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J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series, apologized Monday for incorrectly suggesting on Twitter that President Donald Trump had snubbed a disabled child during a press conference on healthcare in late July.

Rowling's apology came hours after PolitiFact rated her original tweets which have all since been deleted as "Pants on Fire," concluding that her comments were founded on an edited clip from which Trump's greeting to 3-year-old Monty Weer was cut. Weer is confined to a wheelchair because of a spinal birth defect.

"Multiple sources have informed me that that was not a full or accurate representation of their interaction," Rowling tweeted.

"I very clearly projected my own sensitivities around the issue of disabled people being overlooked or ignored onto the images I saw and if that caused any distress to that boy or his family, I apologise unreservedly," she continued.

The writer, a regular Twitter critic of Trump and his policies, first reacted last Friday to the edited video from a July 24 press conference, according to PolitiFact, during which Trump delivered a speech on health care.

"Trump imitated a disabled reporter . Now he pretends not to see a child in a wheelchair, as though frightened he might catch his condition," Rowling originally tweeted based on the spliced footage. (While she has since deleted them, an archived of the tweets still exists.)

White House video of the same press conference, however, showed Trump appearing to bow down and greet Weer as he entered the venue, PolitiFact said.

Marjorie Kelly Weer, Monty's mother, also appeared to have called out Rowling's wrong interpretation of events on Facebook , the BBC reports .

"If someone can please get a message to J.K. Rowling: Trump didn't snub my son & Monty wasn't even trying to shake his hand," she wrote, adding that Monty wasn't into hand shaking anyway.

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JK Rowling Apologizes for Falsely Suggesting President Trump Dissed a Disabled Boy - TIME

A majority of voters think President Donald Trump's administration is in chaos, according to a new poll released Monday in the midst of several White House firings .

The Morning Consult/Politico poll found that 60% of registered voters think Trump's administration is running "somewhat chaotically" or "very chaotically." Just 33% of voters said the administration is running somewhat or very well.

The survey revealed a stark split along party lines. Most Democrats and Independents thought the administration was running chaotically, while most Republicans thought it was running somewhat or very well.

Anthony Scaramucci was fired from his post as White House communications director, just 10 days after he was introduced as the incoming communications chief. Scaramucci's arrival led to the departure of Press Secretary Sean Spicer and Chief of Staff Reince Priebus , though Trump has denied reports of dysfunction. "No WH chaos!" he tweeted Monday morning.

" A great day at the White House!" he added later Monday night.

The poll which surveyed 1,972 registered voters between July 27 and July 29 had a margin of error of plus or minus two percentage points.

Excerpt from:
Poll: Most Voters Think President Trump's White House is in Chaos - TIME

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump addresses a rally against the Iran nuclear deal on the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol September 9, 2015 in Washington, DC.

By Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.

The New York Times's Peter Baker wrote, No longer daunted by a president with a Twitter account that he uses like a Gatling gun, members of his own party made clear that they were increasingly willing to stand against him on issues like healthcare and Russia.

Gatling gun? I had to reconnect with Julia Keller, a Pulitzer-winning former Chicago Tribune stalwart and author of Mr. Gatling's terrible marvel: The gun that changed everything and the misunderstood genius who invented it. (Amazon)

In my catalog of the cultural significance of Richard Jordan Gatling's great invention, I've seen the Gatling gun used as a metaphor in everything from Gilmore Girls (Lorelei and Rory and their 'Gatling Gun dialogue') to Green Acres ('someone knitted a vest for Arnold the pig, and included 'a little pocket for his Gat.')

It's an apt and nifty metaphor for President Trump's tweeting a Gatling Gun is fast, efficient and leaves a lot of destruction in its wake. And once you get the hang of it, you can do it with your eyes closed.

The right movie analogy for Trump

Have you seen the film version of David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross, about a bunch of desperate real estate salesmen? It includes Blake, a character written for the movie and played by Alec Baldwin with nasty gusto as he berates the likes of Shelley Levene (played with brilliant melancholy by Jack Lemmon in the movie).

Well, Kevin Williamson is right on the mark in The National Review about the movie version's relevance to Anthony Scaramucci's "cartoon tough-guy act."

As he writes, Scaramuccis star didnt fade when he gave that batty and profane interview in which he reimagined Steve Bannon as a kind of autoerotic yogi. Thats Scaramuccis best impersonation of the sort of man the president of these United States, God help us, aspires to be.

But he isnt that guy. He isnt Blake. Hes poor sad old Shelley Levene, who cannot close the deal, who spends his nights whining about the unfairness of it all.

So, listen up, team Trump: 'Put that coffee down. Coffee is for closers only.' Got that?

If you've not seen the Baldwin monologue in the movie, it's a classic, so take a look.

Teen Vogues unsparing critique

There have been no hotter topics than John McCain and Anthony Scaramucci. There have been no more tough-minded analyses than in Teen Vogue.

That's right. Yes, there are reams of reporting and punditry in Politico, National Review, The Washington Post or Rachel Maddow, among other venues. But Teen Vogue has been very sharp.

As the press, present company included, lavished praise on McCain after his dramatic return to the Senate last week, the magazine offered five "problematic things John McCain has done during his 40-year career in politics."

The bill of particulars included, "McCain voted against the creation of Martin Luther King Jr. Day," "McCain has been quoted using a racial slur in reference to Vietnamese people" and "In 2013, McCain made a racist joke about Iran's former president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad."

Did those undermine the thrust of his Senate speech? No. But they did offer some needed leavening, perhaps, of the reflexive thrust to unequivocally laud the nervy Arizonan.

Sunday brought Rebecca Chamaa's op-ed in the publication, "I Have Paranoid Schizophrenia, and This Is Why Scaramucci's Insult Was Offensive."

It's a response to his nasty comment about then-White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus in his stunning phone chat with The New Yorker's Ryan Lizza.

"I have paranoid schizophrenia, hid my diagnosis for almost 20 years and came out publicly approximately two years ago," she writes. "Yet my diagnosis has not held me back from being happily married and working as a social worker, library technician, and marketing coordinator."

"The fact that I was able to live without even my in-laws and friends knowing about my mental illness for almost two decades proves that people with schizophrenia dont always stand out like the stereotypes suggest. Whats more, my story is not remarkable or unique. Many people live under the radar with schizophrenia, and their lives should not be distilled down to an insult."

Of course, there is no evidence that Priebus has been diagnosed with it. But Chamaa's point remains: "Schizophrenia is a disturbance of thought and not of character. To use it as an insult is degrading to those of us who live with this brain disorder or disease."

She concludes with the reminder that all of us can make the environment around us less harsh for those who do indeed have mental illnesses. That includes the language we all use.

"This includes both reporters and news anchors, who could take the conversation a step further by calling people like Scaramucci out on his insults of choice. Because people are listening, and whether you are the Director of Communications or someone tweeting at Donald Trump, how you communicate matters."

A giant media merger tanks

"Charter Communications Inc. said it isnt interested in buying Sprint Corp., rebuffing a gigantic merger offer and potentially ending several weeks of deal talks between the media and communications companies." (The Wall Street Journal)

Two rivals, one truth

It's the day's great newspaper war: The New York Times and The Washington Post competing ferociously in covering the new disorder in Washington. Top talent, serious investment, a story that gets more notable and confounding just when you figured it could not.

Here's my long take for Vanity Fair, with the ultimate question involving the role of quality journalism in a nation where increasing numbers of conservatives may not buy into the notion of the media's watchdog role in a democracy.

Headline of the weekend

The Emoji Movie got dumped on by critics. These are the best lines from their reviews who could have possibly predicted this was a bad idea, except everyone?" (Recode)

A New Yorker traffic record

As of Sunday, Anthony Scaramucci's telephonic tirade with Ryan Lizza "has generated: 4.4 million unique visitors, making it newyorker.com's most-read piece of 2017 so far and 1.7 million entries from social-media platforms."

It also generated "more than 100,000 concurrent visitors in the hours following publication, a record for newyorker.com." And brought a hike in typical average new subscriptions for July. (Poynter)

Oh, if you haven't signed up for New Yorker podcasts, this might be a good week to start as Lizza and executive editor Dorothy Wickenden discuss the call.

Drew on Trump

In The New York Review of Books, Elizabeth Drew dissects the healthcare vote in the Senate, notably the not necessarily stunning vote of John McCain, whom she's chronicled for many years:

"And there was another thing: candidate Trump had delivered a particularly low blow to McCain by saying that he had greater respect for military personnel who werent captured. He charged McCain with not helping veterans. McCain doesnt forget such things. McCain also had long had an at-best tense relationship with McConnell the leading Senate opponent of campaign finance reform. Besides, the rather free-spirited McCain and the grim, win-with-whatever-works McConnell, both of them big figures in the Senate, were rarely in tune."

"And so Congress prepared to recess for August with many of its members as well as political observers concerned that Trump might create chaos by trying to stamp out the Russia investigation, and nervously wondering how the tempestuous presidents fractured and faltering administration, even with a new chief of staff, would perform in an international crisis."

Chance the Rapper

Nice work by the Chicago Tribune's Christopher Borrelli on Chicago's very own Chance the Rapper:

"Chance the Rapper has become a cultural nesting doll, occupying many spaces simultaneously and seamlessly. He is a national act who also maintains an intimately Chicago footprint. He is a broad pop culture figure who also remains woven into a tight, Chicago-centered collaborative circle. All of this is funneled through a constant online presence that is complex, promotional yet nuanced, agreeable yet opinionated, blunt yet familial. But that he's done it without appearing cloying that he seems approachable, eager to be all things to all people, and not too insistent is his greatest feat. His brand is no brand, a shrewd marketing of independence that often seems a lot like a brand."

Hammered from the right

Writes Mona Charen, "Having viciously attacked and humiliated his attorney general for acting ethically; hinting that he would abuse the pardon power for his family and himself; threatening Republican senators who voted against health care reform; and 'joking' that he might fire his Health and Human Services secretary, Trump may have thought to toss some red meat to conservatives in the form of the transgender military ban."

Rising to Blumenthal's defense

Writing in The Atlantic, James Fallows defends Sidney Blumenthal, the journalist-author and controversial longtime ally of the Clintons, from a broadside via Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa.

Grassley somehow responded to disclosures that one-time Trump campaign boss Paul Manafort had not registered as a foreign agent by saying that Blumenthal hadn't, either. Huh?

"Love him or hate him, no one has produced any documents indicating that at any point he was in the pay of any foreign government, which is a clear contrast to Manafort."

A new Times podcast

The New York Times' The Daily is a huge success. (Poynter) Now comes The New Washington, on Trump's Washington, with analysis weekly from reporter Carl Hulse and colleagues in the paper's D.C. bureau.

The morning babble

Can John Kelly restore order to the White House and understand Trump is the problem? That was the Morning Joe question to Andrew Card, a George W. Bush-era chief of staff, who made clear what's required, which does not include lots of end-arounds the chief of staff by other allies, friends and family.

CNN's New Day wondered about that and the future of Jeff Sessions, with Republicans nervous about Sessions being moved elsewhere as a prelude to dumping Robert Mueller as special counsel. John Avlon of The Daily Beast called moving Sessions "idiot cunning," while Vladimir Putin's retaliation over the congressional sanctions bill (a rebuff to Trump) and the North Korean missile tests were both cited as evidence of Trump fumbling.

Trump & Friends line of attack, ah, inquiry partly involved the failures of, yes, Nancy Pelosi. It also had a "Fox News Alert" about a prison break in Alabama, albeit one that mistakenly included the chyron at the bottom, "Sen. McCain Battles Brain Cancer" and a photo of a smiling Joe Biden. Oops, it's a Monday.

Corrections? Tips? Please email me: jwarren@poynter.org. Would you like to get this roundup emailed to you every morning? Sign up here.

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Donald Trump's Bark Loses Its Bite - Vanity Fair

Photo Illustration/Getty Images

If he keeps making their jobs harder, he'll become a liability that the GOP can no longer tolerate.

Hours after Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and a better-late-than-never John McCain banded together to torpedo the president's health care reform efforts in the Senate, Donald Trump took to his social media service of choice and delivered a furious screed that will one day replace Pavlov and his dogs as the definitive illustration of classical conditioning in college psychology courses everywhere.

The sun set, the sun rose, and the president tweeted some fuckshit again.

On Sunday, just once. (Because it is the Lord's day.)

As you may recall from the Neil Gorsuch confirmation fight earlier this year, the "nuclear option" is a hypothetical change to current Senate rules that require three-fifths of the chamber to agree to end debate on a bill and proceed to vote. Mitch McConnell, a shameless liar whose only allegiance in this mortal world is to the accumulation of raw power, spearheaded the deployment of the nuclear option for Supreme Court nominees after it became clear that Gorsuch didn't have enough support to secure confirmation under the Senate's traditional rules.

But invoking the nuclear option for legislation is different. Senators treat the filibuster as a sacrosanct feature of their chamber's process, arguing that it forces legislators to craft more moderate, consensus bills than that those that would emerge if only a bare majority of the Senate were sufficient. After Justice Gorsuch's confirmation in April, 61 senators signed a bipartisan letter urging McConnell not to touch the legislative filibustera position that the majority leader has repeatedly and publicly endorsed. From May:

That will not happen, Mitch McConnell said at his weekly press conference, when asked about changing the rules again. "There is an overwhelming majority on a bipartisan basis not interested in changing the way the Senate operates on the legislative calendar."

This may surprise you, but there is a gaping hole in Trump's tweetstorm reasoning: Senate Republicans were attempting to pass Trumpcare through reconciliation, a special procedural tool that allows the Senate to pass budget-related legislation with only 50 votessince, in the event of a tie, Vice President Mike Pence could break it. In fact, McConnell and company specifically chose to use reconciliation because they knew that they probably couldn't cobble together 60 votes to end a filibuster if they were to try and repeal the Affordable Care Act through the regular process. In other words, Donald Trump is effectively arguing that the real problem for a Senate that could only scrape together 49 votes to support its signature piece of legislation is that... it only needed 50, I guess.

To be fair, the president's diatribe mentions other initiatives besides Trumpcare, and if I screw my face up tightly, shut one eye, and imagine him to be smart, maybe I can see his call to spike the legislative filibuster as a long-term ploy: Use the far-right outrage over the health care bill's failure to pressure Senate Republicans into lowering the bar for future legislative efforts. I'm not sure this is right, though. First of all, nothing Donald Trump has ever done as president suggests that he thinks any further into the future than his next tee time. More importantly, given that McConnell couldn't get to 50 votes on a quick-and-dirty repeal effort, it's hard to believe that he could have gotten more votes if he had been able to include even more controversial provisions, like defunding Planned Parenthood, in the process.

The president's seemingly uncontrollable urge to publicly humiliate his colleagues raises the question of how much longer they will put up with a gigantic liability sitting in the White House. Donald Trump is just as responsible for the GOP's repeal effort as Mitch McConnell, or Paul Ryan, or anyone else in the Republican Party, yet when he fails, he blames everyone and everythingthe media, Hillary Clinton, evil Democrats, fellow Republicans, the media againbefore blaming himself. Buck-passing might be a good strategy for a middling hotelier trying to raise investor capital after another bankruptcy, but it's a bad one for a man who is supposed to be the face of his party's legislative agenda. McConnell probably hates being told how to do his job like this, especially by a political neophyte who didn't understand basic elements of the late health care plan, rendering him equal parts unwilling and unable to help whip the necessary votes.

So far, McConnell and Ryan and company have quietly treated Trump's general incompetence as an acceptable price to pay for the privilege of helming a unified Republican government. But as embarrassing high-profile losses pile up, they'll have to decide whether having to work hand-in-glove with an unprincipled, unhinged doofus who will sell them out at the earliest possible sign of trouble is worth it. If Donald Trump really is making their jobs harder, I bet they can think of some clever ways to fix it.

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How Much Longer Will Republican Politicians Put Up with Donald Trump's Incompetence? - GQ Magazine

Since President Donald Trump won the Republican presidential nomination a question hangs over the right: Should the GOP survive or is it morally corrupted and politically deformed to such an extent that those of good conscience on the center-right must start anew? Having engaged in the original sin, if you will, of supporting Trump and then defending his aberrant presidency and helping thereby to define political deviancy down (as the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan described the decline of social and behavioral norms in his lifetime), has the GOP in essence forfeited political legitimacy permanently? There are several aspects to the question that deserve attention.

First, keep in mind the distinction between "should" (normative) vs. can (capacity). The former (should the GOP survive) goes to the moral culpability of those who lifted Trump to power and kept him there. They elevated a very dangerous man who has done and continues to do great damage to our country. They've in essence lost legitimacy as a constructive force; the center-right cannot fully purge the stain of Trump unless it sheds (or shreds) the skin of the GOP. Given the enormity of the GOP's malfeasance, a new party may in fact be required.

Then there is the more practical question (can the GOP survive). Given how toxic the GOP brand has become, the time and cost of rehabilitating the brand may not be worth it. Alternatively, anti-Trump Republicans might conclude that the financial, legal and organizational burden of creating a new party with new state parties may be crippling.

We think a middle ground makes sense. An accountability project (maybe not quite at the level of reconciliation processes in the wake of fallen regimes in South Africa or Chile) certainly is needed; a turnover in leadership is essential. The party must repudiate Trump and the Trump era to go forward. Those intent on turning away from the Trump era will require visible symbols underscoring the party's repudiation of Trumpism, including perhaps a name change. (The New Republican Party? The Modern Republican Party?)

Second, is such a dramatic break really needed? Yes, if, as #NeverTrump and #NoLongerTrump Republicans believe, the Trump problem is of an entirely different magnitude than, say, Watergate, and has resulted in much more serious, permanent damage to our democracy, then it is not enough to simply shuffle the presidential candidates, make some speeches and keep the platform and leadership essentially unchanged. And yes, most of the Republicans currently in the House and Senate need to go. They've put party over country, not lived up to their oaths of office and contributed to the polarization of our politics and erosion of our democratic norms. A clean, dramatic break is mandatory.

Third, both the specific agenda (a creaky facade left over from the 1980s) and the central values of the party are in need of revamping. Its positions on tax, budget, environmental, law enforcement and immigration policy are outmoded, counterproductive and in many cases not based on reality. That does not mean Republicans should copy Democrats. A second party with alternative views remains critical in a robust democracy. We need a party that favors market-based solutions where possible; cares about fiscal sanity; sees advantages in federalism; embraces a positive, essential role for government but is wary of highly centralized bureaucracy; and supports American leadership in defense of the international, liberal order. (By the way, it's always possible the current Democratic Party goes in that direction while the far left goes the full socialist route.)

Fourth, Trump's presidency should prompt center-right voters and leaders to re-define the purpose, foundational beliefs and role of the party. Civic character and dedication to democratic norms (as opposed to positions on a laundry list of issues) must be elevated in importance. The party needs to return to a mediating and moderating role whereby it weeds out the most extreme and most irresponsible elements. (Yes, here come the super-delegates.) The party needs to resume a role of gatekeeper (a goal furthered by diverting resources back to national and state parties and away from special-interest cliques and billionaire candidates and donors). Moreover, a party that believes in a strong role for civil society must dedicate itself to repairing frayed communal ties and institutions and ending rigid tribalism.

Fifth, how Republicans behave from here on out will play a huge role in determining the extent of the housecleaning/destruction of the GOP required. It makes all the difference in the world whether Democrats (by winning elections) save the country from Trump or whether the GOP (by impeachment, support for prosecution, primary challenge) takes matters into its own hands to expunge Trump. The latter would not erase entirely the original sin they committed when they backed him, but a Republican revolt against Trump (finally) would suggest internal reformation is possible. Republicans in office, running for office, in think tanks and other right-leaning groups should think long and hard about how they want the Trump presidency to end; it will become the defining event in their personal and political legacies. And the manner of Trump's political demise will largely determine whether the 2016 election was the last to produce a Republican president.

Washington Post

Jennifer Rubin is a columnist for the Washington Post.

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Will Donald Trump be the last Republican president? - Chicago Tribune