Latest news with #Tanden
Yahoo
19-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Scott Jennings' Temper ERUPTS At Former Biden Official On CNN
Scott Jennings turned up the volume Tuesday on CNN. The resident Republican foil on 'NewsNight' lost his temper in an exchange with former Joe Biden adviser Neera Tanden over vandalism at Tesla sites. (Watch the video below.) 'So let me educate you about my position!' he screamed in a rant that had him trending on social media. Even without regular host Abby Phillip, Jennings still ratcheted up the tension with fill-in moderator John Berman trying to play peacemaker. Jennings reportedly is getting a hefty raise for being the political version of a pro wrestling heel on the show, but he presumably is not acting. The friction the former George W. Bush staffer generates appears to be working in terms of ratings. AdWeek reported that 'NewsNight' is CNN's most popular show in the important 25-54 age demographic. Jennings' regular support for President Donald Trump and his DOGE hatchet man Elon Musk is fairly predictable, but viewers might be tuning in for volatile confrontations like Tuesday's. Jennings sided with Trump's assessment that the suspects involved in vandalizing Tesla sites were domestic terrorists protesting Tesla owner Musk's cuts in the federal government. 'That's the American left right now,' Jennings said. 'It is one angry mob after another willing to take things into their own hands, up to and including keying, firebombing, and otherwise vandalizing cars and car dealerships and charging stations.' 'So, when they do it to a Tesla dealership, it's really bad,' Tanden interjected. 'But when they do it to the halls of Congress, we should pardon them? Is that your position?' Amid crosstalk, Jennings said: 'I know you haven't been around for a while, so let me educate you about my position about Jan. 6.' 'I'm so sorry,' Tanden said sarcastically. Rattled by Tanden and the panel din, Jennings could take no more. He warned her about being condescending and then went Vesuvius. 'So let me educate you about my position!' he bellowed. Berman tried to direct traffic as the two mixed it up. 'Guys, let's do this. Jan. 6 and then Neera.' 'I'm sorry you're getting emotional,' Tanden said. 'Yeah, I'm sorry you're a condescending person who hasn't been paying attention to what I do,' Jennings replied. 'So here's the issue. I didn't support what happened on Jan. 6 and was one of the first Republicans to call it out. I don't support the pardons. I have repeatedly ... said that no violence in our political system is acceptable. But this right here, what's going on with a guy who helps our country, who runs successful companies, who doesn't have to be doing this, and now one of his companies is under systematic terroristic threats and violence all over the country. And people seem to be laughing about it or fine with it. It's outrageous. I've sat at this table and had people say we should cut Elon Musk from the government totally. He rescued our astronauts today. Is that what we want? The treatment of this guy is outrageous. These people who are doing this need to be found and put in jail and made an example of. That's my point.' Or perhaps the point is, Jennings got triggered and it's exactly what CNN viewers want to see. Tanden took the liberty of owning Jennings with the last word on X, formerly Twitter: 'Some men are so emotional,' she wrote. CNN Pundit Scott Jennings, Who Regularly Defends Trump, Gets Raise Amid Staff Cuts Abby Phillip's Priceless Look Cuts Down Scott Jennings' Excuse For Trump Scott Jennings Is Dared by WaPo Reporter To Imitate Elon Musk's Salute On CNN
Yahoo
20-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Neera Tanden is returning to the Center for American Progress. She thinks Democrats have work to do.
Neera Tanden is reprising her role at the helm of the Center for American Progress, one of the Democratic Party's most influential think tanks, as the party looks to regain its footing with voters and counter President Donald Trump. It's a homecoming for Tanden, who was named president and chief executive of CAP Thursday, resuming roles she held before serving in then-President Joe Biden's administration. Tanden's return comes at an inflection point for the party, which has struggled to carve a lane after the 2024 presidential elections. Since Election Day, Democrats have conceded they should have campaigned harder on economic hardship and other issues, and that the party needs to reorient its messaging as Trump works to overhaul the government. 'It's incumbent of us not to be defenders of the status quo, but to provide an alternative,' Tanden said in an interview with POLITICO. In her vision, the party should use moments like the recent House Republican push to cut Medicaid spending to demonstrate to voters the harmful real-world impact of these decisions, she said. Democrats can also use these moments to form alliances with on-the-fence congressional Republicans like Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), she added, who said he had 'concerns' about Medicaid cuts. Tanden has worked as a domestic policy aide for the Clinton, Obama and Biden administrations. She has since been dubbed a key architect of domestic policy, including the Affordable Care Act. That hasn't come without controversy. She was known for legendary spats with critics — including more progressive Democrats — on social media, and would colorfully insult Republicans. (She's stated 'vampires have more heart' than Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and referred to Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell as 'Voldemort.') Tanden left CAP to serve as a top aide for the Biden administration. She was originally nominated to be Biden's director of the Office of Management and Budget, but withdrew with her confirmation sputtering in the Senate. She ultimately served in several senior roles in Biden's White House. In that time, CAP has struggled. The center recently terminated 8 percent of its workforce, The New York Times reported. The terminations came as Democratic donors said they would withhold funds for think tanks until the groups generate a coherent strategy for the party. Still, it's a particularly opportune time to unleash her new strategy to 'oppose and counter' because Trump's approval ratings are faltering, Tanden said. 'CAP was kind of born for moments like this, where you need both the critique and developing the alternative,' Tanden said. 'Americans are waiting on that.'
Politico
20-02-2025
- Politics
- Politico
Neera Tanden is returning to the Center for American Progress. She thinks Democrats have work to do.
Neera Tanden is reprising her role at the helm of the Center for American Progress, one of the Democratic Party's most influential think tanks, as the party looks to regain its footing with voters and counter President Donald Trump. It's a homecoming for Tanden, who was named president and chief executive of CAP Thursday, resuming roles she held before serving in then-President Joe Biden's administration. Tanden's return comes at an inflection point for the party, which has struggled to carve a lane after the 2024 presidential elections. Since Election Day, Democrats have conceded they should have campaigned harder on economic hardship and other issues, and that the party needs to reorient its messaging as Trump works to overhaul the government. 'It's incumbent of us not to be defenders of the status quo, but to provide an alternative,' Tanden said in an interview with POLITICO. In her vision, the party should use moments like the recent House Republican push to cut Medicaid spending to demonstrate to voters the harmful real-world impact of these decisions, she said. Democrats can also use these moments to form alliances with on-the-fence congressional Republicans like Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), she added, who said he had 'concerns' about Medicaid cuts. Tanden has worked as a domestic policy aide for the Clinton, Obama and Biden administrations. She has since been dubbed a key architect of domestic policy, including the Affordable Care Act. That hasn't come without controversy. She was known for legendary spats with critics — including more progressive Democrats — on social media, and would colorfully insult Republicans. (She's stated 'vampires have more heart' than Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and referred to Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell as 'Voldemort.') Tanden left CAP to serve as a top aide for the Biden administration. She was originally nominated to be Biden's director of the Office of Management and Budget, but withdrew with her confirmation sputtering in the Senate. She ultimately served in several senior roles in Biden's White House. In that time, CAP has struggled. The center recently terminated 8 percent of its workforce, The New York Times reported. The terminations came as Democratic donors said they would withhold funds for think tanks until the groups generate a coherent strategy for the party. Still, it's a particularly opportune time to unleash her new strategy to 'oppose and counter' because Trump's approval ratings are faltering, Tanden said. 'CAP was kind of born for moments like this, where you need both the critique and developing the alternative,' Tanden said. 'Americans are waiting on that.'
Yahoo
20-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Democrats ‘should not be knee-jerk institution defenders,' new Center for American Progress chief says
The new leader of one of the Democratic Party's leading institutions, the Center for American Progress, said in an interview that her party needs to oppose Donald Trump across the board — but also offer voters more appealing alternatives. 'No is better than yes. But just saying 'no' makes us vulnerable to the critique that we are just defenders of the status quo,' said Neera Tanden, who was named Thursday the president and CEO of the Center for American Progress, a role she previously held from 2012 to 2020. 'We're in a competition of ideas,' Tanden told Semafor. 'Trump has ideas. We're in a competition with him for whose ideas are better.' She arrives in the role as public polling shows Democratic voters are almost as disappointed in their own elected officials as they are appalled by Republicans. Tanden and CAP, with an annual budget around $50 million, are as close as the Democratic Party gets to an establishment. Tanden has managed to span the party's divides: A key aide to Hillary Clinton since Bill Clinton's presidency and through the 2008 and 2016 presidential campaigns, she was among the relatively few Clintonites who took top roles in the Obama administration. She played a central role in the 2010 passage of the Affordable Care Act before leaving to run CAP, where Wikileaks swept her into the Democrats' bitter internecine battles. (She notes that she's since worked regularly with Senator Bernie Sanders, and was as we spoke 'retweeting Senator Sanders' speech on Russia.') Tanden later spent four years in Joe Biden's administration, dropping a bid to become his budget chief over fiery tweets in that very different era, and then directing his Domestic Policy Council. Now she's wrestling with a central question of her party's identity: Can it offer more than appalled support for business as usual against a rampant Trump and Elon Musk? 'We are not the incumbents. We should not be knee-jerk institution defenders,' Tanden said. 'People do want change. We have to argue why our vision of change is better.' But that will begin, she said, with confrontational opposition. 'The most important thing about Trump is that he's a bully, and if you cower he will take your breakfast money and your lunch money. He'll take all your money,' she said. 'I'm a fighter, and I'm ready for the fight.' Tanden succeeds Patrick Gaspard, a former Obama adviser and past leader of George Soros' Open Society Foundation. She takes over CAP at a moment when Democratic leaders' frustrations include the work ethic of their own staff — who many worry are too focused on issues of justice inside their own workplace while young Republicans outwork them. In her first run at CAP, Tanden occasionally clashed with her staff over what were, in retrospect, early signs of that conflict. 'We're in a moment of maximum peril, and it is a great privilege to work at a place like the Center for American Progress, where we are trying to work on behalf of a lot of people who face a lot of harm,' she said, asked about Democrats' broad complaints about their own aides. 'If you believe you're in a battle for the soul of the country, then you have to act like you're in a battle for the soul of the country,' she added. On a number of issues, Tanden stressed that Democrats need to oppose Trump while offering alternatives. With border crossings at record lows in recent months, for example, she argued that 'the lion's share of that work' was done by a Biden executive order in June. 'We can't ignore a topic that matters a lot to people because we think it helps his side, not our side. This was the lesson on immigration. We got to an answer on this — very late,' she said. 'We can't [oppose] mass deportations unless we have a strong immigration plan that includes reforms of asylum and the border.' Of Trump's assault on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs, she said: 'We should be clear that diversity matters to people and how it improves things. But when it feels like you're preferencing one group over another — the first principle here is that we're all equal, and we support diversity.' When it comes to public safety, she noted that 'working-class people are victims of crime at a way higher level than upper-income people, and they see that as a security issue.' And as Trump and Vice President JD Vance lean heavily into gender as a cultural flashpoint Tanden said the Democratic Party needs to take the issues facing young men more seriously. 'There is something happening with fewer opportunities for younger men, and it's driving a lot of anger. And it's creating a gender chasm — that's a problem we should try to understand,' she said. 'The right is exploiting that by saying, 'You're down because the left hates you.' There is a fundamental issue there.' Some Democrats are asking themselves whether the party should borrow then-Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's 2009 playbook and become the 'Party of No,' simply rejecting every Trump initiative just as McConnell fought Obama. The now-retiring Republican senator recognized (accurately) that his voters sought that and would reward it. Tanden said that approach is necessary, but not sufficient. She compared this moment to Democrats' past wilderness years of 2004 and 2016. During both of those cycles, the party shifted quickly from panic into organized opposition to unpopular Republican domestic policies: After 2004 it was the privatization of elements of Social Security, while the 2016 election saw the GOP get fatally tangled in attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act. I asked Tanden, at my colleague David Weigel's suggestion, whether CAP would produce a 'Project 2029,' a hypothetical Democratic version of the conservative agenda that Trump disavowed but ended up mirroring and shaping his administration's thinking. She declined to slap a label on the project, but said she does see CAP's role as building a party consensus on a new agenda, and a new tone. 'It's important to have a spirit of reform,' she said. 'This is what progress is: It's taking the problems you have and fixing them. 'We should be focused on solving problems for people — not on just defending the institutions,' she added. But Tanden said she was still working through why her former boss Biden had failed so fully to persuade voters that his domestic agenda was helping them. The Democratic economist Jason Furman, a former top Obama aide, has argued that 'Bidenomics' simply fell short, but Tanden rejected that. 'I don't think Bidenomics failed in doing the things it said it would do. It created very low unemployment. It took a while, but it created wage increases,' she said. 'We have to really understand as a party why a program that spent hundreds of billions of dollars for investments in jobs for people [of whom] 70% don't have a college degree — why that didn't resonate at all. 'I don't know if it's that we didn't communicate it, or people didn't care,' she said. As Trump offers a dramatically different vision of slashed government spending, understanding that failure to resonate might help Democrats climb out of the hole. Or Perhaps that's a problem that Democrats, now in opposition, won't have to solve. Tanden's hire was first reported by the New York Times.
New York Times
20-02-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
A Leading Anti-Trump Voice Returns to Democrats' Top Think Tank
Neera Tanden, a longtime fixture of Democratic politics in Washington, is taking back her old post leading the party's top think tank, where she served as one of President Trump's most energetic and vocal antagonists during his first term. The group, the Center for American Progress, announced on Thursday that Ms. Tanden would return as its chief executive. Since its founding more than two decades ago, the center, which is based in Washington, has served as a locus of Democratic opposition whenever Republicans have held the White House. Ms. Tanden takes over the organization at a moment when many Democratic donors are withholding contributions, party leaders are struggling to develop a coherent message and no obvious figures have emerged to lead the pushback to Mr. Trump. Now, Ms. Tanden said, is the time for Democrats to not just fight back against Mr. Trump but also offer ideas of their own before the 2026 midterm elections and the 2028 presidential contest. 'We should have reflection for sure, but a level of self-doubt that basically puts people in catatonic positions is not helpful in a moment where Trump is threatening this level of harm to millions upon millions of Americans,' she said in an interview on Wednesday. 'A critical purpose of the Center for American Progress is to develop an alternative, not just a critique.' Ms. Tanden has served on Democratic presidential campaigns dating to 1988, when she volunteered for Michael Dukakis. She was a dogged aide to Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama — roles in which she was often at odds with more progressive Democrats — before becoming the Center for American Progress's president in 2017. From that perch, she helped lead the Democratic fight to preserve Mr. Obama's signature health care law and was among the party's leading voices of anti-Trump resistance. Her proclivity for expressing unvarnished opinions online about Republicans helped sink her nomination to serve as the director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Joseph R. Biden Jr. She called Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, 'the worst,' and to Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, she wrote that 'you're high on your own supply.' At the time, Ms. Tanden apologized, but that was not sufficient to maintain support from Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, who doomed her nomination when he announced he would not support her. Mr. Biden subsequently made Ms. Tanden a senior adviser, and later his staff secretary and director of the Domestic Policy Council, key White House positions that did not require Senate confirmation. These days, her social media presence consists mostly of reposts of others on X and Bluesky. 'I'm still going to tweet,' Ms. Tanden said in the interview on Wednesday, 'but less.' She is returning to C.A.P. alongside its founder, John Podesta, who was Mr. Biden's global representative on climate. Mr. Podesta was recently named chairman of the group's board. Patrick Gaspard, who has been serving as the organization's president, will shift to a senior adviser position. C.A.P. is one of several liberal groups plagued by financial troubles in the early days of the Trump administration. This month, the center laid off 22 employees, a cut of about 8 percent of its staff. Ms. Tanden said she was confident that there would not be additional layoffs. Ms. Tanden said it was important for Democrats to remember that while the current political moment might feel extreme and dire, it was not unprecedented. 'We have been at moments — Trump's first term, Bush's second term — where people were like, 'Democrats are in the wilderness, and they don't have a response, and the country is radically changed,'' she said. 'We have to get up, dust ourselves off, criticize what we think is wrong and offer better alternatives. 'There is a competition for ideas, and maybe some of Trump's strength is, if we're not solving a problem, he will offer a radical solution,' she continued. 'And that just makes it more incumbent upon us to offer solutions.'
