Thread by @ChadPergram

1) In 2013, the government was in the middle of a 16-day shutdown over Obamacare.

It was a Saturday evening and the Senate just wrapped for the day. No end to the shutdown was in sight. I was the last reporter leaving the Capitol.

2) As I came to the first floor elevators near the Senate Carriage Entrance, Reid materialized. He too was heading home. Reid knew I visited Vegas a few times by that point. I asked how he was doing and mentioned I needed a vacation once the government was funded again.

3) I told Reid of one of my favorite restaurants in Las Vegas: Lotus of Siam. It’s a well-known Thai restaurant located off the Strip. The restaurant is in a different location now. But at the time, Lotus of Siam occupied a spot in a run-down strip mall.

4) The entrance to the restaurant belied the culinary magic inside. The walls were plastered with pictures of Hollywood types and rock stars, all who patronized Lotus of Siam when they visited Las Vegas.

Reid proceeded to tell me Lotus of Siam was one of his favorites, too.

5) I asked what dishes he liked there. And with that, the Senate Majority Leader whipped out his phone dialed his wife Landra, asking for the name of a dish the two of them often enjoyed.

6) “Honey, what is that dish you like so much at Lotus of Siam,” Reid asked his wife. “It’s with pumpkin?”

7) Wendy Sherman was one of the most senior figures at the State Department in 2014. Sherman and other officials journeyed to Capitol Hill to lead a Senate-wide briefing in the basement of the Capitol Visitor’s Center on North Korea’s nuclear program.

8) TV networks positioned a bank of cameras in the Senate subway station in hopes of grabbing a few senators as they came and went from the briefing. I asked another colleague to handle the stakeout and headed to Cups, a coffee shop in the basement of the Russell Building

9) My plan was to grab a cup of coffee and then cut past the subway station stakeout en route to the Capitol Rotunda. That’s where I was scheduled to meet a source.

10) Just as I walked up to the stakeout, Harry Reid appeared atop a small escalator leading to the subway station and near where senators would receive their briefing. I hadn’t spoken to Reid directly in a while. He waved hello. We met at the top of the escalator.

11) I told Reid that I’d be heading to Las Vegas again in a few weeks during the upcoming Congressional recess.

We spoke for a moment, ear-to-ear. Naturally, all of the cameras at the stakeout focused on us talking, as though we were exchanging important info about Pyongyang.

12) “Where are you staying,” Reid asked.

I told Reid we previously stayed at the Bellagio and Mandalay Bay. But we weren’t sure yet this time.

“Stay at Wynn,” said Reid, without missing a beat.

13) “Wynn” is a hotel/casino complex on the north end of the Vegas Strip. Casino Mogul Steve Wynn ran the place until being forced out in 2018 due to sexual misconduct allegations. Reid was telling me this years before anything was known publicly about Wynn’s alleged infractions.

14) Reid, being Reid, was always frank in his assessments of most situations. Even if it came to hotels on the Vegas Strip.

“Steve Wynn is an ass but a friend,” said Reid of Wynn. “But he has the nicest place in Las Vegas.”

15) I thanked Reid for the suggestion and headed up to the Rotunda. Reid went the other direction, toward the North Korea briefing.

By the time I reached the Rotunda, my email exploded with questions from reporters at the stakeout who spotted the escalator exchange

16) “What did Reid tell you about North Korea?” they all asked.

“Nothing,” I told them.

“Come on, Chad. What did he say?” probed one incredulous colleague.

Finally, one of Reid’s aides reached out, curious what the Majority Leader had said.

17) Reid’s staffer was just being diligent, wondering if he needed to brace for a juicy report on North Korea.

“He told me to stay at Wynn,” I replied.

No special information about Pyongyang.

Just an unsolicited hotel recommendation.

Stay at Wynn when in Vegas.

18) Toward the end of his Senate career, Reid took on Washington Football Team owner Dan Snyder. Reid wanted the team to drop the name "Redskins."
Reid would routinely come to the Senate floor to personally blast Snyder and implore him to change the team name.

19) Reid described the club as “a racist franchise,” even hoping for the team to lose games.

Reid and other Senate Democrats crafted legislation to end the NFL’s tax exempt status if it didn’t order a change in the team’s name.

20) “It is not right that the National Football League continues to denigrate an entire population,” said Reid in 2015, noting the 27 Native American tribes he represented in Nevada. “Every time they hear this name is a sad reminder of a long tradition of racism and bigotry.”

21) “One of my disappointments in my senatorial tenure was the fact that we did not get this done during the time I was there,” said Reid in a 2020 interview with Fox

22) Nevada officials just renamed McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas after Reid two weeks ago. The airport had been named after Sen. Pat McCarran (D-NV). McCarran was instrumental in aviation policy and pushed for the creation of the Air Force.

23) But McCarran was a race baiter, an anti-Semite and uttered a host of xenophobic tropes over the years. Thus, the McCarran name was just dropped in favor of Reid.

McCarran remains as one of Nevada’s two statues in the official U.S. Capitol collection.

24) Reid told me years ago that the McCarran statue “should be put out to pasture.” It is generally thought that Nevada will eventually replace the McCarran statue in the Capitol with one of Reid.