Summary
Money in politics dominated Sunday before the candidates hit the trail around New York, with its corrupting influence the danger discussed by Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump and George Clooney.
- Actor George Clooney said he helped raise “an obscene amount of money” for Hillary Clinton and the Democratic party, and that he agrees with Bernie Sanders and protester that it’s a danger to democracy. He also noted that most of the money he raised at a protested San Francisco event went to the party, and not Clinton’s campaign.
- “We need to take the Senate back because we need to confirm a supreme court justice,” Clooney said, “because that fifth vote on the supreme court can overturn Citizens United and get this obscene, ridiculous amount of money out so I never have to do a fundraiser again.”
- Bernie Sanders said that it “doesn’t pass the laugh test” for candidates to go “raising money from the top 1%” and then to promise a crackdown on those same powerful interests. “People see that, and that’s why so many people don’t vote,.”
- “You can’t do that when you’re dependent on them for your fundraising,” he said.. “That is not what democracy is about. That is a movement toward oligarchy.”
- Hillary Clinton shrugged off a new nickname, “crooked Hillary”, from Republican frontrunner Donald Trump. “I can take care of myself,” she said. “He would turn us back and undermine the progress that we’ve been making. He wants to set Americans against each other and I’m not going to stand for it.”
- Trump presided over a raucous crowd in Staten Island, New York, and bemoaned what he sees as a “rigged” primary process in which campaigns have to bribe delegates. “That’s a corrupt system. That has nothing to do with democracy.”
- He again hinted at trouble at the Republican convention in July: “I hope it doesn’t involve violence, and I’m not suggesting that. I hope it doesn’t involve violence and I don’t think it will. But I will say this it’s a rigged system, it’s a crooked system, it’s 100% crooked.”
- Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus said that candidates have no right to complain: each of the 50 states decided their rules last October, long before anyone had complained about caucuses, conventions or local “bosses”.
- He similarly said it’s all up to the delegates to write the convention rules, and out of Washington’s hands. “It’s not a matter of party insiders, it’s a matter of 2,400-plus grassroots activists and no matter what they want to do they can do.“
- “The majority rules and that is an American concept that I can’t imagine us turning our backs on,” Priebus said, before admitting that he had urged party leaders not to recommend any rule changes. “The recommendations I think just confuse people,” he said. “I think it’s a bad idea.”
Trump talks about nuclear weapons. “We have stuff that’s so old and so rotten that we don’t even know if it works.”
“It’s going to be a whole different ballgame, folks.” He appears to be suggesting the US resume active testing of nuclear weapons. China and Russia are beating the US in the arms race, according to the businessman.
“You know Vladimir Putin said Donald Trump is a genius, he’s going to do very well,” Trump says. “Believe me he’s not get anything for that.”
“Wouldn’t it be nice if we actually got along with Russia? Wouldn’t it be nice? It wouldn’t be so bad?”
The crowd gives the verbal equivalent of a shrug to this. A little applause. A half-hearted whoop.
But Trump quickly works them back into a fervor with praise, saying he’s astounded to see the audience still on its feet for his speech. The crowd loves this praise, and goes into raptures.
Trump: “The press won’t report that. This dishonest media. This dishonest group of people.”
The press is reporting this right now, here.
He hunches his shoulders and mimics holding a microphone, like a local TV newscaster on assignment. He also raises his voice into a nasal twang. “They’re going to say, ‘we’re in Staten Island, Donald Trump gave a speech.’”
Back to his usual Trump voice: “They’re not going to say the audience was packed, the biggest audience in 15 years. They’re not going to say that not one person in the audience for a 20 minute speech sat down. Nobody’s seen that before.”
The press has also reported on the specific rules that Trump makes some organizations agree to in exchange for entry, including a rule that cameras are only allowed to show him at the podium, and not zoom out or pan the room to show the crowd.
Updated
The businessman is rambling about China, and a story about how its leaders are alarmed by Donald Trump. “They’re the problem,” he says.
“They’re going to treat us fairly, and they’re going to treat us justly or it’s bye-bye.”
He suggests that he’ll tear up trade agreements and financial arrangements with China if they don’t do what he wants. The crowd whoops and whistles.
Then he talks about how manufacturers have left the US. He previews a hypothetical phone call to a company that goes to Mexico to create a factory.
“Congratulations on your new plant, have many many years of success,” Trump says he’d tell the CEO before revealing the “bad news”.
“Every unit that you make and send across our now very strong border, you’re going to pay a 35% tax on that unit.”
The crowd loves tariffs. “We have New York values,” Trump cheers.
They cheer too. Somebody snarls “Lyyyyyin’ Ted!” with glee.
“They lie. They lie. It’s all a rigged deal. They said they didn’t change anything. I announced in June,” Trump rambles. “So it’s June, we’re doing well all over.”
“Once they heard the message, it was over. And I can tell you this nobody can beat my message.”
He says that “when I watched Lyin’ Ted talk the other night”, he noticed that Cruz talked about a wall and jobs and the myriad topics of a Trump speech (and of many political speeches).
Then he starts talking about how the US should have taken the high quality oil of Iraq instead of “giving them” – the antecedent of “them” appears to be Iraqis – the nation of Iraq.
Trump meanwhile is talking to some rowdy supports at a brunch event on Staten Island. The crowd absolutely roars at a protesters who snuck in. Trump calls the person a “professional agitator” without evidence. “He’s not for real.”
“The safest place to be anywhere is at a New York rally,” Trump says. “There’s love in the room.”
“Some days I wish they could turn off the live television, then we could really have fun.”
The press pack trailing Trump notices some adjustments in the businessman’s tactics.
So "Crooked Hillary" is a thing now.
— Ali Vitali (@alivitali) April 17, 2016
At press conference, trump says he worked on SI for "four summers." In large SI luncheon w crowd, he says it was "probably five" summers
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) April 17, 2016
Never have I see Hilton so packed. A record crowd. pic.twitter.com/qYLMyCYwrI
— Tom Wrobleski (@TomWrobleski1) April 17, 2016
The Sanders campaign has entered the looking glass and sent an email from the beyond.
Its subject line: “Thank YOU, George Clooney.”
Bernie is trying to raise money off of George Clooney's comment about "obscene amount of money" raised for Hillary. pic.twitter.com/5Lue2WOxUI
— Yamiche Alcindor (@Yamiche) April 17, 2016
A reporter asks Trump about his campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, who was charged with battery against a reporter but not prosecuted.
Trump points out that the aide is standing nearby, and says he’s very glad that Lewandowski was “totally exonerated from that bogus nonsense, that bogus claim.”
“That was a very unfair thing that happened to him, very, very unfair.”
Prosecutors said that while the video was enough to charge Lewandowski with the crime but not enough to convict him in trial. They did not say that Lewandowski was “exonerated” or not guilty.
Another reporter asks the candidate about the enormous college tuition debt that many young people carry. Trump doesn’t have a plan – yet. “I’m going to come up with something.”
“They come to me and it’s turmoil for them. They’re loaded up with debt and they can’t get a job. And I’m going to have policy on that very, very soon.”
And finally a reporter asks Trump about the violence that has plagued his events around the country, from fistfights in Chicago to scuffles in St Louis and sucker-punch incidents and pepper-spray in North Carolina and elsewhere.
“The safest places to be in this country are at a Trump rally,” Trump says. It’s the press who misconstrue his events, he claims.
Video from many events, including this rally in March, shows violence by Trump supporters against protesters at his rallies.
Trump: 'corrupt system has nothing to do with democracy'
Donald Trump is doing an event in Staten Island, New York, hosted by a local police association – they’re presenting the businessman with an award.
An official with the police organization is talking about how back in the day “the wall was Ellis Island” and how proud he is to give Trump “the America’s Finest Award”.
Trump starts off with his usual spiel of praise for the “great hotel”, the police organization (“you people [who] have done an unbelievable job”) and irritation at the press in the room, who he says don’t believe him and he doesn’t believe them.
“It’s a rigged election. I’m winning by a lot. And people say, ‘don’t complain, you’re winning,’” he says. “I win all the time when it’s up to the voters.”
He criticizes “the bosses”, just like his new convention manager Paul Manafort did on a talk show earlier today. “I’m winning with the voters, and we’re winning big, and I think we’ll get to the 1,237.”
He rambles a lot about how “they changed the rules” in Colorado and Florida, sometimes to try to stymie him, sometimes to try to help Jeb Bush with changes that actually boosted Trump. All the states had to have their rules set by 1 October 2015, long before any person anywhere had voted for Trump in an election or caucus.
“I don’t want to play the rule game,” Trump says. “It’s all about getting the bosses out.”
Then he insinuates that bad things will happen if delegates try to skew convention rules in favor of Ted Cruz this summer. “You’re going to have a very, very angry and upset group of people at the convention.”
“I hope it doesn’t involve violence, and I’m not suggesting that. I hope it doesn’t involve violence and I don’t think it will. But I will say this it’s a rigged system, it’s a crooked system, it’s 100% crooked.”
“It’s a corrupt system, you’re basically buying these people,” he continues, talking about the kind of delegate courtship – he implies bribery – that he would have to do to win some supporters at the local level. He says he could invite them to his Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida.
“You’re gonna use the spa, you’re gonna this you’re gonna that, we’re gonna buy your vote. That’s a corrupt system. That has nothing to do with democracy.”
The US is a republic.
Trump accepting award pic.twitter.com/TKvXA25zzf
— Sarah McCammon NPR (@sarahmccammon) April 17, 2016
Updated
John Kasich has spent part of the weekend in the private quarters of New York’s Orthodox Jewish community, with my colleague Ben Jacobs in pursuit of the Ohio governor’s quixotic campaign for the Republican nomination.
On Saturday, John Kasich gave what many of the reporters covering his campaign thought was one of his most effective and touching speeches yet. Because it was in a New York synagogue, cameras were banned and even note taking was considered forbidden. As a result only the 500 or so Orthodox Jews who were in the room at the Great Neck Synagogue will ever have seen it.
That, in microcosm, is what John Kasich faces as he stumps New York. The Ohio governor is, in effect, running not to lose. With no path to the 1,237 delegates required to win the nomination (he still needs well over 1,000 and there are only 852 still available), Kasich is banking on a deadlock leading to a contested convention and then emerging as a dark horse if neither Donald Trump nor Ted Cruz prevails.
The Ohio governor’s strategy speaks to his precarious situation. Kasich is hopscotching the state from congressional district to congressional district, to places where he can keep Donald Trump under 50% and finish second, thus winning one delegate.
Kasich spent Saturday targeting Jewish voters, many of whom are wary of Trump for reasons ranging from his inconsistency on foreign policy to his sometimes autocratic presentation. The appearance at the synagogue in Great Neck – a heavily Jewish community with a mix of Ashkenazi and Persian Jews – came at a time when many Jews in the United States are feeling particularly uneasy with the rise of Islamic terrorism and growing anti-semitism throughout the world.
There were moments of awkwardness here too, including Kasich briefly citing the end of Psalm 23 to solve a debate among Jewish theologians about the afterlife; and he cited the approaching holiday of Passover as an opportunity to see the Cecil B DeMille classic The Ten Commandments. But mostly the Ohio governor talked about his faith in a touching, personal way. He rooted it in a retelling the story of how his parents were killed by a drunk-driver in a car accident, and discussed the story of Joseph from Genesis.
His sincerity was evident. Kasich cited his past gaffes defensively – “I’m not trying to teach, sometimes when I get carried away they say he’s trying to teach to us and preach to us, I am not.” The only hint of anything political was when he offered what was likely an inadvertent contrast with Trump: “Sometimes we invest too much in the power of leadership and not investing enough in the power of ourselves to bring a healing and justice to this world to live a life bigger than ourselves.”
North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory is the last guest in the talk shows this morning, on NBC’s Meet the Press.
McCrory is appearing to defend a new law dubbed “the bathroom law” that been protested by LGBT people, corporations, celebrities and other state governments. The law is seen as sanctioning discrimination against LGBT people.
The governor says it’s actually about “government overreach” and liberals. “It was the left that brought about the bathroom bill,” he says.
“The city of Charlotte passed a bathroom ordinance mandate on every private sector employer,” McCrory says, “and I think that’s government overreach.
“It’s not the government’s business to tell the private sector what their bathroom, locker room, shower practices should be.”
“To allow a man into a women’s restroom or a shower facility at a YMCA for example,” would be inappropriate, he says. “I’m not going to tell any manufacturing plan any bank their policy.”
“But I do believe in our high schools, in our universities we should continue the tradition we’ve had for many years” – separate men’s and women’s rooms.
Todd tries to pin McCrory down on the apparent contradiction: he is using the state government to handcuff what city governments can do, ostensibly to prevent government overreach.
“I don’t think the government ought to be the HR director for each business,” McCrory says. “This is that fine line between how much does government tell the private sector.”
Then the NBC host questions McCrory about the central problem of discrimination: why don’t LGBT people deserve the same protections as any other Americans?
“We have got to deal with this extremely new social norm,” he says, “and have these discussions about the conception of equality.”
He says that he doesn’t know of any business in North Carolina that is actively discriminating against LGBT people.
“This is basically a restroom privacy issue versus equality, and these things need to be discussed, not threatened by Hollywood,” an apparent allusion to the criticism he’s drawn from stars such as Bruce Springsteen and George Clooney.
Meanwhile.
I would have millions of votes more than Hillary except for the fact that I had 17 opponents and she just had a socialist named Bernie!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 17, 2016
Reince Priebus is making one last stop on the talk shows, on NBC’s Meet the Press. He’s asked for the third time this morning about Donald Trump’s complaints.
“I don’t know what the motivation is. There’s really nothing being rigged or changed or altered,” Priebus says. “These are really the same rules that’ve been in place for really a century.”
He says that states had to submit their rules by “October 1st of 2015 and not a single thing has changed about them.”
“You have to go state by state by state. It’s a pretty extraordinary task.”
Who elects a nominee, voters or delegates?
‘The voters empower the delegates but the the delegates, who in most cases are bound,” Priebus says, before adding that the convention, “it’s not a four-day party. A convention in the legal sense is the party coming to gather” and write rules and decide how the party works.
“It has a legal value,” he says. “If the boy scouts have a national convention they do similar things. We actually do a lot of business at a convention, and now everyone’s interested in the business.”
Trump’s complaints have a shaky foundation, Priebus implies. “He’s winning a plurality of votes and he has a plurality of delegates,” he says, but “majority rules on everything.”
Clooney: I raised 'obscene amount of money' for Clinton
George Clooney is on NBC with Chuck Todd on Meet the Press, where the actor strikes a friendly tone toward Bernie Sanders and the criticism that he’s complicit in raising “obscene” amounts of money from wealthy interests.
“Yes,” he says. “I think it’s an obscene amount of money. I think, you know, we had some protesters last night when we pulled up in San Francisco and they’re right to protest, they’re absolutely right, it is an obscene amount of money.
“The Sanders campaign when they talk about is absolutely right. It’s ridiculous that we should have this kind of money in politics. I agree, completely.”
“The overwhelming amount of the money that we’re raising is not going to Hillary for president it’s going to the downticket for congressmen, for senators to try to retake Congress,” he says.
“We need to take the Senate back because we need to confirm a supreme court justice, because that fifth vote on the supreme court can overturn Citizens United and get this obscene, ridiculous amount of money out so I never have to do a fundraiser again.”
The actor then links the problem to that of the “incredibly helpful” Panama Papers and corruption in politics more broadly. “I spend probably a quarter of my time now raising millions and millions of dollars for my foundation which is basically chasing and looking form money that these corrupt politicians all around the world have been hiding.”
“I think Citizens United is one of the worst laws passed since I’ve been around.”
Todd asks whether Clooney has ever met Trump. “I met him once, I was sitting own at a table. He was nice, and we talked a couple of times I think, and then he went on Larry King and told everybody I was very short,” the actor laughs. “I said well I met you sitting down.”
Clooney then turns this toward the broader race: “Trump and Cruz are making this a campaign of fear. We have to be afraid of everything, we have to be afraid of refugees, we have to be afraid of Muslims, we have to be afraid of minorities.”
“Are we really going to be scared of the very things that made our country great?”
If the answer is yes, Clooney says, Americans will have to answer to history. “We are not afraid. We are not a country that is afraid.”
The actor concedes that “fear has always worked, one way or another … fear has always been one of the great tools of any election. But the reality is we are not the descendants of a fearful people. So no, we are not going to ban Muslims from this country, that’s never going to happen. We are not going to go back to torture. We are not going to kill the families of terrorists or suspected terrorist. Because that is not who we are.”
Finally Todd asks Clooney about an anti-LGBT law recently enacted in North Carolina. “I think the law is ridiculous,” Clooney says, before praising some of the protests made by corporations who’ve stopped services in the state. Citing the example of corporations that protested a “religious freedom” law in Indiana, Clooney says “I think that can have some great effect.”
Updated
Reince Priebus now on CBS, to be asked, again, about the Republican primary rules that Donald Trump does not like. He goes through the motions.
Does he take the “rough July” remark from Trump as a threat? “Not particularly. I don’t know if it’s hyperbole or positioning.” Dickerson pushes – Trump has shown ability to get his supporters “energised”.
Priebus says he is doing shows like this to get the message across: “Each candidate has to know the rules, learn the rules and abide by the rules.” And the rules are decided at the convention, by the grass roots.
Nor does Priebus think Trump aide/supporter/operator Roger Stone’s remarks about possibly sending out delegates’ room numbers are a good thing.
“We’re going to have plenty of security, plenty of protection for the delegates,” Priebus says, adding: “It’s going to be a great convention… we’re going to be watching American history.”
Is that a reassuring answer?
And it’s over to CBS, and Face the Nation. Facing the Nation this week is… Bernie Sanders.
First, it’s CBS Battleground Tracker time. Trump is way ahead in New York, Pennsylvania and California. Clinton is up on Sanders in California and New York.
Here’s Sanders, to be asked about the changed, some would say deteriorated tone of the Democraric contest. He says he was not “ferocious” in the Brooklyn debate this week, but has become “a little bit fed up” with the negativity of the Clinton campaign and has therefore responded in kind.
“I am making it very clear that my views are representing the needs of the working class,” he says.
He is asked to what negative Clinton tactics he is referring.
“Oh, you name it. After we won eight of nine caucuses and primaries … they made it clear their goal was, and I think I’m quoting, ‘disqualify and defeat’.” He says he has not attacked Planned Parenthood, for example, which he says the Clinton campaign says he has. And he returns to the fundraising difference – small donors for him, big for Clinton.
As he said on CNN, he says he is not saying Clinton has done anything specifically for donors, but uses her positions on Wall Street reform as an attack point, as he did in the debate.
Host John Dickerson accuses Sanders of “fuzzing up” an economic policy debate with Clinton by concentrating on Clinton’s speaking fees from Wall Street banks and her lack of support (she said yesterday she supported it) for a $15 minimum wage.
The 1994 crime bill, now. Does he regret his support? Sanders uses his usual line on this: any big bill will have good things in it and bad, and this one had good things on violence against women and an assault weapons ban, so he voted for it.
And on superdelegates, is the system stacked against him, à la Trump? “Yes. Hillary Clinton is the establishment candidate.” He thinks he can win New York on a big turnout but the state system prohibits independents from voting in the Democratic primary, and that’s wrong.
Updated
Donald Trump’s convention manager Paul Manafort is next on the ABC program, where Stephanopoulos asks him about the businessman’s recent shutout losses to Ted Cruz in Colorado in Wyoming.
“We didn’t even play there because it was a closed system and we didn’t want to waste our money there dealing with party bosses,” Manafort says.
“There isn’t going to be a second ballot,” Manafort insists. “There is [sic] many paths to 1,237 to Donald Trump through June and July,” including New Jersey and California.
He then tries to frame Trump as a surprising underdog of sorts. “This was supposed to be the time when Cruz was supposed to be well ahead,” he says. Cruz wins in “the reddest of red states, where you have closed rules,” Manafort argues.
“Trump wins in states where we have to win to win the presidency.”
Manafort blames “systems that keeps the voters” out. “When voters participate, Donald Trump wins. When the bosses participate…”
The “bosses” don’t like Trump, he says, because the businessman has promised to “change the banking system, change the economy”.
“They’re not playing by their own rules,” Manafort says, adding that he’ll be “filing protests” in Missouri, Colorado and Wyoming.
“And we’re playing by [the rules], and we’re winning, and that’s the point, there’s only going to be one ballot.”
He’s dismissive of Cruz’s delegate tactics: “Those are not votes he’s winning, those are bodies he’s winning. If there’s no second ballot it’s much ado about nothing.”
The aide then defends Trump’s complaints about a “rigged” primary process. “He’s complaining about the system, that’s the point that keeps getting lost here,” Manafort says. “We’re trying to open up the process.”
He adds his own criticism of caucuses and conventions and closed primaries.
“That’s the system of the 1920s, not 2016. And yes, there’s history in conventions, but that history is ancient now, not of the modern presidency.”
Stephanopoulos moves on to foreign policy, asking Sanders about his remarkable turn away from a long tradition of American politicians who have hewed tight to an uncompromising defense of Israel.
Sanders, the first Jewish candidate to have won any state primary or caucus for president, has criticized Israel for what he calls its “disproportionate” response in the 2014 war against Gaza, in which 66 Israelis died and more than 2,000 Palestinians were killed.
“It goes without saying we have to protect Israel, its right to live in peace, to defend the security of its people,” Sanders tells ABC.
“Israel has every right in the world to respond to terrorism,” he adds, “but that was a disproportionate response.”
The senator does not back down from his criticism of Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister who he says is not infallible. “You cannot just nod your head to Netanyahu.”
Sanders doesn’t go so far as to say that Hillary Clinton has “ignored” the devastation and poverty in which Palestinians live (Stephanopoulos’ word), but he does stress its importance. “Poverty rate is off the charts [there], 40% people are unemployed.”
Stephanopoulos then asks about Saudi Arabia’s threats to sell off huge American assets if the US passes a bill that would target Saudis linked to terrorism for prosecution.
“Well, we can’t be blackmailed,” Sanders says, agreeing with Clinton that he wants to look at the legislation before making any kind of position on it. But he doesn’t shy from a critique of the Kingdom. “I have said throughout this campaign that we are not taking a hard enough look at Saudi Arabia,” he says.
“Saudi Arabia is one of the wealthiest and most powerful families in the world,” he continues, “The evidence is quite clear that sections of that very large royal family have funded Wahhabism,” an ultraconservative form of Islam.
“That is what al-Qaida is about,” Sanders says,” this horrific fundamentalist ideology.”
“So let me look at it, let me look at it,” he says of the legislation. “I do believe that Saudi Arabia is playing a very dangerous role in fomenting fundamentalism all over the world.”
Finally, Stephanopoulos asks whether Sanders will support Clinton should she win the nomination. Sanders basically says yes. “At the end of the say we must defeat Trump, we must not allow a Republican” to win the White House.
Stephanopoulos turns away from the live stream with Clinton and to his desk, where Bernie Sanders is sitting across from him. He asks about fundraising, which has been one of Sanders biggest criticisms of Clinton.
The senator says that he wants the US to “move away from Super Pacs, as you know secretary Clinton has many of them”.
He contrasts this with his own campaign’s contributions: “We have received seven million individual campaign contributions, averaging $27 bucks a piece”.
He then links the wealthy donors to the cynicism of many Americans about their politics. “I don’t think you do that by raising money from the top 1% and then” say you represent everyone else,” Sanders says. “That kind of doesn’t pass the laugh test.”
“And people see that, and that’s why so many people don’t vote,” he continues. “So I think we need a revolution, certainly in campaign finance [and an] emphasis on getting more working people, young people in the political process.”
He says that Clinton’s intentions to regulate and prosecute Wall Street run afoul of her contributors. “You can’t do that when you’re dependent on them for your fundraising.”
“I am trying to lead this country in a different direction,” he says. While Clinton says she’ll sign measures to increase the minimum wage or regulate Wall Street, she’ll only do so once Congress sends it to her desk, he argues. “I want to lead that effort, not just follow.”
Corey Lewandowski, Donald Trump’s campaign manager, speaks on Fox News Sunday.
He’s asked first about his infamous “encounter” with the reporter Michelle Fields in March, which resulted in charges of battery which this week were dropped. Does he now acknowledge that he did touch Miss Fields?
No. “Candidly,” he says, “I didn’t remember the incident.” He tried to contact Fields, he says, but to this day he has not heard from her and he is happy this is behind him.
Chris Wallace, one of the more dogged talk show hosts, presses the issue. Is Lewandowski prepared to apologise for touching Fields and saying she was “delusional”?
No. “I’d be happy to have a conversation with her but to apologise to someone I’ve never spoken to and don’t remember having any interaction with is not realistic now.”
On to the delegate fight, which Trump is losing to Ted Cruz in states where bargaining gets delegates rather than voting. Lewandowski says Trump’s best states are ahead of him, starting with New York on Tuesday.
“He is the presumptive nominee going forward,” he says, “and Ted Cruz is going to mathematically eliminated from gaining 1,237 delegates by next Tuesday.”
Wallace presses on how the Trump campaign appears not to have known the rules of the Republican primary. Lewandowski criticises the rules. He mentions Florida, where Trump won but of 99 delegates 30 will be apportioned locally. “I understand that those are the rules but there are people out there who do not volunteer or write a cheque for the party,” he says.
What did Trump mean when he predicted “a rough July” at the convention? Lewandowski doesn’t bite. Trump is winning, the RNC “should respect that”. Wallace pushes – is this another alusion to the possibility of riots, of violence?
“No,” says Lewandowski, “what we’re talking about is a fractured party … that’s not what we’re about … if the party wants a winner they have to support Donald Trump.”
Last question: is the veteran operative Paul Manafort now running the Trump campaign, not Lewandowski, as some reports have said?
In cricketing terms, Lewandowski dead-bats it. Baseball? A bunt?
“I’m grateful that Paul is onboard,” says Lewandowski, adding that they had “a great senior staff meeting” yesterday.
Updated
Clinton 'couldn't care less' about Trump insults
The host asks Clinton whether she’ll release the transcripts of her high-paid speeches to Wall Street, and whether she’s worried they’ll reveal flattery for the financiers.
“I don’t have any concerns like that, I’m just concerned about a constantly changing set of standards for everyone else but me,” she says. Clinton has asked other candidates to release analogous speeches; Sanders has mockingly pointed out he’s never been paid to say anything to Wall Street.
“Thirty-three years of [my taxes] are in the public domain, eight years are on our website,” she says, going on about her openness to letting Americans see her records.
I think the Republicans are going to play all kinds of games … I for one am nto going to be fooled by that
Then Stephanopoulos asks about Donald Trump’s new nickname for Clinton, “crooked Hillary”.
“I don’t respond to Donald Trump and his string of insults to me,” Clinton says. “I can take care of myself.”
“I look forward to running against him,” she continues. “I’m concerned about how he goes after everybody else. He goes after women, he goes after Muslims.”
“He’s undermining the values that we stand for in New York,” she says, adding that “he would turn us back and undermine the progress that we’ve been making.
“He wants to set Americans against each other and I’m not going to stand for it.”
Updated
Hillary Clinton is next on ABC’s This Week, where host George Stephanopoulos asks her whether she’s worried about Bernie Sanders’ continued criticisms of her links to Wall Street and wealthy individuals.
“No, I’m not,” Clinton says. “He knows very well that I’ve been supporting the fight for $15, that the whole movement behind the whole fight for $15 that is fueled by unions and activists, who have endorsed me.”
“We’re having a vigorous back and forth about raising the minimum wage which we both support, which the Republicans don’t support at all,” she continues.
“There are going to be a lot of charges and all kinds of misrepresentations, but I don’t think voters are confused by all that.”
Stephanopoulos points out that Clinton is calling for a $12 national minimum, and has cited some economists’ concerns that a $15 minimum wage could actually reduce jobs.
She says she wants “a phased-in” increase. “A phased-in minimum wage increase to get to $15 in the city and surrounding areas, to get to $12, $12.50 upstate … but to be constantly evaluating the consequences so that there are no lost jobs.”
“If for federal legislation it has the same kind of understanding about how we have to phase this in, how we have to evaluate it as we go, if the Congress passes that of course I would sign it.”
“I think their campaign is trying to make something where there is nothing.”
She again points out that many unions “support me, not him”.
Finally Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, appears on the CNN show.
In what’s become a weekly ritual the host asks him about the rules of the Republican primary process, and Donald Trump’s accusation that the election is “rigged”.
Priebus says it doesn’t bother him at all. “Because I know what the truth is I don’t really worry about it, because I know what is right and I know what is wrong.”
“It’s a state by state process,” he says. “There’s nothing the RNC can do to alter the rules between now and the convention.”
Then Priebus invokes Gertrude Stein (perhaps unwittingly) when pressed about Trump’s charges: “There’s no there there.”
He cannot stress enough how unconcerned he is. “I find it to be rhetoric and hyperbole. I think everyone understands these rules have been in place for years.”
As for Trump’s recent losses, “there are a few states that pick delegates by convention. It’s been going on for a month in each of these states.”
Priebus says that Trump’s stated preference, that the candidate with the most delegates should win the nomination, rather than the candidate with at least 1,237 delegates (a majority of all available delegates), is downright un-American.
“By majority the delegates decide,” he says. “It’s not a matter of party insiders, it’s a matter of 2,400-plus grassroots activists and no matter what they want to do they can do.
“The majority of delegates is the goal and you need to be able to play within the confines of the rules to make sure that you get there.”
He notes that the electoral college and Democratic National Committee also use majority and not plurality systems. “The majority rules and that is an American concept that I can’t imagine us turning our backs on.”
Priebus concedes, however, that he recently asked his colleagues not to even recommend any new rule changes to delegates. “I think it’s too complicated, I think the RNC rules committee with making rules amendment suggestions, it is not a good idea.”
“The recommendations I think just confuse people,” he says. “I think it’s a bad idea and the environment I think is not conducive to that.”
Then Bash asks Kasich about a new law signed in Mississippi designed to protect “religious freedom” by allowing residents to deny services to LGBT people. Kasich has criticized the law.
He says that while religious freedoms are important, so are anti-discrimination laws. “Trying to figure out how to legislate that balance is complicated and you keep doing do-overs because nobody does it right,” he says.
“I think if we would just calm down here” it would be fine, he adds.
“If you don’t like what somebody’s doing, pray for them. And if you feel they are doing something [against you], just for a second get over it, because this thing will settle down.”
John Kasich is next on CNN with a pre-taped interview with Bash, who asks him what his plan is to somehow win the nomination from hundreds of delegates behind Donald Trump and Ted Cruz.
“I am not going to whine,” Kasich says, before complaining about what he sees as a lack of media coverage for most of his presidential campaign.
He then repeats a common stump speech refrain, saying “there’s Coke, Pepsi and Kasich,” and most voters go with the brand they know, even though they’re intrigued by the can that says Kasich.
Then he mixes metaphors. “Now we have to pass the Rubicon so people actually know who I am.”
His plan is “to accumulate delegates and to go into the convention as the person standing who can beat Hillary … we are going to nominate somebody who’s going to win in the fall. We are going to win in the fall.”
Bash then asks Kasich about his advice to young women going who fear sexual assault: “Don’t go to parties where there’s a lot of alcohol,” he said earlier this week.
“When alcohol’s involved it becomes more difficult for justice to be rendered for a whole variety of reasons,” Kasich tells CNN. “I just don’t want justice to be denied because a prosecutor comes up and says ‘well I don’t know.’”
He says he would tell his own daughters “just you have to be careful”. He wants some undefined mechanisms “to make sure that the women on our college campuses are protected”, and that when abuse does happen “of course we’re going to get to the bottom of it.”
“I don’t care if there’s a party with alcohol I would just say be careful.”
Bash asks Sanders about his seemingly conflicted positions on gun control, namely his commitment to a rule that protects gun dealers from lawsuits by the families of gun victims and his recent comment that Sandy Hook families should be allowed to sue.
Sanders tries to thread the needle, saying that they have the right to sue but that he still believes the laws should offer protections to dealers. “Of course they have a right to sue, anyone has a right to sue,” he says.
He has previously argued that guns are like hammers or other objects that could be used for violence: the wielder is ultimately responsible, not the person who made or sold the object, necessarily.
He also points out that he supports a ban on assault weapons. “That’s the kind of weapon that caused the horrible tragedy in Sandy Hook,” he says. “Those weapons should not be made in the United States of America. So in that sense, I agree with the Sandy Hook parents.”
Bash moves on, asking Sanders whether he can point to any instance in which he thinks Hillary Clinton was influenced by cash contributions from wealthy interests. He says no one can prove any instance, declining to go the route that Elizabeth Warren – now a senator and fairly muted about the campaign – once did. Warren has in the past linked Clinton’s ties to Wall Street with her decisions.
Finally Bash asks Sanders about releasing many years of tax returns, as Hillary Clinton has done, and Sanders promises he’ll get them out, as soon as this week.
Updated
Sanders: cynicism and money
Bernie Sanders is the first guest this morning on CNN’s State of the Union, where Dana Bash asks him about actor George Clooney’s recent concession that there are “obscene” amounts of money being given by wealthy donors to candidates.
Clooney just co-hosted a fundraiser for Hillary Clinton that cost as much as $353,400 a seat in San Francisco.
“Well I have a lot of respect for George Clooney’s honesty and integrity on this issue,” Sanders says. “One of the great tragedies is that big money is buying elections,” he continues, adding that leaders should not be “responsive to the needs of Wall Street and wealthy campaign contributors”.
“There is something wrong when a few people, in this case wealthy individuals,” he says, “are able to contribute unbelievably large sums of money. That is not what democracy is about. That is a movement toward oligarchy.”
“This is the issue of American politics today. Do we have a government that represents all of us or represents the 1%?”
Bash then asks about Sanders’ recent visit to the Vatican, where he managed to get five minutes with Pope Francis. “No one is suggesting the pope is embracing my policies,” he says, adding that he was honored to go and that he agrees with the pontiff about the importance of fighting inequality.
“We have got to create an economics which is based on the morality dealing with the needs of working families and the elderly and children and the sick and the poor,” he says. “The fact that I was invited there was for me a very moving experiences.”
“The rich are getting richer almost everybody else is getting poorer.”
Updated
George Clooney hosted some big-money fundraisers for Hillary Clinton in California this week, events which attracted criticism from the Bernie Sanders campaign and protests outside the venues. He has been interviewed by NBC’s Meet the Press, which goes out at 10.30am ET, and NBC has released a clip.
In it, the actor is asked by host Chuck Todd whether the sums involved in his events, such as $353,000 a couple to be a “co-chair”, are as critics and protesters have said, obscene.
“Yes,” he says. “I think it’s an obscene amount of money. We had some protesters last night when we pulled up in San Francisco and they’re right to protest, they’re absolutely right, it is an obscene amount of money.
“The Sanders campaign when they talk about is absolutely right. It’s ridiculous that we should have this kind of money in politics. I agree, completely.”
Hello and welcome to our live coverage of the race for New York, a day after Ted Cruz swept the Wyoming convention and left Donald Trump without a solitary delegate there.
If it’s Sunday it’s the shows, and the businessman has sent two representatives to cross swords with the press on his behalf: a former adviser to dictators and a man who was charged with battery against a reporter, but will not be prosecuted. Last week one of the duo accused Cruz’s campaign of “Gestapo tactics” and hinted at dark things to come at the Republican convention should Trump not receive the party’s blessing and nomination.
The real estate heir’s campaign has turned to his home state of New York, where he’s expected to crush Cruz: he leads 53% to 18%, with third candidate John Kasich sandwiched between them at 23%. Cruz’s ultraconservative ideas have clashed with conservative and liberal New Yorkers alike, and while Kasich has had more success speaking to (and eating with) the moderates of the state, neither has high hopes for Tuesday, though Cruz has chipped away at Trump’s lead in the delegate race.
Trump, after weeks of campaign disarray and losses to Cruz’s well organized team, is ready for a comeback. He’ll be holding a rally in Staten Island at 11.30am ET, where my colleague Ben Jacobs will report on his tirades against a “rigged” primary process.
Party chairman Reince Priebus will also appear on the shows to talk about a possible contested convention – and Trump’s past threats of “riots”.
For Democrats, the race has become a contest of a expat Brooklynite and an adopted Manhattanite. Bernie Sanders, fresh off a speech in the Vatican and a very brief encounter with Pope Francis, will be facing off with the press to talk about his chances to win some of New York’s 291 delegates against high odds.
He’ll also be holding what’s expected to be a gigantic rally in Prospect Park, in the heart of his native Brooklyn, later this afternoon. My colleague Dan Roberts will report from the scene.
Frontrunner Hillary Clinton has also deigned to answer questions from the press this morning, before she also heads to Staten Island to woo Democrats on the most conservative borough of New York City. Clinton has held a steady lead in New York, according to poll averages, and has spent the week alternately criticizing Trump’s outrageous claims and Sanders’ mixed record on gun control.
Sanders has argued that his past in a state with virtually no gun control makes him ideally suited to find “consensus” – but Vermont gun lovers aren’t so sure, Lois Beckett reports.
Clinton also continues to fend off accusations that she’s in the corner for big money: the banks, fossil fuel interests and now venture capitalists. Scores of tech workers took to the streets of San Francisco earlier this week to protest a Clinton fundraiser co-hosted by a financier and George Clooney, with seats costing as much as $353,400.
We’ll have updates on all their answers on national TV, the appearance of North Carolina’s governor – embattled over an anti-LGBT protection law – and any fallout from the surprise release of nine prisoners from Guantánamo Bay, a prison condemned by the UN but largely ignored by presidential candidates so far.
