Today in Campaign 2016
Here’s a quick rundown of the biggest news from the campaign trail today:
- Another presidential election, another Republican nominee who refuses to release his taxes. Like Mitt Romney before him, Donald Trump is rejecting calls for him to release his tax returns any time soon, telling the AP that “there’s nothing to learn from them” and that voters are not interested. Trump also has said he can’t release years of returns because he is undergoing an audit, although there’s historical evidence to the contrary.
- After declining to endorse Trump last week, Paul Ryan said he hoped an upcoming meeting with the presumptive Republican nominee would begin the process of unifying the party in order to defeat Hillary Clinton in November. “To pretend we’re unified as a party after coming through a very bruising primary, which just ended like a week ago, to pretend we’re unified without actually unifying, then we go into the fall at half strength,” Ryan said at his weekly press conference. “This election is too important to go into an election at half strength.”
- Vice president Joe Biden told ABC News this morning that he was planning to run for president until his eldest son, Beau, died of cancer a year ago. What’s more, Biden said, he would have been the best: “I think I would have been the best president” of the candidates running.
- Trump appears to be slightly tempering one of his signature proposals, telling Fox News Channel’s Brian Kilmeade that his plan to ban all foreign Muslims from entering the US is “only a suggestion.” “It hasn’t been called for yet. Nobody’s done it,” Trump said on Kilmeade & Friends, when asked about criticism from the newly elected mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, who is the first Muslim mayor of a major Western capital.
- Trump’s refusal to release his tax returns is “disqualifying” for a presidential candidate, his predecessor as Republican nominee Mitt Romney has said. “There is only one logical explanation for Mr Trump’s refusal to release his returns: there is a bombshell in them,” Romney wrote on Facebook. “Given Mr Trump’s equanimity with other flaws in his history, we can only assume it’s a bombshell of unusual size.”
- Speaking on CNN, embattled North Carolina governor Pat McCrory defended his signing of a controversial law stripping LGBT North Carolinians of protections from discrimination and punishing transgender people who use bathrooms that comport with their gender identity, calling attorney general Loretta Lynch comparison of the law to Jim Crow-era segregation “an insult.” “It’s an insult, and it’s a political statement instead of a legal statement,” McCrory said. “Whether a boy can go into girls restroom - to correlate that to the civil rights movement - is totally irresponsible for the chief legal officer of the United States of America.”
- And one closing remark:
In every state that we have won ... we have had to take on the entire Democratic establishment. We’ve had to take on senators and governors and mayors and members of Congress. That’s what we have taken on, so please, do not moan to me about Hillary Clinton’s problems.
– Bernie Sanders, about Clinton fighting a war on two fronts
That’s all for tonight - tune in tomorrow for our coverage of the meeting between Ryan and Trump, and whatever fallout might result.
Another day, another Elizabeth Warren v. Donald Trump tweet-off:
.@realDonaldTrump can’t talk about Wall St, college costs or min wage, so he spent all day belching insults. Pathetic. Really pathetic.
— Elizabeth Warren (@elizabethforma) May 12, 2016
It’s not every day that billionaire PayPal founder Peter Thiel ends up on a list with a white nationalist. But toss in a bounty hunter, a Tea Party couple from Wife Swap, a border vigilante and a University of California Berkeley undergraduate and you have the makings of Donald Trump’s California delegation to the Republican national convention.
Meet some of the cast of colorful characters who will travel to Cleveland this July to formally anoint Donald Trump as the presidential candidate of the Republican party.
The white nationalist
William Daniel Johnson is a prominent white nationalist who once proposed a constitutional amendment calling for all Americans of non-European non-white descent to be immediately deported. The Southern Poverty Law Center, which maintains a list of hate groups, describes him acidly as an “uninspiring but determined white separatist”.
The controversial ex-lawmaker
Celeste Greig is a former president of California’s Republican Assembly who was ousted in 2013 after making comments about rape that led many to draw comparisons with Todd Akin, the disgraced former Missouri congressman. “The percentage of pregnancies due to rape is small because it’s an act of violence, because the body is traumatized,” Greig said, leading to condemnation from state and national Democratic politicians and, eventually, the delivery of a 28,000-signature petition demanding her resignation, to which Greig capitulated. Ironically, when she made the statement, she was criticizing Akin for the very comments that she immediately echoed. She now blogs about politics under the handle GreigReport.
The celebrity interviewer
Daphne Barak and Erbil Gunasti made their names as a celebrity interviewer and diplomatic press officer turned television producer, respectively, but the couple’s own foray into state politics ended up a little bit wet. Barak was charged with two misdemeanor counts of battery and public intoxication in October 2015, after a fracas at a forum for mayoral candidates in Palm Springs that included Gunasti as one of the candidates. The detective who investigated the case alleged that “Barak opened a water bottle and began pouring water on [another woman], who slapped at the bottle repeatedly and, at one point, struck Barak’s face”, according to the Palm Springs Desert Sun: “As the parties were leaving, Barak allegedly grabbed [another woman’s] cheeks with a ‘clawing’ grasp.” Barak pleaded not guilty, and according to her personal assistant the charges were dismissed. Gunasti did not win the mayoralty, but an interview he gave to the Desert Sun about his candidacy hints at his political affinity to Trump: “Power, money, celebrity – if you can bring all three in one place, you do wonders there.”
Asked for comment about the couple’s selection as delegates, Barak’s personal assistant responded: “Daphne Barak’s lifestyle encompasses many well known names from North America and worldwide. Trump family is one of them. It is a relationship dating back two decades.”
Donald Trump continues to hint about the composition of his vice presidential short list, telling Fox News tonight that both former Arizona governor Jan Brewer and Oklahoma governor Mary Fallin are likely to make the cut.
“Jan Brewer has been fantastic,” Trump said. “She has been so fantastic. You know I won so big, her territory, we won so big. And she is a fabulous woman. And I agree with you, the governor of Oklahoma - fabulous person.”
Saying that there were roughly five to seven people on the short list, Trump declined to confirm or deny that early endorser Chris Christie had also made the cut. “I don’t want to say ‘in there,’ but he’s helping me and he was an early endorsement and a very enthusiastic one and he’s a friend of mine and a very good guy and a talented guy and he’s helping us a lot,” Trump said.
Hillary Clinton: 'I will be a vocal champion for DC statehood'
In a strongly worded editorial in the Washington Informer on the expansion and protection of voter rights, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton declared that she will be a vocal proponent of giving the residents of the nation’s capital a voice in Congress.
“Enfranchisement isn’t solely a matter of individual rights,” Clinton wrote. “In the case of our nation’s capital, we have an entire populace that is routinely denied a voice in its own democracy.”
“Washington, DC, is home to nearly 700,000 Americans – more than the entire population of several states,” Clinton continued. “Washingtonians serve in the military, serve on juries and pay taxes just like everyone else. And yet they don’t even have a vote in Congress.”
(It’s true! The District of Columbia is a federal district under the jurisdiction of Congress, meaning that it has no elected representative or senators, as well as limited control over its own budget and laws. The statehood movement in Washington, DC has been stymied for complicated constitutional reasons - as well as naked political reason, since the heavily Democratic city would likely add two liberal senators to the US senate.)
“Lacking representatives with voting power, the District of Columbia is often neglected when it comes to federal appropriations,” Clinton pointed out. “Many of the District’s decisions are also at the mercy of right-wing ideologues in Congress, and as you can imagine, they don’t show very much of it. Everything from commonsense gun laws to providing women’s health care and efforts to cut down on drug abuse has been halted by Republicans, who claim the District is an exception to their long-held notion that communities ought to be able to govern themselves.”
“Solidarity is no longer enough,” Clinton concluded. “We need a solution. That’s why, as president, I will be a vocal champion for DC statehood. Washingtonians are Americans, too, and it’s time they had a say in their own status. “
Every bold advancement of progress in the United States is met by a racist backlash, says the Guardian’s Steven Thrasher. So, he argues, it would make complete sense if Donald Trump became the next president.
Until 2043, when America is mostly non-white, true political revolution will not come.
Whoever said that there were no second acts in American public life (okay we know it was F. Scott Fitzgerald) wasn’t counting on life after the death of a major presidential campaign: Texas senator Ted Cruz, fresh off of his so-close-yet-so-far bid for the Republican nomination, has filed to run for reelection to his senate seat in 2018.
“I will continue fighting for jobs, freedom and security in the Senate,” Cruz’s office said in a statement. “The conservative movement remains strong and vibrant.”
The chaos over Donald Trump’s California delegation to the national convention escalated today after a controversial, anti-Muslim pastor said he was standing down from the Republican presumptive nominee’s delegation to “take one for the team,” report the Guardian’s Julia Carrie Wong and Nicky Woolf.
Pastor Guy St Onge, who proselytizes frequently on Youtube, told the Guardian he was no longer a delegate. Onge has in the past shared social media postings appearing to advocate the killing of Muslims and last year claimed: “Barack Hussein Obama and his tranny wife Michelle hates the U.S.A.!”
St Onge, who is listed on the California secretary of state’s official list as one of three delegates pledged to Trump from California’s 35th Congressional District, declined to say precisely when he stood down. The list was formally submitted by the Trump campaign on Monday night.
However St Onge informed the Guardian of his decision to relinquish his delegate spot hours after reporters contacted the Trump campaign asking for confirmation the controversial pastor was among a colorful list of delegates, some of whom have a controversial past.
On Tuesday, the Trump campaign was forced to distance itself from another one of their delegates, self-avowed white nationalist William Daniel Johnson, who once called for a constitutional amendment which would revoke citizenship for all non-white Americans.
It is unclear if either St Onge or Johnson can be formally removed from Trump’s delegate list. California’s secretary of state said that the Trump campaign had attempted to send a revised delegate list on Tuesday, the day that news broke about Johnson’s inclusion. However, because they had missed the deadline the secretary of state decided the initial list must stand.
North Carolina governor: Attorney general's Jim Crow comparison 'an insult'
Speaking on CNN, embattled North Carolina governor Pat McCrory defended his signing of a controversial law stripping LGBT North Carolinians of protections from discrimination and punishing transgender people who use bathrooms that comport with their gender identity, calling attorney general Loretta Lynch comparison of the law to Jim Crow-era segregation “an insult.”
“It’s an insult, and it’s a political statement instead of a legal statement,” McCrory said. “Whether a boy can go into girls restroom - to correlate that to the civil rights movement - is totally irresponsible for the chief legal officer of the United States of America.”
The attorney general, in announcing a federal lawsuit against North Carolina for violating the rights of public school students in passing the law, had compared the bill to segregation laws that were also once on the books in the state.
“It was not so very long ago that states, including North Carolina, had signs above restrooms, water fountains and on public accommodations keeping people out based upon a distinction without a difference,” Lynch said on Monday. In the suit, Lynch described the North Carolina law as violating Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bans discrimination on the basis of sex in the workplace.
According to McCrory, however, the suit is merely indicative of a left-wing conspiracy. “North Carolina has, for whatever reason, become the target of the left on this issue,” McCrory said. “To have the Justice Department come out with a massive interpretation of the Civil Rights Act for every employer is something that I think needs clarification from the federal courts.”
New Jersey governor and onetime presidential candidate Chris Christie is rolling his eyes at calls for Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee to whom he has hitched his wagon, to release his tax returns, deriding calls from Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton “ironic.”
WATCH: @ChrisChristie on Trump's tax returns: "Ironic that Hillary Clinton is talking about transparency to anyone." https://t.co/r1oFOhFRFd
— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) May 11, 2016
“I find it ironic that Hillary Clinton is talking about transparency to anyone, given that she had her own email server that she used constantly and had her colleagues in the State Department use in order to avoid FOIArequests and any transparency to the public,” Christie said at a speech in New Jersey today.
“So I hardly believe that Hillary Clinton is in any place to be giving a critique on transparency.”
Donald Trump is now saying that he will release his tax returns once a government audit is complete, rather than after the presidential election.
In interview I told @AP that my taxes are under routine audit and I would release my tax returns when audit is complete, not after election!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 11, 2016
Bad news for certain House speakers who hope to strong-arm presidential candidates into conforming to conservative orthodoxy: They might not be as popular as their opponent among the Republican rank-and-file.
That’s the word from Public Policy Polling, whose new national poll finds that only 30% of voters nationwide approve of Paul Ryan’s performance as speaker, with a near-majority of 48% disapproving. Even worse news for Ryan: He’s even viewed negatively by a plurality of Republican voters, with only 40% approving of his performance while 44% disapprove. Meanwhile, 86% of Republican voters plan on voting for the Republican presidential nominee, the only form of approval that presumptive nominee Donald Trump likely cares about.
It’s a big change for Ryan’s standings in the party since November, when the same poll found that 69% of Republican voters supported Ryan’s ascension to the role of speaker.
Silver lining: Ryan doing much better nationally than Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, whose performance in the upper house is approved of by a mere 11% of voters, and a stunning 14% of Republicans - only four points better than his approval ratings among Democrats.
In a wide-ranging interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, newly elected London mayor Sadiq Khan said today that he hopes that Donald Trump is not elected president, largely due to his stance on Muslim immigration. (Namely, that there should be none.)
“I’m hoping he’s not the guy that wins,” Khan said bluntly in the interview, instead casting his lot behind Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton. “Not only does Hillary have a fantastic track record and she’s very, very experienced, I’m the father of two daughters - I’m a proud feminist in city hall. Just imagine the message it sends to my daughters and to girls around the world that the president of the United States of America is a woman, not any woman, a woman with the gravitas, with the experience, somebody who is a unifier in leading the USA.”
Khan cited his own election as the first Muslim mayor of a Western capital city as evidence that voters can see beyond racial and religious animosity.
“London has chosen hope over fear,” Khan said. “I’m really proud that London chose unity over division. And my message to Donald Trump and his team is that your views of Islam are ignorant. It is possible to be a Muslim and to live in the west. It is possible to be a Muslim and to love America.”
Eighty-seven-year-old billionaire T. Boone Pickens has shruggingly endorsed presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, telling attendees of a convention in Las Vegas today that he has taken a shine to the tycoon’s plan to ban Muslims from entering the US, and said that, worst-case-scenario, he’ll likely be dead before anything truly results from Trump’s election.
“I’m ready to take a chance on it,” the oil billionaire said. “And just in case it’s a mistake, [I’ll] be gone.”
Pickens appears to have chosen Trump as the candidate of last resort, having previously endorsed former Florida governor Jeb Bush and lambasting Trump as not “even have experience running a lemonade stand.”
“We’ve turned our presidential selection process into a reality TV show,” Pickens wrote in a LinkedIn post supporting Bush at the time. “Hell, it’s worse than reality TV. Why? Because this reality TV show is about the selecting the leader of the Free World.”
Mitt Romney: It is 'disqualifying' that Donald Trump won't release his tax returns
Donald Trump’s refusal to release his tax returns is “disqualifying” for a presidential candidate, his predecessor as Republican nominee Mitt Romney has said.
“There is only one logical explanation for Mr Trump’s refusal to release his returns: there is a bombshell in them,” Romney wrote. “Given Mr Trump’s equanimity with other flaws in his history, we can only assume it’s a bombshell of unusual size.”
Although not legally required of presidential candidates, the release of tax returns has been considered the norm for party nominees since Gerald Ford released a copy of his tax returns in 1976. Trump had previously declared in a presidential debate that he would release his tax information, shrugging off delays as due to the inherent complexity of his personal fortune.
“I have very big tax returns,” Trump told NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday. “I’m sure you’ve seen the picture where the returns are literally from the floor to up to here. They’re extremely complex.”
Trump said in February, however, that audits of his federal income taxes prevented him from releasing his taxes, but that “as soon as the audit is done,” he would release his tax information.
There are no laws prohibiting tax returns under audit from being released. Richard Nixon released his own taxes under audit in 1973.
“It is disqualifying for a modern-day presidential nominee to refuse to release tax returns to the voters, especially one who has not been subject to public scrutiny in either military or public service,” Romney wrote. “Tax returns provide the public with its sole confirmation of the veracity of a candidate’s representations regarding charities, priorities, wealth, tax conformance, and conflicts of interest.”
He added: “Mr Trump says he is being audited. So? There is nothing that prevents releasing tax returns that are being audited. Further, he could release returns for the years immediately prior to the years under audit.”
Romney stated: “While not a likely circumstance, the potential for hidden inappropriate associations with foreign entities, criminal organizations, or other unsavory groups is simply too great a risk to ignore for someone who is seeking to become commander-in-chief.”
Romney himself was criticized during the 2012 campaign for initially refusing to release his own returns, and then, upon their release, for not releasing any before the year 2010.
Updated
You may have missed it during the primaries last night, but will appearing on Fox News, Donald Trump told Bill O’Reilly that he would appoint supreme court justices that would overturn Roe v. Wade, and assured his supporters that their best chance at banning abortion entirely would be to vote for him.
“I’ve become pro-life - I was in a meek fashion pro-choice but I’ve become pro-life,” Trump told O’Reilly. “I will protect [anti-abortion views], and the biggest way you can protect it is through the supreme court, and putting people on the court - actually, the biggest way that you can protect it is by electing me president.”
“I’m going to put conservative judges on - I think one of the biggest things happening in terms of this election are, it could be as many as five judges.”
Dawn Laguens, the executive vice president of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, declared Trump’s agenda “dangerous.”
“Women can’t trust Donald Trump,” Laguens said. “Donald Trump goes on sexist rants that demean and disrespect women, and backs it up with a policy agenda that is dangerous and ignores the very real issues women face in this country. Donald Trump promises to make abortion illegal and is pushing to block millions of people from birth control and lifesaving cancer screenings at Planned Parenthood health centers –– even if it means shutting down the government.”
Conservative talk-radio personality Rush Limbaugh is helping out Republican listeners who are having trouble circling the square of Donald Trump’s past donations to and nice statements about Hillary Clinton and her husband, chalking up past declarations that “he’s a really good guy and she’s a really good person and woman” to a massive, four-year plan by the presumptive Republican nominee to get the Clintons exactly where he wants them.
“Will we finally now admit how brilliant Trump is?” Limbaugh said on his show. “Can we all finally admit that he’s been setting these people up for years? He’s been out there praising the Clintons. He’s been fooling them. He’s been making the Clintons think he loves them, he supports them, he’s in their camp, he’s got them tamed, they’re not even thinking about Trump, even looking about Trump, and Trump is just icing them.”
“Trump is gonna come out of the blue one day and just squash these people,” Limbaugh continued. “What a brilliant, brilliant move to keep them off guard and set them up.”
Donald Trump: Proposed ban on Muslims 'only a suggestion'
Presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump appears to be slightly tempering one of his signature proposals, telling Fox News Channel’s Brian Kilmeade that his plan to ban all foreign Muslims from entering the US is “only a suggestion.”
“It hasn’t been called for yet. Nobody’s done it,” Trump said on Kilmeade & Friends, when asked about criticism from the newly elected mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, who is the first Muslim mayor of a major Western capital.
“It’s a temporary ban, it hasn’t been called for yet, nobody’s done it, this is just a suggestion until we find out what’s going on,” Trump said. “We have radical Islamic terrorism all over the world, you can go to Paris, you can go to San Bernardino, all over the world, if they want to deny it, they can deny it, I don’t choose to deny it.”
The “total and complete shutdown” on Muslim travel to the US, first proposed in December, has become a major plank of Trump’s candidacy, despite criticism that the policy is as unconstitutional as it is incendiary.
Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton has promised to release any and all government files relating to unidentified flying objects - excuse us, “unexplained aerial phenomenon” - but voters worried/delighted about the possibility of little green men will have to wait until the end of the current administration to see those X-files.
“I’m not aware of any plans the president has to make public any information about this,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest told journalists during a briefing, after he was asked whether the president plans on doing so himself.
“I have to admit that I don’t have a tab in my briefing book for Area 51,” Earnest joked.
Warren warns Trump: 'your free ride is over'
Earlier today, Donald Trump returned on Twitter to a favorite subject (obsession?) of his of late: “goofy” Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts senator whose advocacy for consumer protection and bank regulation have made her a progressive standard-bearer, and who has been the subject of some (possibly baseless) talk that she could be a running mate to Hillary Clinton.
Goofy Elizabeth Warren has been one of the least effective Senators in the entire U.S. Senate. She has done nothing!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 11, 2016
Goofy Elizabeth Warren didn’t have the guts to run for POTUS. Her phony Native American heritage stops that and VP cold.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 11, 2016
Now Warren is replying:
We get it, @realDonaldTrump: When a woman stands up to you, you’re going to call her a basket case. Hormonal. Ugly.
— Elizabeth Warren (@elizabethforma) May 11, 2016
Do you think you're going to shut us up, @realDonaldTrump? Think again. It's time to answer for your dangerous ideas.
— Elizabeth Warren (@elizabethforma) May 11, 2016
You care so much about struggling American workers,@realDonaldTrump, that you want to abolish the federal minimum wage?
You feel so much for people with college debt, @realDonaldTrump, that you raked in millions scamming students with Trump University?
You’re so concerned about Wall Street, @realDonaldTrump, that you say you’d “absolutely” repeal Dodd-Frank?
When asked what gov should stop doing, @realDonaldTrump said overseeing banks! How can you be tough on Wall Street by letting them off?
.@realDonaldTrump: Your policies are dangerous. Your words are reckless. Your record is embarrassing. And your free ride is over.
— Elizabeth Warren (@elizabethforma) May 11, 2016
Clinton thanks Camden, New Jersey and the crowd claps her off.
For one encapsulation of her vulnerability as a candidate, listen to Jon Stewart’s interview with David Axelrod, in which the former Daily Show host is applauded at saying he’s not sure what her convictions are:
the student applause after Jon Stewart's 1st comment about @HillaryClinton should terrify her https://t.co/HA9YR7U2kK
— Peter Beinart (@PeterBeinart) May 11, 2016
Jon Stewart absolutely skewers Hillary Clinton here. The media quoted him on Trump and left this out.
— Shaun King (@ShaunKing) May 10, 2016
Wow.https://t.co/3GsKnsyEsC
Updated
Clinton says, as she previously has, that she plans on ignoring “personal” attacks by Trump:
I am not going to respond to the insults and the attacks coming from Donald Trump in this campaign. He can say whatever he wants to say about me personally. I will stand up and fight for any American that he attacks and insults. We are better than that and we will act like that.
How do you explain to your children when somebody running for president encourages somebody to be beaten up? Encourages violence?...
I will also search for common ground.
She also says that she plans to pursue questions about Trump’s tax returns – and blasts his tax policy:
"Why doesn’t he want to release them? Yeah, we’ll we’re going to find out," HRC says of Trump's tax returns
— Monica Alba (@albamonica) May 11, 2016
Hillary Clinton in New Jersey: “Donald Trump’s tax plan was written by a billionaire for billionaires.”
— Thomas Kaplan (@thomaskaplan) May 11, 2016
Hillary Clinton is holding a rally in New Jersey, and has just turned to an attack on Trump, promising to get to the issue of his taxes and detailing why she thinks he’s a “loose cannon.”
“You go down the list, and you’ve got a really reckless, even dangerous agenda... there’s a lot of concern around the world about his candidacy. Because it really matters.”
Watch live here:
Trump refuses to release tax returns
Another presidential election, another Republican nominee who refuses to release his taxes. Like Mitt Romney before him, Donald Trump is rejecting calls for him to release his tax returns, telling the AP that “there’s nothing to learn from them” and that voters are not interested.
Trump also has said he can’t release years of returns because he is undergoing an audit, a causal relationship that Romney himself has called out as bushwa:
No legit reason @realDonaldTrump can't release returns while being audited, but if scared, release earlier returns no longer under audit.
— Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) February 26, 2016
Romney similarly resisted intrusive public inquiry into whether he had paid his taxes while nursing the ambition to be president. In January 2012 Romney released his 2010 tax return, and he released his 2011 return in September 2012, revealing he had paid an effective tax rate of between 10% and 15% on varying piles of millions in income. Romney declined to release earlier returns. Hillary Clinton’s tax returns going back longer than you may care to read are online here. Bernie Sanders’ 2014 1040, showing just over $200,000 in income, is here.
Trump said he did not expect to release his tax returns before November, meaning likely not at all. The refusal has stoked speculation that he has something to hide, such as a small income, small charity giving, or a small effective tax rate.
Ironically, Trump told Fox News in January 2012 that Romney’s failure to release his tax returns had hurt him “badly”:
I think Mitt was hurt really very badly by this whole thing with the income tax returns. I believe he should have given them April 1, but I didn’t think going into a little bit of detail without going into a lot of detail was positive thing.
Donald Trump is building a giant, beautiful wall between America and his tax returns https://t.co/wqPwFjzI7Z pic.twitter.com/vIDB5yhcnD
— Chris Cillizza (@TheFix) May 11, 2016
Trump says he can't share his returns during an IRS audit. But that didn't hinder Nixon -- of all people -- in 1972 https://t.co/HvMIpDrBkm
— Brad Bainum (@bradbainum) May 11, 2016
Updated
Sanders: 'please do not moan to me about Hillary Clinton's problems'
In an interview, NBC’s Andrea Mitchell tells Bernie Sanders that Clinton has had to deal with more punishment at Trump’s hands than he has, that “she’s fighting two candidates and you’re fighting one.”
Sanders does not overflow with sympathy:
Since people asked, here's full context of Sanders telling @mitchellreports not to "moan" about Clinton's problems. pic.twitter.com/gvZHmkNJ7E
— Alex Seitz-Wald (@aseitzwald) May 11, 2016
The Guardian’s Adam Gabbatt has gone inside one of the least-heralded candidacies of the election cycle: Jim Hedges’ run at the presidency on the Prohibition ticket. Prohibition, as in no alcohol for anyone.
Hedges isn’t optimistic about his chances of winning, Adam writes:
Nor should he be. The Prohibition party got 270,000 votes in one presidential election, but that was in 1892. In 2012, the party made it on to the ballot in only one state and only 518 people voted for it.
But this time will be different, Hedges says. The Prohibition party is hoping to be on the ballot in six states.
“If I get a thousand votes in each of these six states I’ll be happy,” Hedges says. “It’ll make us look like a going concern again.”
Late in the interview, Hedges controversially reveals to Adam that alcohol has passed his lips. Read the full piece here:
Here’s a clip of Ryan earlier saying the “Republican party cannot pretend to be unified”:
Carson predicts Trump-Ryan kumbaya
Ben Carson, the retired neurosurgeon and former Republican candidate, and now an operative with broad portfolio within the Trump campaign, has spoken with House speaker Paul Ryan in advance of a summit tomorrow between the House leadership and the presumptive nominee.
Carson thinks the two sides are on the verge of working this whole thing out:
“We talked about the big issues, and I think they are going to have a very, very substantive and good meeting,” Carson told the Washington Post. “I suspect that after they meet they’ll feel much closer.”
Ryan said Monday and today that he simply needs to get to know Trump before party unity can be achieved. It was unclear whether Ryan thought a single meeting Thursday would be enough.
Truth. Hats off for the retiring senator from Maryland:
.@SenatorBarb says she's worked with Clinton on "the macro issues and the macaroni and cheese issues"
— Jennifer Epstein (@jeneps) May 11, 2016
incredible Mikulski line. classic. https://t.co/Pg53HMmAru
— Ian Sams (@IanSams) May 11, 2016
If Hillary Clinton does lose this election, it won’t be owing to a failure of industriousness on the part of her media clips team, which has just released a package of Donald Trump’s 15 most damning – or distinguishing, depending on your perspective – headlines from the last week:
It's been a banner week for @realDonaldTrump... https://t.co/u9Qmw3Z8Ri
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) May 11, 2016
Trump-Clinton in virtual tie – poll
Reuters says it has gauged “a big increase in support” for Donald Trump in a potential Trump-Clinton matchup. A new Reuters/Ipsos poll has the race pretty much a tie:
In the most recent survey, 41 percent of likely voters supported Clinton, the Democratic front-runner, and 40 percent backed Trump, with 19 percent not decided on either yet, according to the online poll of 1,289 people conducted from Friday to Tuesday. The poll had a credibility interval of about 3 percentage points.
Is the general election neck-and-neck? This poll alone is not indicative. Presidents are chosen via the electoral college, not a national referendum. The general election is six months away and opinions change. Candidates typically experience a polling bump after clinching the nomination, as Trump has recently. We’re a few months away from what FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver calls “rich data”:
7. Looking at Electoral College is great once you have rich data — multiple recent polls of each state. We won't have that for a few months.
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) May 10, 2016
Update:
.@timothywright3 Most polls show Trump getting a 1-3 bounce from clinching the nomination. Ipsos shows larger. Wait for more data.
— Harry Enten (@ForecasterEnten) May 11, 2016
Updated
Biden: I would have been Potus with the motus
Vice president Joe Biden told ABC News this morning that he was planning to run for president until his eldest son, Beau, died of cancer a year ago. What’s more, Biden, said, he would have been the best: “It’s an awful thing to say—I think I would have been the best president” of the candidates running, he said, continuing:
No one should ever seek the presidency unless they’re able to devote their whole heart and soul and passion into just doing that. And, Beau was my soul. I just wasn’t ready to be able to do that. But, so, my one regret is my Beau’s not here. I don’t have any other regrets.
On Tuesday Biden predicted that Hillary Clinton would win the Democratic presidential nomination and go on to win the presidency.
We could have had it all America pic.twitter.com/bXcvgX6ahk
— Stephen Miller (@redsteeze) May 11, 2016
Updated
Reuters teases a new poll with “Trump nearly even with Clinton.” The data pool on the general election contest is still scarce but appears to coalesce around a 6-point lead or so for Clinton, according to FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver. Clinton has yet to win the Democratic nomination and was beaten by 15 points by Bernie Sanders in West Virginia last night.
EXCLUSIVE: Trump pulls nearly even with Clinton in potential presidential matchup - Reuters/IPSOS poll
— Reuters Politics (@ReutersPolitics) May 11, 2016
More on the Reuters release soon.
Ryan: 'this is a big-tent party'
Here’s some of what House speaker Ryan said, leaving the door wide open on a makeup narrative to emerge after the House leadership meeting tomorrow with Donald Trump.
Ryan said that it was important not to pretend to unity after such a bruising primary but to actually achieve unity in order to beat Hillary Clinton in November.
“To pretend we’re unified with out actually unifying, then we go into the election at half strength,” which would be a disaster, Ryan says. “We need a real unification.”
“I want to be a part of that unifying process so that we’re at full strength this fall. We cannot afford to lose this election to Hillary Clinton.”
Of Trump, Ryan repeats a line he said in an interview on Monday, that “I don’t really know him. I met him once in person... we just need to get to know each other.”
Ryan concludes, “We as a leadership team are enjoying the fact” that we get to meet with him... “This is a big-tent party.”
Whatever reservations Ryan had about Trump appear to be quickly dissipating.
Updated
Ryan: 'I want to be part of unifying process'
Ryan takes a question at the leadership conference. He appears to be coming around on Trump, or laying the groundwork to come around on Trump. He says the GOP is a “big-tent party” and says “I want to be a part of that unifying process.”
More shortly.
Donald Trump sees an InBev marketing stunt announced yesterday to temporarily rename Budweiser beer “America” as logical given how awesome the country is about to be:
Peak Trump this morning on Fox and Friends: pic.twitter.com/s6c7SiAXbH
— Sopan Deb (@SopanDeb) May 11, 2016
Read more about America beer here:
The House Republican leadership is holding its weekly news conference. Watch live here:
Senator Tom Cotton, the Republican military veteran from Arkansas who has made a name for his sharp criticism of the Iran nuclear deal and as the youngest member of the upper chamber, declined to rule out accepting a nod as Donald Trump’s running mate, after months in which he has praised Trump’s assault on Nato and said Trump “could be the commander in chief.”
Cotton was asked by US News and World Report whether he would accept an offer to be Trump’s running mate. The following exchange ensued:
A: (Laughs) I haven’t seen it floated out there. Like I said I’ve been focusing my political work on making sure that we hold the Senate and focus the rest of the time on my son.
Q: So that’s not ruling it out?
A: I wouldn’t rule it in either.
So you’ll be voting for Donald Trump in November?
I’ve said all along, I’ll support the nominee, because we can’t afford another term of the Obama-Clinton foreign policy or for that matter, economic policy at home. And now Donald Trump’s the presumptive nominee. So we obviously need to do some work to unify around our common and shared principles and Donald’s got the responsibility and opportunity to do that in the coming weeks.
Trump said Tuesday that he had whittled his list of potential running mates to “a very good list of five or six people.”
Hello and welcome to our live-wire coverage of the 2016 race for the White House. Bernie Sanders scored an authoritative, 15-point victory over rival Hillary Clinton in West Virginia’s Democratic primary Tuesday night, adding a skip to his step as he turned to campaign in the forthcoming states of Oregon and Kentucky.
Sanders did not gain much on Clinton in the delegates race, however, in which he trails by more than 280 pledged delegates with a dwindling number of contests to go (see delegate tracker below). “We are in this campaign to win the Democratic presidential nomination,” he said.
Donald Trump, meanwhile, pulled to within 100 delegates of claiming a 1,237 majority Tuesday night after winning enthusiastic support from the primary voters of West Virginia and Nebraska. Visit our full results page here.
Speaking of Trump, lawmakers on Capitol Hill have begun to review the next defense budget, which for some Republicans reveals the extreme tension between Trump and the traditional Republican defense establishment:
Trump’s foreign policy is an inane jumble of jingoistic sloganeering, and the NDAA is a serious document,” said John Noonan, a national security aide to former presidential aspirants Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush.
Republican national committee chairman Reince Priebus on Tuesday night called Clinton’s defeat “embarrassing”, eliciting an outpouring of sympathetic replies on Twitter:
Hi, @Reince. I made a little chart for you to put things into perspective. I think you may find it useful. pic.twitter.com/Lc724uI6pG
— T. Becket Adams (@BecketAdams) May 11, 2016
Thank you as always for reading and please join us in the comments.
