Washington Post

[Commentary] President-elect Donald Trump perceived, correctly in my view, that political rhetoric in the United States had become empty, a vast collection of platitudes and bogus phrases that no longer bore any real connection to the truth. Everyone else pretended to mean what they said when they didn’t; Trump simply dropped the pretense. The result is a post-Christian political discourse of a distinctively American sort: blunt and self-assured and largely free of the obligation to express yourself with sincerity. The new post-Christian discourse uses words, not as vehicles to express thoughts and arguments, but as weapons — as instruments to wrong-foot adversaries and keep them guessing while you seize the advantage. I find it hard to lament the quickening demise of the old honesty-based political culture. It had become cheap and false. If Trump hadn’t snapped it, somebody else would have.

[Barton Swaim is the author of "The Speechwriter: A Brief Education in Politics" ]

President-elect Donald Trump is expected to name former Sen Dan Coats (R-IN) to be his director of national intelligence, apparently. Coats, who is seen as a traditional Republican, served two stints in the Senate and was ambassador to Germany during George W. Bush’s presidency. Apparently, the selection of Coats on the condition of anonymity since it has not been announced.

The country’s top intelligence official said that Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential campaign consisted of hacking, as well as the spreading of traditional propaganda and “fake news.” “Whatever crack, fissure, they could find in our tapestry . . . they would exploit it,” said Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr., testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee on foreign cyber threats, and especially Russian hacking and interference in the campaign.

The hearing came as President-elect Donald Trump has loudly and repeatedly voiced skepticism that the Kremlin was orchestrating the effort, directly clashing with the view of the US intelligence community and the committee’s chairman, Sen John McCain (R-AZ). Every American “should be alarmed by Russia’s attacks on our nation,” Sen McCain said at the opening of the packed hearing. “There is no national security interest more vital to the United States of America than the ability to hold free and fair elections without foreign interference,” he said. Sen Lindsey O. Graham (R-SC) asked Director Clapper if he was ready to be challenged by President-elect Trump, and Director Clapper said he is. Sen Graham also advised Trump, “Mr. President-elect, when you listen to these people, you can be skeptical, but understand they’re the best among us and they’re trying to protect us.”

Some of the nation's biggest Internet providers are asking the government to roll back a landmark set of privacy regulations it approved last fall — kicking off an effort by the industry and its allies to dismantle key Internet policies of the Obama years. In a petition filed to federal regulators Jan 2, a top Washington trade group whose members include Comcast, Charter and Cox argued that the rules should be thrown out. “They are unnecessary, unjustified, unmoored from a cost-benefit assessment, and unlikely to advance the Commission’s stated goal of enhancing consumer privacy,” wrote the Internet & Television Association, known as NCTA.

The petition joins a bevy of others from groups representing telecom companies, wireless carriers, tech companies and advertisers. The rules, which passed by a 3-to-2 partisan vote favoring Democrats at the Federal Communications Commission in October, are meant to keep Internet providers such as Comcast, Verizon and others from abusing the behavioral data they collect on customers as they regularly use the Internet.

President-elect Donald Trump announced that he will nominate Wall Street lawyer, Jay Clayton, to head the Securities and Exchange Commission. As chair of the SEC, which polices Wall Street and the financial markets, Clayton would play a key role in Trump's efforts to usher in a period of deregulation, including undoing parts of 2010’s financial reform legislation, known as the Dodd-Frank Act.

"Jay Clayton is a highly talented expert on many aspects of financial and regulatory law, and he will ensure our financial institutions can thrive and create jobs while playing by the rules at the same time,” Trump said in a statement. If confirmed by the Senate, Clayton would replace Mary Jo White, who announced shortly after the election that she would step down.

[Commentary] The groupthink that has overtaken national media outlets is embarrassing. There is an intellectual climate so suffocating that even stating that truth, or daring to line up a presidential interview, makes one be seen as a member of a suspect class. Reporters don’t have to like Donald Trump. But they do need to stop hyperventilating long enough to approach the next four years with a balanced perspective and at least start pretending to once again be objective. As for those who attacked me this weekend for doing my job, facts are stubborn things.

[Joe Scarborough, a former Republican congressman from Florida, hosts the MSNBC show “Morning Joe."]

[Commentary] News organizations should commit to opening at least five bureaus in midsize and smallish cities somewhere in the middle of America in 2017. I don't have any set list of what those cities should be, but just for kicks, here are five: Omaha (NE), Knoxville (TN), Dallas (TX), Missoula (MT), Columbus (OH). President-elect Donald Trump carried all five states. The states represent significant geographic diversity. They range from tiny (Missoula) to pretty darned big (Dallas).

In the modern age of reporting, the relative costs for an effort like this are low. You need to hire one person in each of these places. They can work from home. You pay for their salary, their Wi-Fi, their cellphone and their gas for reporting trips. Given what is expended on, say, covering a presidential campaign, we are talking about peanuts. Technology allows a reporter to work from anywhere, at a low cost. The times demand different coverage. Why not this? And why not now?

The Obama Administration announced sweeping new measures against Russia on Dec 29 in retaliation for what US officials have characterized as interference in 2016’s presidential election, ordering the expulsion of Russian “intelligence operatives” and slapping new sanctions on state agencies and individuals suspected in the hacks of US computer systems. The response, unveiled just weeks before President Barack Obama leaves office, culminates months of internal debate over how to react to Russia’s election-year provocations.

In recent months, the FBI and CIA have concluded that Russia intervened repeatedly in the 2016 election, leaking damaging information in an attempt to undermine the electoral process and help Donald Trump take the White House. Because Dec 29's announcement is an executive action, it can be undone by the next administration. President Obama also ejected 35 suspected Russian intelligence operatives from the United States and imposed sanctions on Russia’s two leading intelligence services.

With weeks to go in his tenure, President Barack Obama on Dec 23 moved to end the controversial “dual-hat” arrangement under which the National Security Agency and the nation’s cyberwarfare command are headed by the same military officer. It is unclear whether President-elect Donald Trump will support such a move. A transition official said only that “cybersecurity has been and will be a central focus of the transition effort.”

Pressure had grown on President Obama to make such a move on the grounds that the two jobs are too large for one person to handle, that the two organizations have fundamentally different missions and that US Cyber Command, or Cybercom, needed its own leader to become a full-fledged fighting force. “While the dual-hat arrangement was once appropriate in order to enable a fledgling Cybercom to leverage NSA’s advanced capabilities and expertise, Cybercom has since matured” to the point where it needs its own leader, President Obama said in a statement accompanying his signing of the 2017 defense authorization bill.

President-elect Donald Trump appointed a handful of campaign loyalists to senior positions in his White House with responsibility for overseeing the administration’s outreach to the public and managing Trump’s sometimes hostile relationship with the news media.

• Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s campaign manager who was an unyielding promoter and defender of his on television, will serve as counselor to the president with direct access to advise him on his message strategy and political tactics across a broad range of issues.
• Conway will serve as a public face of the administration along with Sean Spicer, the Republican National Committee’s chief strategist and communications director, who was named White House press secretary. A veteran operative with deep relationships among Republican officials and political journalists, Spicer will ascend to one of Washington’s most coveted jobs, representing the president in briefings with the press corps.
• Also leading the communications operation will be Jason Miller, the Trump campaign’s senior communications adviser, who will serve as director of communications;
• Hope Hicks, Trump’s longtime spokeswoman who was at the candidate’s side nearly every day of his 16-month campaign, who will be director of strategic communications; and
• Dan Scavino, a onetime golf caddy who managed Trump’s presence on Twitter and Facebook during the campaign, who has been named director of social media.