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Good Monday morning. We have TWO excellent Playbook events this week. A breakfast on Thursday with Attorney General Loretta Lynch at the Liaison Hotel (415 New Jersey Avenue, NW). Doors open at 8 a.m., and the program starts at 8:30 a.m.. We’ll talk to her about her time atop the Justice Department, what she is most focused on in the waning days of the Obama administration and what’s next for her. RSVP http://bit.ly/2h73iS9
ON FRIDAY, we have Playbook Cocktails with Sean Spicer, the chief strategist and communications director for the RNC. Spicer is working on the Trump transition effort, and is in the middle of the biggest decisions being made right now. We’ll talk to him about what to expect from a President Donald Trump, and what we should be watching out for in 2017. This event is also at the Liaison Hotel. Doors open at 4 p.m., and the program begins at 4:30 p.m. RSVP http://bit.ly/2hq2f0C
SPOTTED -- Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and his wife, Transportation Secretary nominee Elaine Chao, dining Sunday night with Ivanka Trump in a private room at BLT Prime in the Trump Hotel.
**SUBSCRIBE to Playbook: http://politi.co/1M75UbX
NOTE TO TRUMP TOWER -- It’s early. Donald Trump hasn’t even been sworn in yet. But there is mounting evidence that Rex Tillerson will never become secretary of state. The president-elect hedged when Fox News host Chris Wallace asked about nominating him. Democrats certainly won’t vote for him, and Republican senators like Marco Rubio are practically begging Trump to find another nominee, signaling he’ll be subject to a skewering of a lifetime. The president elect has political capital, but it’s not clear he has enough coin to install an oil CEO seen as close to Vladimir Putin as the nation’s top diplomat. On the upside, if he does nominate Tillerson, it could be an early lesson about how Washington works. Trump is expected to announce his secretary of state this week.
-- “Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson Faces Senate Dissent as Potential State Pick,” by WSJ’s Kristina Peterson, Peter Nicholas and Rebecca Ballhaus. http://on.wsj.com/2hkK5do
DONALD TRUMP told Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday” that he doesn’t need to get daily intelligence briefings unless situations around the world change. FLASHBACKS – On Sept. 11, 2012, @realDonaldTrump tweeted: “Priorities--while fundraising and campaigning on our dime, Obama has skipped over 50% of his intel briefings” http://bit.ly/2hdRXQk ... On Sept. 30, 2014: “Fact--Obama does not read his intelligence briefings nor does he get briefed in person by the CIA or DOD. Too busy I guess!” http://bit.ly/2hl0vTf ... On Oct. 6, 2014: “Obama has missed 58% of his intelligence briefings. But our president does make 100% of his fundraisers.” http://bit.ly/2grJ1mg
--FACT-CHECK -- WaPo’s Glenn Kessler, Sept. 24, 2012, “The bogus claim that Obama ‘skips’ his intelligence briefings”: http://wapo.st/2hf4OSB
GEORGE LITTLE, former CIA spokesman, posts on Facebook: “The CIA, my former employer, has no natural political constituency. ... What we are seeing today, however, is unprecedented. The next commander-in-chief, President-elect Trump, dismisses the work of the Agency and calls its findings ‘ridiculous.’ His sustained disrespect for the CIA and the wider intelligence community is nothing short of shameful. It also disrupts one of the bedrocks of our strength: the application of foreign intelligence, often collected at great peril by the men and women of the CIA, to the development of policies that keep us safe. We have never been here before. I hope we make a U-turn.”
-- MICHAEL CROWLEY: “Flynn deputy raises more doubts about Trump team: Fox analyst K.T. McFarland, out of government for three decades, is the unlikely choice for pressure-filled job of No.2 at NSC”: “At a political rally in June 2009, Donald Trump’s soon-to-be deputy national security adviser, K.T. McFarland, offered a jarring prediction. China might cancel the Fourth of July, she said. ... Unless voters ‘throw the bums out’ McFarland said, ‘we can all start learning Chinese.’ She then read aloud Mandarin phrases from an index card, including ones for ‘How can I help you?’ and ‘What do you want from me?’ McFarland’s theatrical performance might have been lighthearted, but its breezy and simplistic tone underscores why national security experts in both parties worry she is unqualified for what national security veterans say is among the hardest—and most important—jobs at the White House.” http://politi.co/2hDVPXY
HOUSE CLEANING -- DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE staffers are preparing to head for the exits. Staffers have been told that they will have to submit their resignation and reapply for their jobs following the election of a new party chair, according to sources familiar with the DNC. While there have already been some layoffs at the DNC post-election, interim chair Donna Brazile has been able to keep staffers much longer than anticipated. The move comes after significant turmoil at the committee after several staffers resigned in the wake of Debbie Wasserman Schultz stepping down as chairman over the summer.
IN SEARCH OF A MESSAGE -- “Democrats fear another Trump trouncing,” by Gabriel Debenedetti: “As Donald Trump’s inauguration draws near, Democrats fear they remain woefully unprepared to fight the new president’s agenda. The party loses its standard-bearer once President Barack Obama leaves office, and the Democratic National Committee won’t get a permanent chairman and staff until March, two months into the presidency. That Democratic power vacuum has raised concerns about the party's ability to provide a united message — or even to stand up a centralized rapid response operation — for the president’s first 100 days in office. Their worst nightmare is that Trump, ever the showman, will define his opening act with little unified resistance …
“Individual elected officials, led by Senators Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Sherrod Brown, have already signaled their intention to put loud and sustained pressure on the president-elect through a series of speeches, statements, TV appearances, op-eds, and on social media. But they are doing so without the benefit of any party-wide communication about a coordinated message behind their Trump barbs — the kind of guidance and direction so recently provided by Obama or Hillary Clinton and her campaign surrogate operation. In some corners of Capitol Hill, senior senators have even taken to blindly calling advocacy groups in town, asking where they can find relevant opposition research against Trump’s cabinet picks.” http://politi.co/2hot8iA
GREAT ANECDOTE -- “In Donald McGahn, Donald Trump Gets a Combative White House Counsel,” by NYT’s Eric Lichtblau: “He was feeling triumphant as he had lunch a few weeks ago at his blue-chip Washington law firm, Jones Day, with Benjamin Ginsberg, a colleague at the firm who was a mentor to Mr. McGahn when he was starting out in election law. ‘How old were you,’ Mr. McGahn asked his mentor, ‘when you had your first winning presidential campaign?’ ‘Forty-nine,’ answered Mr. Ginsburg, who was the campaign lawyer during President George W. Bush’s victory in 2000. ‘Ha! I’m 48 — beat you!’ Mr. McGahn responded, according to Mr. Ginsberg.” http://nyti.ms/2hv1fbO
CHINA HITS BACK -- “Trump draws rebuke after saying U.S. isn’t bound by China policy,” by WaPo’s Emily Rauhala in Beijing: “President-elect Trump is talking about Taiwan again — and nobody, it seems, is pleased as he suggests undoing the the nearly four decade-old basis of U.S.-Chinese relations. In an interview broadcast Sunday, Trump said the U.S. would not necessarily be bound by the One China policy, the diplomatic understanding that underpins ties between Washington and Beijing, unless it could ‘make a deal,’ potentially on U.S.-China trade. The remark elicited an angry response from Beijing, with the Foreign Ministry expressing ‘serious concern’ and a Party-controlled newspaper calling the president-elect ‘as ignorant as a child.’ By appearing to treat Taiwan as just a bargaining chip for trade deals, he may also have irked Taipei, experts said.” http://wapo.st/2gCTqzb
JIM RUTENBERG in the NYT: “In Trump Era, Uncompromising TV News Should Be the Norm, Not the Exception”: “Too often television news, especially on cable, serves as a megaphone for politicians who use it to forward lies and propaganda while so effortlessly ignoring questions they’re supposedly there to answer. But every now and then, there are those happy exceptions. One came at precisely 4:01 p.m. on Tuesday. That was when the CNN anchor Jake Tapper began asking Vice President-elect Mike Pence about connections between the Trump transition team and Michael G. Flynn, the son of the incoming national security adviser, Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn.” http://nyti.ms/2hv00JH … 3-min. video of Tapper-Pence http://bit.ly/2h2frW6
BUZZ -- Trump has said he is withdrawing from TPP, and has put the future of other trade deals in serious doubt. But some pro-traders are starting to see an opportunity. Coalitions representing agriculture and other industries (which rely on open markets, but don’t ship jobs overseas) are starting to ramp up campaigns to try and change the narrative.
SHOT -- @realDonaldTrump at 8:02 p.m.: “Just watched @NBCNightlyNews - So biased, inaccurate and bad, point after point. Just can’t get much worse, although @CNN is right up there!”
CHASER -- Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.) (@jahimes) at 8:10 p.m.: “We’re 5 wks from Inauguration & the President Elect is completely unhinged. The electoral college must do what it was designed for.”
HAPPENING TODAY -- Aaron Schock will be arraigned in Springfield, Illinois, on 24 criminal counts relating to his time as a congressman.
STEVE COLL, author of “Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power,” on NewYorker.com, “Rex Tillerson, from a Corporate Oil Sovereign to the State Department”: “In nominating Tillerson, Trump [would be] handing the State Department to a man who has worked his whole life running a parallel quasi-state, for the benefit of shareholders, fashioning relationships with foreign leaders that may or may not conform to the interests of the United States government. ... Tillerson is a devotee of Abraham Lincoln, so perhaps he has privately harbored the ambition to transform himself into a true statesman, on behalf of all Americans. Yet it is hard to imagine, after four decades at ExxonMobil and a decade leading the corporation, how Tillerson will suddenly develop respect and affection for the American diplomatic service he will now lead, or embrace a vision of America’s place in the world that promotes ideals for their own sake, emphatically privileging national interests over private ones.” http://bit.ly/2gPmMYL ... $19 on Amazon http://amzn.to/2hiG6Ov
BOIES, SCHILLER & FLEXNER is officially out of Friendship Heights. The firm moves into the 10th and 11th floors of 1401 New York Avenue today. They have 37,000 square feet of space.
JEFFREY TOOBIN in the New Yorker, “Gawker’s Demise and the Trump-Era Threat to the First Amendment”: “[T]he lawsuit seems destined to have an enduring afterlife, and not just because of the revelation that it had been secretly financed by a tech billionaire with a vendetta against Gawker. The verdict heralds a new era, in which judges and jurors see the ribald world of the Internet, rather than the staid realm of newspapers, as the dominant form of journalism. Since the nineteen-sixties, a series of Supreme Court precedents, most of them involving newspapers, have made libel cases very difficult to win, in part because plaintiffs bear the burden of proving that the stories about them are false. ... Hulk Hogan conceded that Gawker’s story about him was true, yet he still won a vast judgment and, not incidentally, drove the Web site out of business. The prospect of liability, perhaps existential in nature, for true stories presents a chilling risk for those who rely on the First Amendment.” http://bit.ly/2hkGrDp
--“Donald Trump’s Real Threat to the Press: Worry about the Espionage Act, not libel laws,” by Peter Sterne: http://politi.co/2hovZs3
REMEMBER HIM? -- “Khizr Khan rose to fame with his emotional pleas against Trump. Now he’s targeting the ‘politics of fear’,” by LA Times’ Jaweed Kaleem: “Khizr Khan, the Gold Star father who became a viral sensation after speaking at the Democratic National Convention about the death in Iraq of his Army captain son, is no longer on the campaign trail for Hillary Clinton. Now the 65-year-old has a new mission: inspiring hope in young Muslims, some of whom had never voted in an election before last month, some of whom weren’t old enough to vote at all … In the small world of American Muslim and South Asian organizations, Khan, who lives in Charlottesville, Va., and is a naturalized citizen from Pakistan, has become a sought-after speaker. Before Sunday, he had visited with about two dozen groups since the election and plans to visit a few dozen more, all while working on a memoir that will be released next year. It’s talking with those who are decades younger than him, he said, that ‘heartens me.’” http://lat.ms/2gvrwGN
HE’S BACK -- “Twitter Reinstates White Nationalist Leader Richard Spencer,” by BuzzFeed’s Charlie Warzel: “On Saturday evening, Twitter reinstated — with verification — the account of Richard Spencer, a leading figure of the so-called alt-right movement, and the head of the white nationalist think tank, The National Policy Institute. ... [A]ccording to Twitter, Spencer was banned on a technicality: creating multiple accounts with overlapping uses. Twitter’s multiple account policy was put in place as a safeguard to help curb dog piling and targeted harassment. ... [He tweeted on Saturday night:] ‘I’m back.’” http://bzfd.it/2hmRlGp
WEST COAST WATCH -- “A problem ‘too big to ignore’ — how years of congressional wrangling led to a water compromise,” by LA Times’ Sarah D. Wire: “Few people expected a California water fight in the final days of a lame-duck Congress, and fewer still expected landmark water legislation to pit the state’s U.S. senators against each other in the last moments of their 24-year partnership. It took years of negotiations, and the right political timing, to bring the first major water policy affecting California in decades through the House and Senate. Over frayed feelings and filibuster threats, both chambers overwhelmingly passed the bill, which changes how much water is pumped from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to San Joaquin Valley farmers and Southern California.” http://lat.ms/2hkJLOP
TRUMP EFFECT -- NYT A9, “Buoyed by Donald Trump Win, Jerusalem Mayor Hopes to Get U.S. Embassy,” by Rick Gladstone: “The mayor of Jerusalem says that he is optimistic that once Donald J. Trump becomes president, the United States will quickly move its embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to his contested ancient city, a step every other American administration has resisted to the annoyance of many Israeli Jews. ... The official State Department position is that the status of Jerusalem ‘is an issue that should be resolved in final status negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians.’” http://nyti.ms/2ht7D32
TRUMP POOL REPORT DU JOUR from pooler Sarah Westwood (@sarahcwestwood) of the Washington Examiner: “After an old woman approached the pool with a copy of her local newspaper from the day President-elect Trump won in the hopes that we knew where to find PEOTUS for an autograph, Jason Miller asked the pool to find the woman and get the newspaper so PEOTUS could sign it. Unfortunately, the pool could not locate the woman by that time.”
MEDIAWATCH -- “Trump to inherit state-run TV network with expanded reach,” by Tara Palmeri: “President-elect Donald Trump is about to inherit a newly empowered Voice of America that some officials fear could serve as an unfettered propaganda arm for the former reality TV star who has flirted for years with launching his own network. Buried on page 1,404 of the National Defense Authorization Act that passed last week is a provision that would disband the bipartisan board of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the independent U.S. agency that includes Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia, and the Middle East Broadcast Networks. The move – pushed by House Foreign Affairs Chairman Ed Royce as a way to streamline the agency – concentrates control into a powerful CEO that is appointed by the president.” http://politi.co/2gQDKG0
-- FRANKLIN FOER, former TNR editor, to The Atlantic -- HuffPost’s Michael Calderone: Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeff "Goldberg said Foer, who had recently covered the election for Slate, will primarily write ‘big heave magazine stories’ for The Atlantic. Foer, author of a bestselling book on globalization, ‘How Soccer Explains the World,’ has most recently been working on a book about the threat posed by big technology companies. Though Foer’s focus will be writing, Goldberg said he may also help generate story ideas given his experience running a politics and culture magazine. ... Goldberg said the election ‘lit a fire under’ him to ‘quickly and definitively’ build out the magazine’s stable. ‘The Atlantic was created for moments for like this -- quite literally,’ Goldberg said. ‘The Atlantic was created at a moment of intense fracturing.’” http://huff.to/2hn8FuL
-- JOE NOCERA to Bloomberg View – View editor David Shipley to email the staff this a.m.: “Some very good news: Joe Nocera will join View as a columnist, writing several times a week. Some more good news: he’ll also write regular features for Megan and her team at Businessweek. Best of all, he'll be returning to his roots, focusing on business and the cross-section of business and public policy. ... Joe spent more than a decade as a staff writer and columnist at the New York Times. ... Joe starts on January 9 and will be based with us in New York.”
-- JEFF BALLOU elected National Press Club president – Post-Gazette’s Tracie Mauriello: “Elected Friday, Mr. Ballou [of Al-Jazeera] will be the club’s 110th president and the first African-American man to hold the position. ... He succeeds Tommy Burr, Washington bureau chief of the Salt Lake Tribune. ... Mr. Ballou said he is prepared for the challenges of leading the 3,200-member Press Club at the start of the Donald Trump presidency. ‘We have a president elect who has effectively declared war on journalism, and people have told me “You’re going to be a wartime president.” I’m aware of this. I embrace it.’” http://bit.ly/2hkRpIS
--ROY GUTMAN, a McClatchy alum, won the Arthur Ross award for distinguished reporting and analysis of foreign affairs from the American Academy of Diplomacy – per the citation: “Journalist of the first rank, his commentary goes even to the heart of darkness and brings the light to Bosnia-Herzegovina and ethnic cleansing, to Afghanistan and the roots, the course, the effects of terrorism, and his unflinching exposure of the crimes of war.” His remarks accepting the reward http://bit.ly/2gwVad3
SPOTTED: John Podesta in the Miami airport on the 4:50 flight back to DC … Matt Lewis on an American Airlines flight from Washington to Miami yesterday
HOLIDAY PARTY CIRCUIT -- SPOTTED at the house of Norah O’Donnell and “Chef Geoff” Tracy on Saturday night for their holiday party where they had lots of food including crab cakes and tuna tartare: Bob and Patricia Schieffer, Jake and Jen Tapper, Anita McBride, Betsy Fischer Martin and Jonathan Martin, Jim and Autumn VandeHei, Tony Blinken and Evan Ryan, Mary Hagar, Frank and Mary Fahrenkopf, Katty Kay and Tom Carver, Adam Verdugo, Tammy Haddad, Rita Braver and Bob Barnett, Chris Isham and Jen Maguire.
OUT AND ABOUT – Tim Geithner organized a reunion for the 2008 Obama economic team Friday night in the Old Executive Office Building. “[T]he very early members of the economic team in the WH during the early days who crafted the ARRA, auto bailout, housing bailout, etc….. In addition to a great slide show, Anita Dunn created a video with highlights from the first year -- mostly funny clips from early talk shows, interviews, hearings, etc.” Instapic http://bit.ly/2gvrNJW
SPOTTED: Larry Summers, Tim Geithner, Christy Romer, Peter Orszag, Jason Furman, Austan Goolsbee, Brian Deese, Diana Farrell, Jared Bernstein, Cece Rouse, Marne Levine, Shaun Donovan, Michael Barr, Gene Sperling, Karen Anderson, Lyndon Boozer
WEEKEND WEDDINGS – Charlie Szold married Anastasia Voskresenskaya Saturday at the Interlaken Inn, in Lakeville, Connecticut. Charlie just finished as Rep. David Young’s campaign manager and was the IA GOP’s comms director during the caucuses; Anastasia is a financial analyst with Robert Half Management Resources. Josh Levitt, Katie McGinty’s press secretary, officiated. This article outlined Charlie and Josh’s improbable friendship in the DMR last year: http://dmreg.co/1JMhV79 ... Pic http://bit.ly/2gCSM4t
SPOTTED: Lauren Vrazilek, Matt Strawn, Annah Backstrom, James Rockas, Ryan Gough, Tim Alberta, Marilinda Garcia, Shawn McCoy, Tom Szold, Mike Sullivan, Eric Baker, Kenny Cunningham, Laura Steven, Adam Wachholz
--On Saturday, Josh Wolf married Sarah Henke at the Mt. Washington Mill Dye House in Baltimore, Maryland. Pool report from Josh Karp: “Josh just finished working as campaign manager for Rep. Patrick Murphy’s Senate campaign in Florida. He and Sarah met just before he moved to Sacramento to manage Rep. Ami Bera’s 2012 race, and decided to give long distance a try. Three election cycles later, they tied the knot under the chuppah in Josh’s hometown. The happy couple lives in D.C., where Sarah works as a clinical dietitian at Providence Hospital.” SPOTTED: Raghu Devaguptapu, Rich Schlackman, John Bivona, Niels Lesniewski. Pics http://bit.ly/2gPo6ur ... http://bit.ly/2hjsd2R
--Ellen Gilmer, legal reporter for E&E’s EnergyWire, on Saturday married David Lohr, senior compliance and ethics attorney at Latham & Watkins. They met at Iron Horse Tap Room. SPOTTED: Melissa Repko, Christine DiGangi, Laura Helbling, Nicole Dungca, Amanda Reilly, Nigel Duara
WELCOME TO THE WORLD -- Elizabeth Campbell, Bloomberg’s Chicago bureau chief and a municipal finance reporter, and Max Fitzgerald, attending physiatrist at Rush Oak Park Hospital, “have welcomed Nora Campbell Fitzgerald, born Nov. 29, beating her deadline (due date) by 10 days. Mom and baby are doing great. Little Nora is going to grow up to be a Cubs and Northwestern Wildcats fan.”
OBAMA ALUMNI -- “Civitas Public Affairs Group announced today that Jamal Brown will be joining the firm as a senior associate on January 3, 2017. ... Jamal served as the Press Secretary for the White House Office of Management and Budget under the Obama Administration.” http://politi.co/2huKeyo
--Khan Shoieb is leaving Stu Loeser’s firm on Friday to become director of corporate comms and policy at Oscar Health (co-founded by Josh Kushner) on Dec. 19. He was battleground states coordinator on President Obama’s reelection and has worked with Stu on Google, Uber, and Mike Bloomberg for the last few years.
TRANSITIONS -- “Ed Stewart, a 25-year veteran of D.C. and international policy, will lead Prism’s newly established government affairs team at the firm. ... Bill Harris, a stalwart of GOP politics for more than three decades, will join Prism’s advisory council.” ... “Casey Aden-Wansbury, former chief of staff to Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) who has been on Airbnb’s communications team for the past year, is moving over to lead Airbnb’s newly created federal affairs team as the director of federal Affairs and engagement. Meagan McCanna, chief of staff to Representative John Kline (R-Minn.) will join Airbnb in January as senior manager of federal affairs and engagement.” … Public Opinion Strategies has promoted vice presidents Jim Hobart and Micah Roberts to partners at the firm. http://politi.co/2hjwi9Q
BIRTHDAYS OF THE DAY: Jesse Ferguson, former deputy national press secretary and senior spokesman for Hillary Clinton and the pride of Richmond, is 36 – read his Playbook Plus Q&A: http://politi.co/2hl2mHt ... David Pasch, comms. director for Rep. Peter Roskam (R-IL) and a GenOpp alum, celebrating with his fiancé at Homestead later this week – Playbook Plus Q&A: http://politi.co/2huWBKD
BIRTHDAYS: Lanny Davis is 71 (h/t Eleanor McManus, who notes that “hopefully it will be a crisis free day”) … Frank Sinatra would have been 101 (hat tip: Doug Heye, whose Sinatra tie is one of his favorites) ... Allan Karl (h/t little bro Jonathan) ... news anchor Maggie Rodriguez … Broderick Johnson, assistant to the President and White House Cabinet Secretary, as well as chair of the My Brother’s Keeper Task Force (h/t Jon Haber) ... Jeff Goldstein, the deputy chief of staff and special assistant to the chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers (h/t Katie Glueck) ... Taylor Miller Thomas, senior associate at Hamilton Place Strategies ... Sarah Horowitz, senior media strategist at Raffetto Herman Strategic Communications and a Commerce alum -- she celebrated by getting a manicure and massage this weekend, and her boyfriend is taking her to dinner tonight ... Politico alum Katy Bachman ... ABC News’ Becky Perlow, a CNN alum and the pride of Baltimore ... Nora Boustany ... Peter Fenn … former Rep. Joe Sestak (D-Penn.) is 65 ... former Rep. Steve Kagen (D-Wisc.) is 67 ... AP science writer Seth Borenstein ...
… Bret Wincup of Hewlett Packard Enterprise ... Jeff Burton, partner at Burton/Kamins Advocacy and NRCC/Cantor alum, is 42 (h/t Scott Kamins) ... Rep. Blake Farenthold, (R-Tex.) (i.e. “Frosty the snowman”), celebrating with dinner and partying in Corpus Christi with his friends and family, is 55 (h/t Benny Johnson) … Liz Brim, manager of email marketing at Cole Haan ... politics junkie Alexander Levine, an 8th grader at the Dalton School, is 14 ... Jenna Kruse, deputy research director at Emily’s List ... David Mays, PR and comms at Kaiser Permanente Thrive ... Bush WH alum Rebecca Neale, now COS at The Paulson Institute ... Jamie Brown Hantman … Danny Russel, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs ... Dwight Fettig, partner at Porterfield, Lowenthal, Fettig & Sears and a Senate Banking alum ... CBS Radio’s Jen Richer ... Bob Wood ... Maren Hesla … Peter Bock … David Sandretti, director of legislative and public affairs for rural development at USDA ... Dan Schooff … Diane Welsh … Dawn Laguens ... Ed Espinoza ... Carolyn Castore … Dawn Laguens … Tony Winnicker … Pat Geadleman … Madeline Sasse (h/ts Teresa Vilmain) ... Tanner Hishta … Bush 43 alum Angela Hernandez ... Kelly O’Brien ... former TV host Bob Barker is 93 (h/t AP)