Here’s a very interesting article by TPM alum Sahil Kapur on efforts to calm the waters between national Democrats and the Sanders campaign. The gist of it is that while Sanders and his top staffers have been upping the ante against Clinton and pressing their demand to take their campaign all the way to the convention he has also been quietly reaching out to Senate colleagues to reassure them that he understands the stakes involved and has no intention of damaging Democratic party prospects in the fall campaign.
Is this two-faced? Is it all consistent? Does one hand know what the other is doing?
White nationalists and neo-Nazis aren’t the only group represented among Trump delegates. There are also ones being busted on child pornography, weapons and explosives charges. But white nationalists do seem to be the common theme. And here’s yet another. Lori Gayne, a Trump delegate from Illinois whose twitter handle is “whitepride“. Admittedly, in Gayne’s case, “open racist” may be a more apt description.
It’s a truism that general election polls in May don’t tell you much about an election in November. But if you see clear trends, they can tell you something about what’s happening in May. To bring you up to speed there’s a NBC/WSJ poll out this morning which shows Clinton ahead of Trump by 46% to 43%. There’s also an ABC/WaPo poll which shows Trump up by two points, 46% to 44%.
There are two clear things we can draw from these polls.
Freshly assimilated into the Trump Collective, RNC strategist Sean Spicer says Mr Trump has made clear that the RNC must launch “aggressive” attacks on Hillary Clinton and not follow its past practice of not be willing to attack opponents.
Along those lines, David Cay Johnston has a new article out about how Donald Trump’s rise in the world of Manhattan real estate was paved or, perhaps better to say, cemented with enduring ties to members of organized crime. Johnston’s article is based on his and Wayne Barrett’s years of reporting on Mr Trump. And guess, what, Barrett is joining us at The Hive (sub req) at 12:30 PM to answer your questions about Mr Trump. Join me at 12:30 with Wayne, TPM Senior Editor Catherine Thompson and fellow readers.
With Trump again making rape accusations against his opponents husband, it’s really incumbent on reporters to bring up the fact that there is sworn testimony from Trump’s then-wife Ivana that he raped her in a fit of rage over a failed baldness remediation surgery. Come on, folks. Get it together.
We sent TPM’s Allegra Kirkland to Tennessee to cover a national conference of White Nationalists. She found that they’re united and excited in support of Donald Trump. “I’ve never felt this sense of energy in our movement,” the conference host, Jared Taylor, said in his opening remarks. “I’ve never been more optimistic.” Here’s Allegra’s full report from Burns, Tennessee.
For those too young to remember, “Vince Foster” was Vince Foster, a close friend of the Clintons and law partner with Hillary Clinton who came to Washington with the First Couple to work in the White House Counsel’s office. Foster’s tragic suicide only a few months after the inauguration was taken up by DC Republicans and used as a political cudgel with a series of conspiracy theories about how the Clintons had allegedly had him murdered. If you’re looking for a modern analogue, think of Birtherism. Washington Republicans were able to get multiple independent counsel investigations to reinvestigate his suicide, all concluding that it was a suicide as it obviously was from the beginning. It is in short a horrifyingly shameless tale of political exploitation of a very sad story, one man’s death, the shattering of a family which we’re apparently about to relive once again.
As I mentioned yesterday, the three big networks and in fact the major national dailies continue to blast out Donald Trump’s charges that Hillary Clinton’s husband raped or assaulted other women. And yet, CNN, MSNBC, let alone Fox refuse to discuss that at least twice Trump has himself been accused of sexual assault or rape in sworn statements – once by his wife and again a decade ago in a lawsuit brought by a woman named Jill Harth. But in discussing how to approach the issue of how to approach Trump’s history of accusations of sexual violence or harassment the question came up, what exactly is Trump trying to accomplish by using Bill Clinton’s past against Hillary?
I’ve been working on a piece about the different threads of information that make me think Donald Trump is dramatically less rich than he claims (probably why he’s afraid to release the tax returns). But damn, trying to skim a bit off the veterans. It may be worse than I imagine.
In all seriousness, Trump seemed to go to great lengths not to follow through on his personal donation to a vets group after that debate skip fundraiser. The other billionaire contributors had given their contributions weeks earlier. Only getting pressed by The Washington Post forced Trump to cough up the money.
When asked if he’d only given the money after being pressed by reporters, a stung Trump told the Post’s David Fahrenthold: “You know, you’re a nasty guy. You’re really a nasty guy. I gave out millions of dollars that I had no obligation to do.”