| | | | | Two unidentified people embrace outside Sen. John McCain's office in the Russell Senate Office Building Thursday morning after it was announced he was diagnosed with brain cancer. Credit:Mark Wilson/Getty Images | | | NYT Interview, Because I Can't: If you haven't read the Trump transcript, please do
Ivanka Lays Low: She's been absent from Made in America Week events
Country Radio's Gender Imbalance: Hunter's stop in Nashville where he talked about why there aren't more songs by women on the radio | | | What the White House is Talking About:
President Trump's visit today to the Pentagon, where he told assembled press, "ISIS is falling fast, very fast."
What the White House Press Corps is Talking About:
Trump's diss to the New York Times about Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and Sessions' response.
Briefings, A Love/Hate Story:
Six months into the Trump administration, CNN takes a look at what's up with the White House press briefings. There's even a handy chart: | | New York Times Interview, Because I Can't:
I really can't believe how good the Times interview with Trump is. If you haven't read the transcript, please do. My favorite parts are when Trump discusses having a big parade down Pennsylvania Avenue (he wants to), because he says of the Bastille Day Parade in Paris, "that was a super-duper." And also when he says the first lady of Japan doesn't speak any English (she does). TRUMP: "So, I was seated next to the wife of Prime Minister Abe [Shinzo Abe of Japan], who I think is a terrific guy, and she's a terrific woman, but doesn't speak English. NYT: "Like, nothing, right? Like zero?" TRUMP: "Like, not 'hello.'" But the best of all was when the interview was interrupted by Arabella Kushner, who calls Trump "grandpa." He encourages the six-year-old to speak Chinese to the reporters, which she does, because she's Arabella. I make no secret that Arabella is my favorite Trump — if you are curious as to why, just watch this video that Ivanka Trump posted on her Instagram page last night. It's but one example.
Ivanka Trump Lays Low:
Speaking of Ivanka, it's sort of strange that while she's been at many White House roundtable discussions, ranging from women in the workplace to tech innovation, she was absent from the Made in America Week events. Betsy Klein and I wrote a story about it.
Today, however, Ivanka was at the West Wing posing with the robotics team from Afghanistan, who were granted last-minute entry to the US to compete in DC this week at the FIRST Robotics Competition. | | Credit: @karentravers/Twitter
Our Daily Melania:
We haven't seen much of the first lady this week — she's apparently in Bedminster, New Jersey, spending time with family. So I'm resorting to this pic of her wax image, which was unveiled at a museum in Madrid, Spain, today. It's not a bad likeness, actually. | | Credit: Marcos del Mazo/Getty Images; Eduardo Parra/Getty Images
Dress Like the First Daughter:
Ivanka Trump posted a pic of Arabella's field trip to the West Wing, where she also met the Vice President. In the image, I can tell Ivanka is wearing those cream slacks she's worn before, the ones with the flaps and front tie. They're $1,440, by Proenza Schouler. | | | Credit: @ivankatrump/Instagram | | What Washington is Talking About:
John McCain's cancer diagnosis. Some of his Senate Republican colleagues learned the news last night during a meeting on health care. "We all stopped and just prayed," Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska said. The reaction has been a rare moment of bipartisan consensus. "He is the toughest person I know," wrote his daughter Meghan, in a statement. "Cancer may afflict him in many ways but it will not make him surrender. Nothing ever has."
What America is Talking About:
O.J. Simpson is appearing before a parole board in Nevada today. The board will determine whether he'll be released early from prison.
Poll of the Day:
The CBO released analysis Wednesday that found under the Republicans' health care plan, 32 million more people would be without insurance by 2026. And now this morning, a CNN poll shows more than a third of Americans think Congress should abandon the plan to repeal Obamacare. That figure has grown from 23% in March to 35% today. | | I'm driving cross-country for COVER/LINE. You can read about it every day in the newsletter and follow along on Instagram, at @cnncoverline and @hunterschwarz. To read about past stops on the trip, click here.
~The Great American Road Trip 2017~ Stop No. 3: Nashville, Tennessee:
This day is the longest drive of the trip so far -- 645 miles from Punxsutawney to Nashville. It's five states in just over ten hours (shout-out to that little sliver of West Virginia I cut through), and a slog of a drive. An hour outside of the city, I pass Bowling Green (#neverforget).
The next morning, my first stop is to Broadway in downtown Nashville. It's a mix of Beale St., Hollywood Boulevard and the Vegas Strip, but with way more bachelorette parties. Pedal pubs packed with bridal parties in matching shirts stream up and down the street blasting turn-of-the-century teen pop favs like Britney and Spice Girls. The musicians performing inside the bars and restaurants are legit some of the best I've ever heard. This city is a blast.
What Nashville is Talking About:
The 2018 Tennessee gubernatorial race is expected to be the most expensive in state history, with the possibility of TV ads airing a year before the election, according to the Tennessean.
Nashville's Must-See Political Spot:
The venues where losing presidential candidates hold their election-night rallies become the stuff of political legend. There's of course the Javits Center in New York where Hillary Clinton was supposed to speak under faux shattered glass, and the Boston Harbor fireworks show that never happened because Mitt Romney lost in 2012. Nashville has War Memorial Plaza, where Al Gore held his election night rally in 2000. | | Credit: Ryan Alexander
The space is empty when I go, but I imagine what it must have been like that night, packed with supporters. As the story goes, it was after 3 a.m. when Gore was about to give his concession speech. He had already conceded to George W. Bush, but then rescinded his concession because of how tight the race was. His campaign chair Bill Daley was the one who went out to tell the crowd they weren't going to get an answer that night about who the 43rd president of the United States would be.
Meet Beverly Keel:
The entire top 20 of the Billboard Country Songs charts this week are sung by men, with the exception of a Lady Antebellum song (they're just 2/3 men) and three songs with a guest female artist. | | Credit: Billboard
It's nothing new. Country music for a while now has been dominated by men, something Beverly Keel, co-founder of Change the Conversation, is trying to change. The group was founded in 2014 to fight the lopsided gender imbalance in the music genre.
"You'd be hard pressed to hear a lot of female voices on country music these days and the belief in country radio is you shouldn't play two female songs back-to-back and that women don't want to hear other women on the radio," she says.
In 2015, radio consultant Keith Hill in an interview described songs by women as the tomatoes in the salad of country, something that "galvanized" the town. "It gave us a symbol," she says of the tomato, which is on the business card she gives me.
"What we want is an even playing field," she says. "We're not saying play a woman because she's a woman, but if the songs are equally as good, the woman should get a chance along with the man." | | Credit: @cnncoverline/Instagram
In today's "bro country," women are often portrayed as the "pretty little thing" sitting in the passenger side of the truck instead of the ones driving the truck, Keel says. "Young women today aren't hearing their life experiences on the radio, so the next Taylor Swift may be discouraged to launch that career as a teenager or in her early 20s."
She sees what's happening in Nashville as part of the larger conversation about women nationwide, including political movements like the Women's March. "It's one piece of a bigger part of women in pop culture, which is one piece of women in America." | | | | | | |
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