Nancy Pelosi calls DNC email breach 'an electronic Watergate'
Geno Auriemma, the US women’s basketball coach, isn’t going to start apologizing for his team being so good.
USA have been stung by some criticism that their dominant displays have been bad for the women’s good, but Auriemma pointed out that the US men’s team hasn’t been subjected to the same kind of scrutiny. A double standard?
Auriemma said: “We live in that Trumpian era where it’s OK to be sexist and degrade people that are good, just because they’re the opposite sex.
“We are what we are,” he said. “We’re never going to apologize for being that good. We’re never going to apologize for setting a standard that other people aspire to achieve. We got a guy in the pool with a USA swim cap on who nobody can beat. And if he wasn’t in swimming, there would be a lot of other guys with gold medals.
Video: Donald Trump calls Hillary Clinton the “MVP of Isis.”
Donald Trump, to pastors:
Pray for me - I pray for you.
Donald Trump quadruples down on remarks he made last night in which he called President Barack Obama the “founder of Isis” at the American Renewal Project’s Pastors and Pews meeting, telling the audience three times that Obama and Hillary Clinton co-founded the terrorist network.
“Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton: these are the founders of Isis. These are the founders of Isis, because of bad judgment. These are the founders of Isis,” Trump said, to a muted crowd.
“They get the most valuable player award - Isis is going to present them with the most valuable player award, like in high school. Most valuable player. You know, these are bad people, with bad judgment, and at the top we have an incompetent leader,” Trump says.
Trump’s remarks about Isis came while he is still dealing with backlash from his hint that gun rights supporters might attack Clinton, something that seemed to cause genuine shock in a country that has grown used to Trump pushing the boundaries of appropriate political discourse. On Thursday, Patti Davis, the daughter of late Republican former president Ronald Reagan, joined his critics to lambast him for what she called a “glib and horrifying comment”.
“I’m going to figure out a way to give you back your freedom of speech, that was taken away!” Donald Trump says, of the revocation of tax-exemption for churches that engage in direct political action. “We’re gonna get your voice back - we’re gonna get it back.”
“This will be so great for religion, but it will be so great for the evangelicals, for the pastors, for the ministers, for America” Trump continues. “They took away your voice! They took away the voice of great people.”
“It’s not like they took away a bad voice, an evil voice - they took it away.”
Donald Trump, speaking at a Pastors and Pews meeting at the American Renewal Project, just told the room of pastors and ministers that he has decided to ditch his prepared remarks on the teleprompter because “it was boring.”
Saddle up, folks.
Donald Trump speaks at ministers' convention
Donald Trump is speaking in Orlando at the American Renewal Project - watch it live here:
After sharp criticism for the creation of an economic advisory council composed of 13 white men - six of whom were named “Steve” - Donald Trump’s campaign has announced the addition of nine more people to the council, eight of whom are women:
- Diane Hendricks: Chair and owner of building products distributor ABC Supply Co., Inc.
- Darlene Jordan: Executive director of the Gerald R. Jordan Foundation, a nonprofit, and a former assistant attorney general for Massachusetts.
- Betsy McCaughey: A former New York lieutenant governor and anti-Obamacare advocate who popularized the “death panels” fraud.
- Brooke Rollins: CEO of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a think tank.
- Anthony Scaramucci: A co-managing partner and founder of SkyBridge Capital, a global investment firm.
- Carla Sands: Chair of Vintage Capital Group, an investment firm.
- Judy Shelton: A former economic advisor for the National Commission on Economic Growth and Tax Reform.
- Liz Uihlein: Co-founder of Uline, Inc, a shipping and packaging company.
- Kathleen Hartnett White: Director of the Armstrong Center for Energy and the Environment at the Texas Public Policy Foundation.
After Trump’s initial list was released, opponent Hillary Clinton lambasted the council as showing Trump’s lack of emphasis on the economic struggles of women: “Well, so today in Detroit he’s got, oh, I don’t know, a dozen or so economic advisers he just named, hedge fund guys, billionaire guys, six guys named Steve, apparently.”
Before Donald Trump addresses the American Renewal Project, a Christian organization for pastors and ministers, a rapper spit rhymes about abortion.
Between speakers, a man performs l rap abt abortion at American Renewal Project meeting. Trump speaks here shortly. pic.twitter.com/9M2Aes65g8
— Ali Vitali (@alivitali) August 11, 2016
In closing, Hillary Clinton dismisses the threadbare economic plan proposed by opponent Donald Trump as “just a more extreme version of the failed theory of trickle-down economics” with the inclusion of “outlandish Trumpian ideas” rejected even by his own supporters in the Republican party.
At the heart of the matter, Clinton says, is an ability to get economic proposals through Congress in the first place.
“Who can bring people together to get any of this done?” Clinton asks the audience about her economic plan, before emphasizing her belief in “leadership that rises above personal attacks and name calling, not revels in it. I just don’t think insults and bullying are going to get things done.”
“There was a time and Republicans actually worked together - I know that’s true, I did it as first lady, senator and secretary of state!” Clinton says. “We’re gonna get everyone at the table, not just Republicans and Democrats, but businesses and labor unions and experts - and most importantly Americans, like all of you! I think there are a lot of great ideas out in America, and I want you to have a say about your government.”
“The bottom line is this,” Clinton concludes. “I’m running for president to build an economy that works for everyone, not just those at the top , and based on what we know about the Trump campaign, he wants America to work for him and his wealthy friends.”
Trump’s economic plan doesn’t address things like racial inequality, the rising cost of healthcare and prescriptions or the importance of clean energy, Clinton says: It’s “just a more extreme version of the failed theory of trickle-down economics, with his own addition of outlandish Trumpian ideas that even Republicans reject! And as we heard him say at his convention, he may believe that he alone can fix our country, but clearly he doesn’t know the people of Michigan.”
“There is still a long road ahead, but Michigan is on the rise, and everyone is contributing.”
Hillary Clinton is a relatively new Wall Street skeptic, as anyone who has attended one of her high-paying bank speeches will tell you. Progressives are very keen to see how she intends to follow up.
Yesterday activists, including the Center for Popular Democracy Action, MoveOn.org, Public Citizen, theRootstrikers and others wrote to Clinton asking for details of her “transition team” to see if they are the sort of people who are likely to follow through on her newly minted progressive values.
We can expect more scrutiny in the coming weeks.
Hillary Clinton: Donald Trump's tax plan is a massive 'Trump Loophole'
Speaking in Michigan, Hillary Clinton lambasts Donald Trump’s proposed tax cuts for the wealthy, including the elimination of the estate tax, calling them part of a “Trump Loophole” that offers millions in tax benefits to the rich while leaving the poor in the cold.
“There is a myth out there that he will stick it to the rich and powerful because somehow he’s really on the side of the little guy. Don’t believe it,” Clinton says. “Not when he pledges to rip up basic rules that hold corporations accountable, when he wants to scrap regulations that prevent companies from polluting” air and water.
“Trump even wants to abolish the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a new agency that has already returned more than $11b to 25 million Americans who were taken advantage of by corporations,” Clinton continues. “Why would you get rid of that?”
Trump’s tax plan, Clinton says, would “explode our national debt and eventually lead to massive cuts to priorities like healthcare, education and environmental protection.”
“He’d pay a lower rate than millions of middle-class families,” Clinton says of Trump’s tax plan. “It’s hard to say how nice [the deal would be], because he refuses to do what every other presidential candidate has done in decades and release his tax returns! But we do know that the 400 richest taxpayers in America would get an average tax cut of $15m a year through the Trump loophole.”
The elimination of the estate tax “alone would save the Trump family $4b. It would do nothing for 99.8% of Americans. So they’d get a $4b tax cut, and 99.8% of Americans would do nothing.”
That $4b could go a long way, Clinton suggests: “We could pay for more than 47,000 vets to get a college degree - we could provide a year’s worth of healthcare for more than 3m kids! I think there are a lot of better ways to spend the money.”
Updated
Hillary Clinton’s social-media squad is following closely:
One positive thing Trump could do to make America great again?
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) August 11, 2016
Actually make great things in America: https://t.co/lg8Xqwblam
Hillary Clinton launches into a section on free and fair trade, vowing to stand up to currency manipulators and theft of American intellectual property - before making a detour to talk about the Olympics as a metaphor for international economic competition.
“As president, I will stand up to China and anyone else who tries to take advantage of American workers and companies, and I’m going to ramp up enforcement by appointing, for the first time, a chief trade prosecutor,” Clinton says. “And when other companies break the rules, we won’t hesitate to impose targeted tariffs”
“Mr. Trump may talk a big game on trade, but his approach is based on fear, not strength,” Clinton says. “Fear that our country has no choice but to hide behind walls. If Team USA was as fearful as Donald Trump, Michael Phelps and Simone Biles would be cowering in the locker room, afraid to come out and compete! Instead, they’re winning gold medals.”
It’s nice to hear Hillary Clinton talk about infrastructure - Donald Trump has mentioned it too - but the scale of the problem is massive. According to the American Society of Civil Engineers after years of neglect the US needs to spend $3.6t on its roads, ports, bridges, airports and other essential infrastructure by 2020 just to fix what’s broken or breaking.
Speaking in Warren, Michigan, on the outskirts of Detroit, Hillary Clinton announces that she will “dramatically simplify tax filing for small businesses,” part of a line of argument that opponent Donald Trump does not care about small businesses, as evidenced by his history of not paying contractors.
“Right now, the smallest businesses - the kind that my dad had - spend twenty times more per employee to prepare their taxes compared to larger companies. It should be as easy as printing out a bank statement,” Clinton proposes.
“Now, Donald Trump has a different views - he’s made a career out of stiffing small business,” Clinton says. “There are companies that were left hanging because he refused to pay their bills.”
“Some of them ended up taking bankruptcy. It wasn’t because Trump couldn’t pay them - it was because Trump wouldn’t pay them. And that’s why I take it personally.”
“I can’t imagine what would have happened to my father and his business if he had gotten a contract from Trump,” Clinton says. “My father never could have sued a big organization like that! I just don’t understand it. I’ve met all kinds of workers... all of whom were denied payment and after going back time and again, being told ‘okay, maybe we’ll pay you 30 cents on the dollar, or 50 cents on the dollar’ - that’s just not how we do business in America.”
Hillary Clinton tells the audience in Warren, Michigan, that she will push for reinvestment in American infrastructure that will include the largest injection of human capital into the workforce since World War II.
“We will put Americans to work building and modernizing our roads, our bridges, our tunnels, our railways, our ports, our airports,” Clinton says. “We are way overdue for this, my friends. We are living off the investments made by our parents’ and grandparents’ generations.”
“Let’s build a cleaner, more resilient power grid with enough renewable energy to power every home in our country, as well,” Clinton continues. “Some country is going to be the clean-energy superpower of the 21st century and create millions of new jobs and businesses … I want it to be us. We invent the technology - we should make it, and use it, and export it!”
“A big part of our plan will be unleashing the power of the private sector to create more jobs at higher pay and that means, for us, creating an infrastructure bank to get private funds off the sidelines and compliment” our infrastructure plans, Clinton says. “We’re going to invest $10b in … partnerships to support American manufacturing.”
Hillary Clinton casts the importance of the middle class in a personal light, telling the audience in Michigan that she is “a product of the American middle class.”
“My mission in the White House will be to make the economy work for everyone, not just the people at the top,” Clinton says. “This is personal for me - I am a product of the American middle class.”
Speaking of her grandfather, a factory worker at a plant that manufactured lace in Scranton, Pennsylvania, Clinton emphasizes the importance of the ability of workers to build wealth so that they and their families may advance economically.
“Because he worked hard, my dad was able to go to college and eventually start his own business, and eventually send me out into the world to start on my own dreams,” Clinton says.
“I am the daughter of a small business owner, and the granddaughter of a factory worker, and proud of both.”
Speaking in Michigan, Hillary Clinton makes a bid for the home team after Donald Trump’s address in Detroit earlier this week cast the city in a poor light.
“He talked only of failure, poverty and crime,” Clinton says. “He is missing so much about what makes Michigan great!”
“And the same is true when it comes to our country he describes america as an embarrassment,” Clinton continues. “Look around you, my friends. Go visit with the workers building rockets! That doesn’t happen in third-world countries.”
In his speech, Trump called Detroit a “living, breathing example of my opponent’s failed economic agenda”.
Updated
Hillary Clinton has begun her speech about economics in Warren, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. Watch it here:
Hillary Clinton: 'No, Barack Obama is not the founder of Isis'
Hillary Clinton delivered scathing remarks in response to opponent Donald Trump’s continued defense of a statement made at a campaign rally in Florida in which he called President Barack Obama “the founder of Isis.”
It can be difficult to muster outrage as frequently as Donald Trump should cause it, but his smear against President Obama requires it.
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) August 11, 2016
No, Barack Obama is not the founder of ISIS.
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) August 11, 2016
Anyone willing to sink so low, so often should never be allowed to serve as our Commander-in-Chief.
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) August 11, 2016
The Republican presidential nominee’s comments, made at a rally in Sunrise, Florida, directly stated - rather than implied, the usual delivery method for similar statements - that Obama founded the terrorist organization
“Isis is honoring President Obama,” Trump said. “He is the founder of Isis. He founded Isis. And, I would say the co-founder would be crooked Hillary Clinton.”
During a radio interview today with Hugh Hewitt, Trump doubled down on his remarks.
“I meant that he’s the founder of Isis, I do,” Trump said. “He was the most valuable player - I gave him the most valuable player award. I give her too, by the way.”
Hewitt disagreed, pointing out that Obama is “not sympathetic to them. He hates them - he’s trying to kill them.”
Trump continued: “He was the founder, his - the way he got out of Iraq was the founding of Isis.”
Our thoughts on Donald Trump’s decision to hold a rally in Fairfield, Connecticut this weekend:
Donald Trump is:
— Scott Bixby (@scottbix) August 11, 2016
– Down in every swing state
– Falling in Arizona, Utah and South Carolina
– Holding a rally in Connecticut this weekend
During a speech to the National Association of Home Builders in Florida on Thursday, Trump reiterated his earlier attacks on Hillary Clinton’s purported weakness on ISIS.
“Oh boy is ISIS hoping for her,” he said, before saying other power would relish her election as well. “If you were a foreign power looking to weaken America you couldn’t ask for anything better than Hillary Clinton as America’s president.”
He went on to criticize the Middle East policies of the Obama and Bush administrations, something he says Clinton supported and will continue.
“The greatest deal of all time is that we gave Iraq to Iran,” noting Tehran’s power in the country since the U.S. invasion in 2003, before railing against a 2015 nuclear deal brokered by the Obama administration.“We made Iran a very powerful country,” he said. “We gave them a path to nuclear weapons, which they’ll have much sooner than people think.”
He went on to express fatigue for not putting “America first.”
“I get tired of paying everyone’s military,” he said. “We pay for the military of many countries,” he added, explicitly saying it was not just the militaries of NATO countries, whose purported free-riding on American largesse he has complained about for months.
On the domestic front, Trump sought to preempt a scheduled Clinton speech in Michigan later Thursday about the economy.
Touting his recent tax plan, which he said would lower taxes across the board while it simplified the tax code to three income brackets, Trump warned that Clinton had supported tax increases her entire career. “Hillary Clinton wants to tax and regulate our economy to death,” he said. “Now she’s planning another $1.3 trillion tax increase. Enjoy your tax increases, folks.”
“We have stupid leaders, and we can’t take it anymore,” he said.
Steve King: I could work with Hillary Clinton
One of the most outspoken conservatives in Congress told a crowd at the Iowa State Fair today that he could work with Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton if she were elected president.
Iowa congressman Steve King, who is so conservative that he displays a Confederate battle flag in his congressional offices despite Iowa being a Union state, told the Des Moines Register that he could find a way to work with Clinton in the White House.
“If it’s Hillary Clinton, we don’t agree on very much,” King said, according to the Des Moines Register. “So you’ll probably see me become a vocal member of Congress if you should elect me to go back to Washington after November. So I’ll try to break out of my shell if I have to do battle with an agenda I reject.
But, King continued, “I also know that I’ve sat across the table with Hillary Clinton eye-to-eye and when you’re working outside of staff and outside of the press she is somebody I can work with.”
Every day, President Barack Obama reads ten letters sent to the White House by ordinary Americans - and now, for the first time, you can send those letters via the White House Facebook page.
“For the first time ever, you will be able to send a note to President Obama simply by messaging the White House on Facebook, the same way you message your friends,” wrote Jason Goldman, the White House’s chief digital officer. “Our goal is to meet people where they are. It’s why the President launched his own Twitter account and the First Lady is on Snapchat. It’s about creating opportunities for people to engage with their government in new and accessible ways, using the same technologies we already rely on in our daily lives.”
All is not well at Trump Tower this week.
There was all that second amendment business. Then there were all those swing state people deciding they were going to vote for Hillary Clinton. The ultimate indignity came on Wednesday, when some guy attempted to clamber up Trump’s extravagant erection.
One can only imagine what is going through the mind of the notoriously sensitive 70-year-old builder. Hunkered down in his 89th floor penthouse, Melania looking on helplessly as Trump rocks back and forth on a gold chair, he has been in need of a boost.
Happily, his campaign staff appear to have found a perfect way of cheering him up: by sending out a new Trump v Clinton survey. Exclusively to Trump supporters.
The Trump campaign sent the Q&A outon Thursdaymorning. It appears to have been sent to people who signed up to receive Trump emails.
“As an identified Trump supporter from your zip code, your input is missing from our Official Campaign Trump vs. Hillary approval poll,” the email says. A link sends the reader to the poll, which consists of two questions.
“Will you vote for Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton this November?” and: “Which issue is most important to you?”
Fingers crossed the results at least show Trump to be competitive. It would make Trump tower a much happier place.
Clinton campaign on Trump's Isis statement: Another example of Trump trash-talking US
Hillary for America senior policy adviser Jake Sullivan has released a following statement in response to Donald Trump’s claim that President Barack Obama founded Isis:
This is another example of Donald Trump trash-talking the United States. It goes without saying that this is a false claim from a presidential candidate with an aversion to the truth and an unprecedented lack of knowledge. What’s remarkable about Trump’s comments is that once again, he’s echoing the talking points of Putin and our adversaries to attack American leaders and American interests, while failing to offer any serious plans to confront terrorism or make this country more secure.
A former staffer for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign has filed a lawsuit claiming that its former North Carolina state director pulled a gun on him, and that senior campaign officials refused to act on the incident when he reported it.
The lawsuit, filed by former staffer Vincent Bordini, named Trump’s campaign and former state director Earl Phillip, accusing them of assault, battery and intention infliction of emotional distress, as well as negligent infliction of emotional distress. The suit demands unspecified compensatory damages.
According to the complaint, Phillip “produced a pistol, put his right index finger on the trigger, and drove the barrel into Vincent’s knee cap” during a car trip to check on volunteers in Greenville, South Carolina in February:
Phillip pushed the barrel into Vincent’s knee. The barrel’s pressure crinkled Vincent’s blue jeans. Phillip ominously stared sidewise at Vincent while driving the Jeep down the road and the barrel into Vincent. Vincent froze. Phillip’s gun was loaded and the safety was off. A bump in the road would likely result in a bullet hole, and worse, in Vincent’s knee.
Bordini’s suit said that he reported the incident to the campaign’s western North Carolina regional director, who said that the same thing had happened to him. Next, Bordini said, he informed the Trump campaign’s national field director, and later had a phone conversation with then-campaign manager Corey Lewandowski - neither of whom, Bordini said, did anything.
Phillip left the campaign last week.
A new poll from Public Policy Polling shows Donald Trump leading Hillary Clinton in blood-red South Carolina by a mere two points, another indication that the Republican nominee’s campaign is in serious trouble.
Trump leads Clinton 41% to 39%, with Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson pulling 5% and Green candidate Jill Stein at 2%. The lead, PPP postulates, is the result of Trump’s unpopularity within his own party as compared to Clinton’s: Clinton is currently supported by 84% of Democrats, compared to Trump, who is winning only 77% of Republicans.
And that’s just this year: When looking at younger generations, the Palmetto State looks like a potential battleground in years to come, with Clinton leading Trump 41% to 36% among voters younger than 65.
Donald Trump speaks in Miami
Livestream: Donald Trump addresses to the National Association of Home Builders at the Fontainebleau in Miami, Florida:
Video: Donald Trump accusing President Barack Obama of being “the founder of Isis” during a campaign rally in Florida last night.
Report: Hacking of Democratic organizations wider than initially thought
The New York Times reports that the hacking of the Democratic National Committee’s email servers may have just been the tip of the iceberg, with more than 100 accounts of Democratic officials, politicians and groups potentially breached by what the FBI told the Times were likely Russian state actors.
Their biggest target: the personal email accounts of high-ups in Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, as well as key Democratic organizations like the Democratic Governors’ Association.
The hacking of the Democratic National Committee already caused considerable headaches for the party, when former chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz announced her resignation on the eve of the party’s convention after a leak of internal DNC emails showed officials actively favoring Clinton during the presidential primary and plotting against rival Bernie Sanders.
Hillary Clinton denounced Donald Trump’s suggestion that gun owners could stop her from appointing liberal supreme court justices, pointing to it as the latest evidence of behavior by him unbefitting of a presidential candidate, the Guardian’s Lauren Gambino and Ciara McCarthy report.
At a rally in Iowa on Wednesday, Clinton said the remark, which she called a “casual inciting of violence”, offered further proof that Trump does not have the temperament to be president.
“Words matter, my friends,” Clinton said, drawing cheers from the crowd. “And if you are running to be president or if you are president of the United States, words can have tremendous consequences.”
After a volatile week on the campaign trail, the Republican nominee hurled himself once again into the center of controversy, and the backlash has been swift and fierce from Democrats, gun control advocates, members of the media and even some Republicans.
The remarks came during a rally in North Carolina on Tuesday, as Trump told a crowd that if Clinton is elected she would have the power to appoint liberal supreme court justices.
“If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks,” Trump said. “Although the second amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know. But I’ll tell you what, that will be a horrible day.”
Former first daughter: Trump's comments 'glib and horrifying'
Patti Davis, the daughter of late former president Ronald Reagan, lambasted Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump for his “glib and horrifying comment” that appeared to encourage second amendment activists to take matters into their owns hands if Hillary Clinton were elected president and began appointing federal judges.
Davis, whose father was almost assassinated by John Hinckley in 1981, called Trump’s remarks “horrifying,” and potentially inspirational for mentally unwell people with access to firearms.
“I am the daughter of a man who was shot by someone who got his inspiration from a movie, someone who believed if he killed the President the actress from that movie would notice him,” Davis said. “Your glib and horrifying comment about ‘Second Amendment people’ was heard around the world.”
Davis continued, drawing direct comparison between the erotomania that drove Hinckley to attempt to assassinate her father with the potential for Trump’s words to resonate with another would-be assassin:
It was heard by sane and decent people who shudder at your fondness for verbal violence. It was heard by your supporters, many of whom gleefully and angrily yell, ‘Lock her up!’ at your rallies. It was heard by the person sitting alone in a room, locked in his own dark fantasies, who sees unbridled violence as a way to make his mark in the world, and is just looking for ideas. Yes, Mr. Trump, words matter. But then you know that, which makes this all even more horrifying.
Updated
The best quotation from the Time piece on Trump’s campaign:
On other campaigns, we would have to scrounge for crumbs. Here, it’s a fire hose. He can set himself on fire at breakfast, kill a nun at lunch and waterboard a puppy in the afternoon. And that doesn’t even get us to prime time.
Donald Trump’s assertion that he opposed the Iraq war before the 2003 invasion has long since been debunked, but an unearthed section from one of Trump’s many books shows that the real estate tycoon supported invading Iraq as early as 2000.
“I’m no warmonger,” Trump wrote in his book The America We Deserve, published three years before the invasion of Iraq. “But the fact is, if we decide to strike against Iraq is necessary, it is madness not to carry the mission to its conclusion. When we don’t we have the worst of all worlds: Iraq remains a threat, and now has more incentive than ever to attack us.”
“Am I being contradictory here, by presenting myself as a deal-maker and then recommending preemptive strikes?” Trump continued. “I don’t think so. There’s nothing really comparable to unleashing a squadron of bombers, but in the world of business sometimes you have to make quick, secret, decisive moves in order to gain a negotiating advantage.”
Trump then compares preemptive strikes against Iraq to his battles against landmarking commissions.
Donald Trump doubles down: Obama is 'the founder' of Isis
During a speech in Florida last night, Donald Trump declared that President Barack Obama is “the founder of Isis.”
“In many respects, you know, they honor President Obama,” Trump said. “He’s the founder of ISIS. He’s the founder of ISIS. He’s the founder. He founded ISIS.”
During a radio interview today with Hugh Hewitt, Trump doubled down on his remarks. Hewitt attempted to explain to Trump what his own remarks meant, telling the Republican presidential candidate: “I know what you meant - you meant that he created the vacuum, he lost the peace.”
Trump had none of it.
“No, I meant that he’s the founder of Isis, I do,” Trump said. “He was the most valuable player - I gave him the most valuable player award. I give her too, by the way.”
Hewitt disagreed, pointing out that Obama is “not sympathetic to them. He hates them - he’s trying to kill them.”
Trump soldiered on: “He was the founder, his - the way he got out of Iraq was the founding of Isis.”
Hewitt asked Trump if he felt like he was making a tactical mistake in calling the leader of the free world, who has called Isis “a terrorist organization, pure and simple,” the founder of Isis. Trump did not.
“No, it’s no mistake,” Trump said. “Everyone’s liking it. I think they’re liking it.”
Updated
Report: RNC threatened to abandon Trump
Good morning, and welcome to the Guardian’s campaign liveblog. According to a blockbuster report from Time magazine – complete with an evocative cover – Republican National Committee chair Reince Priebus has told presidential nominee Donald Trump that if he doesn’t manage to right his listing campaign, the Republican party may abandon ship in favor of saving down-ballot Republicans.
Quoting two anonymous party officials familiar with the conversation, Time says Priebus bluntly told Trump that internal polling suggests that he is on track to lose the general election, big league, and that he’d have been better off taking a Mar-a-Lago vacation than hitting the trail after the Republican national convention in Cleveland.
Trump told Time he dismissed the story.
“Reince Priebus is a terrific guy,” Trump said. “He never said that.”
Despite the continued fallout from his ill-advised feud with the family of an army captain killed in the line of duty, and lingering questions following remarks that implied that his supporters might take the second amendment into their own hands if Hillary Clinton wins the general election, Trump said that his campaign is going just fine.
“Well, I think we’re doing well,” Trump said. “We have tremendous crowds. We have the same level of enthusiasm that we’ve had, if not more. Some of the polls are down a little bit. We have some polls that are not down very much. But I think we’re moving along. I think we’re doing fine.”
Here’s the schedule for today’s campaigning:
- Clinton will make a major address on the economy in Warren, Michigan, at Futuramic Tool and Engineering, a firm that builds parts for the F-35 fighter jet, at 2.15pm ET (1.15pm local). Running mate Tim Kaine will make a speech at the Progressive National Baptist Convention in New Orleans.
- Trump will hold a rally at Silver Spurs arena in Kissimmee, Florida, at 7pm ET. Running mate Mike Pence will hold a town hall at the Cartwright Center in La Crosse, Wisconsin, at 4pm ET (3pm local), followed by a rally at the Hilton Milwaukee city center in at 8pm ET (7pm local).
Updated
