Today in Campaign 2016
- Hillary Clinton has an 81% chance of winning the election to Donald Trump’s 19%, polling analyst Nate Silver said in his first model of the 2016 presidential election. Silver’s calculations are based on a model that processes polling data exclusively. A second model produced by Silver’s FiveThirtyEight web site, taking in economics statistics and historical data, portrayed a slightly tighter race, at 74%-26% for Clinton.
- Silver gained international fame for his perfect, 50-for-50 performance at predicting state outcomes in advance of the 2012 presidential election. Where many pundits saw a tight race between Republican nominee Mitt Romney and incumbent president Barack Obama, Silver correctly foresaw a 332-206 electoral college blowout.
- Trump’s ratings abroad are strongly negative, according to a Pew Research report on how people around the world perceive the US. Asked if they had confidence in Trump’s ability to manage foreign policy, only 9% of respondents in 10 EU countries agreed. By contrast, a median of 77% said they had confidence in Barack Obama and 59% in Trump’s likely general election opponent Hillary Clinton. Trump collected the most support in China, with 22% expressing confidence in him. In Canada and India, he had 14% confidence; Australia, 11%; and Japan, 8%.
- “Confidence in Clinton to handle world affairs is generally high,” the report said. “By comparison, few trust Trump to do the right thing when it comes to foreign policy.”
- Not all handshakes go as planned. Take this somewhat awkward three-way shake between the US president and his fellow leaders Justin Trudeau of Canada and Enrique Peña Nieto of Mexico:
- Trump’s campaign has been asking foreign politicians for donations to help make America great again – possibly violating federal election rules in the process. Two campaign finance watchdog groups, the Campaign Legal Center and Democracy 21, said they will lodge a complaint with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) alleging that Trump’s campaign has violated federal law by soliciting donations from politicians in Scotland, Australia and Iceland, among others.
Earlier today, President Barack Obama spoke out against inequality and the politics of division when he addressed Canada’s legislators in Ottawa.
Obama said the result of the recent UK referendum was indicative of the “frustrations people felt” regarding “inequality, dislocation and the resulting social division,” and that such issues should not be ignored.
Poll: 13% of Americans prefer giant meteor to Trump, Clinton
In a poll revealed during Rachel Maddow’s show on MSNBC, Public Policy Polling found that in a survey of American voters, Hillary Clinton won the support of 43% of voters, Donald Trump won 38% and a giant meteor striking the earth won 13%.
The poll will likely be a boon to the bumper-sticker industry.
Sometimes reporters have to choose a side. pic.twitter.com/kfXtkEZPgL
— Scott Bixby (@scottbix) June 10, 2016
Donald Trump: 'A lot' of refugees are in Isis
In a conversation with Bill O’Reilly on his eponymous Fox News show, presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump that “a lot” of refugees from Syria are members of the Islamic State.
“Remember one other thing,” Trump said. “They are letting tens of thousands of people come in from Syria and nobody knows who these people are and a lot of those people are Isis.”
Trump was grilled by O’Reilly on his lack of a concrete strategy for defeating the terrorist group, but protested that the only reason he doesn’t make his plans public is to confuse the group.
“Well, I do have them and I hate to give them out because frankly if I win, and it looks like I have a pretty good chance of winning, I don’t like to be giving out all this information,” Trump reasoned in the interview. “I’d like to just go and do the job. If you look at General Patton - he wasn’t one to give out information on television and do what he has to do. I’d hate to give it out. I’ve given out plenty, believe me. I was the one that said ‘take the oil’ and I hated to tell everybody and we should have taken the oil when we left and we didn’t do it, and who has the oil now? Isis has the oil and Iran is going to have the oil from Iraq.”
The city of Cleveland has taken out a staggering $50 million insurance policy to cover possible damages incurred during the Republican National Convention next month, the Plain Dealer reported. The figure represents a quintupling of the city’s prior coverage for the event, an apparent estimation by city officials that Cleveland faces a higher risk of civil unrest this year than other convention host cities.
The policy will cost the city $9.5 million, compared to the $1.7 million Tampa paid for its insurance policy during the 2012 Republican National Convention.
The policy covers damage to public property, non-Cleveland law enforcement and their equipment, and legal claims made during the convention.
North American leaders fought back against isolationism today, promising deeper ties, as Britain’s Brexit vote and Donald Trump’s protectionist stance loomed large.
“The integration of national economies ... That’s here, that’s done,” Barack Obama told reporters after talks with Canadian and Mexican leaders in Ottawa. “And us trying to abandon the field and pull up the drawbridge around us is going to be bad for us.”
He noted the “legitimate” concerns many have about globalization. “Because the fact is that as the global economy is integrated, what we’ve seen are trend lines across the advanced economies of growing inequality and stagnant wages.”
The isolationism currently being touted on the left and right, he warned, is not the answer. “That’s the wrong medicine,” he said, one that would lead to disruption and inefficiencies that could result in job losses and a spike in the price of goods. He instead urged countries to take an active approach towards free trade and help shape an international order that prioritizes workers.
His embrace of free trade was wholeheartedly echoed by Justin Trudeau, Canada’s prime minister, and Enrique Peña Nieto, the president of Mexico. “We know that industries that export more goods pay salaries that are 50% higher than sectors that don’t export,” said Trudeau.
Obama cautioned those who would see Britain’s vote to leave the European Union as a rejection of trade, pointing to efforts by those in the Leave campaign to ensure that the UK could continue to have access to the single market.
“So apparently their argument was not against trade generally, they just didn’t want any obligations to go with the access to the free market.” He said he expected the global economy to hold steady in the short term, but flagged long term concerns if Brexit goes through and investment in the UK or Europe stagnates.
Two-time Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney told an audience at the Aspen Ideas Festival this afternoon that members of his family are still pushing for him to enter the race a third time as a third-party candidate, if only to thwart the accession of presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump to the presidency.
“My wife and kids wanted me to run again this time,” Romney said. “I got an email from one of my sons yesterday, saying ‘You gotta get in, Dad. You gotta get in.’”
But the former Massachusetts governor and Republican nominee added that he doesn’t think that a third-party candidate could do anything than serve as a spoiler.
“I don’t think an independent candidate can win,” Romney continued. “It’s hard on family. It’s hard on your spouse, sitting there in debates, just agonizing over what you’re gonna say next. Or what your kids have to go through. Or what your grandkids go through.”
Congress delivered relief to debt-stricken Puerto Rico on Wednesday, sending President Barack Obama a last-minute financial rescue package to help the US territory of 3.5 million.
The Senate passed the bill on a bipartisan 68-30 vote, three weeks after the House overwhelmingly backed the measure. The vote came two days before the island is supposed to make a $2bn payment to creditors. Obama is expected to move quickly and sign the legislation.
Puerto Rico is in a decade-long recession and has $70bn in debt. Thousands have fled the territory for the US mainland. Businesses on the island have closed, schools have struggled with limited electricity, and hospitals have asked for cash payment in advance for some medication.
The White House and Republican and Democratic leaders in Congress have warned that without help from Washington, the island could descend into economic chaos, with signs already pointing to a humanitarian crisis. In a rare feat of election-year unity, all four Republican and Democratic leaders in Congress supported the bill.
The legislation would create a control board to oversee the US territory’s finances and supervise some debt restructuring. It would not provide any direct financial aid to the territory, but leaders warned that a bailout could eventually become necessary if Congress doesn’t take this step.
“If we don’t act before the island misses a critical debt payment deadline this Friday, matters will only get worse for Puerto Rico and for taxpayers,” warned Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell.
Donald Trump’s campaign has been asking foreign politicians for donations to help make America great again – possibly violating federal election rules in the process.
On Wednesday, two campaign finance watchdog groups, the Campaign Legal Center and Democracy 21, said they will lodge a complaint with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) alleging that Trump’s campaign has violated federal law by soliciting donations from politicians in Scotland, Australia and Iceland, among others.
“Donald Trump should have known better,” said Paul S Ryan, deputy executive director of Campaign Legal Center. “It is a no-brainer that it violates the law to send fundraising emails to members of a foreign government on their official foreign government email accounts, and yet, that’s exactly what Trump has done repeatedly.”
The Federal Election Campaign Act prohibits “any foreign national from contributing, donating, or spending funds in connection with any federal, state, or local election in the United States, either directly or indirectly. It is also unlawful to help foreign nationals violate that ban or to solicit, receive or accept contributions or donations from them.”
The complaint argues that the Trump campaign has “knowingly and illegally” solicited donations from the foreign nationals. It includes several references to media reports of politicians receiving fundraising emails, including a number of members of parliament in Iceland and Australia as well as the 54 members of the Scottish National party and UK House of Commons.
An advance transcript of Donald Trump’s interview with Fox News anchor Bill O’Reilly, set to air tonight, show O’Reilly grilling the presumptive Republican presidential nominee on his lack of specificity in his plan to defeat the Islamic State.
“Well, I do have them and I hate to give them out because frankly if I win, and it looks like I have a pretty good chance of winning, I don’t like to be giving out all this information,” Trump reasoned in the interview, set to air at 9pm EDT tonight. “I’d like to just go and do the job. If you look at General Patton - he wasn’t one to give out information on television and do what he has to do. I’d hate to give it out. I’ve given out plenty, believe me. I was the one that said ‘take the oil’ and I hated to tell everybody and we should have taken the oil when we left and we didn’t do it, and who has the oil now? Isis has the oil and Iran is going to have the oil from Iraq.”
O’Reilly pressed Trump on his claims that he has “a pretty good chance” of winning the general election, pointing out that recent polling shows him lagging far behind presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, who has outspent him on advertising in the month of June $26 million to zero.
Confronted with a recent Fox News poll that shows only 34% of Americans see him as honest and trustworthy, Trump protested. “I’m honest, I’m trustworthy. I tell it like it is. I’m here, I didn’t need to do this. I’m enjoying it, but I’m enjoying it because we are going to make America great again. We are going to make America great again. We’re also going to make America safe again.”
Trump pointed to another poll that shows him outperforming among Latino voters compared to his Republican predecessor at the top of the ticket.
“I just saw a poll that came out, I think it was Quinnipiac, where I’m at 33% with Hispanics now,” Trump said. “I’m six, seven or eight points higher than Romney was. If I listened to you a few months ago, I was going to get nothing with Hispanics.”
President Barack Obama’s address to the Canadian parliament was apparently well-received:
They are shouting "four more years!" pic.twitter.com/Geg2NXWYfF
— Roberta Rampton (@robertarampton) June 29, 2016
Cleveland approves new rules for demonstrators ahead of RNC
City officials in Cleveland have approved a new set of rules ahead of next month’s Republican National Convention that extend the protest route for demonstrators who wish to march outside venues during the convention, the result of a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio over First Amendment concerns.
The new rules, according to The Plain Dealer, reduce the size of the so-called “event zone,” in which heightened security would dampen protests, by half. They will also extend and reroute the designated “protest route” path closer to convention venues, and to end in a more populous area of downtown Cleveland.
“This agreement prevents the 2016 RNC from being defined by an unnecessary conflict between freedom and security,” Chris Link, the ACLU of Ohio’s executive director, said in a written statement. “The RNC offers a unique stage to groups from all sides of the political spectrum to lift their voices to a national audience. The new rules ensure that people have meaningful opportunities to express themselves on some of our most important national issues.”
The settlement, first agreed upon last week, is the result of a June 14 lawsuit filed by the ACLU of Ohio on behalf of both pro- and anti-RNC groups that wished to demonstrate during the convention. The original rules, under which the protest route was a quarter-mile shorter and the “event zone” was twice the size, were thrown out last Thursday by a US district judge as violations of the First Amendment right to peaceful assembly and public expression.
British man arrested at Trump rally indicted on felony charges
The British national who was arrested at a Las Vegas rally for presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump two weeks ago has been indicted by a federal grand jury.
Michael Sandford, 20, allegedly attempted to seize a Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department officer’s firearm at the June 18 rally. According to US Attorney Daniel Bogden, Sandford has been charged with two counts of possessing a firearm as an illegal alien and one found of disrupting the orderly conduct of government business and official functions. All three counts are felonies; if convicted on all counts, Sandford faces up to 30 years in prison and $750,000 in fines.
According to the Justice Department, Sandford, originally of Dorking, Surrey, allegedly took shooting lessons at a Las Vegas gun range the day before the rally using a Glock 9 millimeter handgun, the same make and model used by Las Vegas law enforcement. The next day, Sandford allegedly approached a uniformed police officer and attempted to seize the officer’s sidearm.
Sandford told police following his arrest that his intention had been “to shoot and kill Trump,” according to court papers. He told law enforcement that he had been planning the assassination for “about a year,” and believed that he himself would be killed in the attempt.
Family members have told the press that Sandford has an autism-spectrum disorder and have floated the possibility that he was coerced into attempting to shoot Trump. “I doubt he would even know who the president of the United States is,” Sandford’s father, Paul Davey, told the Portsmouth News.
The case is being investigated by the US Secret Service.
Elizabeth Warren, tipped as a possible running mate for Hillary Clinton, did not let Google’s famously close relationship with Democrats stop her having a dig at the tech giant during a speech at Capitol Hill in Washington.
“Google, Apple and Amazon provide platforms that lots of companies depend on for survival,” she said at an event organised by the New America think tank. “But Google, Apple and Amazon also in many cases compete with those small companies so that platform can become a tool to snuff out competition.”
In 2012, she noted, Federal Trade Commission (FTC) staff concluded that Google was using its dominant search engine to harms rivals of its Google+ user review feature. FTC commissioners ultimately ruled against their staff, but the European Commission has moved forward with formal charges on similar allegations, “and Europeans may soon enjoy better protections than US customers”.
Warren, a Democratic senator for Massachusetts, cited similar charges against Apple and Amazon during a barnstorming speech about the danger posed by monopolies to competition, middle class economic security and, ultimately, democracy itself.
“They deserve to be highly profitable and to be highly successful but the opportunity to compete must remain open for new entrants and smaller competitors who want their chance to change the world,” she said.
Warren also took a swipe at major US airlines, which she said had raked in $22bn in profits even as customer complaints rose, and retailer Walmart, which offered meagre wages.
While praising the Obama administration for stepping up antitrust law enforcement since the Reagan years, Warren said 2015 was “the biggest year for mergers in US history, both in terms of the number of mergers and the size of mergers”.
Warren, who shared a platform with Clinton earlier this week, warned the audience on Capitol Hill: “Today in America, competition is dying.”
Not all handshakes go as planned.
Donald Trump’s campaign has helpfully summarized his remarks in Bangor, Maine, which just concluded a few minutes ago:
· As Mr. Trump continues to argue for change in our rigged system, many who have benefited from these imbalanced trade deals are lashing out to maintain the status quo.
· Mr. Trump takes their attacks as a compliment, and proof that his challenge to the system is shaking D.C. Mr. Trump wants trade deals, but he wants trade deals that are fair, balanced and benefit American workers. Ones that will produce jobs and wealth for our country and our workers.
· America has lost nearly a third of our manufacturing jobs in the last 20 years. This comes as our population has increased by over 50 million in the same time. Since 2000, American household income is down $4,000, and the percentage of those outside the labor force has reached its highest level since the 1970’s.
· Imbalanced trade deals have negatively impacted the American economy. We are no longer the world’s dominant producer and our economy has weakened as a result.
· Clinton has been on the other side of this fight, as an extreme globalist who fights only for the D.C. special interests. America will suffer under her presidency.
· Mr. Trump will continue to fight to put America First, and will make sure that any trade deals are in the best interests of the country, and not established D.C. special interests.
Donald Trump attacks the Chamber of Commerce
Perhaps a first in Republican presidential politics, Donald Trump launched into a tirade against the US Chamber of Commerce at a rally in Bangor, Maine, a group that historically backs Republican presidential candidates.
“The US Chamber of Commerce is totally controlled by the special interest groups, folks, just so you understand it,” Trump told the audience. “And they’re a special interest that want to have the deal that they want to have. They want to have TPP, Trans-Pacific Partnership - one of the worst deals, it’ll be the worst deal since Nafta. No, it’ll be the worst deal - it’ll drain the rest of your businesses out of Maine. Believe me. It’ll be the worse deal since Nafta.”
The lobbying organization heavily criticized an economic address Trump gave earlier this week, calling his proposals to leave TPP and Nafta a recipe for national recession.
“The US recession would set in within the first year under Trump’s proposed trade policies, which include a 35% tariff on imports from Mexico and a 45% tax on goods coming in from China,” wrote the US Chamber of Commerce’s JD Harrison. “Over the next three years, the US economy would shrink by 4.6% and the unemployment rate would nearly double to 9.5%.”
Donald Trump mocks the argument that his failure to spend any money - literally a single dollar - on campaign advertising, citing polling information as evidence that he doesn’t need to spend the money.
“I haven’t spent, I don’t think, one dollar on a commercial. So the Quinnipiac poll just came out and we’re essentially tied. Crooked Hillary has spent on commercials... I’ve heard $68 million on negative commercials,” Trump says, apparently pulling a number out of the clear blue sky.
“She’s got 900 people, I’ve got 73,” Trump continues. “She spent $100 million - or something, a lot... in some form on negative stuff, I spent nothing.”
“And we’re essentially tied! That’s not good.”
Donald Trump on Bernie Sanders:
I know what he thinks inside. He hates her. I mean, he hates her. Bernie Sanders cannot stand Hillary Clinton.
“If things don’t work out for me, I may just come up here and say ‘what the hell,’” Donald Trump says, of moving to Maine. “And more importantly, you have great people up here.”
Trump them launches into a criticism of likely Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton, who Trump blames for the rise of the Islamic State.
“We’re gonna this, and we’re gonna that. We’re gonna this,” Trump says. “She hasn’t done anything about what’s going on. Isis was formed during her tenure, Isis is now worse than ever, you see what happened yesterday,” Trump continues, referring to currently unclaimed suicide bombings in Istanbul that left scores dead.
After a confusing cacophony of multiple songs - both “Get Ready For This” and what sounded like the music played at a laser-tag arena - Donald Trump mounts the dais in Bangor, Maine, and praises the state’s governor, Paul LePage, who introduced him.
“I call him ‘our’ governor,” Trump says fondly.
“I only wish the media would show this crowd,” Trump says, repeating a frequent and unfounded critique. “They never show the crowd - they only show the crowd when there’s a little bit of a protestor. Do we have any protestors? No? That’s too bad.”
“There’s something going on, folks! There’s something really good going on - we’re going to make America great again!” Trumps says, mentioning recent Quinnipiac University polling that shows him closing the gap with presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
Live: Donald Trump speaks in Bangor, Maine
Watch it here:
Maine is a stretch for Trump in a general election: Mitt Romney performed better in Minnesota than he did in Maine’s 2nd congressional district.
Howie Carr, a talk-radio king in Boston, is warming up the crowd in Bangor, Maine, ahead of Donald Trump’s rally with an Elizabeth Warren “impression”:
Trump warm up speaker Howie Carr in Bangor: "You know Elizabeth Warren right? Woo woo woo (hand over mouth)."
— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) June 29, 2016
Updated
Ohio governor and former Republican presidential candidate John Kasich’s onetime chief strategist shared a poll this afternoon that showed Kasich performing better in battleground states against Hillary Clinton than his party’s presumptive presidential nominee.
“Clinton defeated him in all 7 states by an average of 11 points,” John Weaver wrote, citing a Ballotpedia battlegrounds survey released today, which showed Clinton leading Donald Trump in the seven swing-iest states in the country.
“The buried news-lede though was the ballot tests,” Weaver continued. “They confirm what we said throughout the campaign: John Kasich was the very best candidate to defeat Hillary Clinton. On average Governor Kasich defeated Clinton by 4 points in the 7 key swing states, Speaker Ryan tied her.”
“The data is [sic] just further proof that Governor Kasich is the most popular Republican politician in the nation today and it underlies why his efforts to help our US Senate and House candidates are so very important,” Weaver concluded.
Silver gives Clinton 81% chance of winning
Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight, America’s premier source (argue your point!) for elections and polling analysis, has unveiled the site’s forecast in the 2016 presidential election.
A FiveThirtyEight polls-only model rates Clinton’s chance of winning the presidency at 80.6% and Trump’s at 19.3%. A second model that incorporates economic statistics and historical data portrays a slightly tighter race, 73.6%-26.4%. A “now-cast” – who would win the election today? – has the race at 86%-14% for Clinton.
Why credit what Nate Silver thinks? Because in 2008 he predicted 49 of 50 states correctly (missing Obama’s squeaker Indiana win) and all the Senate races correctly, and in 2012 he predicted 50 of 50 states correctly. Silver’s 2012 call was especially sweet because he predicted a blowout 332-206 electoral college victory for Obama when a lot of other loud people said the president was in a close reelection fight with Mitt Romney. They were wrong, Silver was right.
Why discount what Nate Silver thinks? Because in August he gave Trump a 2% chance of winning the Republican nomination, in March FiveThirtyEight’s model gave Clinton a 99% chance of winning the Michigan primary (Bernie Sanders won by a half-point) and in the 2014 midterms he failed to anticipate a Republican wave that created multiple upsets of FiveThirtyEight’s modeling (“the polls did have a strong bias this year,” Silver wrote afterward).
Caveat lector. Here’s what Nate Silver thinks this year:
Hey y'all our 2016 forecast is here. https://t.co/WLXtJovjYd
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) June 29, 2016
The model rates the election in each state. For a sense of Clinton’s advantage at this point, consider the 12 tightest state races in FiveThirtyEight’s model. Trump could win them all – and Clinton would still win the presidency, so long as she won the 13th tossup state, Florida.
The model has Pennsylvania at +7 for the Democrat with Clinton having an 85.9% chance of winning. The model has Arizona, which should be a Republican shoe-in, basically tied with a slight edge for Clinton. The model has North Carolina, Iowa, Colorado, Ohio, New Hampshire and Florida all leaning toward Clinton. The model really stinks for Trump.
There’s an entertaining section that awards probabilities for “crazy and not-so-crazy scenarios”. For example the model thinks that Trump has a 90.6% chance of winning at least one state Obama won in 2012; keep your eye on Colorado, Iowa and New Hampshire. The model puts the probability of a “Clinton landslide” at 29.2%.
Here’s how the basic FiveThirtyEight map looks (but click through for their real map, which captures varying strengths, state-to-state, of redness and blueness):
It’s the kind of map that would deliver on David Plouffe’s prediction of 350+ electoral votes for Clinton. (Not rare: Obama beat John McCain in 2008 365-173; in 1996 Bill Clinton beat Bob Dole 379-159; in 1992 Clinton beat George HW Bush 370-168.)
Updated
Discuss?
This pretty much sums up 2016 on both sides of the Atlantic. pic.twitter.com/h1s2vqtMIs
— Doug Mataconis (@dmataconis) June 29, 2016
Following appearances yesterday in Ohio and Pennsylvania and a rally planned this afternoon for Maine, Trump on Thursday will visit New Hampshire, local WMUR reports:
Exclusive: @realDonaldTrump to return to NH on Thursday to deliver major trade speech. #nhpolitics #fitn #wmur
— Josh McElveen (WMUR) (@JoshWMUR) June 29, 2016
The North American Leaders’ summit appears to be progressing nicely:
"Stop it. You're making it weird."
— T. Becket Adams (@BecketAdams) June 29, 2016
"No, you're making it weird."
"Guys..."
"Shake my hand!"
"Seriously, guys." pic.twitter.com/HwChORo9YL
Donald Trump is apparently using a Ben Carson donor list to solicit funds:
Latest Trump fundraising email comes from "info@bencarson.com": pic.twitter.com/OaBVvPyqOD
— Derek Willis (@derekwillis) June 29, 2016
Whatever lists Trump is using, one of them includes the former prime minister of Canada:
Oh good lord. Fmr Prime Minister of Canada >>> https://t.co/esXF48xoUW
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) June 29, 2016
Rec'd a fundraising email from Trump campaign! Says it is their first. Aside from fact I am Cdn, clearly they don't follow me on Twitter!1/2
— Kim Campbell (@AKimCampbell) June 21, 2016
Trump is also soliciting donations on Facebook:
Donald Trump is now buying list-building/fundraising ads on Facebook. It's late June 2016. pic.twitter.com/sDiBxRxdZK
— Shane Goldmacher (@ShaneGoldmacher) June 29, 2016
Cleveland loosens restrictions on protests outside GOP convention
The city of Cleveland is making way for demonstrators wishing to manifest their displeasure with Republicans who plan to gather to nominate Donald Trump for president next month.
The city approved rules increasing the area protesters can occupy and the amount of time they can spend there, the New York Times reports:
People will have more opportunities to be seen by delegates especially with the new parade route,” said ACLU spokesman Stephen David. “These regulations are a significant improvement from what we had seen before.”
The spectacle inside the convention is also in flux. The Washington Post reports that the convention “is poised to be the most chaotic GOP gathering of the modern era”:
Dozens of well-known Republicans aren’t showing up. There’s no word yet on who will speak. A growing number of corporate sponsors are taking a pass. Groups of white supremacists and other agitators are on the way, while the official protest routes are frantically being redrawn after being thrown out in court. And then there’s the fight to dethrone the big star.
Oh for goodness’ sake, this once-in-4-years unique national opportunity is fully 17 days away. Plenty of time. https://t.co/SVJbRXlr7c
— David Frum (@davidfrum) June 29, 2016
It’s not as if the Trump campaign is not laying plans for an unforgettable convention. Ivanka Trump told a Virginia-based radio host Wednesday that the campaign has recruited stars to make cameo appearances: “It’s not gonna be a ho-hum lineup of the typical politicians,” she said, in remarks reported by BuzzFeed. “It’s gonna be a great combination of our great politicians, but also great American businessmen and women and leaders across industry and leaders across really all the sectors, from athletes to coaches and everything in between.”
Bloomberg reported Tuesday that the Trump campaign had recruited Mike Ditka, the Chicago Bears coach; Bobby Knight, the Indiana basketball coach; Brian France, the Nascar chief; and Mike Tyson, the boxer.
Trump himself said the Tyson part was wrong:
Iron Mike Tyson was not asked to speak at the Convention though I'm sure he would do a good job if he was. The media makes everything up!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 29, 2016
Trump campaign solicits donations from foreign parliamentarians
The Trump campaign is soliciting campaign donations from foreign elected officials, including members of parliament in Britain, Australia, Iceland, Denmark, Finland and maybe Canada, TPM reports.
Is it legal for non-Americans to contribute to US political campaigns? Let’s have a quick look at the FEC FAQ. Nope, not legal:
Foreign nationals are prohibited from making any contributions or expenditures in connection with any election in the U.S.
TPM’s Josh Marshall speculates that the Trumps rented or bought multiple bad potential campaign donor lists and are relentlessly spamming away.
“But obviously, as big as a buffoon as Trump is, and as crooked as he is, there’s no possible way his campaign is intentionally soliciting small donor contributions from members of foreign parliaments,” Marshall writes:
Somehow this must be incompetence in how they bought their email solicitation lists. But how?
Candidly I didn’t know you could easily buy the email list of all members of the Icelandic parliament. But it seems like you can. [...]
The only plausible answer seems to be that the Trump campaign either dealt with a sloppy or disreputable list broker or was so desperate after its horrible May FEC report was released that it went to a broker and just said they wanted every list and they’d sort it all out later. I confess that both scenarios seem a little farfetched. But some version of one of them basically had to happen, unless there’s a prankster actually inside the campaign.
Read the full piece here.
'Trump Institute' students claim deceit
The New York Times’ Jonathan Martin tells the shady story of real estate seminars branded “Trump Institute”:
Yet there was an even more fundamental deceit to the business, unreported until now: Extensive portions of the materials that students received after forking over their seminar fees, supposedly containing Mr. Trump’s special wisdom, had been plagiarized from an obscure real estate manual published a decade earlier.
Together, the exaggerated claims about his own role, the checkered pasts of the people with whom he went into business and the theft of intellectual property at the venture’s heart all illustrate the fiction underpinning so many of Mr. Trump’s licensing businesses: Putting his name on products and services — and collecting fees — was often where his actual involvement began and ended.
Read the full piece here.
Trump on waterboarding: 'I like it a lot'
Here’s video from Trump’s Ohio rally last night in which he was cheered for calling for the return of waterboarding:
Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign manager predicts a blowout Clinton victory:
The race is not close. And it won't be on November 8th. 350+ electoral votes for Clinton.
— David Plouffe (@davidplouffe) June 29, 2016
That’s 350 out of 538, of course. Such a map might look like this:
World lacks confidence in Trump – apart from Putin fans
Donald Trump’s ratings abroad are strongly negative, according to a Pew Research report on how people around the world perceive the US, writes the Guardian’s Amanda Holpuch:
Asked if they had confidence in Trump’s ability to manage foreign policy, only 9% of respondents in 10 EU countries agreed. By contrast, a median of 77% said they had confidence in Barack Obama and 59% in Trump’s likely general election opponent Hillary Clinton.
Trump collected the most support in China, with 22% expressing confidence in him. In Canada and India, he had 14% confidence; Australia, 11%; and Japan, 8%.
“Confidence in Clinton to handle world affairs is generally high,” the report said. “By comparison, few trust Trump to do the right thing when it comes to foreign policy.”
People who have confidence in Russian president Vladimir Putin are more likely to have confidence in Trump, the report says. For instance 44% of those in Italy who have confidence in Putin also have confidence in Trump, whereas only 12% of those who have no confidence in Putin have confidence in Trump.
Read the full piece here:
Updated
Lewandowski said to lose $1.2m book deal
Former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski had HarperCollins on the line for a $1.2m deal to write a book tentatively titled Let Trump Be Trump, but the deal fell apart when Lewandowski refused to share with the publisher the non-disclosure agreement he signed with Trump, Politico reports.
Lewandowski reportedly makes $500,000 as a political analyst on CNN, paid to say things like “Well I think this is Mr. Trump’s best speech of the presidential cycle, candidly”.
Lewandowski has denied that CNN pays him half a million. And now he denies the book deal report:
Once again @politico has their facts wrong and attributed to unnamed sources. Guess journalistic integrity doesn't rank as a priority there.
— Corey Lewandowski (@CLewandowski_) June 29, 2016
The problem with Lewandowski’s denials is that he has a record of saying things that are not true, as when he told reporter Michelle Fields this...
@MichelleFields you are totally delusional. I never touched you. As a matter of fact, I have never even met you.
— Corey Lewandowski (@CLewandowski_) March 11, 2016
...or when he told BuzzFeed that he had no book deal:
Hey remember when @mckaycoppins broke this, and Lewandowski flatly lied https://t.co/4FaBMqF8LW
— Ben Smith (@BuzzFeedBen) June 29, 2016
McConnell: 'Trump clearly needs to change'
Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell tells NY1 that Trump is “getting closer” to being a credible candidate.
“Trump clearly needs to change, in my opinion, to win the general election,” McConnell said:
What I’ve said to him both publicly and privately: ‘You’re a great entertainer. You turn on audiences. You’re good before a crowd. You have a lot of Twitter followers. That worked fine for you in the primaries. But now that you are in the general, people are looking for a level of seriousness that is typically conveyed by having a prepared text and Teleprompter and staying on message.’ So my hope is that he is beginning to pivot and become what I would call a more serious and credible candidate for the highest office in the land.
Asked whether Trump has crossed a “threshold of credibility”, McConnell replied, “He’s getting closer. Getting closer.”
At least she waved?
What happens when @HillaryClinton realizes you're a reporter instead of a voter pic.twitter.com/bbE3n3eGVh
— Kasie Hunt (@kasie) June 28, 2016
Clinton posts leads in polls of battleground states
Ballotpedia has conducted polling in seven battleground states – and Clinton leads Trump in all of them:
- 51% to 37% in Florida
- 45% to 41% in Iowa
- 50% to 33% in Michigan
- 48% to 38% in North Carolina
- 46% to 37% in Ohio
- 49% to 35% in Pennsylvania
- 45% to 38% in Virginia
Those gaps – a lot of them in the teens – are larger than the national polling averages showing Clinton up by six or seven. How is that possible? Let’s check in on the polling analysts at FiveThirtyEight:
If Clinton's up 7% nationally, we're going to see some swing state polls where she's up 12%. And others where she's up 2%. That's normal.
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) June 29, 2016
Harry Enten does not see anything obviously amiss with Ballotopedia’s work:
If those Ballotpedia (a fine site) showed something more in-line with the polling averages, no one would bat an eye. (1/?)
— (((Harry Enten))) (@ForecasterEnten) June 29, 2016
When the numbers were different, folks usually look for a reason to dismiss the numbers. I see nothing wrong in the methodology per se (2/?)
Some might say the long field dates, but Q-Pac had similar time in the field in swing states last week. But the #s looked “normal” (3/?)
That’s not to say the polls are “right”. I’m just saying you shouldn’t exclude them from an average. We won’t. We’ll weight them tho.
I guess my favorite part of the Ballotpedia thing is their "overall" result has Clinton +11 over Trump. Not too different from the ABC poll.
— (((Harry Enten))) (@ForecasterEnten) June 29, 2016
The ABC poll in question (20-23 June) had Clinton up by 12 points on Trump.
How does state polling square with national polling? It doesn’t sometimes, writes David Byler for RealClearPolitics. Here’s some of his analysis:
There are many valid ways to think about these discrepancies, but we’ll limit ourselves to three reasonable, straightforward approaches.
First, one could focus on the national polls and mostly ignore the state polling for the time being. Right now there aren’t that many swing state polls, and there are a number of swing states (e.g. Wisconsin and Nevada) where there aren’t even enough polls to calculate an RCP average. And many voters are still undecided. So it might be prudent to give state polls time to fall in line with national polls and not sweat the discrepancy too much yet.
Trump touts the first poll since 17 June to show him within striking distance of Clinton:
New Q poll out- we are going to win the whole deal- and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! #Trump2016 pic.twitter.com/dL5ahNcwZb
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 29, 2016
Polling averages currently have Clinton up by between six and seven points. An ABC News / Washington Post poll in mid-May had Trump up by two points, and Rasmussen and Fox News polls at the time also had him with a slight lead.
Donald Trump is making a play for an extra electoral vote in Maine, which has a unique system for awarding its four electoral votes: two go to the winner of the popular vote, and one each go to the winners in the state’s two congressional districts.
Trump apparently sees a pickup opportunity in the state’s second congressional district, where a local poll last week had him ahead by one point. Neither of Maine’s districts has gone for a Republican candidate for president since 1988.
Will be in Bangor, Maine today! Join me- 4pmE at the Cross Insurance Center! https://t.co/y4n4nERPFr pic.twitter.com/7LAPewxE05
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 29, 2016
Obama arrives in Canada for summit
Barack Obama has arrived in Ottawa to participate in the North American Leaders’ Summit. He will be welcomed by prime minister Justin Trudeau before participating in a bilateral meeting with president Enrique Peña Nieto of Mexico, according to the White House.
The president will participate in a North American Leaders’ Summit working session and a leader photo before having a working lunch with Trudeau and Nieto. There will be a trilateral press conference, an arrival ceremony at Parliament Hill and a bilateral meeting with Trudeau. Later, Obama will address Parliament. In the evening, Obama will meet with Embassy personnel and families. Then he will fly home.
Obama to campaign with Clinton
The president will join the presumptive Democratic nominee on the campaign trail the day after Independence Day, according to the Clinton campaign.
The pair is scheduled to take the stage on 5 July in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Updated
An MSNBC producer flags a wry (rueful?) McCain quip:
John McCain has the quote of the day: pic.twitter.com/Ez9h1NiV3l
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) June 29, 2016
Second primary victory for transgender woman Tuesday
We posted earlier about Misty Snow’s victory in the Utah senate primary – but she was but one of two transgender women to win congressional primaries Tuesday.
In Colorado, transgender woman Misty Plowright scored a Democratic primary victory in the state’s 5th congressional district. She will take on incumbent Republican Doug Lamborn in November. A Democrat has never held the seat, according to the Colorado Springs Gazette.
Plowright’s campaign biography identifies her as “an Army veteran, a self-educated woman, a member of the LGBTQ+ community, and a passionate social democrat.” She and her wife have a third partner, the biography says:
She has been in a committed long-term relationship with her wife Lisa for 9 years. [...] They have both been in a loving, long-term, committed relationship with their mutual partner, Sebastian, for the last 2 years. All 3 partners support each other emotionally, physically and financially.
Clinton up 5 points on Trump – Economist/YouGov poll
An Economist/YouGov poll released Wednesday morning has Hillary Clinton leading Donald Trump among registered voters nationwide by five points, 40-35. The poll was conducted on 24-27 June, surveyed 1,300 respondents and had a margin of error of +/- 3.9%.
The poll is more closely in line with polling averages, which show Clinton up by six or seven points, than was the aforementioned Quinnipiac poll released Wednesday morning, which depicted a neck-and-neck race.
NEW: Clinton leads Trump by 5 (National) – https://t.co/HTjU6MaBi7 pic.twitter.com/URWcuTe74w
— YouGovUS (@YouGovUS) June 29, 2016
Utah Democrats nominate transgender US senate candidate in historic first
Misty K Snow, a transgender woman, won Utah’s Democratic senate primary Tuesday, making her the first transgender person to be nominated by a major party for the US senate.
“A lot of people have told me whether I win or lose, I’m already making a difference just by running,” Snow was quoted by the Salt Lake Tribune as saying.
Snow will face incumbent Republican senator Mike Lee in November, in an uphill battle as a Democrat in one of the country’s most reliably conservative states. Lee was the first senator to endorse Ted Cruz for president and has resisted shifting his endorsement to Donald Trump.
The Tribune describes the platform of Snow, who got into the race just before the filing deadline:
Snow credited her primary election performance to her focus on “issues that Democrats care about.”
She has called for a $15 per hour minimum wage, paid family leave, legalized marijuana, criminal-justice reform and free or reduced tuition for higher education, a platform inspired by presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. She said her goal is to boost working-class people such as herself. She’s employed as a cashier at a Harmons grocery and hasn’t gone to college, partly due to the cost and partly because she wasn’t sure what career path she would like to take. Now she’s seeking to become a federal lawmaker.
Hello and welcome to our live-wire coverage of the 2016 race for the White House. A new Quinnipiac poll has the presidential race neck-and-neck, with Hillary Clinton at 42% and Donald Trump at 40%, and a margin of error of +/- 2.4%. The same poll a month ago had Clinton up four points. Polling averages currently have Clinton up 6.2 points (RCP) and 7 points (HuffPost, which has not yet incorporated the new Quinnipiac poll).
Quinnipiac gets an A- in FiveThirtyEight’s pollster ratings. For the new poll, conducted on 21-27 June, live interviewers calling land lines and cell phones surveyed 1,610 registered voters nationwide.
The poll also found that 61% of American voters believe “the 2016 election has increased the level of hatred and prejudice in the United States.” Of that 61%, 67% blame the Trump campaign and 16% blame the Clinton campaign.
A separate Reuters/Ipsos poll released late Tuesday found that Trump supporters “are more likely to describe African Americans as ‘criminal,’ ‘unintelligent,’ ‘lazy’ and ‘violent’ than voters who backed some Republican rivals in the primaries or who support” Clinton. The poll, conducted between March and June, interviewed 16,000 Americans and included 21 questions on attitudes about race, asking them to rate white and black people in terms of a series of perceived personality traits. The pollsters note:
To be sure, not all Trump supporters expressed negative attitudes about blacks. No more than 50 percent of his supporters rated blacks negatively, relative to whites, on any of the six character traits in the poll. Yet when their answers to the poll questions were compared with responses from supporters of other candidates, Trump supporters were always more critical of blacks on personality traits, analysis of the results showed.
Trump encouraged the United States to make torture legal Tuesday in remarks responding to the Istanbul airport attack. “What do you think about waterboarding?” Trump asked a crowd in Ohio, which cheered as he gave his answer, “I like it a lot. I don’t think it’s tough enough.”
Trump also three times compared the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement to “the rape of our country”. “It’s a harsh word but it’s true,” he said.
Oh for heaven's sake...
— Ben Sasse (@BenSasse) June 29, 2016
1. That horrific word has a meaning--It isn't this.
2. Trade is, on net, good for Americans. https://t.co/RoqN31SkZj
Clinton outspends Trump $26m - $0
According to data compiled by SMG Delta for NBC News, Clinton and her supporters spent $26 million on ads in eight battleground states in the month of June. Trump’s total expenditure: $0.
Trump has a rally planned this afternoon in Bangor, Maine, while Clinton has a fundraiser in San Francisco.
Thank you for reading and please join us in the comments.
