THE BIGGEST FIGHT: New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez spoke publicly for the first time yesterday since his indictment last week, predicting that he will be exonerated and will continue to be his state’s senior senator.

  Fellow democrats are lining up saying he should resign.

  Accused for the second time in the past 10 years of being on the take, Menendez said the charges were written up to “be as salacious as possible.” His trial six years ago ended with a hung jury and dismissed charges. “I recognize that this will be the biggest fight yet,” the 69-year-old Democrat said. 

  Menendez left the room as reporters shouted questions about $550,000 in cash stuffed into clothing and $100,000 worth of gold bars found at his home, as well as a Mercedes Benz prosecutors say was given to him as a payoff. Prosecutors say the DNA of a businessman also charged in the indictment was on envelopes containing the money.

  The senator has said he keeps cash at home, what he described as an “old-fashioned” habit learned from his parents who lived in communist Cuba. “For 30 years, I have withdrawn thousands of dollars in cash from my personal savings account, which I have kept for emergencies, and because of the history of my family facing confiscation in Cuba,” Menendez said. A US senator makes $174,000 a year.

  He didn’t try to explain the gold bars.

THE WAR ROOM: Ukraine claims that it killed the commander of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet and as many as 33 officers in a missile attack last week on a building in Sevastopol. If it’s true, that would make it among the most damaging strikes since the sinking of the Russian fleet’s flagship last year. The Russian defense ministry has neither confirmed nor denied it, but this morning Russia posted video of Admiral Viktor Sokolov, casting doubt on whether he’s dead.

  Ukraine says fleet officers were holding a meeting at the time of the missile strike. This suggests that they had accurate intelligence, likely from the US or another western power. 

   The Ukrainians continue to hit Sevastopol with long-range missiles and exploding drones. 

  In Washington, Senators from both parties are embroiled in discussions about a continuing resolution to keep paying for the national defense. Part of the debate is whether to include in the bill $25 billion of further assistance for Ukraine or keep that money out of it to avoid opposition from right wingers who want to cut help to the embattled country.

ORANGE ALERT: One of the slowest breaking stories over the past several days has been Donald Trump’s all-caps social media post declaring that Gen. Mark Milley, the soon-to-retire chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, should be executed. Commenting on Milley’s conciliatory phone call to Chinese counterparts after the January 6th insurrection, Trump posted on his 

Truth Social website that Milley’s phone call was “an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH.” 

  Arizona’s Republican Rep. Paul Gosar stepped up the call for killing Milley writing in his congressional newsletter that “in a better society, quislings like the strange sodomy-promoting General Milley would be hung.”

  Milley’s phone call had been approved by civilians in the administration as an act of diplomacy. Now he’s being threatened with being killed for it.

  Writer Mark Klaas says in The Atlantic that calls for Milley’s death have been barely heard amidst all the political noise and hatred in the country. But he warns, “The United States is not just careening toward a significant risk of political violence around the 2024 presidential election. It’s also mostly oblivious to where it’s headed.”

THE OBIT PAGE: David McCallum, the Scottish-born actor who broke out as the mysterious Russian spy Illya Kuryakin on the 1960s television series “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.” and rebounded 40 years later as a medical examiner on the hit series “N.C.I.S.,” died on yesterday in New York. He was 90.

  He also had a part in the World War II movie, “The Great Escape.” 

 In Man From U.N.C.L.E the slim blonde and quiet McCallum became a national sex symbol as the sidekick to Robert Vaughn’s Napoleon Solo. McCallum said no matter where he went in life, he was never able to fully escape being Illya Kuryakin. 

THE SPIN RACK: President Biden is flying to Detroit today to stand with striking auto workers. —Fox News announced that Sean Hannity will host a debate in late November between Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, even though DeSantis is running for president and Newsom is not.  Fox describes the 90-minute event as “a red vs. blue state debate.” — Seven candidates have qualified for the Republican party’s second presidential debate. Donald Trump, the leading candidate by far, will not attend. — Patrick Crusius, the gunman who killed 23 people and wounded 22 others at an El Paso Walmart in 2019 has agreed to pay $5.5 million to the families affected by the attack. Crusius, who was 21 at the time of his rampage, has been sentenced to 90 consecutive life sentences and does not appear to have the money to pay. — As winter comes to an end down there, Antarctic Sea ice has reached a record low, suggesting a serious toll taken by global warming.

BELOW THE FOLD: The Washington Post has published new rules for telephone etiquette in the age of the iPhone.

– Don’t leave voice mail, send a text.

– Text first and ask if they are free to talk.

– You don’t have to answer just because someone is calling.

– Emotions are for voice, facts are for text.

– “Voice mails are dead. Long live the video voice mail.”

– Don’t use speakerphone in public.

– Despite all these other new rules, don’t stop actually talking on the phone.

  They left one out: Don’t text your mother. Call her. 

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