On the one hand, the Hibernia Bank building in San Francisco’s gritty Tenderloin neighborhood was a perfect venue for Hillary Clinton’s Thursday afternoon rally.
It survived the 1906 earthquake, endured decades of vandalism and neglect. Recently renovated, it is beautiful, useful, ready for yet another turn on this graceful city’s architectural stage. A phoenix. That’s right, up from the ashes.
On the other hand, maybe it’s not that great of an idea to pump up a few hundred supporters in an 1892 relic with terrible acoustics. The building is old. An historic landmark. Its glowing, stained glass dome and intricate gilt moldings shout … antique, dated, of an earlier era, long, long ago.
Which is an image the former first lady must shake to appeal to the millennials who have flocked to Bernie Sanders’ camp. The1990s nostalgia for her husband’s administration, critics say, must give way to an image and campaign of her very own.
On Thursday, she mixed a yearning for America of a generation ago – “We can just go back 25 years….Everybody prospered together.” – with a dose of anti-Trump fisticuffs.
What happened to that vibrant economy, she asked? “Then came the Republicans with their failed economic policies,” she continued. “Trickle down economics. It didn’t work then. It won’t work now. That’s all Donald Trump is offering.”
And she finished with a catalogue of promises for the future that brought down the lovely, landmark house, one pledge at a time.
“I will defend a woman’s right to make her own health care decisions,” Clinton cried, and the crowd cheered.
“And I will defend planned parenthood.” Ditto.
“I will defend marriage equality.” See above.
“I will defend voter rights...appoint Supreme Court justices to overturn Citizens United... fight for the right of unions to organize... for comprehensive immigration reform with a path to citizenship... for criminal justice reform.
“And,” she said, rounding out the list, “I will stand up against the gun lobby.”
Today in Campaign 2016
- Thanks to some unpledged delegates boarding the Trump Train, Donald Trump now has 1,238 delegates – one more than he needed to clinch the Republican presidential nomination.
- “We had a very productive phone call, I’ll leave it at that,” House speaker Paul Ryan told reporters at a news conference after the news, when asked about a phone chat with Trump following Ryan’s denial yesterday that he was preparing to endorse Trump. In response to a later question, Ryan returned to a distinction he has made repeatedly – between “real party unity” and fake unity: “The point is I want real party unity, and that’s what I’m most concerned about.”
- Politico reports the Republican party is spending $750,000 on a convention after-party that will feature none other than rock band Journey.
-
The event, slated to take place at Cleveland’s State Theatre, will be the capstone of the four-day Republican National Convention at Quicken Loans Arena in mid-July, when Donald Trump is expected to emerge as the party’s nominee.
- The Bernie Sanders campaign has issued a statement saying it is satisfied with the primary result in Kentucky, where it had called for a recanvassing.
“We accept the results in Kentucky. We are very pleased that we split the delegates in a state with a closed primary in which independents cannot vote and where Secretary Clinton defeated Barack Obama by 35 points in 2008.
- In an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, Florida senator and former presidential candidate Marco Rubio backed away from possibly serving as his party’s vice presidential nominee this cycle, although he all but guaranteed that he will run for office again in the future. “It’s a safe assumption,” Rubio said of his chances of seeking office, although he ruled out running for reelection in this cycle. “If there’s an opportunity to serve again in a way I feel passionate about it, I’ll certainly explore it.”
Two US senators have warned that a new bill would vastly expand the FBI’s warrantless access to Americans’ online records.
Although the text of the 2017 intelligence authorization bill is not yet available to the public, two members of the Senate intelligence committee have said the bill could expand the remit of a nonjudicial subpoena called a National Security Letter (NSLs) to acquire Americans’ email records, chat or messaging accounts, account login records, browser histories and social-media service usage.
While NSLs typically apply to phone or banking records and email addresses, the bill, which cleared the Senate intelligence panel on Tuesday by a 14-1 vote, appears to change the scope of the longstanding term “electronic communications transaction records”.
Senator Ron Wyden criticized the change as a sweeping expansion of warrantless surveillance.
“While this bill does not clearly define ‘electronic communication transaction records’, this term could easily be read to encompass records of whom individuals exchange emails with and when, as well as their login history, IP addresses, and internet browsing history,” Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon who voted against the bill, told the Guardian.
Wyden’s colleague on the panel, Democrat Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, said in a Thursday statement that the measure represents “a massive expansion of government surveillance that lacks independent oversight and potentially gives the FBI access to Americans’ email and browser histories with little more than the approval of a manager in the field”.
Donald Trump, on monuments:
“I don’t want a wall named after me, but that’s okay. I want a statue in Washington, D.C. Maybe share it with Jefferson.
Greta Van Susteren’s “Meet the Trumps” special on Fox News has drawn sharp criticism from media figures:
This is real. This is a real thing being broadcast on Fox News right now. pic.twitter.com/0E0tcedvX5
— T. Becket Adams (@BecketAdams) May 26, 2016
This special feels like something you'd see on state-run television somewhere.
— Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) May 26, 2016
A glimpse of what state media will look like after Glorious Leader Trump is victorious. https://t.co/5viCwg9OBg
— Christopher Hayes (@chrislhayes) May 26, 2016
For his first major energy policy remarks, Donald Trump would quote, almost verbatim at times, from an op-ed published in the Grand Forks Herald earlier that morning. But Trump was not the author.
The byline belonged to local congressman Kevin Cramer, the longtime champion of his state’s oil and gas industries. North Dakota has boomed and busted right along with the price of gas. Trump would start his speech by telling the state’s oil executives that they were standing at the “forefront of a new energy revolution” powered by Trumpian deregulation and protectionism.
As if it had been dredged from the Bakken Formation still dripping with crude, this was a speech both from and of North Dakota.
Before the newly confirmed Republican nominee took to the stage in Bismarck, Cramer, a self-professed climate sceptic, had been invited up in front of the press and praised by Trump as a “talented person” bound for a role in his administration.
“You’ve changed my life,” Cramer said. “I appreciate your comments on energy, and I’m looking forward to hearing the rest of it.” But of course, Cramer had heard it all before.
Saying he was “very excited” to debate Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders told a Ventura College rally this evening that he looked forward to asking the presumptive Republican presidential nominee “why he thinks wages for American workers are too high.”
“We’re going to ask him why he thinks climate change is a hoax when the scientific community is almost unanimous that climate change is causing devastating problems,” Sanders said.
He also said he looked forward to asking the presumptive Republican presidential candidate “why he thinks that in a nation where our diversity is our strength he thinks it is appropriate to be insulting Mexicans and Latinos.”
“We are holding rallies just like this up and down this state,” Sanders continued. “By the end of this campaign here in California I am confident we will have personally met and spoken to over 200,000 Californians. This is a grassroots campaign of the people, by the people and for the people.”
Donald Trump pledged to cancel the Paris climate agreement, endorsed drilling off the Atlantic coast and said he would allow the Keystone XL pipeline to be built in return for “a big piece of the profits” for the American people.
At an oil and natural gas conference in North Dakota on Thursday, just minutes after he had celebrated hitting the 1,237 delegate mark needed to formally clinch the party’s nomination, Trump gave a speech on energy policy that was largely shaped by advice from Kevin Cramer, a US representative from the state.
In a press conference before the event, Trump praised the advice of oil tycoon Harold Hamm. Hamm and Cramer then introduced him onstage.
Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club environmentalist group, was taken aback by Trump’s address.
“I have never heard more contradiction in one hour than I heard in the speech,” he told the Guardian. “There are pools of oil industry waste water that are deeper than Trump’s grasp of energy.”
Trump gave the speech – which Brune also called “a jumbled collection of oil industry talking points that are devoid from reality in the market place” – in a packed arena that generated an atmosphere more like that of a campaign rally than a staid industry conference.
As he hit a number of familiar talking points, a crowd filled with his supporters raised chants of “build the wall”. He did not directly address manmade climate change, which he has in the past called a hoax invented by the Chinese, but he took veiled shots at those who are concerned about global warming.
In addition to his pledge to pull out of the Paris climate deal, Trump promised to only work with “environmentalists whose only agenda is protecting nature” and to “focus on real environmental challenges, not the phony ones”.
He contrasted this approach with that of Hillary Clinton, whose plan to combat climate change he called “a poverty expansion agenda”. Trump also attacked renewable energy sources, claiming that solar energy was too expensive and attacking wind turbines for “killing eagles”.
Without outlining any policy specifics, Trump argued for a focus on clean water and clean air. In January, asked by the Guardian about the Flint water contamination crisis, he said: “A thing like that shouldn’t happen but, again, I don’t want to comment on that.”
On Thursday, Trump also made a unique argument about the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, which would pump shale oil from Canada into the US. Republicans have long supported the pipeline, which was opposed by environmentalists and cancelled by the Obama administration. In exchange for his approval of the pipeline, Trump said, the US would need a “significant piece” of its profits.
Shortly after that statement, though, Trump said: “The government should not pick winners and losers.” Trump also seemed unsure whether high oil prices were good or bad. Although at one point in his speech he took credit for oil hitting $50 a barrel, he later enthused about the need for cheap energy.
The crowd in Bismarck did not seem confused, though. Cheering wildly, they gave Trump a spontaneous standing ovation. “I will give you everything,” he promised them, adding: “I am the only one who will deliver.”
They seemed to believe it.
Well, there’s one person who isn’t taking the idea of a pre-primary bipartisan debate between Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders seriously - former secretary of state Hillary Clinton.
“Oh, Wolf! This doesn’t sound like a serious discussion!” Clinton eyerolled at CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, when he asked the Democratic frontrunner about the current public negotiation over the possibility of a “charity debate” between the two candidates.
“I don’t think it’s serious,” she continued via telephone. “It’s not going to happen.”
On more important matters, Clinton addressed fallout from an inspector general’s report that she violated rules by using a personal email address for work communication during her tenure as secretary of state.
“This report makes clear that personal email use was the practice under other secretaries of state, and the rules were not clarified until after I had left,” Clinton said. “I hope voters look at the full picture of everything that I’ve done, and the full threat posed by a Donald Trump presidency, and if they do, I have faith that they’ll make the right choice.”
Writing in the Washington Post, the sister of late White House associate counsel Vince Foster says that presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump should be ashamed about using her brother’s death as a pretext for attacking Hillary Clinton, writing in the newspaper that Trump’s comments are “beyond contempt.”
“It is beyond contempt that a politician would use a family tragedy to further his candidacy, but such is the character of Donald Trump displayed in his recent comments to The Washington Post,” Sheila Foster Anthony writes. “In this interview, Trump cynically, crassly and recklessly insinuated that my brother, Vincent W. Foster Jr., may have been murdered because ‘he had intimate knowledge of what was going on’ and that Hillary Clinton may have somehow played a role in Vince’s death.”
“How wrong. How irresponsible. How cruel.”
Calling Trump’s accusations “craven,” Foster Anthony details her brother’s years-long struggle with depression, which ultimately led him to take his own life in 1993 - as confirmed by the results of five investigations.
“These outrageous suggestions have caused our family untold pain because this issue went on for so long and these reports were so painful to read,” she writes. “For years, our family had to wage a court fight to prevent release of photographs of Vince’s dead body. My heartbroken mother was plagued by harassing phone calls from a reporter.”
“Through all this time I have not spoken publicly about this matter, out of an effort to maintain our family’s privacy,” Foster Anthony concludes. “I am now, because The Post sought my reaction. I have donated to Hillary Clinton’s campaign but have not had contact with anyone at the campaign about my decision to go public.”
When Donald Trump declared that “You have to be wealthy in order to be great,” who was he talking about? Let us know in the comments.
Bernie Sanders’ campaign manager told MSNBC this afternoon that “backchannel conversations” are already happening between the Vermont senator’s team and that of presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, regarding a possible bipartisan debate between the two candidates before the California primaries on June 7.
“I think it would benefit voters from across the country and I have to believe it would be one of the most-watched debates in presidential politics,” said Jeff Weaver. “Let’s see if he has the courage to go one-on-one with Bernie Sanders.”
The possibility of an unprecedented two-party primary debate first arose last night, when Trump joked on Jimmy Kimmel’s show that he would be willing to debate Sanders. The Trump campaign has since gone back and claimed that the comment was only in jest, although Trump himself later claimed that he was totally serious about the possibility.
Sanders, for his part, is more than interested:
I am delighted that @realDonaldTrump has agreed to debate. Let’s do it in the biggest stadium possible.
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) May 26, 2016
In an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, Florida senator and former presidential candidate Marco Rubio backed away from possibly serving as his party’s vice presidential nominee this cycle, although he all but guaranteed that he will run for office again in the future.
“It’s a safe assumption,” Rubio said of his chances of seeking office, although he ruled out running for reelection in this cycle. “If there’s an opportunity to serve again in a way I feel passionate about it, I’ll certainly explore it.”
Rubio also said that he plans to attend the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, this summer, although it’s not a sure thing. “My sense is that I’ll go to the convention,” Rubio said. He’d even be willing to speak on DOnald Trump’s behalf, telling Tapper “Yes, I’d certainly - yes,” when asked. “I want to be helpful - I don’t want to be harmful.”
Before losing his home state’s primary and dropping out of the race, Rubio told the Guardian that Trump’s nomination would mean the Republican party would “pay a big price in November and beyond.”
“I think he’s already an embarrassment,” Rubio said at the time. “People around the world are watching this debate and this campaign and wondering what’s happening here, because the things he says are nonsensical.
“When you’re the most powerful and important nation on earth, you’re not always going to be popular,” he added. “But the question is, are you respected? And I don’t think Donald Trump is going to be respected.”
Vermont senator and Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders wants to face off against presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump in the biggest venue the unlikely duo can find.
I am delighted that @realDonaldTrump has agreed to debate. Let’s do it in the biggest stadium possible.
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) May 26, 2016
Trump said earlier today that he would “love” to debate Sanders, telling reporters in Bismarck, North Dakota, that the candidate is “a dream.”
“If we can raise for maybe women’s health issues or something - if we can raise $10 or $15 million for charity, which would be a very appropriate amount - I understand the television business very well,” Trump said.
Later, an aide to Trump confirmed to the Guardian’s Sabrina Siddiqui he would not, in fact, debate Sanders – despite the Vermont senator’s willingness to do so. Then, Trump himself walked back that aide’s walkback, which that the possibility of an unprecedented cross-party debate is now ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
Updated
Speaking this afternoon to a labor union conference in Las Vegas, Hillary Clinton called Donald Trump an “urgent threat to our rights and our country,” and thanked Bernie Sanders supporters for “challenging us” and laid out proposals to help working families.
“Donald Trump likes to say I’m playing the ‘woman card,’ ” Clinton said. “Well, here we are in Las Vegas, right? If fighting for equal pay, paid family leave and affordable childcare is playing the woman card, then deal me in.”
The audience included about 300 organizers from the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW), the country’s largest private sector labor group representing 1.3 million US grocery store and retail chain employees.
They offered scathing boos when Clinton mentioned a union-busting effort inside the Trump hotel in Las Vegas. “I was proud to join those workers on the picket line last fall,” she said, drawing raucous applause. “I’m even prouder because they overcame Trump’s intimidation campaign.”
“So to everyone who has faced hostile management, a hostile legislature, a union busting governor or all three, help is on the way.”
There was also an interesting response to Trump’s old remarks about profiting on the housing crisis. “He was rooting for the housing crisis,” Clinton said. “He said profiting while working families get kicked out of their homes and lose their jobs would be a ‘good result’.... Our country is full of honorable men and women who run businesses and don’t take pleasure in other people’s misery, but not Donald Trump.”
UFCW members voted to endorse Clinton before the nation’s first caucuses in January. And before today’s speech, Barb Caruso, an union administrator from Cleveland, said she supported Clinton because she “understands the issues that surround working mothers.”
Caruso also expressed dismay over anti-union momentum from Republican legislators. “I’ve been in the labor movement for 41 years,” she said. “So I’ve experienced the drastic change in the political environment towards unions. It’s in every major city and suburb in the country.”
Clinton’s speech followed a private meeting with UFCW members who have experienced workplace intimidation and unpredictable scheduling at corporate chains like Macy’s and Albertson’s.
She closed her remarks with a conciliatory nod to Sanders, whose waning campaign continues to bruise Clinton from the left, while Trump consolidates support among Republicans.
“The only thing standing between Donald Trump and the Oval Office is all of us. And I mean all of us,” said Clinton. “We’re coming to the end of the Democratic primaries. I applaud Senator Sanders and his supporters for challenging us to get unaccountable money out of politics and take on the crisis of income inequality and I look forward to coming together to unify our party to stop Donald Trump and move our country forward.”
The appearance included no mention of the yesterday’s state department report acknowledging that Clinton broke agency protocol by using a private email server during her tenure as secretary of state.
The report revealed that Clinton expressed concern about her email accounts potentially being hacked in November 2010, telling a top aid at the time that they needed to discuss shifting onto the state department’s email system.
Trump forgoes victory lap, mostly
Trump’s Bismarck, North Dakota, press conference was intended to be a victory lap, where the presumptive nominee was preceded on to the podium by over a dozen unbound North Dakota delegates who had pledged their support to Trump in Cleveland.
While waiting for Trump in the windowless conference room under bleachers in an arena, several delegates jokingly bickered over which one was the 1237th before Trump made his entrance.
But the presumptive nominee spent surprisingly little time taking a victory lap.
Instead, he started pivoting towards a general election, hedging on previous positions like a ban on Muslims entering the United States and his support for ethanol. Trump also flip-flopped yet again on a potential debate with Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders, now saying that he would consider doing so before the California primary but if only the Sanders campaign promised to raise $10 million.
Sanders accepts Kentucky result
The Sanders campaign has issued a statement saying it is satisfied with the primary result in Kentucky, where it had called for a recanvassing.
“We accept the results in Kentucky. We are very pleased that we split the delegates in a state with a closed primary in which independents cannot vote and where Secretary Clinton defeated Barack Obama by 35 points in 2008.
“I thank the people of Kentucky very much for their support.”
Journey to play RNC convention after-party
It’s true. Politico reports the Republican party is spending $750,000 on a convention after-party that will feature none other than rock band Journey.
The event, slated to take place at Cleveland’s State Theatre, will be the capstone of the four-day Republican National Convention at Quicken Loans Arena in mid-July, when Donald Trump is expected to emerge as the party’s nominee.
Will Clinton staffers sneak in? Here they are celebrating her 15 March wins:
Don't stop believing pic.twitter.com/tv1My4wrhM
— Dan Schwerin (@DanSchwerin) March 16, 2016
The Guardian’s Ben Jacobs reports from the room in Bismarck:
Worth noting the reporter who was so offended by "Pocahontas" had previously asked Trump about tribal sovereignty
— Ben Jacobs (@Bencjacobs) May 26, 2016
Context:
Trump calls Warren "Pocahontas". Local ND reporter yells "that's very offensive". Trump says "ok". Then calls warren "Pocahontas" again.
— Katy Tur (@KatyTurNBC) May 26, 2016
Further:
Trump: I know a lot about solar and I've gone solar on occasion
— Ben Jacobs (@Bencjacobs) May 26, 2016
Trump condemns wind turbines "for killing eagles"
— Ben Jacobs (@Bencjacobs) May 26, 2016
Trump now delivering an unprompted defense of eminent domain the day he clinches the GOP nomination because?
— Ben Jacobs (@Bencjacobs) May 26, 2016
Trump calls Warren 'a woman that’s been very ineffective, other than she’s got a big mouth'
Trump is asked about attacks on him by Senator Elizabeth Warren, who most recently went after Trump for rooting for the 2008 housing market crash.
Trump likes to refer to prior claims by Warren, who was touted as having Native American roots when she was on the Harvard Law faculty, to have Cherokee or Delaware heritage.
“Pocahontas? Or is that offensive? I’m sorry about that? Pocahontas. Elizabeth Warren,” Trump says.
“She is a senator that is highly overrated. She has passed little legislation,” he says. But he would debate her:
“I’ll debate anybody. I don’t care. I’d debate her. And she has done very little for Massachusetts... she said she was Native American but she wasn’t able to document it... she then, I don’t know if you’d call it a fraud...
“I think she’s as Native American as I am, that I will tell you. But she’s a woman that’s been very ineffective, other than she’s got a big mouth.”
Trump: 'I really know nothing about the Vince Foster situation'
Trump is challenged for having, several days ago, repeated claims that the death of Vincent Foster was a “murder,” despite conclusive evidence that Foster, deputy White House counsel to Bill Clinton, was a suicide.
Trump says he was asked about Foster, but didn’t know anything about it, so he decided to repeat what he heard.
I really know nothing about the Vince Foster situation. Haven’t known anything about it. A lot of people have been very skeptical... I know nothing about it... I don’t think it’s something that should be part of the campaign. But again if you people reveal something to me, I’ll answer it the appropriate way.
Trump: 'we’re gonna have a lot of fun that first 100 days'
How does it feel to cross 1,237 delegates?
“I’m so honored. I’m so honored by these people, they had such great sense.
Trump’s asked what he’ll do in his first 100 days.
“We’ll have many things to do. Number one, I’ll be unwinding various executive orders.” Pertaining to “the border”. “We’re going to start rebuilding our military. ... nobody’s going to mess with us, very simple.... we’re gonna have a lot of fun that first 100 days. We’re going to start the process of making America great again.”
Trump says he would build the Keystone XL pipeline and “make our country rich again.”
Yes we will absolutely build it... but I want a piece of the profits for the United States. That’s how we’re going to make our country rich again, just one way out of thousands.
A lot of times pipelines are so much better... instead of going on trains.... I want it approved for jobs, and the concept for pipelines is OK.
Trump once again is asked whether he still supports a ban on Muslims – but he will not answer:
“As of this moment, I am very unhappy, when I look at the world of radical Islam... we’re going to find a solution... Obama could never find a solution... I have many Muslim friends, they said to me, thank you, thank you.
“We have to have turn-ins,” Trump says, of people who would report terrorism suspects.
Trump won't repeat call for ban on Muslims
Trump said he had “a very good conversation” with House speaker Paul Ryan.
“That’s moving along, he’s a good man,” Trump said of a prospective Ryan endorsement.
Trump is asked about Manafort’s assertion that his proposed Muslim ban was merely a conversation starter. Trump says Manafort was misquoted by the Huffington Post.
“I don’t read the Huffington Post... I’m sure he was misquoted. I didn’t think they covered politics?”
But Trump won’t repeat his call for a ban on Muslims entering the United States.
“We’re going to look at a lot of different things. But we have a big problem... and we have to find a solution. And we have to be vigilant...”
Trump: 'I'd love to debate Bernie'
Trump reverses his campaign statement that said he was joking when he said he would debate Bernie Sanders.
“I’d love to debate Bernie, he’s a dream. I said, and I said last night ... I’d love to debate him but I want a lot of money to be put up for charity, women’s health issues. If we can raise $10 or 15m for charities.
“The problem with debating Bernie is, he’s going to lose. His system is rigged ... it’s so unfair. The biggest problem I have is that Bernie’s not going to win, but I’d debate him anyway. We’ve actually had a couple of calls from the networks already.
“I’d love to debate Bernie, but they’d have to pay a lot of money for it. I’d love to debate him. Every single poll, on every single debate – I’ve won every single debate.”
Here’s Trump last night on Jimmy Kimmel:
Updated
Trump on Clinton: 'she cannot close the deal'
Trump predicts that he will win Pennsylvania, Maryland, Connecticut, Delaware, Rhode Island, Indiana – “so we’re gonna have tremendous successes.
“We were supposed to be going into July... and here I am watching Hillary fight, and she can’t close the deal. And that should be such an easy deal to close. And she cannot close the deal. And we’ll see what happens.”
Trump on Clinton emails: 'probably illegal'
Trump says he’s been audited for 15 years. “The IRS has been very professional.”
Trump says he’s willing to release tax returns after his audit is done. “Hopefully it’s going to be before the election, I’m fine with that.”
“Probably illegal, we’ll have to find out what the FBI says about it. But bad judgment. It’s devastating... it’s a very, very harsh report... it’s shocking to see, it’s shocking to see what she did.”
Trump reverses aide's claim that he won't consider woman for veep slot
Trump thanks the crowd. He says he won’t forget North Dakota. Behind him is a group of Republican party officials whom Trump says “got me over the top”.
Trump opens it for questions. He’s asked about Obama’s remarks at the G7 that the world was “rattled” and surprised by Trump’s nomination.
“He’s a president who’s done a horrible job,” Trump replies. “Everybody understands that. It’s unusual that every time he gets a press conference, he’s talking about me.
“He shouldn’t be airing his own [politics] where he is right now.”
Trump shot down a contention in a Huffington Post interview by his “convention manager,” Paul Manafort, that he would not consider a woman or minority as a running mate because that would be “pandering.”
Trump says he was likely to consider a woman or person of color.
“We’re looking for absolute competence,” Trump said. As for Manafort: “He’s been misquoted a lot.”
Trump enters the room and approaches the lectern. Live stream here.
Trump withdraws offer to debate Sanders
Donald Trump was joking when he offered on late-night TV Wednesday to debate Bernie Sanders, reports Guardian politics reporter Sabrina Siddiqui:
An aide to Trump said he would not, in fact, debate Sanders – despite the Vermont senator’s willingness to do so in the absence of Hillary Clinton, who has declined to participate in a final Democratic debate.
Trump to hit giant biker rally for Memorial Day
Each Memorial Day weekend, hundreds of thousands of motorcyclists converge in Washington DC for a downtown procession to honor military veterans.
Donald Trump is going, his campaign has announced.
.@GuardianUS can confirm that @realDonaldTrump will appear at Rolling Thunder motorcycle rally in DC on Sunday
— Ben Jacobs (@Bencjacobs) May 26, 2016
“I am doing it in honor of the great bikers who have been totally supportive of my campaign and now I want to be supportive of them,” Trump said in a statement to Bloomberg Politics. “I look forward to it!”
Trump is due to speak any moment in Bismarck, North Dakota – in his first remarks since he clinched the Republican presidential nomination.
A live video stream is below. The Guardian’s Ben Jacobs is at the scene.
Clinton cues a fundraising callout to Trump clinching.
→ https://t.co/IQXVlI5Hs7 pic.twitter.com/LSz3Uh3L4S
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) May 26, 2016
Trump promises to turn GOP into 'worker's party'
When it became clear that Donald Trump would claim the Republican presidential nomination, party chair Reince Priebus had two choices: resign or get behind the nominee. Bloomberg Politics’ Joshua Green gets inside that decision and much more in a newly published profile titled How to Get Trump Elected When He’s Wrecking Everything You Built.
The piece is tidbit-rich. In an interview with Trump, Green asks what Trump thinks the Republican party would look like in five years.
“Love the question,” he replied:
Five, 10 years from now—different party. You’re going to have a worker’s party. A party of people that haven’t had a real wage increase in 18 years, that are angry. What I want to do, I think cutting Social Security is a big mistake for the Republican Party. And I know it’s a big part of the budget. Cutting it the wrong way is a big mistake, and even cutting it [at all].”
The piece continues:
He explained the genesis of his heterodox views. “I’m not sure I got there through deep analysis,” he said. “My views are what everybody else’s views are. When I give speeches, sometimes I’ll sign autographs and I’ll get to talk to people and learn a lot about the party.” He says he learned that voters were disgusted with Republican leaders and channeled their outrage.
I asked, given how immigration drove his initial surge of popularity, whether he, like [Alabama senator Jeff] Sessions, had considered the RNC’s call for immigration reform to be a kick in the teeth. To my surprise, he candidly admitted that he hadn’t known about it or even followed the issue until recently.
“When I made my [announcement] speech at Trump Tower, the June 16 speech,” he said, “I didn’t know about the Gang of Eight. … I just knew instinctively that our borders are a mess.”
Read the full piece here.
Well that’s an unfortunate choice of stock photo.
Hillary, like syphilis, is the gift that keeps on giving. pic.twitter.com/iBE0oGn3OW
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) May 26, 2016
Ryan says phone chat with Trump 'very productive'
“We had a very productive phone call, I’ll leave it at that,” House speaker Paul Ryan tells reporters at a news conference, when asked about a phone chat with Donald Trump following Ryan’s denial yesterday that he was preparing to endorse Trump.
In response to a later question, Ryan returns to a distinction he has made repeatedly – between “real party unity” and fake unity:
“The point is I want real party unity, and that’s what I’m most concerned about.”
Trump picking woman or minority running mate would be 'pandering', aide says
In the same Huffington Post interview in which he said that his boss Donald Trump’s call for a ban on Muslim travel to the United States was merely a conversation-starter and not an actual policy proposal, Paul Manafort, Trump’s convention manager, said that Trump would not choose a woman or a member of a minority group.
“In fact, that would be viewed as pandering, I think,” Manafort told the Huffington Post.
Manafort said that Trump’s running mate search is active. “He needs an experienced person to do the part of the job he doesn’t want to do. He seems himself more as the chairman of the board, than even the CEO, let alone the COO.”
“There is a long list of who that person could be,” Manafort added, “and every one of them has major problems.”
Read the full interview here.
Updated
Bookmaker odds on Trump winning everything have narrowed
Odds quoted by bookmaker William Hill on Donald Trump becoming the next president have slowly narrowed from 150/1 to just 7/4 (a 36% chance)
— Dan Roberts (@RobertsDan) May 26, 2016
A press release from William Hill explains that the bookmaker, who had quoted Trump at 33/1 to win the Republican nomination, and at 150/1 to win the race to the White House, “now make him just 7/4 (36% chance) to become the next President of the USA”:
‘Mr Trump’s progress towards the nomination has been an astonishing transformation from complete outsider in the betting to red hot favourite’ said Hill’s spokesman Graham Sharpe. ‘Once he is confirmed as the Republican candidate we can begin paying out to those who were shrewd enough to bet on him – and there are plenty of them.’
Trump to speak on clinching nomination
Donald Trump has announced plans to hold a victory news conference in just over an hour in Bismarck, North Dakota (it’s the capital), where Guardian politics reporter Ben Jacobs is laying in wait.
DT Jr celebrates victory:
1237 ✔️
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) May 26, 2016
Others register disbelief:
PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP
— Ron Fournier (@ron_fournier) May 26, 2016
Can't happen?
Would've thought that a year ago had somebody tweeted: "GOP presidential nominee Donald J. Trump"
I remember when reporters used to ask who the DNC wanted as GOP nominee. Trump wasn't mentioned, b/c I didn't have that kind of imagination.
— Holly Shulman (@HollyShulman) May 26, 2016
Trump crosses line to clinch nomination
Thanks to some unpledged delegates boarding the Trump Train, Donald Trump now has 1,238 delegates – one more than he needed to clinch the Republican presidential nomination – and – confetti.
The AP reports:
Trump was put over the top in the Associated Press delegate count by a small number of the party’s unbound delegates who told the AP they would support him at the convention. Among them is Oklahoma GOP chairwoman Pam Pollard.
“I think he has touched a part of our electorate that doesn’t like where our country is,” Pollard said. “I have no problem supporting Mr. Trump.”
Updated
Staff concerns about Clinton's email were suppressed, report reveals
A state department inspector general’s report on Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email address and secret home server during her time as secretary of state reveals that Clinton, who along with top aides declined to be interviewed for the probe, maintained the server as a secret from all but her inner circle for months after the clintonemail.com domain was first registered.
The report also reveals that state department staffers raised concerns about Clinton’s private server when they found out about it, on the grounds that emails handled by the server might not be preserved for the public record, as required by federal regulations. But those concerns were dismissed by a senior official. The Associated Press reports:
In one meeting with [John A. Bentel, then director of the Office of Information Resources Management], a staff member worried that messages sent or received using the private server could contain documents that needed to be preserved under federal regulations.
Bentel told the staff member that State Department legal staff had “reviewed and approved” the server— though the inspector general’s review found no evidence such a review had ever occurred. In that meeting and another that Bentel had with a different staff member who raised concerns, Bentel directed the staff members to “never to speak of the secretary’s personal email system again.”
In January 2011, a Bill Clinton aide wrote to a Hillary Clinton aide saying that the server had been the target of a hack attack:
“Someone was trying to hack us,” the aide told [top Clinton aide Huma] Abedin. Later the same day, it happened again. “We were attacked again so I shut (the server) down for a few min,” he said. The next day, Abedin warned [Cheryl] Mills and [Jake] Sullivan not to send Clinton “anything sensitive” in their emails.
The AP has further:
The State Department inspector general’s release of the 83-page report provides new insights into the server: Who knew about it, its vulnerabilities and the bureaucratic mismanagement that allowed the secret system to operate outside normal channels throughout Clinton’s tenure.
The findings — more than a year in the making — also show how the use of private emails by Clinton and other top aides caused internal headaches for the few State Department officials who knew of its existence and for an agency that has long struggled to comply with federal cybersecurity and record-keeping requirements.
Read AP’s latest report on Clinton’s emails here. The Washington Post this morning has published a scathing assessment of the state department probe findings:
HILLARY CLINTON’S use of a private email server while secretary of state from 2009 to 2013 has been justifiably criticized as an error of judgment. What the new report from the State Department inspector general makes clear is that it also was not a casual oversight. Ms. Clinton had plenty of warnings to use official government communications methods, so as to make sure that her records were properly preserved and to minimize cybersecurity risks. She ignored them.
“There is no excuse for the way Ms. Clinton breezed through all the warnings and notifications,” the Post concludes. “While not illegal behavior, it was disturbingly unmindful of the rules.”
An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll of the American public last October found that 47% of respondents thought Clinton’s use of a private email server was “important”.
How does American public view the HRC email story? Our NBC/WSJ from October (before Benghazi testimony): pic.twitter.com/Y17aRkrYZY
— Mark Murray (@mmurraypolitics) May 26, 2016
The Inspector General's report on Crooked Hillary Clinton is a disaster. Such bad judgement and temperament cannot be allowed in the W.H.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 26, 2016
Updated
Hello and welcome to our live-wire coverage of the 2016 race for the White House. Bernie Sanders has responded in the enthusiastic affirmative to an offer of unclear seriousness from Donald Trump to debate him before the 7 June California primary.
Appearing on late night funnyman Jimmy Kimmel’s show on Wednesday, Trump said he would be glad to debate Sanders mano a mano – for charity. At which Sanders, whose supporters routinely cheer his stump speech attacks on Trump, and who has failed to lure Hillary Clinton into a similar California showdown, tweeted that he was game:
Game on. I look forward to debating Donald Trump in California before the June 7 primary.
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) May 26, 2016
Meanwhile Trump’s campaign manager, Paul Manafort, told the Huffington Post that the candidate’s proposed ban on Muslims entering the United States was just a conversation-starter:
He’s already started moderating on that. He operates by starting the conversation at the outer edges and then brings it back towards the middle. Within his comfort zone, he’ll soften it some more.
He’ll still end up outside of the norm, but in line with what the American people are thinking.
Barack Obama, speaking at the G7 summit, said that the world was “surprised” by the prospect of Donald Trump as the Republican nominee for president:
They are rattled by it and for good reason. Because a lot of the proposals he has made display either ignorance of world affairs, or a cavalier attitude, or an interest in getting tweets and headlines.
Trump is to speak today in Bismarck, North Dakota, with the Guardian’s Ben Jacobs at the scene. Later Trump will travel to Montana.
Hillary Clinton is to speak in Las Vegas this morning – with the Guardian’s Dan Hernandez reporting – and San Jose and San Francisco, California, where our reporter Sam Levin will be in attendance, this afternoon.
Bernie Sanders will speak in Ventura, California.
Thank you for reading and, as always, please join us in the comments.
