| | | | | President Donald Trump denounces the Maduro regime in a speech Monday to the Venezuelan community in Miami. Credit: Joe Readle/Getty Images | | What the White House Is Talking About:
President Donald Trump has closed-door meetings today after a three-day weekend in Palm Beach that featured a lot of golfing. This afternoon, he signs the Space Policy Directive 4.
What the White House Press Corps Is Talking About:
Sen. Bernie Sanders is entering the 2020 race.
(Promo alert: Wolf Blitzer will host a town hall with Sanders next Monday. Details here.)
Just as Trump Predicted, Here Come the Lawsuits:
Sixteen states filed suit against the President's declaration of a national emergency. Led by California, the basic premise of the litigation is that Trump is going around Congress to get funding when he doesn't have the power to do so under the Constitution. And while the states have an uphill legal battle if they really want to go forward, Trump also faces more challenges, including one that could from Democrats in Congress.
McCabe Book Tour Continues:
Former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe continued his media rounds today, promoting his new memoir, "The Threat." McCabe basically said things behind the scenes in the West Wing and the Department of Justice were pretty chaotic in 2017, and there was a general mistrust of the President and his closest advisers.
McCabe, according to CNN's Laura Jarrett, really didn't like Jeff Sessions: "McCabe offers a scathing depiction of Attorney General Jeff Sessions as a hapless, bumbling leader, with regressive and uninformed beliefs about national security, who harkened back for the 'old days' when the FBI 'only hired Irishmen,' not those with 'nose rings and tattoos,' and appeared fixated on 'immigration, even when there was no immigration angle' on any given topic. Even more worrisome, according to McCabe, was Sessions' failure to 'compartmentalize the new knowledge he acquired,' and how Sessions 'would say, I saw in the paper the other day ... and then would repeat an item that (the FBI) had briefed him on a few days earlier, intelligence from the (President's Daily Brief).' "
McCabe is scheduled to be on "Anderson Cooper 360°" tonight. | | Investigating the President? McCabe Says Congress Was Meh:
Another interesting nugget from McCabe was that when he informed Congress that the FBI had opened a counterintelligence investigation into the President of the United States, Congress was basically like, "Cool, cool." McCabe talked about it on the "Today" show this morning: "That's the important part here, Savannah: No one objected. Not on legal grounds, not on constitutional grounds and not based on the facts."
Amy Klobuchar Refreshingly a "No" Woman:
I have to say, and I only caught snippets because I was traveling, but I dug what Sen. Amy Klobuchar was putting down Monday night at her CNN town hall. There's always something fishy to me when a candidate is so "yes, yes, yes, I can do that" to things that we know aren't easy -- and aren't easily fixable. So Monday night, when Klobuchar was skeptical about issues such as free college tuition, Medicare for All and the Green New Deal, I felt a refreshing sense of realism. Or, as Jeff Zeleny puts it, pragmatism. Klobuchar also has something else that will help her: her sense of humor. She's funny. | | Dress Like the First Lady:
Monday in Florida, Melania Trump went with a bold floral pattern, something she doesn't often do. Personally, I didn't love it. She wore this $2,500 silk Gabriela Hearst dress to a children's hospital event in Miami as well as to a later introduction for her husband at his speech about Venezuela. | | Credit: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images, bergdorfgoodman.com
Fashion Giant Karl Lagerfeld Is Gone:
I don't want to say "rest in peace," because Karl Lagerfeld never rested, up until his last years. He designed collection after collection and was the driving force in modern fashion history. There won't be another designer like him, probably ever. I was so influenced by the 1990s Chanel days when the original supermodels were in their heyday and Lagerfeld was cutting iconic Chanel suits to showcase miniskirts, and simple white T-shirts under the telltale Chanel jackets -- I used to "borrow" my mother's black Chanel jacket with white piping and gold buttons and wear it with torn baggy jeans and a Hanes T-shirt. Those were the days. Anyway, I'm sad, but I'm spending the day reminiscing about my favorite Lagerfeld fashion moments and the dreams he weaved and the magic he created -- and how thankful I am to him for all of it. | | To understand who Lagerfeld really was read this Vogue obituary and scroll through his most important Vogue spreads. And I highly recommend the Netflix documentary series "7 Days Out," especially the episode featuring the Chanel Haute Couture show. Fun fact: It's the season that featured the gown Melania Trump wore last year to the France state dinner at the White House.
And speaking of the first lady, here is a shot of her and Lagerfeld in Paris in 2005 just months before her wedding to Donald Trump. | | Credit: Michel Dufour/Wireimage/Getty Images
And here's the shot from Vogue that I still have hanging in my bedroom, and which I just changed my Twitter cover photo to. ... What a legend. Those were the days, you guys. | | | Hunter Schwarz is off. His section will return Wednesday. | | | | | | |
