a whisper about his personal conduct." Then more women came forward, and doubt began to set in. "What. The. Fuck," Smith writes. "That's the only way to explain the reaction among the advisers, especially the women. It started to feel like we were being manipulated — used because of our gender to cover and lie for Cuomo." In this illuminating excerpt from her upcoming book, Any Given Tuesday, Smith takes us behind the scenes during the fall of New York's "Prince of Darkness," as his inner circle — including his brother, Chris Cuomo, who was later fired from CNN over his involvement — tried to keep the governor's worst impulses in check. Read Smith's story.
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| "[He demonstrates] a quite stupefying ignorance that makes him, frankly, unfit to hold the office of president of the United States." Can you guess who said this about Donald Trump in 2015? Scroll to the bottom for the answer.
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| We're Not in This Town Anymore … Mark Leibovich still gets quips about This Town, his 2013 book that famously pulled back the curtain on the smarmy, sycophantic Washington of the aughts. Nearly 10 years later, the famous chronicler of D.C. society was determined to do something different, he tells Michael Schaffer in this week's Capital City column. For his new book, Thank You for Your Servitude, about the Republicans who enabled the 45th president, Leibovich had to find a way to write about a Washington in which terms like "civil war" and "threat to democracy" make the misdemeanors of This Town almost quaint. The writing is still signature Leibovich — funny and teasing — but this time, writes Schaffer, the misdemeanors point not to a generalized absurdity, but to a major crime.
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| British PM Boris Johnson stepped down as leader of the Conservative Party this week after dozens of cabinet ministers and senior officials in his government resigned. Here's what you need to know to sound up on all the drama. From POLITICO's Ryan Heath, currently in the U.K.: - Among the many scandals in his party this year, the two that brought Johnson down were his parties in 10 Downing Street during Covid lockdowns and his continued promotion of a loyalist whom he knew had been accused of sexually assaulting multiple young men. - He's still technically the PM. It will take weeks or months for his party to choose a new Conservative leader. (Though some are insisting on a second party coup to remove him immediately.) That leaves plenty of time for A. scheming or B. an easy summer bashing out a quick memoir from the PM's summer home, "Chequers." - Who's next? The long-time front-runner to replace Johnson, Rishi Sunak, was bruised earlier this year by news that his heiress wife had been avoiding paying U.K. taxes. - The next two most likely contenders are women — Penny Mordaunt, a trade minister, and Liz Truss, the foreign secretary — both from Johnson's Brexit wing of the Conservatives. Expect a more disciplined face to the same or similar policies.
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eBay | This week's historical treasure — brought to you by historian Ted Widmer: An 1802 newspaper and a reminder that the founders were sometimes as dysfunctional as we are. It can be yours for a mere $47.99 on ebay. We tend to feel reverence for Thomas Jefferson around the Fourth of July. But the author of the Declaration of Independence was not above throwing a sharp elbow during his long career in politics. Unsurprisingly, he received a few in return. In the 1790s, he quietly offered money to a Scottish immigrant, James Callender, who was furiously attacking Jefferson's political opponents in the press. Unamused, the John Adams administration convicted Callender for sedition (Jefferson pardoned him when he became president). After his release from prison, Callender demanded that Jefferson make him the postmaster of Richmond, Va. When Jefferson refused, Callender revealed embarrassing details of their financial relationship and accused Jefferson of fathering children with an enslaved woman, Sally Hemings. This original copy of an 1802 newspaper contains Callender's detailed account of how Jefferson funneled money to Callender to attack his political enemies, and comes very close to accusing the sitting president of criminal activity.
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Politico illustration / AP Photo | Jon Stewart for President! … Biden should run for reelection, says Juleanna Glover. But if he doesn't, Jon Stewart, the former host of the Daily Show, should. "Stewart's definition of being an entertainer has him wrestling with the kind of big, serious topics that actual politicians specialize in avoiding," Glover writes in this piece that is 100 percent not a joke. "He's also a truly gifted public speaker who can break down our most complicated political debates into common-sense arguments for effective policy."
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Original held in the Sir Henry Wellcome Collection at the National Archives in Seattle. | Ninety-nine years ago today — July 8, 1923 — President Warren G. Harding made history as the first sitting president to visit Alaska. Here, he and his wife, Florence, are presented with a salmon while visiting Metlakatla, Alaska. Harding met with local Native Americans, who told him their livelihoods were being stolen by white men and their salmon traps. Harding told Tribal leaders the government would try to find some solutions, although also said, "There can be no return to primitive conditions because that is against God's law and the best interests of human society." But Harding never made it back to Washington: He died suddenly in a San Francisco hotel room less than a month later.
| | | **Who Dissed? answer: It was Boris Johnson, who yesterday resigned as prime minister of the U.K. At the time, he was the mayor of London, responding to Trump's false claim that London had "no-go" zones dominated by Muslim extremists. | | | | Follow us | | | | |
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