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“The personal is political” is not merely a rallying cry of a women’s movement from which Kelly has, in public, disassociated herself; it is also the osmotic reality of an America whose president was elevated to the position with the help of reality TV, and in which late-night hosts are shaping healthcare policy for millions of Americans, and in which politics, for many, have daily consequences of life and death.

As Megyn Kelly knows—as she knows perhaps better than most—politics infuse even, and especially, the things that claim to be apolitical. Even in the morning. Even in a faux-windowed studio in the middle of New York City. The weather is political. The water is political. Football is political. Alex Jones is political. The New Black Panther Party is political. Tamron Hall is political. Swimming pools are political. Santa Claus is political. The phrase “we all feel it” is political.

Kelly summarized the previous segment’s discussion: “We talked a bit about this show’s impact, and culturally”—Kelly repeated the word for emphasis—“culturally, it had a huge impact.” And then she mentioned the famous interview in which Joe Biden credited Will & Grace with doing more than anything else to bring about the (extremely political) legality of same-sex marriage.

Trump does deserve credit for North Korean talks, Chuck Todd says

Meet the Press Moderator joins Sunday TODAY’s Chuck Todd and says President Donald Trump deserves credit for helping create conditions to start talks of denuclearization with North Korea, but says some questions still loom. {"1222279235816":{"mpxId":"1222279235816","canonical_url":"https://www.today.com/video/oregon-trucker-recounts-walking-36-miles-after-losing-his-way-1222279235816","canonicalUrl":"https://www.today.com/video/oregon-trucker-recounts-walking-36-miles-after-losing-his-way-1222279235816","legacy_url":"https://www.today.com/video/oregon-trucker-recounts-walking-36-miles-after-losing-his-way-1222279235816","playerUrl":"https://www.today.com/offsite/oregon-trucker-recounts-walking-36-miles-after-losing-his-way-1222279235816","ampPlayerUrl":"https://player.today.com/offsite/oregon-trucker-recounts-walking-36-miles-after-losing-his-way-1222279235816","relatedLink":"","sentiment":"Neutral","shortUrl":"https://www.today.com/video/oregon-trucker-recounts-walking-36-miles-after-losing-his-way-1222279235816","description":"Jacob Cartwright, a truck driver in Oregon, accidentally plugged the wrong address into his GPS and wound up lost more than 100 miles out of his way. 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The officials said Kelly portrays himself to Trump administration aides as the lone bulwark against catastrophe, curbing the erratic urges of a president who has a questionable grasp on policy issues and the functions of government. He has referred to Trump as "an idiot" multiple times to underscore his point, according to four officials who say they've witnessed the comment

Officials said Kelly's public image as a retired four-star general instilling discipline on a chaotic White House and an impulsive president belies what they describe as the undisciplined and indiscreet approach he's employed as chief of staff. The private manner aides describe may shed new light on why Kelly now finds himself — just nine months into the job — grappling with diminished influence and a drumbeat of questions about how long he'll remain at the White House.

Presidential historian Michael Beschloss said Kelly's comments about Trump, when compared to previous White House chiefs of staff, "suggest a lack of respect for the sitting president of a kind that we haven't seen before." Beschloss said the closest similarity would be President Ronald Reagan's chief of staff during his second term, Don Regan, who "somewhat looked down on" his boss and eventually lost the support of the staff and the president. Regan was replaced after two years by Howard Baker.

White House chief of staff John Kelly personally denied calling President Donald Trump an "idiot" in an afternoon conversation with the commander in chief, relaying nearly the same statement in his face-to-face talk with the President as the one he released publicly, according to an administration official.

"I spend more time with the President than anyone else and we have an incredibly candid and strong relationship. He always knows where I stand and he and I both know this story is total BS," Kelly said in a statement. "I am committed to the President, his agenda, and our country. This is another pathetic attempt to smear people close to President Trump and distract from the administration's many successes."

But the White House official pointed out a big difference between the Kelly incident and Tillerson -- Kelly immediately denied the report and denounced it to the President's face. Tillerson declined to do so, simply saying he wouldn't play that Washington game

EWB: Well, that’s the point, I mean, I think that’s a very honest response. But you were going to be the story anyway: Why not do an Oct. 15 release date and give voters more information for a critical decision, than Nov. 15 and not give those voters that critical information? I still don’t understand.

KELLY: You have to understand that this isn’t just “Megyn Kelly, journalist, stumbles upon a news story.” This is “Megyn Kelly, human being, woman, mother, wife, finds herself in the middle of a news story in which her safety was in danger, her children’s safety was in danger,” and I have actual responsibilities to the people who live in my home to make sure I didn’t do anything to make our situation worse, and I took those very seriously. I did not want to do anything that would chum up those shark waters I was already swimming in. And while I thought it was important to make a historical record of what Donald Trump had done — just as a matter of First Amendment issues and presidential politics, whether he won or not I thought it was important — I didn’t feel it was necessary to endanger my own safety or my children’s safety to do that

KELLY: I know, Erik, but be realistic. I have a 7-, 5- and 3-year-old. We lived under armed guard for a year. We still have an armed guard. Why would I do something that might fan those flames within a month of a presidential election? How do you think that would have gone for me and my family?

The TV producer in Ailes saw a marketing niche, and the political operative in him saw a direct way of courting voters. Rupert Murdoch owned the network, but Ailes was its intellectual author. In the two decades since, the network has thrived without legitimate competition of any kind. It has proved to be a big tent, sheltering beneath it some excellent reporters but also a collection of blowhards, performance artists, cornballs, and Republican operatives in rehab from political failures and personal embarrassments. With the help of this antic cast, the Fox audience has come to understand something important that it did not know before: The people who make “mainstream” news and entertainment don’t just look down on conservatives and their values—they despise them.

Her understanding of the legal aspects of news stories and her tendency to conduct interviews as hostile cross-examinations (“Stay in bounds!” “I’ve already ceded the point!” “Don’t deflect!”) made her a riveting journalist-entertainer

Almost as soon as the election ended, Fox News went back to work on the mission, emphasizing a variety of themes, each intended to demonize the left. At the top of the list was the regular suggestion that Barack Obama was an America-hating radical, an elaboration of Glenn Beck’s observation (on Fox) that the president had “a deep-seated hatred for white people.” Other themes included the idea that straight white men were under ever-present threat from progressive policies and attitudes; that Planned Parenthood was a kind of front operation for baby murder; that political correctness had made the utterance of even the most obvious factual statements dangerous; and that the concerns of black America—including, especially, those of the Black Lives Matter movement—were so illogical, and so emotionally expressed, that they revealed millions of Americans to be beyond the reach of reason.

Morgan savaged Kelly for his remarks, saying he was taking a “nothing to see here, nothing to worry about” approach as “your entire country is eviscerated by fires”

“You are facing now one of the greatest crises you have ever faced, and there is you Mr Kelly, with respect, a senior politician who still doesn’t think this has anything to do with a heating-up planet,” Morgan said.

Tobin accused Kelly of denying the science which showed that 2019 was Australia’s hottest and driest year on record.

Men gave Perdue a 10-point lead over Ossoff and Loeffler a 9-point lead over Warnock. Women gave Ossoff an 11-point lead over Perdue, as well as a 19-point advantage for Warnock.

. If either Republican wins, the GOP will retain control of the Senate.

Fox—which, as the most watched cable news network, generates about $2.7 billion a year for its parent company, 21st Century Fox—acts as a force multiplier for Trump, solidifying his hold over the Republican Party and intensifying his support. “Fox is not just taking the temperature of the base—it’s raising the temperature,” she says. “It’s a radicalization model.”

The White House and Fox interact so seamlessly that it can be hard to determine, during a particular news cycle, which one is following the other’s lead. All day long, Trump retweets claims made on the network; his press secretary, Sarah Sanders, has largely stopped holding press conferences, but she has made some thirty appearances on such shows as “Fox & Friends” and “Hannity.” Trump, Hemmer says, has “almost become a programmer.”

Bill Kristol, who was a paid contributor to Fox News until 2012 and is a prominent Never Trumper, said of the network, “It’s changed a lot. Before, it was conservative, but it wasn’t crazy. Now it’s just propaganda.”

ohn Kelly, the former White House chief of staff, said he “felt bad” for having left Trump’s side, because his advice was not followed and the president therefore faced impeachment.

Kelly said that on leaving, he “said, ‘Whatever you do, don’t hire a ‘yes man’, someone who won’t tell you the truth’”. “Don’t do that,” the retired marine general said he told Trump. “Because if you do, I believe you will be impeached.”

Trump denies having done so but the House foreign affairs, intelligence and oversight committees have heard extensive testimony to the contrary.

The 117th Congress, being sworn in Sunday, is historically diverse, with record-setting numbers of women, Black and Latino members and members who identify as LGBTQ.

There will be two vacancies in the House: New York's 22nd District will not have representation as legal challenges in the race continue, and Louisiana's 5th District will not have representation due to the death of Republican Rep.-elect Luke Letlow. I

Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler is also running in Georgia's dual runoff elections Tuesday. Perdue's term finished at the end of the 116th Congress, so he is not included in the new Congress' numbers. Loeffler's term will continue unless she is defeated Tuesday, so she is counted.

In the current issue of Wired, the technology writer Kevin Kelly says that we had all better get used to this level of predictive prowess. Kelly argues that the age of artificial intelligence is finally at hand.

the smart machines of the future won’t be humanlike geniuses like HAL 9000 in the movie “2001: A Space Odyssey.” They will be more modest machines that will drive your car, translate foreign languages, organize your photos, recommend entertainment options and maybe diagnose your illnesses. “Everything that we formerly electrified we will now cognitize,” Kelly writes. Even more than today, we’ll lead our lives enmeshed with machines that do some of our thinking tasks for us.

Two big implications flow from this. The first is sociological. If knowledge is power, we’re about to see an even greater concentration of power.

There’s been total silence from the White House for a week regarding the deaths of four soldiers in Niger, and the administration remains relatively silent regarding the scope of their mission, and its own counter-ISIS and Afghanistan strategies.

By focusing on keeping the sacrifice of a Gold Star family sacred, I think Kelly missed the point of this last week’s distress. There is literally nothing a president can say or do to salve the grief of a parent or spouse who has lost a loved one serving their country. Nothing can rightly acknowledge or even measure the hole in their lives—no phone call or letter, not the benefits or life insurance provided by the Department of Defense, not even a personal $25,000 check offered to a grieving father. We shouldn’t fool ourselves into thinking there is a “right” way mitigate to their loss, though that shouldn’t stop us from trying.

I still have many questions. I want to be sure that the president does not treat the death of a servicemember who knew he or she might die like writing off a cost of doing business. I want him to to affirm that he sees the risks men and women in uniform take on behalf of the United States as a matter that accrues most to him, regardless of their success or failures. I want to believe that he does not see military families as a problem he can keep quiet with a check. I want to be assured that he does not only pause to consider the cost of today’s wars when someone dies. And I want to him to be able to explain, if asked, why they died.

Donald Trump has a particular taste for the degradation of racial, ethnic and religious minorities and women — and God forbid those identities should overlap — as a way playing out his personal sense of racial, sexist, and patriarchal entitlement.

as he degrades, he plays to those very same entitlements in the base that elected him.

This has manifested itself most recently in a despicable episode in which Trump became embroiled in a controversy — mostly of his own making! — over an unacceptable call he made to a pregnant widow of one of four soldiers killed in a still-murky attack in Niger.

Former President Donald Trump was audible, if not visible, all day long on Monday — and the effect is to keep him front and center in the Republican Party conversation.

His unwillingness, or inability, to lay low is exactly what many Trump observers expected

when broadcaster Rush Limbaugh died, Trump resumed his old habit of calling into TV networks, with two calls to Fox and one call each to Newsmax and One America News.

Sale believed society was on the verge of collapse. That wasn’t entirely bad, he argued. He hoped the few surviving humans would band together in small, tribal-style clusters. They wouldn’t be just off the grid. There would be no grid. Which was dandy, as far as Sale was concerned.

“History is full of civilizations that have collapsed, followed by people who have had other ways of living,” Sale said. “My optimism is based on the certainty that civilization will collapse.”

Sale was a bit taken aback—he’d never put a date on it. Finally, he blurted out 2020. It seemed like a good round number.

Republicans hold the Senate 53-47. (There are two independents — Angus King of Maine and Bernie Sanders of Vermont — but they caucus with Democrats and therefore should be counted that way in the math for Senate control.)

To flip the Senate, Democrats would need to net-gain four seats outright or three seats and control of the White House

Republicans can lose up to three seats and hold the majority, as long as President Trump wins reelection.