🍻 In This Week's Hill Spill Newsletter: Stolen Valor at the Kennedy Center, Rick Scott vs. Kanye West and Trump's DNI Curveball

🍹 Welcome to this week's Hill Spill! We've got a Kennedy Center exec accused of inventing a Grammy nod and allegedly using his perch to pay his own band, a Pastors for Trump candidate whose campaign got nuked by a texting scandal, Rick Scott going to war with Kanye West over a Tampa concert, and Trump blowing up his own party's DNI plan just because why not... Grab a bev, this one's juicy! 🍸

SCOOP: Sammy Miller’s Kennedy Center bio called him Grammy nominated. The Recording Academy begs to differ. Now the former head of music programming, facing accusations of “stolen valor” from former colleagues, is also under scrutiny for allegedly using his perch to book and pay his own band at the venue he ran.

The Recording Academy, the people who actually hand out Grammys, confirmed to us that Miller isn’t among their nominees. His bio on the Kennedy Center’s own website said otherwise. So did a Wall Street Journal op-ed he wrote, where his byline identified him as a Grammy-nominated artist. Nobody apparently thought to check.

“I’ve checked with our Awards Team on this and can share with you on background that Mr. Miller is not Grammy nominated,” a Recording Academy spokesperson told us.

When we reached out, Miller pushed back on the premise. “I was honored to play drums on Joey Alexander’s Grammy-nominated album,” he told us. True enough. But by that standard, so is everyone else who set foot in the recording studio.

Two former colleagues told us the credential amounted to “stolen valor” in a business where a Grammy nod actually means something.

Miller was allegedly using his position to book himself. Contracts reviewed by Sources Say show SMATC Music LLC was paid to perform at the KC Speakeasy, the Kennedy Center’s self-described “after-hours jazz club hidden in the sky,” while Miller was the senior director in charge of booking it. Sources familiar with his tenure say his band played there more than once.

A recent Politico story noted in passing that Miller had played the Speakeasy once and wasn’t paid. The contracts say otherwise.

Three people familiar with Miller’s tenure told us they flagged concerns about his qualifications and took them straight to leadership, but got nowhere. One said Miller was simply “in the wrong seat on the bus.” Another said there was “no reason” he was “on the programming team at the Kennedy Center” given his lack of booking experience.

Miller left the Kennedy Center during the April layoffs. He didn’t respond to additional requests for comment.

In a feud nobody saw coming, Senator Rick Scott is demanding the cancellation of Kanye West's upcoming Tampa concerts, pointing to the rapper's history of antisemitic rhetoric.

“This is ridiculous. Kanye West adores Hitler and hates Jews," he told us in an interview on Thursday.

"He's been banned in a lot of countries from performing. Now in a public facility funded by taxpayer dollars, Kanye West is going to be allowed to do concerts. These should be canceled," he added. "The Jews in Tampa are paying their taxes, and then the Sports Authority is bringing in somebody that wants to attack Jews. That's wrong."

Scott sent a letter to the Tampa Sports Authority on June 4 demanding cancellation, then held a press conference at the Florida Holocaust Museum behind a lectern that read "Don't. Fund. Antisemitism," joined by Holocaust survivors, Jewish leaders, Sen. Ashley Moody (R-Fla.) and former Republican governor turned Democratic St. Petersburg mayoral candidate Charlie Crist.

The Tampa Sports Authority has pushed back on the calls for cancellation, arguing that all costs are being covered by the event's promoter and that as a public venue it’s constitutionally obligated to uphold free speech principles regardless of the performer's views. 

"We condemn antisemitism from any source. However, we also respect free speech rights guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution, even when we disagree with that speech. In addition, no taxpayer money is being used for staging the Ye concerts. To suggest otherwise is false,” they said in a statement. 

The Sports Authority's general counsel also issued a memo arguing that canceling the shows would expose the agency to First Amendment and breach of contract challenges.

Scott pushed back on the First Amendment argument, telling us: "He can go to any private venue he wants, but the government shouldn't be platforming somebody that's antisemitic." We asked him what the bar should be for banning artists from public venues. "If they have a hatred against a group of people, then yeah, they should be banned," he said.

West published a full-page apology in the Wall Street Journal earlier this year, attributing his antisemitic behavior to bipolar disorder and a brain injury sustained in a 2002 car accident, and said it did not excuse the harm he caused.

Some defenders have pointed to that apology and the fact that he has not repeated the most egregious of his past statements since, accusing Scott and his allies of their own brand of cancel culture. Critics on the other side argue the apology rings hollow given that West has continued to profit from the controversy.

Scott's office told us West's team has not been in touch. "No, nor has Mr. West's team reached out to ours — or anyone in the Tampa Bay area Jewish community — about this performance," a spokesperson said. Scott was unmoved by the apology. "He could have come to Tampa and gone to the Holocaust Museum and done something to alleviate the concern. Has he done that?"

Scott says he still expects the shows to come down.

 "My expectation is this gets canceled," he told us.

The Florida Holocaust Museum is waiving admission fees all three days, the Tampa Bay Times first reported. The concerts are June 26 and 28.

The Senate's push to get a permanent DNI in place and keep Bill Pulte out of the position got completely upended by President Trump on Wednesday, and we have some GOP sources who are less than thrilled about it.

Pulte's lack of any intelligence credentials has not gone unnoticed on the Hill. When Trump tapped the Federal Housing Finance Agency director to serve as acting DNI after Tulsi Gabbard stepped down following her husband's cancer diagnosis, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) told reporters "We don't need a weaponized DNI, we need professionals there." Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) called Pulte an "incendiary attack dog" in an interview with CNBC.

 One GOP senator told us both parties were in agreement to block Pulte from assuming the position by fast-tracking Clayton, but "Trump said screw you all, Pulte will reign."

Jay Clayton was the play to box out Pulte. Both sides were quietly fast-tracking him so Pulte would never actually touch the job. There’s even chatter Trump wanted Pulte in just long enough for information gathering purposes before Clayton took over.

Early Wednesday morning, Trump canceled Clayton's confirmation hearing and said he would keep Pulte as acting DNI until the Senate passed the SAVE America Act, a voter ID bill that has already failed to win a simple majority in the Republican-controlled Senate. Senate Intelligence Chairman Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) initially announced the hearing would continue, saying the committee would proceed "unless the president directs him [Clayton] not to appear." Two hours later, he announced the hearing was being postponed.

The SAVE Act push created its own drama inside the GOP conference with things getting a little spicy during the Senate GOP lunch on Wednesday, where we were told senators were taking aim at Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) over his push to attach the voting bill to FISA, which many members consider a wildly unrealistic ask that gives the president false hope.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) told us Wednesday he was frustrated with the delay in FISA and the confirmation process being stalled for seemingly no reason. 

 "We had a hearing scheduled for this afternoon, and it got canceled because the president told the nominee not to show up, so I think we're sort of at an impasse. But we need to break the impasse, because we need to restart the 702 collection — that's 60% of what the president gets briefed on in his intelligence daily brief. So hopefully it won't last long,” he said. 

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) threw salt in the wound arguing Trump “embarrassed Republicans — he's pulled the rug out from under them and blown up the FISA negotiations at every step.”

Clayton, sources tell us, is the key to unlocking FISA.  When reporters asked Thune on Wednesday why Trump was doing any of this, he replied, "Good question."

Meanwhile FISA remains lapsed and Pulte is set to take over the position on Friday. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

This week on the pod we caught up with Rep. Byron Donalds, the frontrunner in Florida's governor's race! We got into an array of topics, including the racist attacks coming from a primary opponent, how he turned his life around after two arrests in college, the moment he gave his life to Christ while working at Cracker Barrel and more! He also told us who he thinks the most difficult member of Congress is and how he is a bit of an introvert. Grab a bev and tune in!

Jackson Lahmeyer survived Tuesday's Republican primary and was headed for a runoff, but fallout from a weekend scandal ultimately brought his congressional campaign to an end less than 24 hours later.

The Pastors for Trump founder and Tulsa megachurch pastor announced Wednesday that he was suspending his bid for Oklahoma's 1st Congressional District. 

The controversy erupted over the weekend when the Daily Mail reported a banger story detailing how Lahmeyer, who is a married father of five, had exchanged saucy text messages with campaign fundraiser and former Miss Oklahoma USA Caitlin Simmons Key. The report also included allegations that the two had kissed and that the candidate invited Key to his hotel room.

Lahmeyer pushed back on the story on X, calling it a "distorted" account of events while acknowledging that he had "crossed a boundary line through text messaging" and said he was addressing the matter privately with his wife and his spiritual advisers.

Despite the allegations, former President Donald Trump stood by Lahmeyer heading into Tuesday's primary where he received 26 percent of the vote, finishing second and earning a place in a runoff against state Rep. Mark Tedford.

The Trump support was short-lived…

By Wednesday afternoon, the president withdrew his endorsement and backed Tedford instead  in a Truth Social post. Shortly after, Lahmeyer released a statement announcing he was ending his campaign.

"After prayerful consideration with my wife, Kendra, and my team over the last twenty-four hours, I've made the difficult decision to suspend my campaign for Congress," he said. "I do not want to be a distraction to my family, my church, and the great people of Oklahoma's 1st Congressional District."

Lahmeyer's exit leaves Tedford as the overwhelming favorite to become the Republican nominee for the seat and brings an abrupt end to a campaign built largely around faith, conservative values and personal integrity. 

Senior GOP sources told us they are happy leadership won’t have to deal with another insane member next year. 

This week, one of our readers asked us to make the cocktail the “Kiss Me Kessler.” Apparently, it is an inside joke that hopefully doesn’t entail anything that might get me cancelled. But the recipe is posted on Urban Dictionary so here ya go!

1 part gin

1 part vodka

1 fine waitress

Bitters

Cherry grenadine

Enjoy and stay tuned for next week’s tea!