Free Republic

And the funny thing is, he didn't really mean it as an insult! On today's CNN This Morning, in a segment analyzing the results of the Iowa caucuses and looking ahead to New Hampshire, CNN commentator Jamal Simmons, who stuck it out for a year as Vice President Kamala Harris's communications director before bailing, said: "Trump is like a walking, talking middle finger, right? People think about him like, oh, this guy is the way we get back at the elites. The way we get back at the people who are in charge, who are leaving the rest of us...

Vice President Kamala Harris’s communications director Jamal Simmons is leaving his position as Harris continues to churn through staff. Simmons plans to leave at the beginning of the new year, according to a report from Politico, having become part of Harris’s team in January to help her fix her public image after her difficult first year as vice president. Harris’ chief of staff Lorraine Voles told staff in an email announcing Simmons’ departure that she hired him to help “steady the ship” of the vice president’s office and that he agreed to serve in the position for a year, according...

More information emerged Saturday about Jamal Simmons, who was recently hired as communications director for Vice President Kamala Harris. Simmons made a donation to a presidential candidate in June 2015, sending a $250 contribution to the campaign of Republican U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, according to Federal Election Commission filings. Simmons previously expressed support for Paul in 2014, when he responded to the senator's call for speeding up deportations of "DREAMers and other immigrant children." "I liked him so much last week," Simmons wrote about the senator.

Just a day after his hiring was announced, Vice President Kamala Harris‘ new communications director is the center of a controversy over things he said and posted on social media. In two tweets drawing the most criticism, Jamal Simmons wondered why undocumented immigrants weren’t being apprehended by federal immigration authorities.... ..These aren’t the only tweets and comments Simmons, a longtime political pundit, made in the past that are raising eyebrows. Last January, Simmons suggested that former President George Bush wasn’t impeached for waterboarding people because it was intended to protect the country.... ...Simmons also once cautioned Biden not to get...

From: Begala, Paul Sent: Tuesday, February 19, 2008 3:09 PM To: tom@zzranch.com; john.podesta@gmail.com; Susan@messageinc.com Cc: sgreenberg@gqrr.com; agreenberg@gqrr.com; tara@campaigntodefendamerica.org Subject: Re: DRAFT launch statement for progressive media Statement looks good - so long as the lawyers approve. I would reach out to Obama supporters. Let me nominate Jamal Simmons. He's young (to me) Af-Am and way smart. He worked in the Clinton White House and now does commentary with me on CNN. Other prominent African-Americans should be courted, like Donna Brazile. How 'bout Dee Dee Myers? Not African-American, but rumored to be a woman. Knows the media as well as anyone....

President Obama endured a terrible 2013, raising GOP hopes of a Senate takeover in next year’s midterm elections that would turn him into an early lame duck. The GOP needs to win six seats in the upper chamber to take a 51-49 edge, something clearly obtainable with Democrats defending difficult seats in South Dakota, Montana, West Virginia, Arkansas, Alaska, Louisiana and North Carolina. With the Senate and House in GOP hands, Obama would have little if any hope of moving his legislative agenda, and would be left to play defense against a GOP Congress in his final two years in...

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has promised he would not make his GOP rival John McCain’s wife a political issue, but at least one of his television surrogates is trying to make her personal wealth a major campaign issue. “I would never consider making Cindy McCain a campaign issue and if I saw people doing that---I would speak out against it,” Obama said in an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network on June 18. Now, less than a month later, an Obama loyalist deployed by the Democratic National Committee to various television shows for the purpose of promoting Obama’s candidacy...