Carter Wrenn
Gary Pearce
The media says Trump, by inflaming them, makes the most liberal Democrats more powerful. But what inflames Democrats isn’t Trump’s ideology – it’s Trump, himself. And when Trump insults and boasts the anti-Trumpsters protest and hurl insults right back – they’re the mirror image of Trump himself, proving the old adage: Those to whom evil…
My print-free experiment with The News & Observer is clicking along well. Still, like any loyal reader, I’ve got some bones to pick. First the good news. Even though I don’t get the paper in my driveway anymore, I still read it most mornings. I click on the website’s E-edition, then flip through the pages…
In the middle of Donald Trump’s campaign against Hillary Clinton, a Playboy model sold the rights to her story about her affair with Trump to the National Enquirer for $150,000 – and when Trump learned what happened he sat down with his lawyer, Michael Cohen, to discuss buying those rights from the Enquirer so the…
A reader offers this suggestion: If I were a Democratic pundit I would, henceforth, refer to our President as “Putin’s Poodle.” In the first place, it’s true. He respects and trusts Dictator Putin more than he respects and trusts American intelligence services. In the second place, Trump can sure dish it out. You remember —…
In his terse, clipped way, Bert Bennett once summed up perfectly why we’re Democrats and why he helped elect Terry Sanford and Jim Hunt: “Sanford and Hunt had the right attitude: human dignity, based on ethics and work and not color or background or money.” Rob Christensen’s N&O profile today caught the essence of Bert,…
Back when Jim Hunt was Governor (the good old days) he routinely had job approval ratings in the mid to high 60s. He was one of the most popular governors in America, until Carter & Co. spent two years and $20 million knocking him down in 1984. Even then, Hunt bounced back into the 60s…
Elections are usually about issues. But sometimes character overwhelms issues. Like with Trump. The Gallup Poll asked: “Thinking about Donald Trump as a person, do you have a positive or negative opinion of him?” Only 36 percent of voters – just over one in three – said positive; 55 percent said negative. Among Independents, only…
The ABC News reporter asked Steve Bannon if Trump ever lied and Bannon said ‘never’ then the reporter asked, Never? and Bannon quipped, “Except when he called me Sloppy Steve.” Politicians telling tall-tales is an old story but, like insults and boasting, in days past lying was a taboo – Democrats, Republicans, Liberals, Conservatives all…
Sometimes Carter and I get asked to speak about the 1984 Hunt-Helms Senate race. Some of the people we see weren’t born then. For them, it’s like going to the Dinosaur Museum – and the dinosaurs come out and talk. Because we lost, I’m often asked what was the biggest lesson I learned. That’s easy,…
Carter Wrenn and I are moving to Substack. That’s where you’ll find our blogs in the…
The political sniping began even as chaos still reigned at the White House Correspondents Dinner. My…
A new nationwide poll shows that, if they could run against each other in 2028, Barack…