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Arizona Republicans gather for their state party meeting at Dream City Church in Phoenix on Jan. 28, 2023. | Photos by David Siders | This past weekend, in a megachurch in Phoenix, the Arizona Republican Party assembled to dust itself off after a disappointing midterm and figure out what to do next. Only, they seemed to spend more time looking backward. They had a package of resolutions to consider, but one of them was about censuring officials — Republican officials — who ran past elections. Yes: In Arizona, it might as well be 2020, because election denialism is still the name of the game. And according to one attendee, censures wouldn’t be harsh enough for what those (again: Republican) officials did (run a free and fair election). “We should duct tape people to a tree in a dog park, so the dogs can pee on them. And then, when they’re there for a few hours and they have to crap in their pants, they can wallow in their own shit,” said Mark Del Maestro, who introduced himself as a Vietnam veteran. It wasn’t exactly the self-diagnosis that beltway Republican political professionals might expect. One conventional reading of the midterms holds that it was far-right, Trumpian politics that alienated “normie” Republicans and moderates, sinking the red wave. Voters are sick to death of sore-loser rehashes of the 2020 election, the theory goes; they want to leave electoral denialism on the dust heap and move forward. “Yet denialism and its attendant conspiracies animate a large swath of the Republican Party — still,” writes David Siders. “And if Arizona is any example, it suggests that a not insignificant percentage of the national electorate is determined to run the same doomed experiment again in 2024.” In the first installment of his Road Trip series — a set of dispatches you can expect to see in our pages as we all roll down the treacherous road to 2024 together — Siders stopped in Arizona to explore how the defeat of election deniers like failed gubernatorial candidate Keri Lake has affected Republican strategy. Turns out Lake is still “at the center of the Republican universe.” And that has implications not just for Arizona, but for the rest of the country as well. Read the story. | | | | 
| “This week, I hear him literally say that ‘I don’t think we should legalize marijuana.’ I thought you might have been high when you said it. Marijuana in our country is already legal for privileged people and ... the war on drugs has been a war on Black and brown people.” Can you guess who said this to then-presidential candidate Joe Biden? Scroll to the bottom for the answer.**
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| 38 percent … of Democratic men have seen RuPaul’s Drag Race, compared to 33 percent of Democratic women. Republicans prefer to sashay away: Only 12 percent of Republican men and 15 percent of Republican women say they’ve watched the show.
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The new memoir from former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo prompted backlash over his claim that the media blew the 2018 assassination of Washington Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi out of proportion. | Steven Senne/AP Photo | Jamal Khashoggi and the Politics of Memory … In Mike Pompeo’s new memoir, the former secretary of state claims that his go-to punching bag, the media, painted an overwrought portrait of Jamal Khashoggi, the Washington Post contributing columnist who was assassinated in 2018. As for Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who according to the CIA ordered Khashoggi’s murder and dismemberment? Pompeo praises him as a reformer. The Post, meanwhile,has shot back with embraces of Khashoggi, running editorials calling Pompeo’s swipes “revolting” and releasing statements saying they’re “shameful.” In this week’s Capital City column, Michael Schaffer explores the real story behind the criticism and furious response. “Khashoggi leaves behind a legacy that a lot of folks have a real interest in either muddying or elevating all these years later,” he writes.
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| Everyone wants to know how long George Santos will hold on to his seat — probably even George Santos. The New York Republican is sure to be a topic of conversation at your next function, so don’t follow his playbook — take a moment to get the facts straight. (From POLITICO Magazine’s Jesús Rodríguez.) - Remember that veteran who said George Santos raised $3,000 for his dying service dog, only to allegedly ghost him later? The FBI is working with him on a new probe into Santos. - One hyper-specific detail that’s drenched in irony: His favorite song is “Unholy” by Kim Petras and Sam Smith — the pop hit about a man who spins a web of lies to cheat on his partner. - Pay close attention to which investigations move forward. Santos faces an alphabet soup of inquiries and complaints, from the FEC to the SEC to the DOJ and even one by Brazilian prosecutors. But all the lawyers are watching the DOJ, which can probably move fastest if it determines it should charge Santos with a crime. - It’s not a given that Santos has the support of the GOP top brass. Yes, he’s hanging on, but he wouldn’t answer questions about whether he felt Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy had his back and he just “voluntarily” resigned his committee assignments. I mean … who “voluntarily” does that? - Definitely don’t pretend to know when (or if) he’s going to resign. But you could say you don’t know how on earth he would win again in 2024.
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POLITICO illustration/Photos by iStock | Тепер ми всі розмовляємо українською … Over the last few years, Google Translate has undergone a quiet but massive transformation, vastly outperforming the old, iffy-at-best program that once ruined your vacation and building bridges between multilingual Europe’s towers of Babel. Now, as the Russian invasion bloodies Ukraine, Claire Berlinski reports on how the service is strengthening European unity and giving Ukrainians a chance to rally the world to their cause on social media, exposing Russian brutality and debunking shameless propaganda — language barriers be damned. As this sub-hed says (according to Google, anyway): We all speak Ukrainian now.
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Photos by Francis Chung/POLITICO |
Chasing George Santos … Anytime the most shameless liar on Capitol Hill peeks out of his office, he gets swarmed by reporters — including our own Jesús Rodríguez — with questions about his fabulism that he (surprise!) doesn’t want to answer. What he gives them instead is donuts — in the sense that he put a dozen from Dunkin’ out for the scrum, but also in the sense that most of what he says is a bunch of junk with a hole at the center. If you missed Rodríguez’ story earlier this week, here’s your chance to spend 16 hours and 27,000 steps with the scandal-ridden freshman as he dodges, scolds and obfuscates his way through Congress — loving every minute of it.
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Two staffers wearing a horse costume pay a visit to President Reagan and Kenneth Duberstein in the Oval Office. | Courtesy Ronald Reagan Library | On January 19, 1989, one day before President Ronald Reagan’s last day in office, White House staff members surprised him by showing up in the Oval Office wearing a horse costume. Part of the costume featured a bridle, presented to the president and First Lady Nancy Reagan, as a farewell gift from the White House staff. Reagan wrote in his diary on that day: “Then into the Oval O. came a horse — the kind you see in vaudeville — 2 human beings one the front & one the rear end. Dan Crippen [from the Office of Domestic Affairs] was in front & Fran Marie Kennedy Keel [from the Policy Development Office] brought up the rear.” The Reagans loved horses and frequently visited their 688-acre ranch near Santa Barbara, California, which they purchased in 1974 near the end of Reagan’s second term as governor. During his presidency, Reagan stabled seven horses: American quarter horses, Peruvian Pasos and Arabians. One of his favorites, a white Arabian named “El Alamein,” was a gift from Mexican President Jose Lopez Partillo. Reagan named another Arabian after his wife: It was called Nancy D.
| | | **Who Dissed answer: The zinger came from Sen. Cory Booker during a crowded 2019 Democratic primary debate. politicoweekend@email.politico.com | | | | Follow us | | | | |
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