Today in Campaign 2016
Kicking off the first week that we can remember where we aren’t anticipating a presidential primary debate, nominating contest or caucus, Monday was still plenty busy, with palace intrigue in the Donald Trump campaign joined by continued fallout from the billionaire’s online feud with fellow candidate Ted Cruz.
On the Democratic front, a thorough thumping by Bernie Sanders in the so-called Pacific Primary on Saturday gave Hillary Clinton’s campaign a spook that may end up threatening future scheduled debates between the two.
Here’s a quick wrap-up of the most important political news from today:
- The War of the Wives continued, with Donald Trump refusing to apologize for having public spats with Ted Cruz about whose wife is prettier during an interview with Charles Sykes, a Wisconsin radio shock jock this morning. “I didn’t start it. He started it,” said Trump. “Wow. You realize we’re not on a playground and that you’re running for president, right?” said Sykes, a well-known Cruz supporter and part of the #NeverTrump movement. “My views are not playground views,” replied Trump.
- Temperatures will already be running hot at the possibly-contested Republican National Convention in July, but no one will be packing heat, after Secret Service ruled that guns are banned. A petition with 45,000 signatures and counting called on event organizers to allow people to carry guns. Ohio is an open-carry state, but the venue, the Quicken Loans Arena, bans all firearms. Only law enforcement would be allowed to carry gun, said the Secret Service spokesman. “Individuals determined to be carrying firearms will not be allowed past a predetermined outer perimeter checkpoint, regardless of whether they possess a ticket to the event,” spokesman Robert Hoback said.
- Dana Scavino, social media director for Trump’s presidential campaign, is fanning the flames of the unsupported conspiracy theory that rival Cruz has engaged in a physical relationship with his former communications director.
Amazing. @realDonaldTrump's fault. https://t.co/zpPOwG3IEq
— Dan Scavino (@DanScavino) March 28, 2016
- Stephanie Cegielski, former communications director for the Make American Great Again super-PAC was once Trump’s top strategist. And then she defected. In an article written for xoJane, Cegielski declares that Trump is unfit for office - and writes that the original goal of his candidacy was nothing more than a protest against presumptive nominee Jeb Bush.
- Hillary Clinton had a message for Republicans bemoaning the rise of Trump: “You reap what you sow”. In a speech on Monday, the former secretary of state blamed Republican obstructionism aimed at thwarting President Obama as the root cause of the real estate developer’s incendiary campaign. “Donald Trump didn’t come out of nowhere,” Clinton said in a speech at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “What Republicans have sown with their extremist tactics, they’re now reaping with Trump’s candidacy. Once you make the extreme normal, you open the door to even worse,” she added.
That’s it for tonight - check in tomorrow, the next day and every day after that for up-to-the-minute political news from our team of campaign reporters, filing around the country.
A viral Change.org petition that calls the firearm ban at the Quicken Loans Arena, which is hosting the convention, “a direct affront to the Second Amendment” has collected more than 40,000 signatures, including more than 9,000 in the last 24 hours.
In Ohio, the open carry of a legally possessed gun is fully lawful, but individual businesses can ban weapons from their premises if they so choose.
The Quicken Loans Arena explains on its website that “in accordance with the Ohio’s ‘concealed carry’ law and the right for private entities to ban handguns on their premises, firearms and other weapons of any kind are strictly forbidden on the premises”.
But the petition author, using the username “The Hyperationalist”, said of this policy that “without the right to protect themselves, those at the Quicken Loans Arena will be sitting ducks, utterly helpless against evil-doers, criminals or others who wish to threaten the American way of life”.
Many appear to believe the post and its hyperbolic rhetoric was intended to be satire. According to Change.org, the signers of the petition are more likely to have signed gun violence prevention petitions than the average user, and are “overwhelmingly” leftwing, pro-Democrat and pro-Bernie Sanders, based on other petitions those users have engaged with.
“This takes something that Republicans daily refer to as sound principles and makes them live by it,” said Ladd Everitt, a spokesperson for the Coalition to End Gun Violence. The organization, which opposes unregulated open-carry, tweeted a link to the petition twice Monday morning.
“But I don’t honestly want to see guns carried into that convention because I think people would die,” Everitt said.
Fidel Castro has responded to Barack Obama’s historic trip to Cuba with a lengthy and scornful letter that recounts the history of US aggression against Cuba and reasserts its independence with a warning to the American leader that “we don’t need the empire to give us any presents.”
The 1,500-word letter published in state media, titled “Brother Obama”, was Castro’s first response to the president’s three-day visit last week, in which the American president said he had come to bury the two countries’ history of cold war hostility.
Speaking in Havana, Obama said it was time for the two countries to look forward “as friends and as neighbours and as family, together”.
But in his letter Castro dismisses Obama’s comments as “honey-coated” and said that Cubans “ran the risk of having a heart attack on hearing these words from the president of the United States”.
Governor Nathan Deal of Georgia said on Monday he will veto a religious freedom bill that critics say condones discrimination against LGBT people.
The proposed law would allow individuals and groups to refuse to conduct business with anyone whose marriage they believe violates their religious beliefs. It would also overrule existing anti-discrimination protections in local governments.
“I do not think that we have to discriminate against anyone to protect the faith-based community in Georgia,” Deal said on Monday, saying it was a community he and his family “have been a part of for all of our lives”.
Deal, a Republican, rejected the proposal amid criticism from the public and prominent Georgia businesses.
“I have examined the protections that this bill proposes to provide to the faith-based community and I can find no examples of any of those circumstances occurring in our state,” he said.
Three people, backed by civil liberties groups, have filed a federal lawsuit against North Carolina’s sweeping new LGBT discrimination law, which the plaintiffs say violates the constitution.
Governor Pat McCrory last week signed into law a bill that blocks local governments from enacting laws with anti-discrimination protections for LGBT people and requires transgender people to use bathrooms that match with their biological sex, even if doing so violates their gender identity.
House Bill 2 (HB2) was shuttled through the state government in one day, inspiring a protest from Democratic lawmakers and ensuring a swift response from civil liberties groups despite the Easter weekend. The federal lawsuit was announced on Sunday night.
“By singling out LGBT people for disfavored treatment and explicitly writing discrimination against transgender people into state law,” the lawsuit said, “HB2 violates the most basic guarantees of equal treatment and the US constitution.”
Looks like a rough night on Sean Hannity for Texas senator Ted Cruz...
Hey #CruzCrew, check out Cruz on @seanhannity tonight, but might be last time you watch. Sean spends half the intv pushing Trump smears.
— Brian Phillips (@RealBPhil) March 28, 2016
Hillary Clinton on Donald Trump: "You reap what you sow"
Hillary Clinton had a message for Republicans bemoaning the rise of Donald Trump: “You reap what you sow”.
In a speech on Monday, the former secretary of state blamed Republican obstructionism aimed at thwarting President Obama as the root cause of the real estate developer’s incendiary campaign.
“Donald Trump didn’t come out of nowhere,” Clinton said in a speech at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “What Republicans have sown with their extremist tactics, they’re now reaping with Trump’s candidacy.”
“Once you make the extreme normal, you open the door to even worse,” she added.
In the speech, Clinton asked voters to consider – “as scary as it might be” – who Trump might pick to fill the supreme court vacancy left by the death of justice Antonin Scalia in February. The president has nominated judge Merrick Garland, but Republican leadership in the Senate has refused to grant him a hearing.
Clinton singled out Senate judiciary chair Chuck Grassley of Iowa, who - along with Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky - has committed to keeping Garland from having a hearing. Republicans have argued that the next president should replace Scalia on the bench. Clinton quoted Grassley, who has said that allowing Obama to pick the nominee is in effect denying voters a voice in shaping the supreme court.
“As one of the more than 65 million Americans who voted to re-elect Barack Obama, I’d say my voice is being ignored,” Clinton argued. “I’m adding my voice to the chorus asking Senator Grassley to step up and do his job. He should hold a hearing.”
In the speech, Clinton articulated why she believed Democrats should make the supreme court vacancy a voting issue, noting that the next president will likely may two or three more additional nominations to the bench during the next four years. Clinton invoked the seminal 1965 supreme court case Griswold v Connecticut, that effectively decided a woman’s right to use birth control. A young high school student at the time, Clinton said the case underscored the role the nation’s highest court played in expanding – or restricting – the rights of America’s most vulnerable and marginalized people.
“For a long time now the ideological bent of the court has led our country in the wrong direction, stacking the deck in favor of the wealthy and powerful,” Clinton said. She promised to appoint justices who would expand civil and human rights, and cited the supreme court’s role in legalizing same-sex marriage.
“I will appoint justices...who will protect a woman’s right to choose, rather than billionaires’ right to buy elections,” she pledged.
Clinton is campaigning in Wisconsin ahead of the state’s primary on 5 April, where she will try to end her opponent Vermont senator Bernie Sanders hot streak. The senator has picked up momentum after winning five out of the last six Democratic nominating contests.
His string of victories over the weekend has erupted into a testy exchange between the Democratic rivals over whether Sanders has a viable path forward.
On Monday, the campaigns held dueling press calls on the matter. “While Hillary Clinton is the clear frontrunner … she has emerged as a weak frontrunner,” Sanders’ strategist Tad Devine told reporters on a conference call on Monday. Hours later, Clinton’s top strategist, Joel Benenson, told reporters that former secretary of state’s lead was “nearly insurmountable” and that there “simply is not enough real estate left” for Sanders to close the pledged-delegate gap.
Bernie Sanders has gone on an astounding run in the Democratic presidential race in the last week. In five out of the last six states to vote, nearly three out of every four voters have selected the Vermont senator over Hillary Clinton. “We believe we have a path to victory,” Sanders strategist Tad Devine told reporters on a conference call on Monday. “While Hillary Clinton is the clear frontrunner … she has emerged as a weak frontrunner.”
But have Sanders’s chances of grasping the nomination improved appreciably with his big wins out west? Even setting aside the former secretary of state’s lead among superdelegates – party elites who can vote however they choose – the relatively small number of pledged delegates at stake in the recent state contests means Sanders did not actually gain much ground.
He won a total of 128 delegates in Arizona, Idaho, Utah, Alaska, Hawaii and Washington combined, to Clinton’s 75. That puts Clinton on 1,712 delegates including 469 superdelegates, while Sanders has 1,004, including 29 superdelegates. A total of 2,383 are needed to win the nomination.
Sanders, however, is claiming momentum, and his campaign points to more than$4m in donations that have poured in since Saturday. In fact, given certain ideal conditions – including a herd shift among those superdelegates – Sanders still has a chance to win the nomination, if he can do at least three things.
The US government has dropped its court fight against Apple after it successfully pulled data from the iPhone of San Bernardino gunman Syed Farook, according to court records.
The development effectively ends a six-week legal battle that was poised to shape digital privacy for years to come. Justice Department lawyers wrote in a court filing Monday evening that they no longer needed Apple’s help in getting around the security countermeasures on Farook’s device.
“The government has now successfully accessed the data stored on Farook’s iPhone and therefore no longer requires the assistance from Apple Inc,” the government said. It then asked the court to vacate a 16 February court order demanding Apple create software that weakened iPhone security settings to aid government investigators.
The Guardian has reported that the technique used by the government has been classified.
Former Trump adviser: "He is the presidential equivalent of Sanjaya on American Idol"
Stephanie Cegielski, former communications director for the Make American Great Again super-PAC was once billionaire Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump’s top strategist.
And then she defected.
In an article written for xoJane, Cegielski declares that Trump is unfit for office - and writes that the original goal of his candidacy was nothing more than a protest against presumptive nominee Jeb Bush.
Some highlights:
- “The Trump camp would have been satisfied to see him polling at 12% and taking second place to a candidate who might hold 50%. His candidacy was a protest candidacy.”
- “The exchange with Megyn Kelly was like manna from heaven for a communications director. She appeared like yet another reporter trying to kick out the guest who wasn’t invited to the party.”
- “He certainly was never prepared or equipped to go all the way to the White House, but his ego has now taken over the driver’s seat, and nothing else matters. The Donald does not fail. The Donald does not have any weakness. The Donald is his own biggest enemy.”
- “Many people are not aware of the Trump campaign’s internal slogan, but I will tell you. It is stolen from a make-believe television presidency on The West Wing where Martin Sheen portrayed President Bartlet. The slogan on the show amongst the idealistic group of Bartlet’s staff was ‘Let Bartlet Be Bartlet.’ Inside the Trump camp, the slogan became ‘Let Trump Be Trump.’”
Tourists visiting the US Capitol in Washington DC described a tense situation after shots were fired inside the visitors center. There was confusion in early accounts about what occurred, but police said a suspect was taken into custody with wounds after shots were fired. Police said the suspect was taken to hospital. The officer did not identify or describe the suspect and he added that there were no additional suspects.
Ivanka Trump, daughter of the real estate magnate, has dedicated much of her professional life to the family business, writes the Guardian’s Megan Carpentier. Will his race for the White House help or hurt her?
Ivanka Trump, like her friend Chelsea Clinton, doesn’t like the press very much. Perhaps that’s understandable coming from the daughter of Donald Trump, who grew up with outrageous headlines targeting her father hitting the newsstands with alarming regularity. One of them – a quote from his then mistress Marla Maples – spelled “THE BEST SEX I EVER HAD”.
In a 2007 interview with GQ, Ivanka described the media at that time as “vicious and brutal”, as she recounted being accosted by photographers outside theexclusive all-girls Chapin school in Manhattan. One of them asked her for a comment on whether it was true that her father was good in bed. She was nine.
“It taught me not to trust anyone,” she said. “You can never let your guard down, and I never really have since that time.”
Update: Shooter at Capitol was the only person seriously injured
In a press conference, Capitol police chief Matthew Verderosa said that based on the preliminary investigation, the incident was believed to be that “act of single person who has frequented Capitol grounds before and [we have] no reason to believe that this is anything more than a criminal act”.
A female bystander suffered minor injuries and was transported to hospital, Verderosa said. The shooter, a long male, is currently undergoing surgery and his condition is unknown.
The shooting, which occurred in the Capitol visitors center, an underground entrance to the Capitol building for tourists, sowed panic in Washington on a pleasant spring day.
How, exactly, does a “Brooklynite” campaign?
That’s the question Hillary Clinton’s chief campaign strategist seemed to beg after tweeting that the former senator and secretary of state will campaign in New York “like a senator,” unlike rival Bernie Sanders, who will campaign like a... well:
Clinton strategist Joel Beneson says Sanders is going to "campaign like a brooklynite, while Clinton is going to campaign like a senator."
— Max Tani (@maxwelltani) March 28, 2016
Joel Beneson appears to have forgotten that Clinton’s national campaign headquarters is in the heart of Brooklyn - and that insulting a borough of 2.6 million people might not be the best way to win the hearts of some of the country’s most liberal voters.
Beneson later tweeted that “Brooklynite” was a term of affection from a fellow outer-borougher:
Of course "Brooklynite" was a compliment! I'm an outer borough guy from Queens and we'are all proud New Yorkers. https://t.co/GrHaP42whg
— Joel Benenson (@benensonj) March 28, 2016
Dana Scavino, social media director for billionaire Republican frontrunner Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, is fanning the flames of the unsupported conspiracy theory that rival Ted Cruz has engaged in a physical relationship with his former communications director.
Amazing. @realDonaldTrump's fault. https://t.co/zpPOwG3IEq
— Dan Scavino (@DanScavino) March 28, 2016
His tweet links to a conspiracy video that purports to “prove” that Amanda Carpenter, a former Cruz campaign staffer, and the Texas senator were engaged in an affair. The “proof”? Carpenter said on Twitter that Cruz was in a “fun” mood one day.
Carpenter has gone on the record calling allegations that she and the senator had anything more than a professional relationship “categorically false.”
More on the shooting at the Capitol...
The shelter in place order has been lifted, though the visitors center remains closed and the Capitol is only open for official business. Capitol Police said chief Matthew Verderosa would hold a press conference at 4:15pm.
Washington was filled with tourists taking advantage of their Easter vacation while few members of Congress were even in the city as no votes were scheduled for this week. Police blocked off the streets around the Capitol with armed officers holding submachine guns standing in the intersections to ward off sightseers.
The lockdown also applied to the White House, where Secret Service agents closed off the stretch of Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House as well as Lafayette Square. The area, a magnet for tourists and lunching office workers, was left with only police tape and agents in bulletproof vests on the sunny spring afternoon.
Bryan Sanders, a man who was punched in the face at a Donald Trump rally in Tucson, Arizona, last week, writes that the man who hit him should be held responsible for his actions - but that the violent rhetoric against peaceful protest starts with Trump himself:
I don’t bear Tony Pettway, the man who sucker-punched me when I was peacefully protesting at a Donald Trump rally in Tucson last week, any ill will. I think he was just caught up in the moment. I wouldn’t want anything to happen to him; his career in the air force is already going to be messed up.
What happened to me is a tragedy that comes straight from Donald Trump. He created the situation where people come and protest at his rallies because of what he says; he tells his supporters that “in the old days the protester would be taken out on a stretcher”. He says that he’d like to punch a protester in the face. He offers to pay the legal bills of somebody who punches a protester. Pettway is responsible for his own actions, but it’s Trump’s violent, hateful message that is creating this situation.
In a way, what happened afterwards was worse. By the Sunday after the rally, I woke up with these crazy viral stories about me online. I had messages of support from around the world, but also immense amounts of hate and lies being spread about me.
Trump had lied about me on George Stephanopoulos’ show on ABC after the protest. He said I was a professional agitator, and the rightwing blogosphere immediately followed it with a half-dozen articles.
They said I must have used a racial slur to incite Pettway to hit me. They said I assaulted him first – despite the clear video evidence that I did not. They said endless things about me; that I was a plant of George Soros, or the Bernie Sanders campaign, or the Hillary Clinton campaign. None of those things are true.
US Capitol in lockdown after police officer shot
One Capitol police officer has been shot and a shooter is in custody, US officials have told the Associated Press.
The US Capitol was placed on lockdown and all staff ordered to shelter in place after reports of gunshots being fired in the Capitol visitors center, police said on Monday afternoon.
The US Capitol police shut down the entire Capitol complex due to a “potential security threat” following reports of gunfire, according to an alert emailed to Capitol staff.
The alert states that no one will be allowed to enter or exit the buildings though people are allowed to move within the buildings and underground between buildings. The police warned those outside to seek cover.
Due to police activity, Capitol Police have issued a shelter in place for the Capitol complex. Please stay in your designated area. #alert
— SenateSergeantAtArms (@SenateSAA) March 28, 2016
The lockdown also applied to the White House where Secret Service agents closed off the stretch of Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House as well as Lafayette Square. The area, a magnet for tourists and lunching office workers, was left with only police tape and agents in bulletproof vests on the sunny spring afternoon.
Congress is in recess, with few lawmakers in Washington.
Update: Capitol police now say that previous reports of a police officer having been shot were inaccurate - the shooter himself was the only person seriously injured.
Updated
One Capitol Police officer has been shot and the shooter is now in custody, according to AP.
APNewsAlert: Capitol officials: 1 Capitol police officer shot, not seriously, shooter in custody.
— AP Politics (@AP_Politics) March 28, 2016
Capitol Hill and the White House are currently in lockdown because of this reported shooting. As the AP reports:
The U.S. Capitol Police are telling staff in the Capitol complex to shelter in place after a report of gunshots being fired in the Capitol Visitors Center.
...The situation was apparently contained to the Visitors Center but no further information was immediately available.
Reports of a shooting at the US Capitol Visitor Center, with US Capitol Police responding.
*SHOTS FIRED AT U.S. CAPITOL VISITOR CENTER: CAPITOL POLICE
— Mike Dorning (@MikeDorning) March 28, 2016
Guns banned at RNC, says Secret Service
Temperatures will already be running hot at the possibly-contested Republican National Convention in July, but no one will be packing heat, after Secret Service ruled that guns are banned.
A petition with 45,000 signatures and counting called on event organizers to allow people to carry guns. Ohio is an open carry state, but the venue, the Quicken Loans Arena, bans all firearms.
Only law enforcement would be allowed to carry gun, said the Secret Service spokesman.
“Individuals determined to be carrying firearms will not be allowed past a predetermined outer perimeter checkpoint, regardless of whether they possess a ticket to the event,” spokesman Robert Hoback told The Hill.
When questioned about it at a recent news conference in Wisconsin, candidate Ted Cruz supported the Secret Service’s policy.
“Secret Service is going to have principal decision making,” said Cruz.
Trump not suing over Louisiana delegates
The “lawsuit” threatened by Donald Trump on Twitter over the weekend against the Louisiana Republican Party, will be a challenge in the RNC Committee on Contests.
Top Trump aide Barry Bennett clarified that the campaign will not seek litigate the matter, which is likely non-justiciable and instead go through the RNC’s internal process for fights over delegates.
The Wall Street Journal reported last week that despite Trump’s win of the popular vote in the Pelican State, supporters of Texas senator Ted Cruz had captured control of the delegation through internal maneuvering. Both Trump and Cruz won 18 delegates apiece in the state’s March 5 primary while Marco Rubio won five delegates and the remaining five delegates are unbound free agents.
Ted Cruz just spoke with reporters in Wisconsin about terrorism, jobs and his ongoing quibbles with Donald Trump.
The Texas Senator claimed that he would destroy ISIS. “Jihadists across the globe, your day of reckoning is coming,” said Cruz.
He said jobs was his biggest campaign issue, bringing back jobs to the US and driving wages up. “We’re going to see people coming out of school with 2,3,4 job opportunities. That’s what this election is about.
And Cruz slammed Trump for retweeting a disparaging comment about his wife last week.
“No candidate should be doing what Donald Trump did last week which was attacking my wife and attacking my family,” said Cruz. “Let me get an answer from the American people… who cares? Who cares what Donald Trump is tweeting at night?
Updated
Kasich’s campaign strategist John Weaver tweeted even more detail about the Kasich campaign changing its radio buy in Wisconsin, since many on social media immediately took it to mean that the Ohio governor was dropping out of the race.
Instead, Weaveer says more money is being spent in specific key congressional districts, since both New York and Wisconsin are winner-take-all states when it comes to delegates.
Allocating additional $ in key CDs, reallocating in others in WI. Going up in New York today/tomorrow, to be followed soon in PA. #targeting
— John Weaver (@JWGOP) March 28, 2016
Some clarification from the Kasich campaign about the cut down in radio ad buys in Wisconsin, by Dave Weigel from the Washington Post.
Kasich spox: "We are increasing our buys in some Congressional Districts in Wisconsin and reallocating in some others."
— daveweigel (@daveweigel) March 28, 2016
Yesterday a tombstone for presidential wannabe Donald J Trump mysteriously turned up in Central Park on a sunny New York Sunday.
It’s currently unknown which pranksters erected the stone tribute - it shows Trump’s actual birth year - but the Parks Department had removed it by Sunday evening.
Updated
John Kasich is hosting a town hall at West Salem, Wisconsin at 1pm CT, and the crowd is already filling up. You can watch the livestream of it here.
John Kasich's event filling up in West Salem pic.twitter.com/PueMNbQEAC
— Hope Kirwan (@HopeKirwan) March 28, 2016
Updated
This from the Wisconsin radio host who interviewed Trump this morning...
BREAKING: Kasich campaign immediately pulling all radio ads from Wisconsin markets.
— Charles Sykes (@SykesCharlie) March 28, 2016
Jill Abramson, the former executive editor of The New York Times, is now an official political columnist for The Guardian.
While she’s already been writing semi-regularly for the last few months, today’s piece on Hillary Clinton’s honesty kicks of her new column, which will run every two weeks.
I would be “dead rich”, to adapt an infamous Clinton phrase, if I could bill for all the hours I’ve spent covering just about every “scandal” that has enveloped the Clintons. As an editor I’ve launched investigations into her business dealings, her fundraising, her foundation and her marriage. As a reporter my stories stretch back to Whitewater. I’m not a favorite in Hillaryland. That makes what I want to say next surprising.
Hillary Clinton is fundamentally honest and trustworthy.
The yardsticks I use for measuring a politician’s honesty are pretty simple. Ever since I was an investigative reporter covering the nexus of money and politics, I’ve looked for connections between money (including campaign donations, loans, Super Pac funds, speaking fees, foundation ties) and official actions. I’m on the lookout for lies, scrutinizing statements candidates make in the heat of an election.
The connection between money and action is often fuzzy. Many investigative articles about Clinton end up “raising serious questions” about “potential” conflicts of interest or lapses in her judgment. Of course, she should be held accountable. It was bad judgment, as she has said, to use a private email server. It was colossally stupid to take those hefty speaking fees, but not corrupt. There are no instances I know of where Clinton was doing the bidding of a donor or benefactor.
Read the rest here.
“We have a path toward victory,” declared Bernie Sanders after the weekend wins in Alaska, Hawaii and Washington.
But is that true? Tom McCarthy -- who has been allowed to step off the blog hamster wheel for a day -- is currently writing about the odds of Sanders nabbing the nomination after his recent gains. Stay tuned.
This just in: Ted Cruz will appear on Jimmy Kimmel Live on Wednesday, his debut on the late night show.
So far, the Republicans have mainly avoided the late night shows. Last week Sanders and Clinton both made appearances on Kimmel, with the former Secretary of State performing a pretty funny bit about mansplaining.
Clinton: “[Mansplains is] when a man explains something to a women in a patronising way”
Kimmel: “Actually it’s when a man explains something to a woman in a condescending way. But you were close.”
Trump defends his attitudes to women
More from that feisty Donald Trump interview with Wisconsin radio host Charles Sykes this morning.
Sykes said to Trump that “conservative women [are] repelled by your attitude and treatment of women” and played the ad currently getting a lot of airtime in Wisconsin, which shows real women reading out the foul quotes Trump has said about women over the years.
“Women are just going to see what I’ve done. I’ve hired tremendous numbers of women, women are in the highest executive positions, I pay women in many cases more than I pay men, which is more than most people can say,” said Trump.
When quizzed re Fox News’ Megyn Kelly -- Trump has refused to participate in presidential debates because Kelly would be one of the interviews -- Trump said it wasn’t because she was a woman.
“I’m not a fan of Megyn Kelly. I’m allowed to say that. If Megyn Kelly were a man, I would be saying the exact same things about Megyn Kelly,” he said.
“I have been better to women than any of these candidates… people have said that in terms of breaking the glass ceiling, I was a leader in it,” said Trump.
It seems the GOP hot favorite was unaware that his attitudes towards women were still part of the campaign.
“I thought this was a dead issue until I just spoke to you,” said Trump.
Here’s the entire interview.
In important national news, the White House will host the 138th Egg Roll this morning, with festivities kicking off at 10.30am. More than 35,000 people are expected.
The battle of the wives continued with Donald Trump refusing to apologize for having public spats with Ted Cruz about whose wife is prettier, during an interview with Charles Sykes, a Wisconsin radio shock jock this morning.
“I didn’t start it. He started it,” said Trump.
“Wow. You realize we’re not on a playground and that you’re running for president, right?” said Sykes, a well-known Cruz supporter and part of the #NeverTrump movement.
“My views are not playground views,” replied Trump.
NYPD Commissioner slams Cruz comments
New York City Police Commissioner Bill Bratton attacked Ted Cruz’s comments on the NYPD muslim monitoring program in an interview with MSNBC’s Morning Joe today.
The NYPD “demographics unit” was a group of 14-16 detectives who monitored and mapped the Muslim communities in New York City with the idea of watching for possible Islamic terrorism, but nothing was ever found. Last week Cruz called it a “very successful” anti-terror program and called for police to “patrol and secure” Muslim neighborhoods.
As Bratton said this morning:
That unit began to be disbanded around 2012, 2013. When I came into office in 2014, with Mayor de Blasio, there were two detectives left in that unit. The work had been done, the unit was disbanded myself, but it’s been portrayed by many of the tabloids and by Senator Cruz that somehow or another by disbanding that unit, that we lost a valuable tool in the fight against terrorism.
We did not. It was never an investigatory entity. The chief of my intelligence unit, who was the chief under Commissioner Kelly testified of a lawsuit that the unit never developed one piece of actionable intelligence. So, there’s a misrepresentation that’s been played over and over again and that Senator Cruz in his lack of knowledge of what works here in New York, once again reiterated his attack on this city.
Bratton noted that the program greatly affected relationships with police in Muslim communities and now the need to rebuild that fractured relationship is on par with the NYPD and African-American communities in the city.
...what we’re attempting to do is repair damaged relationships with that Muslim community that had been damaged for a period of time, because it was felt we were spying on them, that we were trying to intimidate them, that we were not concerned with their concerns. We’ve learned with the past. It’s much as the issues we’ve had with African-American communities over these many generations, that you cannot police a community without effectively working with them.
Last week reporter Jamiles Lartey headed out to Bay Ridge, Brooklyn to report on how monitoring of Muslim communities is still going on.
“It’s just part of growing up Muslim in New York,” said Faisal, a 17-year-old Bay Ridge resident.
Updated
Happy Monday and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the 2016 election campaign.
This week there is a tiny little breather.
Welcome to the first week of calendar year 2016 with no voting and no debates.
— Gabriel Debenedetti (@gdebenedetti) March 28, 2016
CNN’s Anderson Cooper will, however, host a Republican town hall meeting in Wisconsin on Tuesday night.
Today Hillary Clinton will speak at the University of Washington about the problems Donald Trump could cause on the supreme court. The Guardian’s David Smith will be there. The Associated Press reports that Clinton will argue that a President Trump could reshape the court and “roll back the rights of individuals, further empower corporations and undo some of the nation’s progress.” Clinton will call on Senate leaders to give Merrick Garland, Obama’s pick for supreme court justice, a fair hearing, says the AP.
It was the weekend of Bernie Sanders, with the bird-taming Vermont senator enjoying massive wins in Alaska, Hawaii and Washington on Saturday. But can Sanders catch up with her in the delegate count?
It’s “improbable not impossible”, reports Politico, noting that he would need big wins in upcoming states where Clinton is at present ahead in the polls: New Jersey, New York, California and Pennsylvania. A street party in Brooklyn – Sanders’ hometown – signaled the opening of Sanders’ local headquarters on Saturday in anticipation of the April 19 primary.
The delegate count is also in focus for Republicans, with Donald Trump complaining that despite winning the state of Louisiana back on March 5, Cruz will take more delegates. Trump is threatening legal action.
Just to show you how unfair Republican primary politics can be, I won the State of Louisiana and get less delegates than Cruz-Lawsuit coming
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 27, 2016
Trump took 41% of the state’s vote, compared to Cruz’s 37%, giving them 18 delegates each. Marco Rubio won five delegates – who have now chosen to support Cruz. Another five of the six superdelegates from Louisiana heading to the convention, who are unbound by the state’s results, are known Cruz supporters.
The Guardian delegate tracker shows Clinton leading in the Democratic race with 1,712 delegates (2,383 needed to win) and Trump leading for the GOP with 739 delegates (1,237 needed to win).
John Kasich will host a town hall in Madison, Wisconsin at 6pm. Ted Cruz is also in Wisconsin, with a stop at 1pm and a rally at 5pm in Rothschild.
And Trump added another grandkiddy to the family empire on the weekend, with daughter Ivanka giving birth to third child Theodore (perhaps a tribute to President Roosevelt, rather than Cruz?).
Baby Theodore. My heart is full. xx, Ivanka #grateful pic.twitter.com/aOux7Nm3BU
— Ivanka Trump (@IvankaTrump) March 28, 2016
