Today in Campaign 2016
- Hillary Clinton today disparaged her Republican rival as a tool of the racist, radical right, a man who foments “paranoia and prejudice” and ushers hate groups into the mainstream. Donald Trump is “a man with a long history of racial discrimination”, Clinton said during a rally in the flag-festooned student center at Truckee Meadows Community College. He is a man “who traffics in dark conspiracy theories drawn from the pages of supermarket tabloids and the far reaches of the internet”. Positioning herself as the true representative of a tolerant and open-minded United States, Clinton derided the real estate mogul as a darling of the “alt-right” and a soulmate of David Duke, a former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.
- Trump, trailing badly in the polls, has moved aggressively to capture non-white voters. The Republican nominee met African American and Latino activists at Trump Tower in New York this morning, after moderating his stance on immigration and including in his stump speech a sales pitch for African American voters: “What do you have to lose?” “We have great relationships and the numbers are going up with the African American community rapidly,” Trump said at the meeting, which included retired neurosurgeon and former presidential candidate Ben Carson and members of the Republican leadership initiative to develop conservative minority leaders.
- Trump told host Anderson Cooper that the “softening” of his immigration plan does not include a path to legalization - “unless people leave the country” and pay back taxes. “No, there’s not a path to legalization unless people leave the country,” Trump told Cooper, in remarks set to air at 8pm ET. “If they come back in and then they have to start paying taxes, but there is no path to legalization unless they leave the country and come back.”
- Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway told CNN on Tuesday that there would be no “touchback” policy in Trump’s future - that is, undocumented immigrants leaving the country for their nation of origin before entering the United States legally.Trump also doubled down on remarks he made last night, calling rival Hillary Clinton a “bigot” who only views African Americans as votes to be won.
- “She is a bigot,” Trump said. “If you look at what’s happening to the inner cities, you look at what’s happening to African Americans and Hispanics in this country where she talks all the time. She talking - look at the vets, where she said the vets are being treated essentially just fine that it’s over-exaggerated what’s happening to the vets not so long ago.”
Trump campaign CEO once charged with domestic violence
Stephen Bannon, the newly appointed CEO of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, was once charged with misdemeanor domestic violence, battery and dissuading a witness, according to court documents obtained by Politico.
The report, filed in 1996 in Santa Monica, California, says that Bannon pulled at the neck and wrist of his then-wife during an argument over the couple’s finances, threatening to “take [their twin daughters] and leave.” A police officer reported seeing red marks on Bannon’s then-wife’s neck and arm after the alleged attack on New Year’s Day.
The New York Post, which also obtained the divorce documents in which the attack is alleged, quotes Bannon’s ex-wife as saying: “I took the phone to call the police and he grabbed the phone away from me throwing it across the room, and breaking it as he [was] screaming that I was a ‘crazy f—ing c–t!”
The case was closed after Bannon’s ex-wife failed to appear in court to testify to the accusations, although she stated in the couple’s divorce papers that Bannon threatened her into not testifying, telling her that she would “would have no money [and] no way to support the children” if she did so.
“He also told me that if I went to court he and his attorney would make sure that I would be the one who was guilty,” the ex-wife’s divorce papers stated. “I was told that I could go anywhere in the world.”
Bannon pleaded “not guilty” to the allegations, and his spokeswoman told Politico that “he has a great relationship with the ex-wife.”
Until his selection as Trump’s campaign CEO, Bannon served as the executive chair of Breitbart News’ parent company.
Updated
Donald Trump on the alt-right: 'I don't even know what that is'
Despite his campaign CEO declaring his media organization the voice of the alt-right, Donald Trump told Anderson Cooper in an interview airing now on CNN that he doesn’t know what the term means.
“Nobody even knows what it is - she didn’t even know,” Trump said of opponent Hillary Clinton, whose address earlier today castigated him for his relationship with conspiracists and internet racists. “I don’t know what Steve said - I can only speak for myself.”
On a series of lawsuits from the Justice Department in the 1970s that accused his company of discriminating against black tenants, Trump was dismissive, and declared that he did not pay a dime in fines for refusing to rent apartments to African-Americans.
“We were sued many, many years ago, when I was very young, the federal government sued many, many companies,” Trump said. “They found nothing - they found absolutely nothing. I settled. I settled with no rewards or nothing.”
“They settled the case and that was the end of it,” Trump said. “It was a long time ago, but I don’t believe” that the Trump Organization paid any fines.
Donald Trump: “I think we’re going to do very well with African-Americans.”
Donald Trump is currently in fourth place among black voters: https://t.co/PT14qTdZUX
— Scott Bixby (@scottbix) August 25, 2016
Donald Trump: Hillary Clinton 'should be in jail'
Hillary Clinton should be in jail. You know it, the director of the FBI knows it - she should be in jail.
Donald Trump: 'You know it’s a process - you can’t take 11 million at one time'
In a conversation with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump told the anchor that the deportation of the estimated 11m undocumented immigrants currently living in the United States is “a process,” but denied that his recent muddying of his immigration policy amounts to “legalization.”
“We are gonna build a great wall, the wall is gonna be paid for by Mexico,” Trump said, when asked about his immigration policy shift. “We’re gonna have tunnel technology ... people will not come into our country illegally - we’re gonna fix that.”
The “bad ones,” Trump said, will be deported from the country as his first act as president.
“They’re out, they’re out. The police know who they are - I’ve spoken to many police. The police know who they are,” Trump said. “We’re going to end sanctuary cities.”
“After that, we’re going to see what happens, but we’re going to find people,” Trump said. “The first document I will sign will say get the bad ones out of this country - get them back to where they came from.”
“You know it’s a process - you can’t take 11 [million] at one time and say boom you’re done,” Trump continued. “We know the bad ones - we know where they are, who they are, we know the drug cartel people, we know the gangs... those people are gone.”
When asked how his newfound embrace of allowing undocumented immigrants to pay back taxes stacks against the platform of former rival Jeb Bush, whose stance on immigration led Trump to dismiss it as “amnesty,” Trump was dismissive.
“Jeb Bush wasn’t building a wall, Jeb Bush wasn’t making strong borders.”
“First I wanna see what’s going to happen - we;re going to deport many people, many, many people,” Trump said. “There is no path to legalization unless they leave the country and then they come back.”
“We’re going to see what happens once we strengthen up our border.”
Arizona senator John McCain’s Republican challenger, former state senator Kelli Ward, has criticized her opponent as too old for the job.
“John McCain is falling down on the job, he’s gotten weak and he’s gotten old. I do want to wish him a happy birthday, he’s going to be 80 on Monday. And I want to give him the best birthday present ever, the gift of retirement,” former Arizona Ward told MSNBC Chuck Todd, according to the Hill.
“I’m a physician, I see the physiological changes that happen in normal aging in patients again and again and again over the last 25 years. I do know what happens to the body and the mind at the end of life.”
Asked if she felt comfortable diagnosing a man she had never met, Ward said: “Diagnosing him as an 80-year-old man? Yes, I do.”
Video: Hillary Clinton accused Donald Trump of embracing a brand of US political conservatism associated with white nationalism and nativism during a Nevada campaign stop earlier today.
She cited Trump’s decision to bring on Breitbart News executive Steve Bannon as his new campaign chief as a sign Trump is strengthening his ties to the “alt-right” movement.
Kellyanne Conway, Donald Trump’s latest campaign manager, has issued a statement in response to Hillary Clinton’s speech on Trump’s connections to the so-called “alt-right”:
Today proved to the American public what we have known all along - Hillary Clinton has no hope, no vision and no ideas for the future of our country. Clinton lied about her emails, she lied about Colin Powell, and today she lied about Donald Trump. Donald Trump is talking about issues; Hillary Clinton is talking about Donald Trump. Today, she she took a break from her Hillary-in-Hiding Tour, she missed another opportunity to talk about education, infrastructure, terrorism, healthcare, the economy and energy. We’re living in her head rent-free, and that must terrify the political insiders who want to keep things exactly they way they are.
Donald Trump continues to muddy immigration stance
In a preview of remarks to be made tonight on CNN’s AC360, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump told host Anderson Cooper that the “softening” of his immigration plan does not include a path to legalization - “unless people leave the country” and pay back taxes.
“No, there’s not a path to legalization unless people leave the country,” Trump told Cooper, in remarks set to air at 8pm ET. “If they come back in and then they have to start paying taxes, but there is no path to legalization unless they leave the country and come back.”
Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway told CNN on Tuesday that there would be no “touchback” policy in Trump’s future - that is, undocumented immigrants leaving the country for their nation of origin before entering the United States legally.
Trump also doubled down on remarks he made last night, calling rival Hillary Clinton a “bigot” who only views African Americans as votes to be won.
“She is a bigot,” Trump said. “If you look at what’s happening to the inner cities, you look at what’s happening to African Americans and Hispanics in this country where she talks all the time. She talking - look at the vets, where she said the vets are being treated essentially just fine that it’s over-exaggerated what’s happening to the vets not so long ago.”
Asked to elaborate - Trump’s definition of bigotry appears to be different than Cooper’s - Trump said that Clinton is bigoted because “she is selling them down the tubes because she’s not doing anything for those communities. She talks a good game. But she doesn’t do anything.”
Asked whether Clinton is personally bigoted, Trump said yes.
“Oh, she is,” Trump said. “Of course she is. Her policies. They’re her policies, she comes out with the policies and others that believe like she does also but she came out with policies over the years. This is over the years. Long time. She’s totally bigoted, there’s no question about that.”
Updated
Al Baldasaro, Donald Trump’s adviser on veteran’s issues, has quadrupled down on comments made earlier this summer in which he called for Hillary Clinton to be shot:
Paul my comments were in accordance with the law & Constitution, far from controversial just an opinion from a Vet https://t.co/OeECnkMQs8
— Rep Al Baldasaro (@Al_Baldasaro) August 25, 2016
Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton today disparaged her Republican rival as a tool of the racist, radical right, a man who foments “paranoia and prejudice” and ushers hate groups into the mainstream.
Donald Trump is “a man with a long history of racial discrimination”, Clinton said during a Thursday rally in the flag-festooned student center at Truckee Meadows Community College. He is a man “who traffics in dark conspiracy theories drawn from the pages of supermarket tabloids and the far reaches of the internet”.
Positioning herself as the true representative of a tolerant and open-minded United States, Clinton derided the real estate mogul as a darling of the “alt-right” and a soulmate of David Duke, a former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.
The speech, a kind of throwing down of the patriotic gauntlet, came eight days after Trump named Steve Bannon as the new chief of his struggling campaign. Bannon is a Breitbart News executive and a key figure in the anti-establishment revolt that has captured the Republican party.
“The de facto merger between Breitbart and the Trump campaign represents a landmark achievement for the ‘alt-right’,” Clinton declared. “A fringe element has effectively taken over the Republican party. All of this adds up to something we’ve never seen before.
“Of course, there’s always been a paranoid fringe in our politics, steeped in racial resentment,” she continued. “But it’s never had the nominee of a major party stoking it, encouraging it, and giving it a national megaphone. Until now.”
By billing the speech as a takedown of “Trump’s divisive ‘alt-right’ candidacy”, her campaign shined a light on a little-known slice of the political spectrum: an amorphous, largely online movement that prefers the label “race realist” to “white supremacist”.
Not only has Trump insulted African Americans and Latinos from the campaign trail, but by aligning himself with Brietbart, Clinton said Thursday, he hooked up with a media outlet that the Southern Poverty Law Center says “embraces ideas on the extremist fringe of the conservative right”.
“This is not conservatism as we have known it,” she continued. “This is not Republicanism as we have known it. These are racist ideas, race-baiting ideas, anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, anti-women, all key tenets making up the emerging racist ideology known as the alt-right.”
Trump turned to Twitter shortly after Clinton’s rally ended. He said her “short speech is pandering to the worst instincts in our society. She should be ashamed of herself!”
Donald Trump, currently in fourth place among African-American voters:
Hillary Clinton is using race-baiting to try to get African-American voters- but they know she is all talk and NO ACTION!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 25, 2016
Hillary Clinton has tweeted support for actor Leslie Jones, whose personal information and explicit images were leaked online in a racialized cyberattack.
@Lesdoggg, no one deserves this—least of all someone who brings us so much joy. I'm with you. -H
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) August 25, 2016
Earlier today, Donald Trump responded at a Manchester, New Hampshire, campaign stop to reports that Hillary Clinton would present the Trump campaign as one that appeals to the far right.
Trump stated Clinton “is going to ‘accuse decent Americans who support this campaign, your campaign, of being racists, which we’re not. It’s the oldest play in the Democratic playbook.”
Donald Trump has responded to Hillary Clinton’s speech on the alt-right - or, at least, to a recap:
Just watched recap of #CrookedHillary's speech. Very short and lies. She is the only one fear-mongering!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 25, 2016
Hillary Clinton's short speech is pandering to the worst instincts in our society. She should be ashamed of herself!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 25, 2016
Updated
Breitbart News, in response to Hillary Clinton’s speech:
MUH PUTIN IS BEHIND IT ALL pic.twitter.com/ICkA7S4Hug
— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) August 25, 2016
On the heels of Hillary Clinton’s Nevada speech on the alt-right, Super-Pac American Bridge has already released an advertisement comparing Donald Trump to white supremacist US Senate candidate David Duke:
Curious about the “alt-right”? The Guardian’s Jason Wilson has more:
The alt- (or alternative) right has surged as a (so far) mainly online movement, occupying positions beyond the pale of many conservatives. It has no centralised organisation or official ideology – it has been described as “scattered and ideologically diffuse”.
The alt-right has been involved in fleeting street protests, but its online activities are well-organised and relentless. It recruits by opposing progressive ideas about gender, sexuality, and especially race and immigration. Adherents congregate on message boards like 4chan and 8chan, comment on websites like the Right Stuff and American Renaissance, and lurk on Twitter, where they taunt progressives (or “shitlibs”) and mainstream conservatives (“cuckservatives”).
The association with Breitbart comes from the efforts of Milo Yiannopoulos to appropriate and popularise the term. At the height of his Twitter-driven notoriety, Yiannopoulos wrote a manifesto introducing the tendency to mainstream conservatives. But are Breitbart and Bannon really a part of the movement? Some of its most hardcore activists say no.
The editor of white nationalist rag American Renaissance:
Hillary calling on Republican cucks to throw Trump out of the party.
— Jared Taylor (@jartaylor) August 25, 2016
For the unfamiliar: The term “cuck” - taken from “cuckservative,” itself a portmanteau of “cuckold” and “conservative” - is a derisive label for anyone the alt-right considers to be insufficiently conservative or supportive of Donald Trump.
Hillary Clinton’s campaign is drawing attention to Breitbart News’ history of racist, misogynistic and otherwise offensive clickbait headline - a good thing for the site’s traffic, but a bad thing for the presidential campaign that just hired the organization’s chief as its CEO:
Trump hired the head of Breitbart "News" to be CEO of his campaign. Here's a sample of their work: pic.twitter.com/y8loOnkbNu
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) August 25, 2016
Hillary Clinton cites the record level of racial, ethnic and religious diversity on the US Olympic team as proof that young people - “the most open, diverse and connected generation we have ever seen” - are good for the future of the country.
“How many of you saw the Olympics?” Clinton asks the cheering crowd. “Ibtihaj Muhammad, an African-American Muslim from New Jersey, won the bronze medal in fencing with grace and skill. Would she even have a place in Donald Trump’s America? And I’ll tell you, when I was growing up, in so many parts of our country, Simone Manuel and Katie Ledecky would not have been allowed to swim in the same public pool. And now they’re winning Olympic medals as teammates!”
“I don’t know about you, but I don’t think we have a person to waste.”
Hillary Clinton tells the audience in Nevada that rising bullying and harassment incidents in American public schools can be traced to the political climate and Donald Trump’s candidacy, because children “hear a lot more than we think”.
“At a recent high school basketball game in Indiana, white students held up Trump signs and taunted Latino players on the opposing team with chants of ‘Build the wall!’ and ‘Speak English.’”
“After a similar incident in Iowa, one frustrated school principal said, ‘They see it in a presidential campaign and now it’s OK for everyone to say this.’ We wouldn’t tolerate that kind of behavior before, and we wouldn’t tolerate it in our own homes, and we shouldn’t stand for it from a candidate for president.”
“No one should have any illusions about what’s really going on here,” Clinton says of the alt-right. “The names may have changed: Racists now call themselves ‘racialists;’ white supremacists now call themselves ‘white nationalists;’ the paranoid fringe now calls itself ‘alt-right;’ But the hate burns just as bright.”
“And now Trump is trying to rebrand himself as well. But don’t be fooled.”
“The de facto merger between Breitbart and the Trump Campaign represents a landmark achievement for this group,” Hillary Clinton says of the so-called “alt-right,” a loose confederation of online conservatives who view multiculturalism as a threat to white identity. “A fringe element has effectively taken over the Republican party. And this is part of a broader story - the rising tide of hardline, right-wing nationalism around the world.”
Clinton lambastes Donald Trump for appearing with Nigel Farage in Mississippi last night, describing the former head of Ukip as someone “who stoked anti-immigrant sentiments to win the referendum on leaving the European Union.”
“Farage has called for a ban on the children of legal immigrants from public schools and health services, has said women are, quote, ‘worth less’ than men and supports scrapping laws that prevent employers from discriminating based on race - that’s who Trump wants by his side when speaking to Americans.”
Sample Breitbart News headlines Clinton read out loud:
- “Birth Control Makes Women Unattractive and Crazy”
- “Would You Rather Your Child Had Feminism or Cancer?”
- “Gabby Giffords: The Gun Control Movement’s Human Shield”
- “Hoist It High And Proud: The Confederate Flag Proclaims A Glorious Heritage”
“Just imagine,” Clinton says. “Donald Trump reading that and thinking: ‘this is what I need more of in my campaign.’”
Hillary Clinton compares Donald Trump's immigration stance to Isis
Hillary Clinton dismisses Donald Trump’s latest “pivot” on the issue of undocumented immigrants: “He may have some new people putting new words in his mouth, but we know where he stands.”
“He would form a deportation force to round up millions of immigrants and kick them out of the country,” Clinton continues. “He’d abolish the bedrock constitutional principle that says if you’re born in the United States, you’re an American citizen. He says that children born in America to undocumented parents are, quote, ‘anchor babies’ and should be deported. Millions of them.”
“Ever since the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock, America has distinguished itself as a haven for people fleeing religious persecution, believing in religious freedom and religious liberty,” Clinton says. “Under Donald Trump, America would distinguish itself as the only country in the world to impose a religious test at the border.”
But, Clinton says, “there actually may be one place that does that: It’s the so-called Islamic State.”
Hillary Clinton, on Donald Trump’s embrace of conspiracy:
The last thing we need in the Situation Room is a loose cannon who can’t tell the difference - or doesn’t care to - between fact and fiction, and who buys so easily into racially-tinged rumors.
Highlighting Donald Trump’s longtime embrace of fringe conspiracy theories, Hillary Clinton repeats a series of anecdotes from the course of the campaign:
Through it all, he has continued pushing discredited conspiracy theories with racist undertones. Trump said thousands of American Muslims in New Jersey cheered the 9/11 attacks. They didn’t.
He suggested that Ted Cruz’s father was involved in the Kennedy assassination. Perhaps in Trump’s mind, because he was a Cuban immigrant, he must have had something to do with it. Of course there’s absolutely no evidence of that.
Just recently, Trump claimed President Obama founded Isis. And then he repeated that nonsense over and over. His latest paranoid fever dream is about my health.
All I can say is: Donald, dream on.
“This is what happens,” Clinton continues, “when you treat the National Enquirer like gospel. They said in October I’d be dead in six months! It’s also what happens when you listen to the radio host Alex Jones, who claimed that 9/11 and the Oklahoma City bombings were inside jobs. He even said - and this, really, is jsut so disgusting - he even said the victims of the Sandy Hook massacre were child actors and no one was actually killed there. I don’t know what happens in somebody’s mind, or how dark their heart must be to say things like that, but Trump didn’t challenge those lies. He actually went on Jones’ show and said: ‘Your reputation is amazing. I will not let you down.’”
“This from the man who wants to be president of the United States.”
“To this day, he’s never apologized to Judge Curiel,” Clinton says, referring to Donald Trump’s attack on the federal judge presiding over the Trump University fraud case, in which he described Curiel’s assignment to the case as “an absolute conflict” because he is “of Mexican heritage”.
“But for Trump, that’s just par for the course.”
Quoting poet and author Maya Angelou, Hillary Clinton tells the crowd: “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”
“When Trump was getting his start in business, he was sued by the Justice Department for refusing to rent apartments to black and Latino tenants,” Clinton says, referring to Donald Trump’s well-documented civil-rights suit in the 1970s. “Their applications would be marked with a ‘C’ – ‘C’ for ‘colored’ – and then rejected. Three years later, the Justice Department took Trump back to court because he hadn’t changed. The pattern continued through the decades.”
The trend continued, Clinton says: “State regulators fined one of Trump’s casinos for repeatedly removing black dealers from the floor. No wonder the turn-over rate for his minority employees was way above average.”
“It really does take a lot of nerve to ask people he’s ignored and mistreated for decades, ‘What do you have to lose?’ Because the answer is: everything.”
Clinton calls Donald Trump’s rhetoric “a disturbing preview of what kind of president he’d be,” highlighting his embrace of conspiracy theories regarding President Barack Obama’s birth as evidence that he “should never run our government or command our military.”
“If he doesn’t respect all Americans,” Clinton asks, “how can he serve all Americans?”
Clinton:
Everywhere I go, people tell me how concerned they are by the divisive rhetoric coming from my opponent in this election.
It’s like nothing we’ve heard before from a nominee for President of the United States.
From the start, Donald Trump has built his campaign on prejudice and paranoia.
He’s taking hate groups mainstream and helping a radical fringe take over one of America’s two major political parties.
His disregard for the values that make our country great is profoundly dangerous.
In just the past week, under the guise of “outreach” to African Americans, Trump has stood up in front of largely white audiences and described black communities in insulting and ignorant terms:
“Poverty. Rejection. Horrible education. No housing. No homes. No ownership.
Crime at levels nobody has seen… Right now, you walk down the street, you get shot.”
Those are his words.
Donald Trump misses so much.
Clinton begins address on Trump 'history of discrimination'
Clinton takes the stage and thanks the local dignitaries.
We have an advance copy of her prepared remarks. She adds some phrases here and there:
“My original plan for this visit was to focus on our agenda to help small businesses and entrepreneurs,” she says:
This week we proposed new steps to cut red tape and taxes, and make it easier for small businesses to get the credit they need to grow and hire. I want to be a small business president. My father was a small business man.
Because I believe that in America, if you can dream it, you should be able to build it. We’ll be talking a lot more about our economic plans in the days and weeks ahead.
But today, in this community college... I want to address something I hear from Americans all over our country.
Here’s a live video stream of the upcoming Clinton speech:
Trump’s done. Clinton up soon. Here’s the bit where he said, “we can be greater than ever before, and African American citizens and Latino citizens will have the time of their life because we are going to create jobs like you’ve never seen”:
Trump says "African-American citizens and Latino citizens will have the time of their lives" if he's elected pic.twitter.com/Nu7BbcSRLw
— POLITICO (@politico) August 25, 2016
Trump:
“I’m asking for the vote of every African American and Hispanic American who wants to see, maybe for the first time ever, a better future.”
Yes we can?
Trump runs through positions denying they're racist
Trump says that on immigration, national security and crime, people who favor the policies he supports (which are those again?) “are not racists”:
Trump now defending his policies as not racist, islamophobic, or prejudiced pic.twitter.com/j1bHepaWGA
— Zeke Miller (@ZekeJMiller) August 25, 2016
To state the obvious, a major party presidential nominee is giving a lengthy speech on the doorstep of Labor Day to insist he's not a racist
— Alex Burns (@alexburnsNYT) August 25, 2016
Trump:
“I see all this stuff handed out over the last few days by the media that Trump doesn’t want to build the wall. Folks, we are building the wall.... remember what I say. Mexico will pay for the wall.”
Trump invites his supporters to see Clinton’s imminent description of his “long history of racial discrimination” as a personal attack on all of them:
Here’s the central point I want to make. Hillary Clinton isn’t just attacking me. She’s attacking all of the decent people of all backgrounds who support this incredible, once in a lifetime movement. Never seen anything like it.
Clinton to say Trump has 'long history of racial discrimination'
The Clinton campaign has just released excerpts of her speech to be delivered in Reno, Nevada. Here they are in full:
From the start, Donald Trump has built his campaign on prejudice and paranoia. He’s taking hate groups mainstream and helping a radical fringe take over one of America’s two major political parties. His disregard for the values that make our country great is profoundly dangerous.
This is what I want to make clear today: A man with a long history of racial discrimination, who traffics in dark conspiracy theories drawn from the pages of supermarket tabloids and the far reaches of the internet, should never run our government or command our military. If he doesn’t respect all Americans, how can he serve all Americans?
Further:
Alt-Right is short for “Alternative Right.” The Wall Street Journal describes it as a loosely organized movement, mostly online, that “rejects mainstream conservatism, promotes nationalism and views immigration and multiculturalism as threats to white identity.”
The de facto merger between Breitbart and the Trump Campaign represents a landmark achievement for the “Alt-Right.” A fringe element has effectively taken over the Republican Party.
All of this adds up to something we’ve never seen before. Of course there’s always been a paranoid fringe in our politics, steeped in racial resentment. But it’s never had the nominee of a major party stoking it, encouraging it, and giving it a national megaphone. Until now.
On David Duke’s radio show the other day, the mood was jubilant. “We appear to have taken over the Republican Party,” one white supremacist said. Duke laughed. There’s still more work to do, he said.
Trump has delivered his favorite pitch of late to African American voters, but he spices it up a bit in this delivery:
What the hell do you have to lose? It can’t get any worse than it is right now.
Trump: Democrats have been making a fortune "running the inner cities" & "destroying those people." "this is actually a civil rights issue"
— Tom McCarthy (@TeeMcSee) August 25, 2016
Once you understand that Trump's mental image of black America is a scene from The Warriors, this all makes sense. https://t.co/gquhP7DdCb
— Jamelle Bouie (@jbouie) August 25, 2016
Updated
Trump: Clinton 'will accuse us of being racists, which we're not'
Trump refers to the speech Clinton is about to give in Nevada. He says she will frame him as a racist and calls it “the oldest play in the Democratic playbook”:
I hear, for the first time in a long time, she’ll be making some kind of a quick statement tonight.
Then he calls it “one of the most brazen attempts at distraction in the history of politics. I’ve not seen what Hillary is gonna say, but I’ve heard about it... a response is required for the sake of all decent voters that she is trying to smear.
The news reports are that Hillary Clinton is going to accuse this campaign and all of you and the millions of decent Americans at record levels... who support this campaign... of being racists, which we’re not. It’s the oldest play in the Democratic playbook. When Democratic policies fail, they are left with only this one tired argument. You’re racist you’re racist you’re racist, they keep saying it. It’s a tired disgusting argument. And it’s so predictable... it’s the last refuge of the discredited Democratic politician. They keep going back to the same well.
But you know what?... The people are too smart. The well is dry.
Sweet chyron from MSNBC (via @jeisrael) pic.twitter.com/9h90gkxbq3
— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) August 25, 2016
Updated
Trump says “she’s being totally protected by our government” in her criminal activities.
He says as president Clinton will sell the White House “like she sold the state department.”
“Vote to save your country,” he says.
“And by the way folks, if you’re looking at the poll numbers, take a look, we’re doing very well.”
Trump: Clinton led 'major criminal enterprise'
Trump accuses Clinton of heading up “a major criminal enterprise.”
“Lock her up!” the crowd chants.
“She created a private, illegal email server in order to hide her corrupt dealings,” Trump says.
“People that did 2% of what she did, their lives have been destroyed. But she didn’t care. As long as it helped her get away with her crime – no risk to America was too great.”
He continuously refers to Clinton’s ‘criminal cover-up.’
“We now know this to be one more massive Clinton lie and deception.
Trump is introduced by Ben Carson. Then Trump takes the stage and says “the real divide in this election is not between left and right but between everyday working people and a corrupt political establishment that only works for itself.”
He says there are 74 days until the election. Most counts have 75 days. It depends on whether you include election day, 8 November.
Donald Trump is scheduled to speak shortly in Manchester, New Hampshire. Here is a live video stream:
Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill agrees with the Trump campaign that the rhetoric in the new Clinton ad featuring white supremacists praising Trump is repulsive:
The "rhetoric" in this ad comes from Trump supporters talking about Trump. So yes, agree completely. https://t.co/kN45RLVp6Y
— Nick Merrill (@NickMerrill) August 25, 2016
Trump campaign calls Clinton ad 'sickening'
The Trump campaign has released a statement from South Carolina Pastor Mark Burns, its controversial surrogate, calling on Hillary Clinton to disavow her new video spot featuring white supremacists praising Donald Trump.
Here’s the statement, in full:
Hillary Clinton and her campaign went to a disgusting new low today as they released a video tying the Trump Campaign with horrific racial images. This type of rhetoric and repulsive advertising is revolting and completely beyond the pale. I call on Hillary Clinton to disavow this video and her campaign for this sickening act that has no place in our world.” - Pastor Mark Burns
Here’s the Clinton ad:
There's a reason the most hateful fringe of the right wing is supporting Donald Trump.https://t.co/AqB3DM2m0N
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) August 25, 2016
The national Quinnipiac poll that just came out has Clinton leading Trump among nonwhite likely voters by 62 points, 77-15. Trump leads Clinton 52-41 among white likely voters and Trump leads Clinton 59-32 among male likely voters, according to the poll.
National poll of likely voters has Clinton up 10 points
The pollsters at Quinnipiac University, where a house effect favoring Republicans has been detected, have conducted their first national poll of likely voters and found Clinton ahead of Trump in a head-to-head race by 10 points, 51-41. In such a race, Clinton also draws a majority of voters, the survey found:
Q poll - likely voters: Clinton 51, Trump 41. 4-way: Clinton 45, Trump 38, Johnson 10, Stein 4. Via @chrisdonato04
— Rick Klein (@rickklein) August 25, 2016
Note that the poll has Clinton up by seven points in a four-way race. That’s right on the mark with an Ipsos-Reuters poll conducted over August 20-24. Polling averages have Clinton ahead in the four-way race by about seven points (HuffPost Pollster) and four points (RealClearPolitics).
Separately, a new poll of Michigan has Clinton ahead by seven points in a four-way race. In a head-to-head race, polling averages have Clinton up by about eight points in the state, which awards 16 electoral votes and hasn’t gone Republican since the 1980s:
New Suffolk poll of Michigan --
— Will Rahn (@willrahn) August 25, 2016
Clinton: 44
Trump: 37
Johnson: 5
Stein: 3
8/22 to 8/24, 500 LVs, MOE 4.4
Suffolk has Clinton+7 in Michigan, probably one of Trump's better polls in a while https://t.co/A35e2P50S8
— Nate Cohn (@Nate_Cohn) August 25, 2016
Polls over the past few days have been a cherrypicker's delight. Everything's either "wow, not bad at all!" for Trump or utterly terrible.
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) August 25, 2016
Here's the deal. Over the past three weeks, our polls-only model has had Clinton with between an 80% and 90% chance of winning. Race=static.
— (((Harry Enten))) (@ForecasterEnten) August 25, 2016
A pro-Trump rally has been planned for outside the US embassy in Moscow, notes the former US ambassador to Russia:
Note followers in US: a protest in Moscow planned in support of Trump, against Clinton outside of US embassy. https://t.co/6lKqUd5n5G
— Michael McFaul (@McFaul) August 25, 2016
Donald Trump’s reversal on immigration appears not to have lost him the support of shock-talk performer Ann Coulter:
Talked to Coulter last night. She isn't about to jump off the Trump train: compared him (favorably!) to Kim Jong-un pic.twitter.com/WpVEOBjDhB
— Joshua Green (@JoshuaGreen) August 25, 2016
A presidential nominee holding a press conference, what a cute idea. Or at least Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon seems to think it’s cute:
A smiling @brianefallon tells MSNBC: "I suspect very soon we will answer questions in more of a press conference style format"
— Laura Meckler (@laurameckler) August 25, 2016
Hillary Clinton has not held a news conference in 264 days. The Clinton campaign points out that the candidate has taken questions from reporters and voters at events and sat for many interviews. Those are different from standing alone at a microphone and inviting questions, including follow-up questions, about things like basement servers and meetings with donors. Or if there’s no substantive difference – then there should be no problem with Clinton scheduling a news conference soon.
Trump writes check to Louisiana church
Donald Trump has apparently made good on a pledge he made last week during a tour of Louisiana flooding to give $100,000 to a church.
David Fahrenthold, the Washington Post reporter who has been exhaustively seeking, mostly in vain, to match up Trump promises of charitable giving with records of actual contributions, has just been sent a pdf of a check from Trump to the church, he reports:
Just got an email from @realdonaldtrump spox Hope Hicks, w/PDF of a check attached. $100K from Trump to Greenwell Springs Baptist in La.
— David Fahrenthold (@Fahrenthold) August 25, 2016
Farenthold’s reporting appears to have inspired what may turn out to be Trump’s most generous year:
.@realdonaldtrump's most charitable yr had been '89: $1.02M in total. He's given $1.1M since this spring, when we first askd abt his charity
— David Fahrenthold (@Fahrenthold) August 25, 2016
Updated
Trump: 'Hillary Clinton is a bigot'
Here’s more video from Trump’s rally last night in Jackson, Mississippi:
Reporters were briefly allowed into the Trump minority outreach event this morning. Trump bragged about his polls and said “the numbers are going up with the African American community rapidly.” It’s unclear what numbers Trump was referring to.
A list of attendees is below, including members of the Republican Leadership Initiative, a project of the Republican National Committee that hopes to engage millennial and minority Republicans.
The pool report sets the scene of the meeting:
Mr. Trump was seated at the middle of a square table, surrounded by members of his campaign, the Republican National Committee and the RLI. To his right was Dr. Ben Carson, to his left was Pierry Benjamin, the New York State Director for the Republican Leadership Initiative.
“We’re up 15, 15 to 20, and that’s in over one week. So a lot of good things have been happening. Tremendous things are happening, and Lynne you’ve been so amazing,” Trump said, nodding across the table to Lynne Patton.
The candidate then turned his attention to the press lined up across from him.
“How was it last night? Good right? Wasn’t it great? Amazing people last night. Brexit was something, right?”
Reuters Steve Holland asked the candidate to explain what they’ve been talking about at the table.
“We’re just talking about the fact that we have great relationships and the numbers are going up with the African American community rapidly. I’ve always had great relationships with the African American community, and now, I’ve made it such a focal point.”
Here’s a list of attendees:
From the Trump campaign: Kellyanne Conway, Stephen K. Bannon, Jason Miller, Lynne Patton, Katrina Pierson, Pastor Mark Burns, Dr. Ben Carson
From the GOP: Ashley Bell, Sean Spicer, Chris Young, Elliot Echols, Sarah Nelson, Helen Aguirre
With RLI: Pierry Benjamin, Alexa Cardena, Gregory Kirsopp, Patricia Bober, Oz Sultan, Ronald Eith, Michele Adolphe, Marilyn Miller, Alfred Liz, Samsus Saintloth, Konstantinos Poulidis, Jaime Ulloa, Kimberly Morella
Clinton releases video featuring white supremacists for Trump
Clinton’s scheduled to speak in Nevada on this topic at noon local time. The video also features Stephen Bannon, name-checks Breitbart and warns, “if Trump wins, they could be running the country.”
There's a reason the most hateful fringe of the right wing is supporting Donald Trump.https://t.co/AqB3DM2m0N
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) August 25, 2016
Updated
Donald Trump has held a meeting inside his namesake tower this morning with African American and Hispanic activists, as part of his ongoing efforts at minority outreach. Ben Carson was there.
Trump talked about his views on illegal immigration, according to CBS News’ Sopan Deb, saying he was “very strong” on the issue. Then he encouraged the media not to fool the media:
Trump on immigration at this morning's roundtable: "Don’t let the media fool the media." pic.twitter.com/vuic85isfv
— Sopan Deb (@SopanDeb) August 25, 2016
If the media does end up fooling the media about where Trump stands on immigration, the media might be forgiven for it (?), as Trump has been something of a moving target on the topic.
Incorrect descriptions of this:
— Tim Alberta (@TimAlberta) August 24, 2016
- "pivot"
- "softening"
- "moderating"
Correct descriptions of this:
- 180
- total reversal
- flip flop
It's something unpredictable / but in the end it's right / I hope you had the time of your life pic.twitter.com/aUDDn8gfJM
— Benjy Sarlin (@BenjySarlin) August 25, 2016
What is the alt-right?
In her Nevada speech today attacking Donald Trump for taking a “hate movement mainstream,” Hillary Clinton is expected to describe Trump campaign connections to the “alt-right,” the online fever swamp of bigotry and nastiness.
Asked about Trump’s alt-right connections on CBS This Morning Thursday, Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway pleaded ignorance, much as Trump once said he was not familiar with David Duke.
“I am not that familiar with [the alt-right] to be frank with you,” Conway said. “I’ve read about it but I think that we all start cherry picking headlines from a website and is Hillary Clinton running against a website?”
Conway went on to deny that the Trump campaign is a platform for the alt-right, which mixes murkily in corners of the Breitbart web site run by Trump campaign CEO Stephen Bannon:
No, not at all, we’ve never even discussed it internally. It certainly isn’t part of our strategy meetings, it’s nothing that Mr. Trump says out on stump.”
What is the alt-right, exactly? “It is new, difficult to pin down, and hard to understand,” writes Jason Wilson for the Guardian. “But it’s important to try to get a handle on who is involved, what they believe, and what their possible influence might be on the immediate future of rightwing politics”:
The alt- (or alternative) right has surged as a (so far) mainly online movement, occupying positions beyond the pale of many conservatives. It has no centralised organisation or official ideology – it has been described as “scattered and ideologically diffuse”.
The alt-right has been involved in fleeting street protests, but its online activities are well-organised and relentless. It recruits by opposing progressive ideas about gender, sexuality, and especially race and immigration. Adherents congregate on message boards like 4chan and 8chan, comment on websites like the Right Stuffand American Renaissance, and lurk on Twitter, where they taunt progressives (or “shitlibs”) and mainstream conservatives (“cuckservatives”).
NBC News asked watchdogs, Republicans and journalists to define it:
Ahead of HRC's "Alt Right" speech, we asked GOPers/conservatives/journalists to define term: https://t.co/UDpvzoslfQ pic.twitter.com/ucVCa49FyQ
— Mark Murray (@mmurraypolitics) August 25, 2016
Update: Here’s a video produced by members of the white supremacist American Renaissance group (read further from the Southern Poverty Law Center) that is informative about the alt-right, or a corner of it, its world view and some of its heroes. Be warned that the video is racist propaganda. Also be warned that the video is an elaborate cover of the 1989 Billy Joel hit We Didn’t Start the Fire.
Updated
As part of his recent appearance on Fox News non-journalist Sean Hannity’s show (Hannity, faced with accusations of pro-Trump bias, has insisted he is not a journalist), Trump invited the crowd to applaud to decide the fate of undocumented migrants in the USA (“the good ones”; the bad ones are to be summarily expelled):
Gross video of Trump POLLING AUDIENCE about whether he should ruin millions of lives by mass deporting immigrants https://t.co/qpsrYDfyDY
— igorvolsky (@igorvolsky) August 25, 2016
Updated
Hello and welcome to our live-wire coverage of the 2016 race for the White House. Donald Trump – who insisted that Barack Obama was born in Africa; whose family firm was hit with a federal civil rights suit in 1973 for refusing to rent to “coloreds” (the Trump firm term); and whose campaign has galvanized white nationalists – called Hillary Clinton a bigot in a speech on Wednesday night.
“Hillary Clinton is a bigot!” Trump said in Jackson, Mississippi, after being introduced by former Ukip leader Nigel Farage. “Who sees people of color only as votes, not as human beings worthy of a better future.”
Trump has been trying his hand at minority outreach in stump speeches over the last week.
Clinton, who is scheduled to give a speech today in Reno, Nevada, on what she says is Trump’s campaign strategy of embracing racism and racial tension, hit back sharply in a late-night phone interview on CNN.
“[Trump] is taking a hate movement mainstream,” Clinton said. “He’s brought it into his campaign. He is bringing it to our communities and our country.”
Clinton: "He is taking a hate movement mainstream." pic.twitter.com/Ayn8YC6lrb
— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) August 25, 2016
Farage, meanwhile, in his Mississippi adventure, told the crowd they can still win: “You can beat the pollsters, you can beat the commentators, you can beat Washington, and you’ll do it by doing what we did for Brexit in Britain,” he said. He also told people to get their “walking boots” on, which we don’t have in America and definitely not in Mississippi.
Trump has also reversed his trademark immigration stance. He has gone, for now, it seems, from supporting mass deportations to advocating a path to legal status for undocumented migrants, the centerpiece of immigration reform plans crafted by mainstream Republicans.
“They’ll pay back taxes, they have to pay taxes, there’s no amnesty, as such, there’s no amnesty, but we work with them,” Trump said, in pretaped remarks to Fox host Sean Hannity.
Trump appears to be losing rightist provocateur Ann Coulter, who was so excited about the candidate’s original immigration policy she wrote a book about it:
Well, if it's "hard," then nevermind. Trump: "... to take a person who's been here for 15 or 20 years ....It's a very, very hard thing."
— Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) August 25, 2016
Also in her CNN interview last night, Clinton gave a new answer about her use of private email while secretary of state:
This Clinton apology's to @CNN on emails is possibly the cleanest, most succinct answer she's given on emails. pic.twitter.com/PLttjwXixM
— Dan Merica (@danmericaCNN) August 25, 2016
Thanks for reading and please join us in the comments.
Updated
