Trump Chief of Staff Pick Worked for PR Firm that Represents Trulieve Cannabis

Well, it looks like a woman will be in charge after all at the White House. 

Donald Trump has named as his Chief of Staff pick Floridian and longtime Republican operative Susie Wiles, which will make her the first woman to hold that position. 

According to the New York Times, Wiles worked for Ballard Partners, a Florida-based lobbying firm. According to their website, Ballard represents Trulieve, the mega cannabis company whose female CEO Kim Rivers reportedly met with Trump just before he announced he would be voting in favor of Florida's measure to legalize cannabis on the November ballot. 

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis strongly opposed the measure, charging that it would benefit only Trulieve, which contributed over $70 million to the Smart & Safe Florida campaign behind Amendment 3. The measure won a majority vote (56%) but fell short of the 60% vote it needed to become a Florida constitutional amendment, similar to the reproductive rights measure also on the state's ballot, which garnered 57% of the vote. 

Wiles helped DeSantis win the 2018 Florida governor’s race, but he later fired and denounced her; she then helped Trump crush DeSantis in the G.O.P. presidential primaries. She recently worked at the lobbying giant Mercury, whose clients include SpaceX, AT&T, and the Embassy of Qatar. Politico reports that until earlier this year, she lobbied lobbied Congress on “FDA regulations” for the tobacco company Swisher International while running the Trump campaign. 

According to the Times, Wiles has run Trump's political operation for nearly four years, and has been the only campaign manager to survive an entire campaign working for him. The daughter of the football legend Pat Summerall, Wiles reportedly "did not emerge in politics from Mr. Trump’s hard-right political base" and "championed the former president’s effort to expand his coalition in the general election beyond the party’s older white base to appeal to Black and Latino voters who typically had not supported Republicans." 

Summerall, an NFL champion kicker and longtime commentator, admitted to becoming an alcoholic during his broadcast career. In his 2006 biography, he recounted how Susie staged an intervention for him, leading to him checking into the Betty Ford Clinic for treatment. 

Gabbard (center) with members of California NORML
at the 2019 NORML Lobby Day in DC

Co-chairing Trump's transition team is former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who introduced the first-ever bipartisan bill that would end the federal prohibition of marijuana by removing it from the Controlled Substances Act in 2017. Gabbard was critical of Kamala Harris's record on marijuana when she ran against her for the Democratic Presidential Nomination in 2019, saying during a debate, “Sen. Harris says she’s proud of her record as a prosecutor and that she’ll be a prosecutor president. But I’m deeply concerned about this record. There are too many examples to cite, but she put over 1,500 people in jail for marijuana violations and then laughed about it when she was asked if she ever smoked marijuana.”

Also on the Trump transition team is former independent Presidential candidate Robert Kennedy, Jr., who along with Gabbard has long been an outspoken advocate of legalizing marijuana. Just before the election, Kennedy claimed Trump promised him control of "the public health agencies, which is HHS and its sub-agencies, CDC, FDA, NIH and a few others. And also the USDA, which is, you know, key to making America healthy, because we've got to get off of seed oils and we've got to get off of pesticides."  Trump said at the pre-election Al Smith dinner, "We're gonna let him go wild for a little while, then I'm gonna have to maybe reign him back, because he's got some pretty wild ideas, but most of them are really good."  

Upon announcing his support of Florida's Amendment 3 in September, Trump also called medical marijuana "amazing" and said that his administration would “continue to focus on research to unlock the medical uses of marijuana to a Schedule 3 drug, and work with Congress to pass common sense laws, including safe banking for state authorized companies, and supporting states rights to pass marijuana laws, like in Florida, that work so well for their citizens.” That sounds more like the old "research dodge" than full federal legalization, but at least the Biden administration's efforts to reschedule cannabis could go forward along with safe banking under Trump, if Congress complies.

Connie Chung Comments on Marijuana Strain Named for Her in New Memoir

In Connie: A Memoir, Connie Chung, who broke through stereotypes and stigmas as an Asian woman newscaster starting in the 1960s, reflects on and meets with the "Connie Generation" of Asian women named in her honor. 

She then rather surprisingly ends the book: 

"As gratifying as the Connie Generation is, I have one more distinction of superior recognition. 

"There is a strain of weed named after me. Yes, a strain of marijuana named Connie Chung. I have not a clue how it came about. I tried smoking marijuana in college, and unlike Bill Clinton, I did inhale. However, still being a straight [pun intended?] arrow, I am not a weed smoker, not that there's anything wrong with it."

Perhaps Chung enjoyed her dance with Mary Jane in her formative years. The youngest of 10 children born to recent Chinese immigrants, she had a long road to climb to get to the top of her profession. Thankfully, it seems she chose a better relaxant than others to take the edge off. Her namestrain has been described as, "known for its hazy head high which can lead you down the road of unwinding and relaxing." 

Chung surprised Today Show hosts Savannah Guthrie and Hota Kolb during a book-tour interview in September by bringing up her namestrain and its/her qualities at the end of the segment, joking that her husband Maury Pauvich would disagree about her being "low maintenance."  

Chung reporting from the House of Representatives

The book reads,

"Nonetheless, if you look up my pot namesake online, you will find my characteristics. I am immensely proud to boast that I am easy to grow. I am deeply relaxing and happy; I am helpful under deadline; and I cause dry mouth but very, very little of the scaries. My flavor profile is described as berry, earthy, piney, sweet, and blueberry, with a blast of berry on the exhale....And this is the trait that I find the most admirable: I am low maintenance."

Flabbergasted, Guthrie could only blurt out, "We didn't expect this interview to go in this direction." (In other words, I have no words.) "Did you bring any?" Guthrie more calmly and pertinently inquired. "No, you can get it online," Chung replied. 

Annie Nelson Leads Willie's Cannabis Community Event for Kamala

Last Thursday, October 24, Willie Nelson and his wife Annie D'Angelo Nelson hosted a star-studded Cannabis Community Call for Kamala. It was obvious that Annie was leading the charge on the call, introducing speakers and keeping the event flowing, as well as making pro-cannabis comments of her own.

“If we want to see legalization become a reality, we have to do what we can to elect Harris,” Willie said. “We need you to drag your friends to the polls if need be.” 

“At the end of the day, we can’t go on blaming her for enforcing the law when she was a prosecutor. That was the law, and that was her job,” he continued. “And we need to recognize when we have a real partner in this mission to legalization we’ve all been on, and in Vice President Harris, there’s no doubt that we have that partner.”

Guest speakers began with Colorado Governor and cannabis legalization advocate Jared Polis, who called Harris “the first major party candidate to support leaving it up to the states.” He opined that while Joe Biden has done "very little" on legalization, Harris’s support for marijuana legalization is part of her “freedom agenda.” He added, "Finally, they have the rescheduling sitting there. We hope they approve it, but that’s just the first step.”

Cannabis activist/entrepreneur and 2016 Tokin' Woman of the Year Whoopi Goldberg spoke next about how cannabis can help with women's health issues like menstrual cramps. “It’s really important that we get these things thought of as normal,” she added. “When we talk about cannabis, it should not be something that is ever thought of as something harmful, because it’s not, and we have so many ways of using this, and Kamala knows this.” 

Country singer/songwriter Margo Price, also a cannabis entrepreneur, announced that she's already voted for Harris and feels good about voting for the first major party candidate to embrace cannabis legalization (as well as, the whole democracy thing, doing right by women and children, etc.) 

Kiki de Montparnasse: Je Me Drouge

Man Ray, Le Violon D’Ingres, 1924. Kiki is the model.

In the preface to the 1929 book Kiki's Memoirs, Ernest Hemingway wrote, "She dominated the era of Montparnasse more than Queen Victoria ever dominated the Victorian era." He was describing the woman known Kiki de Montparnasse, a muse, chanteuse, painter, actress, and cultural icon like no other. 

Born Alice Prin in 1901 to an impoverished single mother in Paris, she was required to work menial jobs from the age of 12 at places like print shops and shoe factories. Finding joy in self decoration, she "would crumble a petal from her mother's fake geraniums to give color to her cheeks and was fired from a nasty job at a bakery because she darkened her eyebrows with burnt matchsticks." (Source.)

Uninhibited by posing in the nude, she was determined to make a living as an artists' model while still in her teens, which caused her mother to turn her out of the house. The proprietress of Rosalie's restaurant in the Montparnasse district of Paris took pity on the young Alice, and often fed her. Rosalie's or La Rotonde may be the place where Modigliani, one of dozens of artists who painted or sculpted portraits of Kiki, paid his bill by slipping Futurist painter Gino Severini a chunk of hashish. (Source: Modigliani: A Life by Meryle Secrest, p. 106). 

In 1921, Kiki began an eight-year affair and artistic collaboration with the photographer Man Ray, during which time he influenced her style and took hundreds of portraits of her, including the iconic surrealist image Le Violon d'Ingres (Ingres' Violin) and Noire et blanche (Black and White). She also acted in experimental films shot by Man Ray. 

With a distinctive pointed-nose profile, Kiki also possessed "an extraordinary complexion which you could put makeup on in any form, and she did, too," said Lee Miller, Man Ray's subsequent collaborator and lover. "She was absolutely a gazelle," Miller said. (Source: Kiki Man Ray by Mark Braude, p. 229). "She had the short bobbed hair and unconventional look and really an energy, I think that people just really competed to capture," her biographer Mark Braude told The Octavian. "The bob and that whole fringe cut became ubiquitous by the end of the '20s. But when she started in 1921, 1922, that was actually a dangerous thing." (Kind of reminds me of when Tokin' Woman Patti Smith invented the shag haircut on herself and soon everyone copied her style.)

Kees van Dongen, Portrait of a Woman with a Cigarette

(Kiki de Montparnasse) ca. 1922-1924,

JE CONNAIS LA DROUGE

In Kiki's memoir, illustrated with her portraits and her own drawings, she tells of her introduction to cocaine while still a teenager (and a virgin). In a chapter titled, "Je Connais La Drogue" (I Know Drugs) she writes: 

"A sculptor for whom I pose entrusts me with an errand to run on the Champs-Élysées. I have to deliver a statuette to a gentleman of high importance. But he warns me that I must not be frightened by what I will see and above all, if I see money lying around not to worry about it."

Opening the door at the address where she is sent is a man of 40 years who "has the face of a bon vivant and a nose as if he had a bad cold!" He takes her on a tour of the apartment where, "Before letting me into another, darker room, he demands that I undress and put on a beautiful Chinese dress, white silk socks and golden slippers. In this room, all the wonders are gathered: the most beautiful collections of butterflies, lace, carpets, shawls. It's enough to give you a stiff neck. I want to see it all at once! It's magical."

She then writes, "I had noticed that from time to time he opened a pretty gold box from which he took, with a very small gold shovel, a pinch of white powder that he put in his nose; immediately afterwards he became very eloquent and I listened to him open-mouthed! 

"I took advantage of a moment when his back was turned to take a pinch of it myself and sniffed it. A while later, I felt very light; I was no longer thinking about anything. Life seemed beautiful... beautiful!"

Tamara de Lempicka: Surviving in Style

Tamara de Lempicka, "Young Woman in Green" (1931)

Just opened in San Francisco at the De Young museum: A retrospective of the work and life of Polish-born artist Tamara de Lempicka, the first exhibition of its kind in the US. 

Born Tamara Rosa Hurwitz, either in Warsaw or St. Petersburg to a family of Polish Jewish elites that encouraged her artistic interest with a tour of Italy. She married Tadeusz Lempicki in 1916, just before the October Revolution of the following year sent them fleeing Russia to Paris. Using the feminine declension of her husband's surname, Lampicka enrolled at free academies in the artistic community of Montparnasse, and began a lesbian affair with poet Ira Perrot, the subject of her first portraits. She began exhibiting at the Salon des Independants, held annually in Paris, under the masculine name Lempitzsky.

The timeline of Lempicka's life at the exhibit says that in 1922, "Tadeusz grows intolerant of his wife's affairs, cocaine use, late nights spent at clubs followed by valerian-induced sleep, and long work sessions listening to Richard Wagner at full volume." The couple divorced the year she painted a portrait of him, wherein his left hand (where his wedding ring would be worn) is purposely left unfinished. Lempicka picked up her paintbrush to support herself and her child,  exhibiting in the United States, and with the Société des Femmes Artistes Modernes in Paris. She subsequently married Baron Raoul Kuffner, becoming Baroness Kuffner.

Molly Tuttle, Brandy Clark and Patti Smith Rock Hardly Strictly Blue-Grass

The Annual Hardly Strictly Bluegrass free music festival, held in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park through the generosity of investment banker/banjo player Warren Hellman, tends to have its musical acts comment on being in the city once called Yerba Buena. 

In 2023, Rufus Wainwright opened his set with his song "Beautiful Child" by saying it was written on acid and mushrooms on Yoko Ono's farm, gesturing to the crowd and saying, "so, it feels proper." 

Very Important Pothead Kris Kristofferson, who died just before this year's festival, dueted with Merle Haggard on his satirical song "Oakie from Muskogee" at the 2011 fest. "I think when someone's 70 years old, they ought to be able to smoke anything they want to smoke," Haggard began, bringing cheers from the crowd for the verse, "We still wear our hair grow long and shaggy / like the people in San Francisco do." Kristofferson added his own clever verse, which he sang with a wry smile: "We don't shoot that deadly marijuana / We get drunk like God wants us to do." 

Tuttle (center, in green) with her female fiddle and bass player at HSB.

This year, Molly Tuttle brought her righteous bluegrass band Golden Highway, with which she's won the Grammy for Best Bluegrass Album two years running. Tuttle spoke of being raised in California and said she was offered her first pot brownie at Hardly Strictly when her mother brought her to the festival. Now a Tennessean, Tuttle rocked the crowd with her song, "Down Home Dispensary" from this year's Grammy-winning "City of Gold" CD.

Hello legislator the voters have spoken
There’s too much politickin' and not enough tokin’
It’s an economic agricultural wonder
So legalize the southland and roll us a number
Hey mister senator I’m asking you please
Put up a down home dispensary in Tennessee

Tuttle also performed the guitar solo and vocal on Tokin' Woman Grace Slick's "White Rabbit," another nod to San Francisco. The song was also performed at the fest by the three female back-up singers from the pot-friendly Dead cover band Moonalice, which includes in its lineup 84-year-old Lester Chambers, who performed the Chambers Brothers classic "Time Has Come Today." 

Nixon Caught On Tape Downplaying Dangers of Pot

Ehrlichman and Nixon

"Nixon Started the War on Drugs. Privately, He Said Pot Was ‘Not Particularly Dangerous,’" read a startling New York Times headline last week.

Minnesota cannabis lobbyist Kurtis Hanna was responsible for the story, after he listened to hours Nixon's infamous Oval Office tapes recently uploaded by the Richard Nixon Presidential Library. Hanna told the Times he has been "fascinated by the history of drug policy ever since he was arrested inside a casino in Iowa in 2009 and charged with possession of marijuana."

“Let me say, I know nothing about marijuana. I know that it’s not particularly dangerous, in other words, and most of the kids are for legalizing it," Nixon said in a March 1973 White House meeting with aides including then–White House press secretary Ronald Ziegler and White House counsel/Watergate conspirator John Ehrlichman.

Nixon added, "I don't think marijuana is (unintelligible) bad, but on the other hand, it’s the wrong signal at this time." He then began to talk about a coming law enforcement speech in which he would "totally" oppose legalization, bragging that no administration had been as hard-line on the issue, and opening a discussion about mandatory minimum sentences; penalties like five years for a trafficker, and life without parole for repeated offenses were put on the table.