After Trump Divorce, Is Anthony Scaramucci Now an Out-of-the-Closet Nikki Haley Supporter

Page Six reports that former Trump administration UN Ambassador Nikki Haley may have recruited Anthony Scaramucci to “the resistance.” That would be the Republican arm of”the resistance’, not the Democratic wing.

Trump’s controversial, short-lived comms chief Scaramucci officially divorced himself from his former buddy Donald Trump this weekend. The Mooch compared the US president to a nuclear reactor on the verge of melting down and suggested strongly that the GOP should run a candidate against him in 2020.

“To those asking, ‘what took so long?’ You’re right. I tried to see best in [Trump] based on private interactions and select policy alignment. But his increasingly divisive rhetoric — and damage it’s doing to [the] fabric of our society — outweighs any short-term economic gain.”

The reliable — even if it is owned by Rupert Murdoch — New York Post writes on Page Six that Scaramucci dined recently with Nikki Haley at the famed Harlem eatery Rao’s. The former governor of South Carolina, Haley has been deft in disassociating herself from Trump, while keeping her volume at low level. After Trump launched his despicable tirade against Baltimore Congressman Elijah Cummings two weeks ago, Haley tweeted: “This is so unnecessary.”

Haley seemingly has presidential ambitions of her own, although all bets are on 2024; Stay tuned.

Donald Trump: Why White Evangelical Women Support Him

Donald Trump: Why White Evangelical Women Support Him

During the US president Donald Trump’s State of the Union address in early February, House Democratic women showed up clad all in white. The colour, a nod to the suffragettes, was meant to show their displeasure with the president’s policies towards women, climate change and immigration. But Trump’s contentious relationship with Democratic women contrasts sharply with the support he receives from another group of women – white evangelicals.

As is well known by now, in the November 2016 presidential election, 80% of white evangelicals voted for Trump. That constituted the largest “evangelical vote” in nearly two decades. If scholars, journalists and the general public have puzzled over why so many white evangelicals would vote for someone whose language and behaviour violated key tenets of the Christian faith, the question of why evangelical women voted for him is even more puzzling – especially given Trump’s long track record of alleged sexual misconductand derogatory comments about women.

But the 2016 vote wasn’t a fluke. A recent poll reports that two-thirds of white evangelical women still approve of the president.

Massive Splits Between Clinton & Trump Voters Show Diametrically Opposed Views On Cultural Issues

Massive Splits Between Clinton & Trump Voters Show Diametrically Opposed Views On Cultural Issues

Yet another new poll explores the massive fault lines between Democrats and Republicans, and between Clinton and Trump supporters. NBC's headline sums up yet again the fundamental argument that cultural attitudes -- and not economic forces -- distinguish Democrats from Republicans.  We recap revelations in the new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. 

More than 8-in-10 Clinton voters are comfortable with a changing America. Change comes in many forms, but most Clinton voters are not only positive -- but excited -- about an American experiment that see self-perceived whites as no longer being the majority of Americans. By contrast, only one quarter of Trump voters welcome these changes. 

“The ‘Culture Wars’ have been with us forever, and they remain today,” says Democratic pollster Peter Hart, who conducted this survey with Republican pollster Bill McInturff.

Study: Republican Men See Women Political Leaders As Less Competent & With Lower Integrity

Study: Republican Men See Women Political Leaders As Less Competent & With Lower Integrity

NPR reports on a new study analyzing data about Americans' attitudes toward their House of Representatives  members from 2010 through 2014. Ideally, the analysis would be more current, because the presidential election both confirmed and negated some of these conclusions. 

Mia Costa and Brian Schaffner, political scientists from the U of Mass, Amherst concluded that women tend to think "more highly of female legislators on a variety of measures", regardless of party. Republican men express serious reservations about the women representing them, whereas Democratic men often rate women higher than men in governing. 

The research isn't broken down by education, and I would argue here that high-school educated women tend to be more traditional in their beliefs that men should govern. These attitudes have been explored in depth post presidential election, like PRRI/Atlantic analysis and direct interviews with a large sampling of Trump voters. 

In studying members of the House, and not the Senate, the research results are also impacted by districts that are seriously gerrymandered and representing rigid attitudes among both parties, and also racial attitudes. Within these caveats, Costa and Schaffner concluded:

"While Democratic men evaluate women legislators more favorably, the opposite is true for Republican men," the researchers write. "Republican men are the one group who provide lower evaluations of female elected officials."

GOP Congressman Are Dueling Till Dead, Now Slapping Around Republican Women Senators Over Healthcare

GOP Congressman Are Dueling Till Dead, Now Slapping Around Republican Women Senators Over Healthcare

It's been a tough week for Republican women senators. On Monday, Congressman Blake Farenhold of duck pjs fame was quoted on Texas radio as saying that if Republican senators Collins (Maine), Shelley Moore Capito (W. Va), and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) -- who voted against a Republican plan on ending Obamacare last week -- were men, he would challenge them to a duel. 

Presumably Farenhold would be the last man standing, although after his jammies pic and sexual harassment lawsuit, coupled with his girth, AOC is not so sure.

{. . . }

In an interview with MSNBC's Ali Velshi, Representative Buddy Carter (R-GA) defended Donald Trump’s Wednesday morning Twitter attacks on Senator Lisa Murkowski saying that, “Somebody needs to go over to the Senate and snatch a knot in their ass.” (For those of you who are not fluent in Carter's Georgia boy male lingo, to “snatch a knot” means to smack someone).

Artist Andrea Fraser Will Map Trump Inauguration Donors & Art World Ties

Artist Andrea Fraser Will Map Trump Inauguration Donors & Art World Ties

Andrea Fraser is a performance artist, known primarily for her focus on institutional critiques. Based in New York and Los Angeles, Fraser is currently a new genres professor in the Art Department faculty at the University of California, Los Angeles.  A native of Billings, Montana, Fraser grew up in Berkeley, Calif. She is a graduate of New York University, the Whitney Museum of American Art's Independent Study Program and the School of Visual Arts. Initially, Fraser wrote art criticism before incorporating it as analysis and commentary in her artistic practice. 

We all know that Donald Trump has little interest in any art not inspired by his own image. His donors, however, are major players in the art world. In her new project, Fraser is mapping the connections between major US museums and the political elite, and their institutional ties to the White House. The Art Newspaper writes that Fraser is documenting all political donations made in 2016 by museum patrons and trustees, many of whom contributed to the Trump campaign and inauguration. 

Donald Trump's inauguration was a small and comparatively understated affair, but one that rose a staggering amount of money -- $106.7 million, twice the amount raised by Obama for his historic, much larger affair, writes Hyperallergic. According to a 510-page report of donations to Trump’s inaugural committee released in April by the Federal Elections Committee, billionaire art collector and Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) board member Steven A. Cohen as well as Henry Kravis — whose wife, Marie-Josée Kravis, is the president of MoMA — both gave $1 million. Unlike campaign contributions, which are capped, there is no limit to how much can be given to a candidate’s inaugural committee.