Today in Campaign 2016
- Donald Trump’s new presidential campaign chief is registered to vote in a key swing state in an empty house where he does not live, in an apparent breach of election laws. Stephen Bannon, the chief executive of Trump’s election campaign, has an active voter registration at the house in Miami-Dade County, Florida, which is vacant and due to be demolished to make way for a new development.
- ...or, at least, he was, until today. After the Guardian disclosed that he was previously registered at an empty house in Florida where he did not live, Bannon moved his voter registration to the home of one his website’s writers.
- Bannon also faced domestic violence charges after a fight with a woman he was married to 20 years ago, in which she accused him of grabbing her by the neck “violently” and destroying a telephone when she tried to summon police. Documents from the Santa Monica, California, police department relating to the case were first published by Politico on Thursday. The case was eventually dismissed.
- A Maine state lawmaker has complied with Maine governor Paul LePage’s request that he, the lawmaker, make public a voicemail in which LePage calls him a “cocksucker” and a “little son-of-a-bitch socialist cocksucker.” The unpleasantness arose out of LePage’s belief that the lawmaker, Democratic Representative Drew Gattine, had called LePage a racist. Gattine denies that. “I want you to prove that I’m a racist,” LePage challenges Gattine in the voicemail, which you can listen to on the Portland Press Herald web site. “I’ve spent my life helping black people.” LePage, a Republican, gets on well with Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, in a relationship the Boston Globe has described as a “bromance.” LePage’s daughter is a state coordinator for the Trump campaign.
- Iraq war co-architect and former deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz has told Der Spiegel that he will probably have to vote for Hillary Clinton. Wolfowitz told Spiegel that Trump represented a security risk and that his apparent affection for Russian president Vladimir Putin was “disturbing.”
- NJ.com reports that New Jersey governor Chris Christie is at least partially behind Donald Trump’s moderation this week on immigration. Trump indicated for the first time this week that he may be open to an immigration reform plan that includes a path to legal status for some undocumented migrants.
- The Trump campaign debuted its iPhone application this morning to relatively little fanfare - its release was accompanied by an email, but no tweets from the candidate himself - but privacy experts in the tech sphere are already casting a wary eye at the “America First” app as a potentially serious security risk for its users. According to ABC News, anyone who downloads the app opens the gate for the campaign to access and collect unusually vast quantities of data, including their entire address book and contact lists.
Donald Trump's doctor: I wrote Trump's health letter in five minutes
Donald Trump’s gastroenterologist wrote the letter stating that Trump “will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency” in a matter of minutes, according to an interview the doctor gave NBC’s Lester Holt.
Dr. Harold Bornstein told NBC that he stands by the assertion that Trump would be the healthiest man to ever hold the nation’s highest office, saying of the obvious hyperbole: “I like that sentence, to be quite honest with you.”
Bornstein’s one-page assessment of the septuagenarian’s health - in which he called Trump’s latest test results “extraordinarily excellent” - have drawn new scrutiny since the letter’s release in December as the candidate and his acolytes have pointed to conspiracy theories that rival Hillary Clinton suffers from any number of secret ailments, from epilepsy to fainting spells, as proof that she does not have the “stamina” to serve as president.
Bornstein said that the decidedly non-medical language he used in the letter was gleaned from Trump’s own vernacular: “I think I picked up his kind of language and then just interpreted it to my own.”
Bornstein’s credentials have been called into question, after CNN’s Sanjay Gupta pointed out that the professional gastroenterological association mentioned in the letter has not counted Bornstein as a member for decades. Additionally, Bornstein’s website redirects to something called Annoying Teddy, a teddy bear that sings for three hours at a time.
Updated
Speaking to a roundtable of Latino business leaders in Las Vegas, Donald Trump bragged - without apparently secret evidence - that his campaign is doing well with Latino voters:
“We’ve been doing very, very well with the Latinos, we’ve been doing amazing - far, far greater... than anyone understands,” Trump said. “And they want to see jobs coming in, we’re going to bring jobs. They want to see things happen, I don’t know if you just saw, the GDP was just reduced from last month to 1.1%, when they had it last month it was 1.2, everyone thought that was a catastrophe, well they just did an adjustment and brought it down.”
The “attack” in question: releasing a transcript of Jill Stein’s sitdown with the Washington Post’s editorial board.
The @washingtonpost was kind enough to attack me twice in two days. Who says corporate media is biased?
— Dr. Jill Stein (@DrJillStein) August 26, 2016
Jared Taylor was prominently featured in a Hillary Clinton campaign ad released ahead of her speech denouncing the “alt-right” in Reno on Thursday and “appreciates” the Democratic presidential nominee for “calling attention to the message I have for America”.
The self-described “race realist” is unrepentant in embracing the label and expounding his views. He founded the alt-right American Renaissance website 25 years ago, which started as a print monthly to emphasize race as society’s most “prominent and divisive” fault line, and that mainstream politics and media tries to “gloss over” the issue.
Clinton has attacked Trump’s associations with the alt-right, describing it as a “a fringe element that has taken over the Republican party”.
Taylor said her speech was “a typical lefty campaign ploy”, and maintained Trump is not a part of the movement. “Is Hillary Clinton responsible for the views of everyone who supports her?” he asked.
Asked to define what the diffuse alt-right stands for, Taylor said there were “areas of disagreement”, but that “the central element of the alt-right is the position it takes on race.”
That position, until recently, would have been clearly beyond the pale of presidential politics, and rejected by liberals and mainstream conservatives alike. Now, Taylor sees an opportunity to further proselytise his views. He does not think Trump is solely responsible for the alleged growth of the alt-right. But, “it is encouraging because here we have a candidate for president who is saying some things that we have been saying for years”.
Donald Trump, for one, is still an avid reader of Breitbart News:
Meet the ‘Trumpocrats’: Lifelong Democrats Breaking w/ Party Over Hillary to Support Donald Trump for President: https://t.co/g2N3JJWV8a
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 26, 2016
Statement from the Iowa chair of the Republican party on Hillary Clinton’s “alt-right” speech:
Hillary Clinton’s latest strategy of deflecting from her corrupt pay-to-play scheme at the State Department by leveling personal attacks against Donald Trump is as desperate as it is predictable.
For decades, Hillary and other Democrats have taken minority support for granted while offering them embarrassingly little results. Donald Trump’s powerful message of hope, opportunity and empowerment for minority communities threatens to resonate with Hillary’s base, and that’s why she’s lashing out.
Hillary Clinton can add the endorsement of the National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce to her pile of endorsements from LGBTQ-oriented organizations, with business association’s CEO declaring in a statement this afternoon that LGBTQ Americans have “come too far to lose [their] seat at the table”.
“The National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce has never endorsed a candidate in its nearly fifteen year history, but the stakes have never been so high for the future of the LGBT business community,” said NGLCC co-founder and CEO Chance Mitchell in a statement. Calling Clinton “the progressive champion our businesses and our families need to thrive,” the head of the nation’s largest business organization for LGBTQ people wrote that the advocacy group is “certain that Secretary Clinton will be the president fighting for the collective economic and social longevity of America’s 1.4 million LGBT business owners.”
In its endorsement, the Washington, DC-headquartered organization, which aims to expand economic opportunities for LGBTQ businesses and business owners, cited Clinton’s long (albeit checkered) history of advocacy for LGBTQ communities, including her support for antidiscrimination legislation and reduction of red tape for small businesses.
“The NGLCC and our partners are proud to endorse a champion for equality and opportunity who will promote the Democratic Party’s most progressive platform yet,” added Mitchell. “Secretary Clinton proudly affirms an essential core value of the NGLCC: that we are all stronger together, and that our economy only succeeds when the American Dream is available to all LGBT and allied Americans.”
Clinton responded enthusiastically to the endorsement:
“I am honored to have earned the first-ever endorsement of the National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce,” Clinton said in a statement. “The stakes in this election could not be higher for LGBT Americans. When Donald Trump says he’ll ‘make America great again,’ that’s code for ‘take America backwards.’ He has said he would appoint judges who would overturn marriage equality. The man Trump chose as his running mate signed a law that opened the door for Indiana businesses to discriminate against LGBT people and said marriage equality could cause ‘societal collapse.’”
“As we’ve seen in North Carolina, discrimination isn’t only wrong – it’s bad for business. North Carolina’s egregious HB2 measure has caused companies to pull jobs and millions of dollars out of the state.”
Updated
Donald Trump iPhone app 'vacuums up' personal data from users
The Trump campaign debuted its iPhone application this morning to relatively little fanfare - its release was accompanied by an email, but no tweets from the candidate himself - but privacy experts in the tech sphere are already casting a wary eye at the “America First” app as a potentially serious security risk for its users.
According to ABC News, anyone who downloads the app opens the gate for the campaign to access and collect unusually vast quantities of data, including their entire address book and contact lists.
The app’s privacy policy informs users that the campaign “may access, collect, and store personal information about other people that is available to us through your contact list and/or address book.”
That’s a long step further than Hillary Clinton’s analogous campaign application, which does not acquire any contact information beyond that of the user.
“Trump’s is asking to collect significantly more data, and not just data about you, but data about anyone who might be in your contact list,” technology and civil liberties policy director at the ACLU of Northern California Nicole Ozer told ABC News.
“You have the situation where an individual is wanting to use the app, and they’re making decisions about other people’s privacy,” Ozer said. “Just because you choose to use an app, doesn’t mean that all the people you come in contact with want information about them shared with that campaign or that company.”
Donald Trump’s campaign chief has moved his voter registration to the home of one his website’s writers, after the Guardian disclosed that he was previously registered at an empty house in Florida where he did not live.
Stephen Bannon is now registered to vote at the Florida house of Andy Badolato, who reports for Breitbart News and has worked with Bannon in the past on the production of political films.
According to public records, Badolato, 52, and two of his adult sons are also registered to vote at the property, which he co-owns with his ex-wife.
A spokeswoman for Bannon, a spokesman for Trump, and Badolato did not respond to emailed questions about whether Bannon lives at the single-family house, which is listed as his residence on his new voter registration record in Sarasota County.
Alexandra Preate, a spokeswoman for Bannon, said earlier in an email that “Mr Bannon moved to a different residence in Florida”, repeating a statement about the issue that was previously released by Trump campaign spokesman Jason Miller.
The Sarasota County supervisor of elections advises new registrants that they must use the address of their legal residence, and notes prominently that applying with untrue information can result in a felony charge punishable by five years in prison or a fine of up to $5,000.
Bannon, the recently hired chief executive of Trump’s presidential campaign, made the amendment to his registration after being contacted by the Guardian for a report published on Friday morning about his previous voting registration arrangements.
The 62-year-old executive chairman of Breitbart News was from 2014 until this week registered to vote at two rented houses in Miami where his ex-wife lived. The second house has been vacant for months, according to neighbors, and is due to be demolished. Bannon, who owns property in California, works predominantly in Washington and New York.
Bannon, his ex-wife Diane Clohesy and the Trump campaign have not disputed that Bannon did not live in the Miami houses with Clohesy when given eight separate opportunities to do so before and after publication.
Badolato states on his website that he is an “entrepreneur, senior level executive, venture capitalist and seed stage investor” and claims to have founded companies that reached a total of $26bn in market capitalization. According to federal court records, he has filed for bankruptcy four times since 2008.
He is also an “editorial journalist and blog contributor” at Breitbart News and formerly worked as an associate producer on some of Bannon’s films such as The Undefeated, a documentary about the 2008 Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin.
Which is your favorite?
OMG. Trump campaign store out with new apparel pic.twitter.com/N6DSV49TTC
— Gabby Morrongiello (@gabriellahope_) August 26, 2016
In 2004 Donald Trump told CNN that he dealt with stress by reflecting on how “nothing matters”:
Thanks to @kyledcheney for pointing this out and vindicating all of my Trump reporting https://t.co/OkHxh0yDXx pic.twitter.com/41KPZOQLZl
— Ben Jacobs (@Bencjacobs) August 26, 2016
Donald Trump will attend a fundraiser this evening at Harrah’s casino Lake Tahoe, in an event hosted by the Nevada Republican party.
Beforehand he will participate in meetings with local Hispanic leaders and small business owners, according to local reports:
Trump's Hispanic round table is at 2pm, and then a 3pm event with unspecified local small biz owners, before heading to Tahoe tonight #8NN
— Patrick Walker (@PatrickWalker) August 26, 2016
Christie persuaded Trump to moderate immigration stance – report
NJ.com reports that New Jersey governor Chris Christie is at least partially behind Donald Trump’s moderation this week on immigration.
Trump indicated for the first time this week that he may be open to an immigration reform plan that includes a path to legal status for some undocumented migrants.
Former New York City mayor and Trump confidant Rudy Giuliani told NJ.com how it played out, the site reports:
And, Giuliani says, even more Christie-inspired changes to Trump’s immigration stance will be forthcoming, like his call for tracking immigrant visas like Fedex packages, and using the E-Verify system to reduce illegal labor.
In an interview with NJ Advance Media on Thursday, Giuliani, a top adviser to the Republican presidential nominee, said Trump’s recent reversal on immigration policy came after his inner circle for several weeks suggested a more nuanced, practical, and humane approach in dealing with the nation’s 11 million undocumented immigrants.
Asked if Christie was responsible for Trump’s softening approach to immigration, the former mayor responded: “The answer to that question is yes.”
Wolfowitz to vote for Clinton
Iraq war co-architect and former deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz has told Der Spiegel that he will probably have to vote for Hillary Clinton. Wolfowitz told Spiegel that Trump represented a security risk and that his apparent affection for Russian president Vladimir Putin was “disturbing.”
Hillary Clinton voted in favor of the invasion of Iraq. Donald Trump said beforehand that he favored the invasion but later withdrew his support.
Politics for humans: the immigration debate and 2016
In this week’s Politics for Humans podcast – our series that takes on headline news with thoughtful conversations about real lives – host Sabrina Siddiqui takes a look at the great immigration debate of 2016. She’s joined by the Republican National Committee’s Helen Aguirre Ferré, Pulitzer-winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas and Cecilia Muñoz, director of the Domestic Policy Council.
Have a listen!
This week, I talk to @Cecilia44 @helenaguirrefer and @joseiswriting about immigration and Hispanic outreach https://t.co/I3nI9yPxwg
— Sabrina Siddiqui (@SabrinaSiddiqui) August 26, 2016
Obama, Biden to hit trail for Clinton
Barack Obama will campaign for Hillary Clinton in Philadelphia on 13 September, and Joe Biden will campaign for the Democrats in multiple events in Ohio on 1 September, the White House has announced.
The White House notes that there’s a voter registration deadline in Pennsylvania on 11 October.
Donald Trump confused everyone this week by indicating that he may be open to an arrangement under which undocumented migrants in the United States would be able to stay here if they had no criminal background and pay back taxes. Previously he called for the expulsion of all undocumented migrants, citing as inspiration president Dwight Eisenhower’s expulsion in the 1950s of hundreds of thousands of Mexican immigrants.
Now Trump tweets that illegal immigration is “such a big problem for our country-I will solve”. But that’s not quite enough information for some people:
@realdonaldtrump How? You’ve flip-flopped about 100 times in the last week.
— Sahil Lavingia (@shl) August 26, 2016
@realDonaldTrump You have no coherent plan. You scammed your base!
— (((Sylvia))) (@Tellall2012) August 26, 2016
@realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/GQM3EWn7jd
— Josh Perry (@MrJoshPerry) August 26, 2016
McCain says 'Britney Spears is certainly very attractive'
Arizona senator John McCain, whose primary opponent attacked him yesterday as “weak” and “old” – McCain turns 80 Monday – has told TMZ that he finds Britney Spears attractive.
TMZ caught up with McCain at the Los Angeles airport and asked him to name his favorite “younger generation” female celebrity (video at TMZ):
“Britney Spears?” a man off camera said.
“There you go,” McCain said. “Britney Spears is certainly very attractive.”
Spears has a new album out. She also is in a new episode of Carpool Karaoke with Late Late Show host James Corden. Didn’t expect to find reason to add this to today’s live blog politics coverage, but sometimes everything comes together:
(h/t @bencjacobs)
Updated
In reply to Donald Trump’s brash pitch to African American voters – “what do you have to lose?” Trump says – the Hillary Clinton campaign has produced a television ad called “Everything”:
We’ll post new Trump ads when we see them – there haven’t been any since the one that was released when Trump’s first TV ad buys were announced last week.
Do Instagram videos count? Trump is out with a new one today, hitting Clinton for a 1996 warning about juvenile “super predators”. The video draws on footage of a Democratic debate in which Bernie Sanders calls the comments “racist”:
Updated
This May video of Ted Cruz predicting Donald Trump will betray supporters “on every issue across the board” particularly immigration has aged well:
If only someone had warned us during the primaries that Trump was going to flip on immigration. pic.twitter.com/U1ik22IBVa
— Ken Webster Jr (@ProducerKen) August 26, 2016
(h/t @awzurcher)
Cruz wasn’t alone. Here’s National Review editor Rich Lowry in January:
WATCH the clip on @megynkelly: https://t.co/eW0EezgvGc pic.twitter.com/myWGpMihoP
— National Review (@NRO) August 26, 2016
In news from off the campaign trail, the president has created the largest marine protected area on Earth, which also has what must be competitive for the longest name for a marine protected area, Papahānaumokuākea.
It’s Friday. Treat yourself to some photos:
Today @POTUS expanded Papahānaumokuākea, making it the largest marine protected area on Earth 🌎🐬🌊Pics by James Watt pic.twitter.com/qORZTkLnsM
— US Dept of Interior (@Interior) August 26, 2016
And read our coverage here:
Accused of racism, Maine governor leaves profane voicemail
A Maine state lawmaker has complied with Maine governor Paul LePage’s request that he, the lawmaker, make public a voicemail in which LePage calls him a “cocksucker” and a “little son-of-a-bitch socialist cocksucker.”
The unpleasantness arose out of LePage’s belief that the lawmaker, Democratic Representative Drew Gattine, had called LePage a racist. Gattine denies that.
“I want you to prove that I’m a racist,” LePage challenges Gattine in the voicemail, which you can listen to on the Portland Press Herald web site. “I’ve spent my life helping black people.”
LePage, a Republican, gets on well with Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, in a relationship the Boston Globe has described as a “bromance.” LePage’s daughter is a state coordinator for the Trump campaign.
“I want you to record this and make it public, because I’m after you. Thank you,” LePage concludes his voicemail to Gattine.
LePage apologized in January for giving voice to a fantasy of marauding outsiders who come to his state to sell drugs and “impregnate a young white girl.”
“These are guys with the name D-Money, Smoothie, Shifty – these types of guys – they come from Connecticut and New York, they come up here, they sell their heroin, they go back home,” LePage said. “Incidentally, half the time they impregnate a young white girl before they leave, which is a real sad thing because then we have another issue we have to deal with down the road.”
LePage, who had already been known for incendiary rhetoric, said those comments were a “mistake.”
“I was going impromptu and my brain didn’t catch up to my mouth,” LePage said. “Instead of Maine women I said white women … If you go to Maine, you can see it’s 95% white.”
Read further:
Hello and welcome to our live-wire coverage of the 2016 race for the White House. Hillary Clinton denied Friday morning that her work as secretary of state was affected by donations to the Clinton charitable foundation, after an Associated Press investigation revealed earlier this week that a large share of meetings she took as secretary with non-governmental counterparts were with foundation donors.
“My work as secretary of state was not influenced by any outside forces,” Clinton said in a phone interview with MSNBC. “I made policy decisions based on what I thought was right to keep Americans safe and protect our interest abroad. I believe my aides also acted appropriately. And we have gone above and beyond ... to voluntarily disclose donors.”
Clinton also suggested that the foundation would become less active on the world stage, saying its governors were “trying to make sure good work continues as we wind it down” and that “the Foundation is looking for partners but that’s going to take time to carry out”.
.@HillaryClinton: My work as Secy. of State was not influenced by any outside forces https://t.co/p0ilLxbdGx
— Morning Joe (@Morning_Joe) August 26, 2016
The interview followed a speech Thursday in Reno, Nevada, in which Clinton described what she said was Donald Trump’s “long history of racial discrimination”. She repeated that description Friday.
Senior Republicans have declined to comment on the speech or its content (read our news coverage of the speech here). That includes the leaders of both chambers of Congress.
Recap: Asked for response to Clinton's 'alt-right' speech:
— Frank Thorp V (@frankthorp) August 26, 2016
Ryan spox: "Doubt he saw it."
McConnell spox: "I don't think he saw the speech."
Separately, it emerged Thursday evening that Stephen Bannon, the head of the Donald Trump presidential campaign, faced domestic violence charges after a fight with a woman he was married to 20 years ago, in which she accused him of grabbing her by the neck “violently” and destroying a telephone when she tried to summon police.
Documents from the Santa Monica, California, police department relating to the case were first published by Politico. The case was eventually dismissed.
“She complained of soreness to her neck,” wrote a police officer who responded to the incident. “I saw red marks on her left wrist and the right side of her neck. These were photographed.”
Read further:
Additionally, a Guardian investigation has revealed that Bannon is registered to vote in a key swing state at an empty house where he does not live, in an apparent breach of election laws. From our report:
Stephen Bannon, the chief executive of Trump’s election campaign, has an active voter registration at the house in Miami-Dade County, Florida, which is vacant and due to be demolished to make way for a new development.
“I have emptied the property,” Luis Guevara, the owner of the house, which is in the Coconut Grove section of the city, said in an interview. “Nobody lives there … We are going to make a construction there.” Neighbors said the property had been abandoned for several months.
Read further:
wait what https://t.co/54L3lUBjNG pic.twitter.com/IQw1I1MqDp
— Simon Maloy (@SimonMaloy) August 26, 2016
Thanks for reading and please join us in the comments.
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