‘Wrong, troublesome.’ One of the few Republicans in Congress to condemn President Trump for hush money paid to adult film star Stormy Daniels happens to be a guy nearly impeached after admitting to an affair while he was South Carolina’s governor.
■ Politico’s Jack Shafer: Trump “has successfully demolished a norm so outrageous that nobody ever thought to spell out as a norm: Presidential Candidates Should Never Get Caught Having Sex With Adult Film Actors.”
■ A new book asserts Trump turned thumbs down at the Miss Universe pageant on women whose skin was too ethnic or too dark-skinned.
■ The Washington Post: Trump’s reversal on elephant hunting trophies shows “the need to watch what he does, not what he says.”
■ Mother Jones: “The Very Strange Case of Two Russian Gun Lovers, the NRA, and Donald Trump.”
Banned on Pornhub. Following widespread reports he’s been lying about lots of stuff, the self-dubbed “cannabis candidate” for Congress from Chicago, Benjamin Wolf, has been forbidden from advertising on “the world’s leading free porn site.”
■ In another nationally watched Chicago-area congressional race, Dan Lipinski challenger Marie Newman acknowledges she went into the restaurant biz with a convicted felon.
■ … but Newman has Bernie Sanders’ support.
■ State Rep. Robert Rita is contending with domestic battery charges against him 15 years ago.
■ Nicholas Kristof in The New York Times: “Mr. Trump, Here’s a Teenage Hero; It’s Your Turn!”
■ Since the Parkland school shootings, USA Today reports, schools across the country have seen more than 600 copycat threats.
■ Time: Walmart’s decision to raise the age for gun buyers won’t cut homicides.
■ Fox News: “No resolution on DACA or guns, but Congress naming lots of post offices.”
■ Mayor Emanuel is pressing Gov. Rauner for quick action on legislation that would require Illinois to license gun dealers.
Rahm Emanuel on the spot. A Cook County Circuit Court judge says the mayor will have to offer a sworn deposition in the case of two people shot by a Chicago cop.
■ Emanuel six years ago: “We’re gonna keep telling the truth until it doesn’t work for us any longer.”
■ Rather on this week’s media rampage by Trump’s troubled ex-apparatchik, Sam Nunberg: “It’s a sad day for journalism. … But this is the new world.” (2016 photo: Jay Godwin.)
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■ Why the Stormy Daniels story is finally gaining journalistic traction.
No insurance-job insurance. State Farm is cutting almost 900 information technology jobs at its Bloomington, Ill., headquarters.
■ Steve Johnson in the Tribune on the demise of WLUP-FM: “The Loop of today … is the radio equivalent of a cover band, yet another station that’s been squeezing the final pennies out of the biggest songs by the biggest bands of the 40-years-past album-rock era.”
■ Media reporter Robert Feder: The Loop’s music—minus DJs—will survive online.
Overkill. To promote its coverage of the next big Marvel movie, Avengers: Infinity War, the latest issue of Entertainment Weekly appears with 15 different covers.
■ The director of Iron Man has signed on to write and produce a new streaming Star Wars TV series.
■ Next target for the guy who created the Veep TV show: Russia.
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