Mitch Perry
I was driving to a dental appointment yesterday when I heard via Sirius/XM’s POTUS channel that CNN had hired former Donald Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski as a “contributor” to their network’s political team.
The motivation for hiring such a prominent surrogate, obviously, is to get somebody on set who can get into the candidate’s head, if you will. So perhaps Lewandowski can provide some insight in their political coverage.
Probably not.
Upon leaving the campaign this week (or being unceremoniously dumped, to be more accurate), Lewandowski signed a non-disclosure agreement, meaning the network just apparently signed a higher priced Scottie Nell Hughes.
MSNBC apparently met with Lewandowski earlier this week to suss out the possibility of bringing him on, but passed. Not a good omen in terms of looking for “insights” into the Donald’s thinking.
And why hire Lewandowski when you already have Jeffrey Lord? I’ve actually at times earlier in the campaign enjoyed the former Reagan administration official’s remarks, until he went bat sh*t crazy, literally taking Trump’s talking points to heart during the whole Judge Curiel debacle. You remember, that’s when Lord debased himself and CNN by saying anyone who accused Trump of acting in a racist fashion by signaling out the judge’s ethnicity (you know, like Paul Ryan) to be a racist.
Meanwhile, can I segue into talking about non-political TV?
I know the last decade or so has been considered the renaissance of American television with so many great shows on the air, but I haven’t seen most of them. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not one of these pseudo-elites who say they only watch PBS (just the NewsHour for me), but outside of sports, movies and, of course, political news, there’s only so much bandwidth I have for some of the good stuff out there.
One of the shows I really did enjoy earlier this year — well, enjoyed is perhaps an exaggeration, was “Vinyl” on HBO. That was the ’70s rock-steeped drama that had the pedigree of being produced by Martin Scorcese and Mick Jagger.
Look, even its biggest fans have to admit some of the show was pure nonsense. I mean, how much cocaine can one man inhale and still be alive? But a lot of it was thrilling stuff. My favorite episode was when Richie (Bobby Carnavale) meets Devon (Olivia Wilde), one of Andy Warhol’s Factory Girls who he meets at the Factory. It was pretty cool.
Well, the point I’m getting to is, despite the fact that the show was renewed back in February, HBO pulled the plug on it earlier this week. Alas, “Vinyl” fans, you won’t get a second season.
Even though I “hate watched” some of the episodes, I’ll miss it.
In other news..
Think immigration doesn’t matter in this campaign? We’ll see. Two super PACS are going in on a digital ad to begin airing the next two weeks in Florida targeting Republicans on the issue, after the Supremes deadlocked on President Obama‘s executive order that would have shielded up to 5 million undocumented immigrants from being deported.
Perennial candidate Joe Redner is running for office again. This time as a non-party-affiliated candidate in the Senate District 18 race between Dana Young and Bob Buesing.
Victor Crist won’t be leaving his gig at the Hillsborough PTC anytime soon, despite the wishes of those in the cab industry in Tampa.
Patrick Murphy’s campaign team pushed back hard against a damaging investigative TV report about his embellishments of his career before he became a congressman.
And one of the most ambitious Democrats in Florida, Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine, was in Washington yesterday, talking about his plan to raise the living wage in Florida at the White House.
