Summary
We’re going to wrap up our live blog politics coverage for the evening. Thanks for reading and join us tomorrow for primary day in Kentucky and Oregon and live coverage through the night as results come in.
Trump campaign hires pollster
Politico reports that after months of pooh-poohing the work of political pollsters, the Trump campaign has brought one onboard:
Donald Trump's presidential campaign has hired veteran Republican operative @TonyFabrizioGOP as its pollster https://t.co/OSFmNqIUv6
— Marc Caputo (@MarcACaputo) May 17, 2016
From the Politico report:
Fabrizio is a longtime friend of top Trump adviser Paul Manafort and Trump backer Roger Stone, who had a falling out with the campaign in August as the campaign refused to hire a pollster. With Manafort’s hiring in March, a source said, Stone’s relationship with the campaign improved; and Manafort began advocating for the hiring of Fabrizio -- all three of whom cut their teeth in New York politics decades ago.
Read the full piece here.
The other person Trump's listed as "pollster" this cycle? Wife, Melania. https://t.co/U0B0TFB6HD
— Ali Vitali (@alivitali) May 17, 2016
Update: It appears that Fabrizio has not always been fully complimentary of Trump on Twitter:
🔥🔥🔥 pic.twitter.com/EEAaYNwxbl
— Liam Donovan (@LPDonovan) May 17, 2016
— Liam Donovan (@LPDonovan) May 17, 2016
(h/t: @bencjacobs)
Updated
'Trump' caught on tape: 'she looks like a f*ing third-rate hooker'
An audio recording purportedly of Donald Trump denying having dated a model who said “I never met a more narcissistic person than Donald” has emerged. He’s discouraging a gossip publisher to write a story about his (he says false) liaison with the model, Victoria Zdrok.
The Daily Beast has posted the audio. From their story:
Judging by Trump’s liberal use of curse words and otherwise coarse misogynistic language in his pleadings with Hayden to not publish the interview with Zdrok, he was also—at least by the naïve standards of a simpler time—less than presidential.
“I don’t even know who the hell she is,” Trump insisted to Hayden, after boasting about the ratings of his reality television show. “It’s the biggest thing [NBC has] had sinceFriends.” [...]
Trump said that he could not have possibly gone out with Zdrok because “she looks like a fucking third-rate hooker. Gimme a break. I never took her out. She’s full of shit. Chaunce, look, I have good taste in women. Take a look at her picture. It’s all bullshit. I never took her out.”
“It’s just so fuckin’ false,” the man on the audio identified as Trump says. Hear it here.
The Trump campaign did not reply to a Guardian email asking for confirmation that the voice on the audio is Trump. The Daily Beast reports similar reticence: “Zdrok didn’t respond to an email from The Daily Beast; neither did Trump campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks.”
Does Donald Trump really speak for you?
That’s the tagline of a new ad from Priorities USA, a pro-Clinton outside political group, that features women wearing T-shirts with Trump’s head, mouthing the words as audio plays of some of Trump’s most infamous/ignominious quotes:
Two South Boston brothers who were reported last August to have beaten a homeless Hispanic man with a metal pipe while saying “Donald Trump was right” and urinated on the men have pleaded guilty in the beating, the Boston Globe reports:
They cited Trump > South Boston brothers plead guilty to beating homeless man https://t.co/hJbBh8onCH via @BostonGlobe
— James Pindell (@JamesPindell) May 17, 2016
Alison Lundergan Grimes, the former senate candidate, is with Hillary Clinton in Kentucky in advance of the state’s Tuesday primary.
What will happen in Kentucky? The Democratic primary in the state appears to have been polled precisely once – one year ago.
Kentucky Republicans voted on 5 March, back when the race was clogged. Trump beat Ted Cruz 36-32 in the Bluegrass state, with Marco Rubio taking 16% and John Kasich winning 14%.
Great crowd for @HillaryClinton back in Lexington! Let's bring this home tomorrow! #GoVoteKY #ImWithHer pic.twitter.com/qduFDoDnMS
— Alison L. Grimes (@AlisonForKY) May 16, 2016
Both Republicans and Democrats vote tomorrow in Oregon as well, where Bernie Sanders is the favorite.
San Juan feeling the Bern
Take a look at @BernieSanders' evening San Juan crowd. Packed theater. pic.twitter.com/ZZtNkyw45i
— Danny Freeman (@DannyEFreeman) May 16, 2016
Whoops. A congressional candidate in Virginia may have unwittingly revealed porn-surfing by... someone... on a computer desktop of which the candidate posted a screenshot to make a point on Facebook about... well it’s difficult to discern his point. It appears to be about a rival’s possible conspiracy against him. You can read his post by clicking through below.
Here’s the screenshot, enlarged by Gawker:
The stuff of nightmares: https://t.co/d2GCBrFoRg
— Marin Cogan (@marincogan) May 16, 2016
Trump to meet with Kissinger
Donald Trump will meet with Henry Kissinger, the controversial former statesman who steered presidents Nixon and Ford’s foreign policies as secretary of state and whose influence on American conduct abroad, particularly in favorite Trump country China, is arguably unsurpassed among living “formers”.
Trump met with former secretary of state James Baker last Thursday (and there’s photographic proof of his meeting with at least one future SoS).
Kissinger, 92, and Trump are to meet in New York Wednesday, the Washington Post reports. The paper points out that Sarah Palin also met with Kissinger when she was on a national Republican ticket.
Perhaps the two will dine at noted Kissinger haunt the Four Seasons.
(h/t @bencjacobs)
Donald Trump spent the weekend tweeting about the New York Times piece chronicling his relationships with women. He is still at it.
In the last five minutes he has tweeted four times about the story. Does that qualify as a tweetstorm? Judge for yourselves:
The failing @nytimes is greatly embarrassed by the totally dishonest story they did on my relationship with women.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 16, 2016
No wonder the @nytimes is failing—who can believe what they write after the false, malicious & libelous story they did on me.
Over 50 women were interviewed by the @nytimes yet they only wrote about 6. That’s because there were so many positive statements.
The writer of the now proven false story in the @nytimes, Michael Barbaro, who was interviewed on CBS this morning, was unable to respond.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 16, 2016
Only like, 12% of my former girlfriends & female employees had bad things to say about me as I am on verge of POTUShttps://t.co/LeUPQWK6MS
— Tom McCarthy (@TeeMcSee) May 16, 2016
Updated
Bernie Sanders’ team in Puerto Rico told the candidate on his visit today that they suffered from a lack of resources, NBC News reports:
.@BernieSanders stopped by a field office in San Juan today. One worker lamented the office had "no resources." 1/2 pic.twitter.com/eUeBrEk3B4
— Danny Freeman (@DannyEFreeman) May 16, 2016
One @BernieSanders supporter said he was "working very hard [for the campaign] with nothing" in PR. Sanders guaranteed the man resources 2/2
— Danny Freeman (@DannyEFreeman) May 16, 2016
Trump 'studying' transgender issues 'very closely'
Donald Trump has said he would repeal protections Barack Obama has put in place for transgender people in the insurance marketplace – but he now tells reporters that the government must act to “to protect all people”.
Trump told the Washington Post that transgender people must be protected under the law and that he did not believe that the issue of discrimination against transgender people had been overblown.
Last month Trump criticized a North Carolina law restricting bathroom access for transgender people, saying that people ought to be able to go the bathroom wherever they want to. He soon partially went back on that statement, however, saying the issue ought to be for “local communities and states” to decide.
In the Washington Post interview Monday, Trump indicated he did not know any transgender people, saying “I have not had any exposure to it at all.”
He added, “Now, I may not know about it, but I do not think I have any exposure to it from the standpoint of knowing people.”
But Trump said he wants to learn more about the transgender experience in America.
“It’s actually a very interesting subject to me,” Trump said. “It’s certainly an issue that’s getting a lot of play and it’s an issue that I’m studying very closely.”
The Koch brothers, longtime megadonors to Republican causes and the movers behind freelance civic efforts such as don’t-get-out-the-vote legislation and don’t-control-guns initiatives, are tapering back spending on national elections, according to a National Review report:
The meeting, reported here for the first time, confirmed what some Koch insiders had begun to suspect: That the brothers’ political decision-making was increasingly being influenced by their business and public-relations interests, and that as a result, their investments in electoral politics at the federal level were diminishing. While the vote-taking that day was unexpected, several of those present say, the outcome was not.
The piece says that “interviews with numerous people close to the brothers, including a half-dozen sources with direct knowledge of developments inside their donor network and political operation” revealed that “the scope of recent changes extends well beyond their inactivity in the presidential race.”
Read it in full here. In January 2015 the Washington Post reported that the Kochs planned to spend almost $1bn in and around the 2016 elections. That plan appears to no longer hold, with an early favored candidate, Wisconsin governor Scott Walker, having dropped out of the race long ago and the presumptive nominee, Donald Trump, not necessarily any better, in the view of Charles Koch, than Hillary Clinton.
Recent buzz inside Koch World about streamlining of departments, consolidation of offices https://t.co/nd9GnSfcQg pic.twitter.com/yqUZppXvHU
— Tim Alberta (@TimAlberta) May 16, 2016
Who’s first in line to read Corey Lewandowski’s book?
UPDATE: Lewandowski denies book.
Despite false reports to the contrary, I am not writing a book. I am under a strict confidentiality agreement with Mr. Trump.
— Corey Lewandowski (@CLewandowski_) May 16, 2016
Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski is working on a book, according to 2 sources. https://t.co/z0oJAwZjOj
— McKay Coppins (@mckaycoppins) May 16, 2016
Updated
John Kasich: 'Running third-party doesn't feel right'
Ohio governor John Kasich has ruled out a potential third-party run for the White House, telling CNN that such a campaign “doesn’t feel right”.
“I’m not gonna do that,” Kasich told CNN’s Anderson Cooper in his first interview since dropping out of the race for the Republican nomination. “I gave it my best where I am. I just think running third party doesn’t feel right. I think it’s not constructive.
“A third party candidacy would be viewed as kind of a silly thing,” he continued. “And I don’t think it’s appropriate. I just don’t think it would be the right thing to do.”
The move comes despite reported pressure from former Republican nominee Mitt Romney.
Kasich suspended his presidential campaign earlier this month after failing to break through among Republican voters as a moderate alternative to the perceived extremes of presumptive nominee Donald Trump and his closest challenger, Texas senator Ted Cruz.
Even as he fell hopelessly behind in the race to capture a majority of delegates – Kasich’s sole primary victory was in Ohio, his home state – Kasich argued that Trump would also fail to capture a majority of delegates, and that the party would be left looking for a consensus alternative at the national convention.
As a longtime congressman with a turn as chairman of the powerful budget committee to his name, and as the popular Republican governor of a presidential swing state, Kasich hoped to emerge as that consensus alternative.
It was not clear, however, how the fundraising and vote-getting challenges he faced as a Republican candidate would change if he struck out on his own.
Whispers of a potential third-party candidate entering the presidential race have circulated for months, as a general election campaign between two nationally unpopular candidates – Trump and Democratic hopeful Hillary Clinton – has shaped up.
Updated
The small, private liberal arts college once helmed by the wife of Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is shutting its doors for good, citing the “insurmountable” tens of millions of dollars in debt accrued during her tenure as the school’s president.
Burlington College, a tiny liberal arts college on the shores of Lake Champlain in Burlington, Vermont, was headed by Jane Sanders from 2004 to 2011, during which she led the charge in acquiring 32 acres of lakefront property from the Archdiocese of Burlington for the school, the Burlington Free Press reports.
“Since July 2014, The College has been on probation with its accrediting agency, The New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC) due to not meeting its financial resources standard,” the school announced in a release.
“The Federal Department of Education allows a college only two years of probation,” it continued. “Hence, we anticipate notice from NEASC that we have not met the Commission’s financial standard, and, therefore, our accreditation will be lifted as of January 2017, and the College will not be able to award academic credit after this time.”
Buzzfeed News’ Chris Geidner is interviewing President Barack Obama in the Roosevelt Room at the White House regarding his stalled supreme court nominee and the plan for the nomination - watch it here live:
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton hasn’t made any announcements about the identity of a potential running mate, much less any cabinet appointments, but at a campaign stop in Bowling Green, kentucky, today, she ruled out at least one potential appointment.
“No,” Clinton said, shaking her head, when asked if her husband, former president Bill Clinton, would serve as a member of her cabinet.
Will Bill Clinton serve in Hillary Clinton's cabinet? "No," she says, shaking her head. pic.twitter.com/KciYx7dydJ
— Liz Kreutz (@ABCLiz) May 16, 2016
On Sunday, Clinton had said that her husband could potentially serve as an economics czar, citing the growth of the American economy under his administration as a qualification.
Wisconsin senator Ron Johnson is pushing back against claims by his opponent that he compared the 2016 general election to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
On Saturday, the Associated Press reported that Johnson compared the general election this year to the hijacking of United Flight 93, the so-called “fourth plane” which crashed in rural Pennsylvania.
Johnson, after repeating the story of how passengers in the hijacked aircraft took a vote before instigating a revolt to retake the plane, compared their vote to the upcoming general election.
“The reason I like telling that story now as we head into the election season is we all know what we need to do,” Johnson said. “November 2016 we’ll be taking a vote. We’ll be encouraging our fellow citizens to take a vote. Now, it may not be life and death, like the vote passengers on United Flight 93 took, but boy is it consequential.”
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee today called Johnson’s comments “beyond the pale.”
“Using the memories of the heroes of Flight 93 in service of your re-election bid is crass, offensive and deeply troubling for any public official, not to mention a sitting U.S. Senator. Ron Johnson should apologize for his comments immediately,” the DSCC said.
Johnson remains adament that there was nothing wrong with his comparison, and instead called the DSCC out for “politicizing” the issue.
“The fact that the hacks in the [Russ] Feingold campaign would try to politicize this is literally disgusting,” Johnson told local radio station WTMJ today.
Rowanne Brewer Lane, onetime girlfriend of presumptive Republican frontrunner Donald Trump, doubled down on claims she made earlier today in which she declared that a New York Times piece, featuring her, detailing Trump’s history of offensive comments and actions towards women was unfair.
“I was not happy with the way that the article was written and I was promised that it wouldn’t be done that way and it absolutely was,” Brewer lane said. “I don’t think it’s fair to me and I don’t really think it’s fair to him ... it seems to me like they must have some sort of agenda.”
“I never said that he ‘paraded’ me anywhere, and that word keeps coming up,” Brewer Lane said, of her specific problems with the piece. “I think it’s a negative, ugly word. He did not parade me anywhere. He didn’t force me to put anything on ... He didn’t ask anybody anything. He said, ‘Now that’s a stunning Trump girl,’ and I was very flattered. I was indeed flattered, and I made that very clear to the writer that I was flattered by that.”
More tidbits have emerged in preview of Megyn Kelly’s highly anticipated interview with presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, in which the real estate tycoon says that victims of bullying “gotta get over it.”
In the exchange, first reported by the Associated Press, Kelly asks Trump if he has ever been bullied. Trump says no, but that bullying can happen to people of any age. “People are bullied when they’re 55,” he says.
“Can happen when you’re 45,” Kelly, who is 45, responds pointedly.
“You know, it happens, right?” Trump continues, not acknowledging Kelly’s implication. “But you gotta get over it. Fight back, do whatever you have to do.”
Kelly’s interview with Trump, the culmination of months of highly public feuding between the presumptive Republican nominee and the newsreader, airs on Fox - like, American Idol Fox, not O’Reilly Factor Fox - tomorrow night.
A candidate for the Republican senate nomination in Florida is facing heated criticism for calling President Barack Obama “an animal” during a party committee meeting last Thursday.
“Unfortunately, for seven and a half years, this animal we call president - because he’s an animal, OK? - for seven and a half years has surgically, with thought and in a very smart, intelligent manner, has destroyed this country and dismantled the military under not one, not two but three secretaries of defense,” said Carlos Beruff, a one of five candidates seeking to replace retiring senator Marco Rubio. “They’ve all written books about it.”
“He wants us to be just another country,” Beruff continued. “I don’t want to be another country. I want to be the United States of America, the greatest country in the world.”
“Mr. Beruff’s statement is not only offensive, but extremely disrespectful to President Obama’s incredible service to our nation,” said the campaign of Patrick Murphy, who hopes to take the Democratic nomination.
“I’m proud to stand by President Obama and his commitment to fighting for Florida families, and I call on Mr. Beruff to immediately apologize for his disrespectful comments. In the U.S. Senate, our diverse state deserves better than Mr. Beruff’s clear record of bigotry.”
Hillary Clinton has said she wants her husband to play a role in her presidency should she secure the nomination and win in November, but it won’t be from the perch of her cabinet.
Asked during a campaign stop in Kentucky if the former president would have a role in her cabinet, Clinton shook her head. “No,” she replied, amid a crush of journalists and diners at a restaurant in Paducah, Kentucky.
Throughout her campaign, Clinton has hinted at the role her husband would play in her presidency. During a debate last year, Clinton quipped that she would probably still “ pick the flowers and the china for state dinners” as she did when she was First Lady. She added that she would turn to him “as prior presidents have” for advice.
Campaigning in Kentucky over the weekend, Clinton said she would “put in charge of revitalizing the economy because, you know, he knows how to do it, especially in places like coal country and inner cities”.
While Clinton has struggled to gain support in coal country, where Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders economic message has resonated in contrast to her own, her husband remains popular.
Bill Clinton won the state of Kentucky, twice, which no recent Democratic nominee has achieve. He left office during a period of economic growth. During his eight years in office, rates of employment rose and poverty fell.
While campaigning in coal country over the last few weeks, Clinton has been quick to remind voters there that her husband would have her ear.
“I’ve told my husband he’s got to come out of retirement and be in charge of this because you know he’s got more ideas a minute than anybody I know,” Clinton said earlier this month during a discussion in Kentucky on manufacturing and jobs.
In a sign of how unpredictable the US supreme court has become since justice Antonin Scalia’s death left the bench short-handed, the eight remaining justices on Monday failed to reach a final conclusion in a significant religious challenge to the Affordable Care Act’s contraception mandate.
Instead, in an unsigned, unanimous decision which cited the “gravity” of the dispute, the justices ordered the lower courts to find a compromise between opposing sides.
The case, called Zubik v Burwell, pitted the government against 29 faith-based not-for-profit organizations who claimed that the government’s rules for groups with religious objections to covering female employees’ contraception are morally compromising.
Those not-for-profit groups have the right to opt out of providing contraceptive coverage by filling out a short form alerting the government to their religious objection. But the groups claim that filling out the form made them complicit in providing contraception, since it sets in motion a process in which the government provides the coverage. The government argues that it is not the form which “triggers” the coverage, but the Affordable Care Act.
Monday’s decision allows the government to continue acting on the forms it receives from not-for-profit organizations to cover contraception for the nonprofits’ employees.
Angelina Jolie said this morning she was “very disheartened” by the US response to the global migration crisis, particularly from Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.
The actor and special envoy for the United Nations refugee agency said she feared countries would adopt increasingly isolationist policies instead of acting together to tackle the challenge.
“I have been very, very disheartened by my own country’s response to the situation,” she said at a London event on migration organised by the BBC.
Referring to Trump, who suggested a temporary ban on all Muslims entering the US in the wake of attacks by extremists, Jolie said: “To me, America is built on people from around the world coming together for freedoms, and especially freedom of religion.
“And so it is hard to hear that this is coming from someone who’s pressing to be an American president.”
Jolie said worries about uncontrolled immigration had given a “false air of legitimacy to those who promote politics of fear and separation”.
“It has created the risk of a race to the bottom, with countries competing to be the toughest,” she said.
Jolie said nations needed to pull together to deal with the world’s 60 million displaced people by rebuilding a coordinated and orderly system for dealing with refugees and migrants.
At the Nebraska Republican convention on Saturday, a resolution condemning “degrading remarks toward women, minorities and other people by Republican elected office holders or party officials, including candidates for president of the United States” was quashed.
The resolution, which fell in the name of party unity, had been intended as an implicit rebuke to Donald Trump, the party’s presumptive presidential nominee. The Republicans were meeting to design their state party platform ahead of the national convention in July, at which delegates will create the campaign platform with Trump.
However, state school board member Pat McPherson, who has a history of controversy surrounding racial remarks and has faced allegations of inappropriate behavior towards a woman, made the motion to put the resolution aside.
Last year it was reported that repeated references to President Obama as “a half-breed” had appeared on McPherson’s blog. The Republican activist insisted that an anonymous contributor wrote the posts in question. He declined to identify that person.
A majority of the state school board called for McPherson to resign, as did Republican Nebraska governor Pete Ricketts and both its Republican senators, Ben Sasse and Deb Fischer.
Bernie Sanders holds town hall in Puerto Rico
Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is holding a town hall in San Juan, Puerto Rico - check it out live here:
Updated
Retired pediatric neurosurgeon, former presidential candidate and current campaign surrogate ben Carson told CNN this morning that, contrary to a report from the Washington post this weekend, he has zero interest in serving as presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump’s vice president - or in any other kind of public office.
“This is something that is extremely undesirable to me, as is any government post, quite frankly,” Carson told CNN. “I have no intention of running for office. I believe that citizen statesmen can work from outside the government in a capacity where they contribute to the well-being of the country.”
Being Donald Trump's running mate "extremely undesirable to me, as is any government post" -- @RealBenCarson https://t.co/VXvyOoITWe
— New Day (@NewDay) May 16, 2016
Carson also said that he’s not going to reveal any more names on Trump’s vice presidential short list - or, if pressed, he’ll lie.
“Any name you’re going to throw out, I’ll say, ‘yeah sure,’” Carson said. “That doesn’t mean they’re under consideration or that they’re on the short list.
“I’m not going to get into that. I’ve already made my suggestions and had the conversations. My involvement is continuing to make sure that Donald Trump’s candidacy is successful and more importantly that America is successful.”
Barack Obama delivered a stinging rebuke to a culture of isolationism and falsehood, and an adamant defense of facts and science, in his commencement address to the Rutgers University graduating class of 2016 on Sunday.
In a wide-ranging address, Obama singled out the issue of income inequality and proposed closing tax loopholes on hedge fund managers, highlighted the importance of voting and accountability, and commented on the problems of money in politics and climate change.
“A wall won’t stop that,” he said, alluding to the proposal by Republicans’ presumptive nominee, Donald Trump, to build a wall at the US-Mexico border. “The point is, to help ourselves, we’ve got to help others, not pull up the drawbridge and try to keep the world out.”
The president did not mention Trump by name, but he made the object of his ire clear, referring also to the businessman’s inflammatory rhetoric about Muslims, Hispanic people and women.
The president took particular umbrage with a culture of willful ignorance, ridiculing leaders and commentators who reject science and facts. “And yet, we’ve become confused about this,” he said.
One of the women quoted in a New York Times investigation into Donald Trump’s history with women has taken to the cable news circuit to dispute how she was portrayed in the article, telling Fox & Friends this morning that the paper “spun it to where it appeared negative.”
Rowanne Brewer Lane, who first met Trump at a pool party in 1990, dated Trump briefly in the early nineties, and told the New York Times that the future presumptive Republican nominee asked her at one point to rank the attractiveness of two of his ex wives, on a scale of one to ten.
“I thought that was very boyish of him,” she told the Times. “He asked me the same thing about Ivana. I said, obviously, she is your wife. A beautiful woman. What could you say but a 10? I am not going to judge your wife.”
Brewer Lane has taken exception with the quotations, telling Fox & Friends that “[the Times] told me and my manager several times that it would not be a hit piece and that my story come across in the way I was telling it and accurately. It absolutely was not. I don’t appreciate them making it look like it was a negative experience.”
Ben Carson, retired pediatric neurosurgeon, onetime presidential candidate and currentl Trump campaign surrogate, revealed to the Washington Post this weekend that former half-term Alaska governor Sarah Palin is on the short list of potential vice presidential candidates that the Trump campaign is currently vetting.
According to Carson, the list is composed of Palin, Ohio governor John Kasich, Florida senator Marco Rubio, Texas senator Ted Cruz, New Jersey governor Chris Christie and himself. Considering that only Carson, Kasich and Palin have even endorsed the presumptive nominee, the realistic short list appears to be, well, even shorter.
Donald Trump to David Cameron: 'Number one, I’m not stupid'
Donald Trump has said he might not have a “very good relationship” with David Cameron, after the prime minister described his proposal to ban Muslims from the US as “stupid”.
The US presidential hopeful also sniped at the new London mayor, Sadiq Khan, for comments he made after being elected and warned him: “I will remember those statements.” He challenged Khan to “take an IQ test” after the mayor called him ignorant.
The presumptive Republican nominee, who is likely to go up against Hillary Clinton in November’s presidential election, was speaking to Piers Morgan on ITV’s Good Morning Britain.
Last week Khan said Trump was ignorant in his views on Islam and risked harming security on both sides of the Atlantic. Trump said in response: “When he won I wished him well, and now I don’t care about him. Let’s see how he does, let’s see if he’s a good mayor.
“He doesn’t know me, hasn’t met me, doesn’t know what I’m all about. I think they were very rude statements and frankly, tell him I will remember those statements. They are very nasty statements.”
Trump also attacked Cameron’s comments on his proposed “Muslim ban”, which the prime minister had called “divisive, stupid and wrong”.
Trump said: “Honestly, I don’t care, it doesn’t matter. It looks like we’re not going to have a very good relationship. I hope to have a good relationship with him, but it sounds like he’s not willing to address the problem either.
“Number one, I’m not stupid, I can tell you that right now, just the opposite. I don’t think I’m a divisive person, I’m a unifier, unlike our president now.”
Happy campaign morning!
Good morning and welcome to the Guardian’s politics live blog. We have a full slate of major campaign events on the docket today, but first, a quick catchup on some important and emerging political stories from over the weekend.
- Presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump is likely to face continued and sustained criticism from a pair of stories that have emerged from the time when he was a New York tabloid fixture. First, fallout and mockery hasn’t abated since the Washington Post released audio of a phone call between a journalist and “John Miller,” reportedly a pseudonym that Trump used in the nineties when acting as his own public relations manager. When confronted with the audio, Trump at first insisted that it was not his voice – later, when asked whether he had ever employed a man named John Miller as a public relations agent, Trump apparently hung up. The topic, of course, was ripe for Saturday Night Live:
- The second of the stories, however, may present more of a problem for the Trump campaign’s political future than spoofs by late-night sketch comedians. On Saturday morning, the New York Times released a feature dubbed Crossing the Line: How Donald Trump Behaved with Women in Private. The piece, a lengthy investigation into Trump’s alleged mistreatment and objectification of women in his personal and professional lives, prompted an outrage from the candidate, who denies ever treating women with anything but respect and courtesy:
The failing @nytimes wrote yet another hit piece on me. All are impressed with how nicely I have treated women, they found nothing. A joke!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 15, 2016
Everyone is laughing at the @nytimes for the lame hit piece they did on me and women.I gave them many names of women I helped-refused to use
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 15, 2016
Why doesn't the failing @nytimes write the real story on the Clintons and women? The media is TOTALLY dishonest!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 15, 2016
The media is really on a witch-hunt against me. False reporting, and plenty of it - but we will prevail!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 15, 2016
- The Republican leadership, for its part, is apparently standing by its man. Reince Priebus, chair of the Republican National Committee, told Fox News on Sunday that if voters have shown they are prepared to ride over issues surrounding the nominee’s behavior, so should the party. “We’ve been working on this primary for over a year,” he said. “People don’t care. The question is, who is going to bring an earthquake to Washington DC?”
- But not everyone is lining up: Texas senator Ted Cruz, once seen as the only viable obstacle to Trump’s nomination, refused to even use the presumptive nominee’s name in his keynote speech to Texas Republicans at their state convention. But he did allude to the deep unease, and in some quarters overwhelming repulsion, that many Republicans feel about having the former reality TV star represent their party. “Some are asking, ‘What now?’” the Texas senator said. “I don’t know what the future will hold, but I want to encourage each of you to have hope.”
- Republicans weren’t the only ones scrambling to unite a party divided by an aggressive primary this weekend: disputes over delegate status at the Nevada Democratic convention lead to police being called, when supporters of Vermont senator Bernie Sanders protested the exclusion of 58 Sanders backers from delegate status because they were not registered Democrats by the 1 May deadline. Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton ended up with a 33-delegate margin of victory over Sanders at the convention, further padding her delegate lead.
Now on to today, where we’re forecasting some major news on the judicial front:
- BuzzFeed’s Chris Geidner will be interviewing Barack Obama about the supreme court and his stalled nomination of Merrick Garland at 2.50pm ET today, the president’s first interview on Facebook Live.
- Sanders will travel to Puerto Rico today, visiting Guaynabo and the capital of San Juan in a series of three events: first, a town hall meeting in San Juan; second, a “community conversation” in Guaynabo; and finally, this evening, a rally at the University of Puerto Rico.
- Former president Bill Clinton will be in the US Virgin Islands – clearly drew the short straw – while the former secretary of state will continue her trip in Kentucky with stops including Lexington, Bowling Green and Hopkinsville.
That’s it for this morning – now on to the race!
Updated
