| | | | Trump's team sought security clearance for Flynn's son | | Officials from President-elect Donald Trump's transition team attempted to distance themselves Tuesday from Michael G. Flynn -- the son and former top aide to his father, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who is Trump's pick for national security adviser and was involved in the transition effort. However, government sources tell CNN's Jake Tapper that the Trump transition team had requested a security clearance for the younger Flynn.
Tapper tried eight times to get Mike Pence to answer whether he knew the transition team sought security clearance for the younger Flynn. But Pence repeated that Flynn was merely helping his father with scheduling and administrative matters -- and no longer is doing so. Pressed on seeking a security clearance for Flynn, Pence said: "Well, whatever the appropriate paperwork was to assist him in that regard, Jake, I'm sure was taking place. But that's no longer the case."
For months, the younger Flynn has spread deranged conspiracy theories, including one making the unfounded and nonsensical accusation that a pizzeria in Washington is a secret home of a Satanic pedophilia cult. On Sunday, that wild lie led to near-tragic consequences, with a North Carolina man entering the restaurant armed with guns. | | Trump takes his 'thank you' tour to North Carolina | | President-elect Donald Trump will hit the road Tuesday -- this time to visit supporters in Fayetteville, North Carolina, as part of his "thank you" tour. Daniella raises the curtain.
Tonight's main attraction: Trump will be side-by-side with his nominee for defense secretary, retired Gen. James Mattis. | | "The threat will endure." -- President Barack Obama, taking the long view on combating terrorism while laying out his own legacy in his final national security speech today in Tampa. | | | | Donald Trump started this morning with a swing at Boeing over the company's construction of an updated Air Force One: | | | Twitter is the new bully pulpit. Trump showed once again the power his words carry -- even when they come 140 characters or fewer at a time. It's a reality that those who claim journalists pay too much attention to Trump's Twitter musings should keep in mind. Wisconsin conservative talk radio host Charlie Sykes put it well as he noted Boeing's (temporary) stock drop: | | Now, about Boeing: The company says it has no idea where Trump got the $4 billion figure, and doesn't know what the updated plane will cost yet because the Pentagon is still deciding which features it wants included.
What it's like to fly on Air Force One: Don't miss this great take from CNN's Kevin Liptak and Antoine Sanfuentes. | | Ben Carson is back -- and so are his controversies | | | The on-again, off-again relationship between Donald Trump and Ben Carson is back on again now that Trump has tapped Carson to lead the Department of Housing and Urban Development. But Carson has never worked in government, and the life experience that Trump supporters were claiming -- he'd personally lived in public housing -- turned out to be false. Armstrong Williams, the Carson friend and business manager who told journalists Monday that Carson was raised in public housing, reversed course on Twitter this morning: | | | Here's the problem: Carson's supporters -- including former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee -- had used the false claim that he'd lived in government housing to attack Democrats who are questioning whether a man who's never held a government job and is a former brain surgeon is suited to helm an agency with 9,000 staffers and a budget of $45 billion per year. | | Huckabee's entire tweet is inaccurate. Prior HUD secretaries have lived in public housing -- Alphonso Jackson, the secretary under President George W. Bush, did, a HUD spokesman told me. And, of course, Carson didn't live in public housing.
Not that this matters. Politico's Burgess Everett and Seung Min Kim write that Carson is on a glide path to confirmation. "He's one of the smartest people I've ever met," Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, the most senior GOP senator, told them.
Fueling the misperception about Carson's history was The New York Times headline. The newspaper corrected that headline today, attributing the inaccurate information to Williams. Huckabee took a shot at the Times -- not Williams -- in this follow-up tweet: | | | The talk from Huckabee and Trump world of "fake news" -- conflating what they see as left-leaning but legitimate news sources such as The New York Times and literally bogus sites that knowingly promote false conspiracy theories to vulnerable people -- is a huge, huge threat to democracy, designed to blur the lines and delegitimize critical but accurate information. But it's also a topic for another newsletter. In fact, CNN's Brian Stelter put it well in "Reliable Sources" -- sign up here if you haven't already -- last night. He wrote: "People in power benefit from confusion ... from competing narratives ... from a sense that nothing is really true. We've seen this in authoritarian countries for a long time." | | | As 2016 as it gets: The Weather Channel is going hard after Breitbart -- the pro-Donald Trump propaganda site -- for distorting its data. | | GOP's Obamacare repeal: How and when will it happen? | | Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday repealing President Barack Obama's signature health care law is still "the first item up in the new year." But Republicans are not yet in agreement about how long it will take to replace the law -- and what replacement legislation would entail.
"Will there be challenges? Absolutely, yes. This has been a very, very controversial law," McConnell said at a Capitol Hill news conference. "We have an obligation to the American people to change it and to do a better job. And if we can get Democratic cooperation in doing that, that would be great." More from Daniella. | | | Ohio Gov. John Kasich told electoral college members he doesn't want to be on the receiving end of their anti-Donald Trump protest votes. ... Federal prosecutors recommended between 17 and 21 years in prison for convicted former Rep. Chaka Fattah, D-Pennsylvania. ... Former Sen. Bob Dole -- whose lobbying shop receives hefty fees from Taiwan -- lobbied Trump's team to embrace Taiwan and anger China. | | | We'd love to share our other newsletters with you. Check out CNNMoney's Reliable Sources, an insider's look into the media brought to you by Brian Stelter. | | | Get the Nightcap, a comprehensive summary of the most important political news, delivered to your inbox daily. | | | | | |
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