Summary
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For the first time, Donald Trump gained a lead on Hillary Clinton in polling averages, as new polls showed Trump and Clinton in an extremely tight general election race and nearly tied in Ohio and Florida. One poll found that 48% of Clinton supporters are mainly opposing Trump, 53% of Trump supporters are mainly opposing Clinton, and that 20% of Bernie Sanders’ supporters would rather support Trump than Clinton.
- Bernie Sanders vowed to fight for “real change” in the Democratic party, saying it should open its primaries to independent voters and welcome the coalition that’s flocked to his cause. “That’s the kind of party we need to be, a vital party, of working people who are hurting, of young people who have a dream that this country can be greater,” he told CBS’s Face the Nation. “Not just the party where we have our folks raising our money for wealthy people.”
- He also accused Democrat leaders of “anointing” Hillary Clinton as nominee before the primary race ever began, in part through party officials who can vote unbound to state results at the convention.
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Because of his conflict with those leaders, he began fundraising for the primary opponent of Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, the chairperson of the Democratic National Committee. “We need a Congress with members who believe, like Bernie, that we cannot change a corrupt system by taking its money,” a campaign email said.
- Hillary Clinton said that Donald Trump poses “immediate dangers” to the US and the world. “Talking about letting other countries have nuclear weapons. Advocating a return to torture, and even murdering the families of suspected terrorists. That is beyond the pale.”
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She and Sanders also hinted at reconciliation. “I will certainly do my part, reaching out to Senator Sanders, reaching out to his supporters,” she told NBC’s Meet the Press, while Sanders promised he would stop the presumptive Republican nominee. “Donald Trump is a disaster and I will do everything, as candidate or not, that I can,” he said.
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Donald Trump said that guns should be brought into classrooms because of unnamed, “unbelievable” things going on at unspecified schools. “I don’t want to have guns in classrooms although in some cases teachers should have guns in classrooms, frankly,” he told Fox’s Fox and Friends.
- He also threatened to marginalize the major Republican donors who refuse to contribute to his campaign. “These are people that won’t have access to the White House,” he said. “They’re not going to be able to tell me what to do.”
Barack Obama’s longtime speechwriter Jon Favreau chimes in on the string of polls that seem to bode so poorly for Hillary Clinton at this early stage of a de facto general election.
Hillary will get a unity bump once Sanders is gone, but either way, the very high percentage of Republicans backing Trump is...depressing.
— Jon Favreau (@jonfavs) May 22, 2016
And ABC News and the Washington Post find yet one more grim detail for the Clinton campaign.
New @ABC/WaPo poll finds 20% of Sanders supporters say they'd back Trump over Clinton https://t.co/M0TzTMeq2W pic.twitter.com/fBSARIaQii
— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) May 22, 2016
FiveThirtyEight’s senior political analyst breaks down the new polls that show Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton extremely close in a general election …
Could Trump win? You betcha. Will he win? Probably not. Would I make any ice bucket challenges about it? No. Am I near 140 characters? Yes.
— Harry Enten (@ForecasterEnten) May 22, 2016
… and the truly daunting challenge Clinton faces at bringing in many Sanders supporters …
Great breakdown by the NBC/WSJ poll here (Clinton +3 overall). Lots of Sanders holdouts from Clinton right now pic.twitter.com/hohXAyoR96
— Harry Enten (@ForecasterEnten) May 22, 2016
… while Real Clear Politics’ senior analyst tweets his own take.
We can rationalize it or explain it away however we want, but we did a lot of that in the primary as well. 2/
— Sean T at RCP (@SeanTrende) May 22, 2016
So it's probably time to panic.
— Sean T at RCP (@SeanTrende) May 22, 2016
Harry also notes: “Clinton has led in 12 polls since Trump clinched the nomination, Trump has led in three of them.”
Updated
Sanders fundraises against Democrat leader
Bernie Sanders has not only endorsed the primary opponent of Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, the chairperson of the Democratic National Committee, but has also begun fundraising for him.
Sanders said that if elected he would not re-appoint Wasserman-Schultz to the position.
The fundraising email reads:
“The political revolution is not just about electing a president. We need a Congress with members who believe, liek Bernie, that we cannot change a corrupt system by taking its money.
So let me introduce you to Tim Canova, a progressive challenger who is running against Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz in a Democratic primary in Florida this year.
Tim endorsed Bernie’s presidential campaign, and was inspired to run because of Wasserman Schultz’ support of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. His campaign is funded like ours by lots of people giving small amounts of money.
And on issues like taking on Wall Street, making tuition free at public colleges, and reforming our broken campaign finance system, he is someone you can be proud to support. That’s why Bernie is endorsing Tim’s campaign, and why we’re proud to ask:
Splitting a contribution between Bernie 2016 and Tim Canova for Congress will help elect progressives up and down the ballot while sending an UNMISTAKABLE [sic] message about our political revolution’s commitment to electing candidates who share our values.
Wasserman-Schultz has released a statement on Sanders’ opposition to her.
“Even though Senator Sanders has endorsed my opponent I remain, as I have been from the beginning, neutral in the Presidential Democratic primary,” she said. “I look forward to working together with him for Democratic victories in the fall.”
Updated
The duo who lead FiveThirtyEight’s political stats coverage take note about those polls that show Donald Trump in a dead heat with Hillary Clinton in Ohio, Florida and even nationally.
Wise words. Wise words from a man named Nathaniel Read. pic.twitter.com/ptSeHFWVOM
— Harry Enten (@ForecasterEnten) May 22, 2016
The National Rifle Association refused to issue the Guardian US with accreditation for its annual convention, but my colleague Lois Beckett is in Louisville and covering the NRA’s annual meeting nonetheless. Only a day after the group endorsed Donald Trump for president, its chief lobbyist praised Bernie Sanders for his stance on lawsuits against gunmakers.
During a March debate in Michigan, Sanders said: “If you go to a gun store and you legally purchase a gun, and then, three days later, if you go out and start killing people, is the point of this lawsuit to hold the gun shop owner or the manufacturer of that gun liable?
“If they are selling a product to a person who buys it legally, what you’re really talking about is ending gun manufacturing in America. I don’t agree with that.”
A hall full of NRA members gave the clip a smattering of applause. To laughter, Chris Cox, head of the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action, said: “I don’t say this often … OK, fine, I’ve never said it. But Bernie’s right.
“Holding gun manufacturers liable for the acts of madmen and terrorists will put them out of business overnight.”
Cox said Clinton’s support of lawsuits against gun companies was a “backdoor” attempt to ban guns by “suing gun manufacturers into bankruptcy”.
Earlier this year, Sanders suggested that a lawsuit against the companies that sold a gun used in the 2012 Newtown school shooting was “a backdoor way” to ban assault weapons.
Family members of the 20 children and six adults who died at Sandy Hook elementary school are suing the manufacturer, distributor and dealer of the military-style Bushmaster rifle that was used. Lawyers for the families argue the companies were negligent in selling a dangerous weapon to the general public, and that macho advertising may be designed to target insecure, powerless young men.
The gun companies in the suit say that they are protected by the 2005 federal shield law that Sanders supported, and that the Sandy Hook tragedy had nothing to do with the type of weapon used, which was legally purchased by the gunman’s mother.
The Clinton campaign has highlighted the case, and she has won endorsement from some family members of victims from Sandy Hook victims and other mass shootings.
The Sandy Hook families have won a series of small technical victories in recent months, with a Connecticut judge ruling in early May that gun companies should begin the discovery process. Whether the case can move forward despite the federal shield law will be decided in October.
Sanders backed off from his support of the 2005 shield law earlier this year, with his campaign saying he would now support a repeal. But as Clinton and some family members of Sandy Hook victims have criticized his stance on the gun industry, he has repeated his support for the central tenet of the law: that gun companies should not be held responsible if they sell a gun lawfully and it is later used in a crime.
Cox told NRA members that Clinton’s support for lawsuits against gun companies had nothing to do with safety “and everything to do with banning your guns”.
“When a criminal knocks out a convenience store clerk with a baseball bat, you don’t sue Louisville Slugger,” he said.
Updated
Republican reconciliation.
.@realDonaldTrump Let me hasten to admit: I underestimated your skills as a demagogue and the credulity of some of the American public.
— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) May 22, 2016
Earlier this morning Hillary Clinton said she puts no weight on polls so early into an election – technically still a primary – a point her campaign will broadcast loud and clear, if also a little reluctantly, whenever anyone points out a string of new polls.
Trump now leads Clinton in the RCP average for the first time. pic.twitter.com/VQGKxi2tKn
— Noah Rothman (@NoahCRothman) May 22, 2016
New Wa Po/ABC poll shows Trump/Clinton with identical favorable/unfavorable numbers: https://t.co/XPoowQ9wjG pic.twitter.com/YG9nTKWjHg
— Sopan Deb (@SopanDeb) May 22, 2016
Donald Trump, meanwhile, has done this.
Trump seemed almost frightened, confused: "Now they're remaking Ghostbusters with only women! What's going on!?" pic.twitter.com/fcZk5Fs4cQ
— andrew kaczynski (@BuzzFeedAndrew) May 22, 2016
Updated
Cuban: unthinking Trump is 'scary'
Finally, Todd asks Cuban whether he’d be interested in running as anyone’s vice-presidential candidate. Clinton, for instance?
“Absolutely,” Cuban says. “But the key would be that she’d have to go more to center.
“I like the fact that Senator Clinton has thought out proposals. That’s a good thing because at least we get to see exactly where she stands. But I think Senator Sanders has dragged her a little bit too far to the left. Things like college tuition and, you know, other business elements that really I think could hurt the economy.
If she’s willing to listen, if she’s willing to, you know, hear other sides of things, then I’m wide open to discussing it.
What about Trump?
Same, Cuban says, calling himself “fiercely independent”. And it’s that lack of independence that he finds “scary” about Trump.
“I’d have the same conversation for Donald. I think Donald has a real chance to win, and that’s scary to a lot of people. But what’s scary about it to me is that you can see him now trying to do what he thinks is right to unify the party.
And he’s listening to everybody, which is fine on the surface. But what’s also happening is it’s coming across as if he’s proposing things based off the last person he talks to.
He uses the supreme court vacancy as an example, noting Trump’s list of 11 judges – one of whom frequently mocks Trump on Twitter. “I bet you if you asked him about any one of them and then to discuss any one of their findings, he wouldn’t be able to do it,” Cuban says. “And to me, that’s a problem.”
And so if he asked me, I’d be, like, “Okay, Donald. That’s great. Let’s talk about it. But we’re both going to have to dig in and really look and understand the issues so we can come up with solutions.”
Finally he talks about temperament, noting that he’ll throw a temper tantrum during a basketball game and scream it out, “but the other 23 hours a day or 22 hours a day, what you see now has always been my temperament.”
“With Donald, could he change? You know, it’s possible for anybody to change. But, you know, I just don’t see evidence that he wants to change. I think he’s trying to do what he thinks is the right thing right now. But there’s just so much coming at him at once, he’s looking for shortcuts. And this is just not a job where there’re shortcuts.”
“Assess the Obama presidency,” Chuck Todd commands Mark Cuban.
“I think he’s done a lot of good things, contrary to what some think,” he says. “I think he’s made a lot of mistakes as well.”
Todd asks what the president’s healthcare act has done for Cuban’s businesses. The billionaire says it hasn’t made a much of a difference for his companies, though it has done more for others.
“From an entrepreneur’s perspective, it’s given entrepreneurs the chance to leave jobs they were stuck in and get insurance where they otherwise might not have had it. And really, to me, what it’s accomplished, I have a saying that I live by in a lot of my thinking. It’s called the risk doesn’t lead the systems.
Basketball billionaire Mark Cuban is next up on NBC, a guest of host Chuck Todd because he was reportedly the object of some Republicans’ desire for a third-party, non-Trump campaign.
Todd asks whether Cuban still believes, as he said last year, that Trump is “a great thing for politics” and good for the US.
“In some respects, yeah,” Cuban says. “On a longer term basis, absolutely. I think he’s opened the door to non-traditional candidates, which is a great thing. I think he’s taken out the traditional, you know, bullet points and political speak. That’s a good thing. But those are longer term issues.
“In the short term, there’s a lot of divisiveness and a lot of uncertainty and that’s not necessarily a good thing.”
The host asks then if Cuban is thinking about getting in the game. “Well, it’s certainly more of a consideration than it was,” Cuban replies, since “you don’t have to be the perfect Stepford candidate like you would’ve been in the past.”
But he’s planning on getting involved anytime soon.
It’s too late for this election. I mean, just to try to wing it, just to try to shake things up, you know, the law of unintended consequences tends to create a lot more problems than it solves.”
Cuban adds that he understands while Michael Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York and a fellow billionaire, didn’t mount a third-party campaign.
If you don’t think you can win, then your decision making is impacted by that. It’s the same in sports, it’s the same in politics, it’s the same in business. If you don’t think you’re going to succeed, I think voters in this case would see right through it and see that that’s the case.
“So you can’t go into it not willing to do the work, not willing to grind. And so, you know, and it’s his choice to make.”
Sanders calls for open party
Sanders made one last appearance, on CBS’s Face the Nation with John Dickerson.
Sanders makes a number of the same calls he voiced earlier today, saying that the Democratic party should aim to be as inclusive as possible. He describes the milieu of Hillary Clinton and her allies in the Democratic leadership as “such a different world” from that of his supporters.
“It really is like two parallel universes,” he says, for people who attend “fancy dinners” and working class voters and young people.
Then he goes back to the calls that have girded his campaign from the start: taking on “the entire political establishment” the “financial establishment” and “the media establishment”.
He admits that “if I were insulting somebody it would get a lot of attention”, but says “real attention” deserves to go to climate change and why the middle class is shrinking and wealth being siphoned off toward the wealthiest Americans and corporations.
But the only way Democrats can do this is by lowering the gates to the American people writ large, as his campaign has done with young people, he argues.
“That’s the kind of party we need to be, a vital party, of working people who are hurting, of young people who have a dream that this country can be greater, not just the party where we have our folks raising our money for wealthy people.”
“If you want votes you’ve got to talk to the needs of the people.”
He says that he wants Democrats to adopt a platform that reflects working class needs, and to reform the primary. “I want changes in the rules of the Democratic primary process such that we have open primaries.”
“There’s a lot of work to be done whether or not I am the nominee.”
But he will not run a third-party campaign: “Donald Trump is a disaster and I will do everything, as candidate or not, that I can do to [stop him].”
The next question about a running mate, or at least about what Clinton learned from when her husband chose Al Gore as his vice-presidential pick in 1992.
“Well, the most important thing is to pick someone who you have absolute confidence in can be president,” she says.
“That’s more important than any characteristic. And then someone you can work with.
Someone that you believe will be a good partner, not just to you, but to the rest of the government. Someone who can go around the country, as Joe Biden has done very well, and explaining and advocating for the policies of the Obama administration.”
Todd: “Mark Cuban.”
He’s saying the basketball billionaire’s name because Cuban said he’d be open to running as somebody’s vice-presidential pick.
Clinton is noncommittal. “I think we should look widely and broadly. It’s not just people in elective office. It is successful business people. I am very interested in that. And I appreciate his openness to it.”
She contrasts “successful business people who are really successful as opposed to pretend successful” – and we’re back to Trump. Clinton says he needs to release his tax returns.
“The only two we have show that he hasn’t paid a penny in taxes. And yet he goes around talking about ‘Make America great.’ You know? That means paying for our military. That means paying for our roads. That means paying for the VA.
“That means a lot of things. And if you’ve got someone running for president who’s afraid to release his tax returns, because it will expose the fact that he pays no federal income tax, I think that’s a big problem.”
But Todd asks whether there’s anything worth praising about Trump at all.
“We’ll find out,” Clinton says. “Because we have to get below the hype. We have to find what the reality is.”
Do we really not know that yet?
Clinton: “I don’t think the country knows it.”
Updated
Clinton defends the 90s
Todd asks Clinton what she meant when she said she would make her husband, Bill, an adviser on economic issues. What did she mean?
Clinton says “there are parts of our country that have been left out and left behind for too long,” using West Virginia and Kentucky as examples.
“I am going to ask my husband, who has a great track record in creating jobs, putting people to work, revitalizing communities, to be in an advisory role working with me, working with our cabinet, to try to figure out what we can do.”
“You know, every first lady has taken on special projects. And I think my husband’s understanding of how to get this economy moving in places that have been left behind will be incredibly valuable.”
Todd points out that Clinton has a rather mixed – or at least highly debated – economic legacy, for instance deregulating Wall Street and signing free trade deals.
She defends her the former president, saying Trump and Sanders are “not running against 23 million new jobs. They’re not running against incomes going up for every American, not just those at the top. They’re not running against median family income going up 17%, and for African-Americans 33%, and living more people out of poverty. And ending up with a balanced budget and a surplus.”
But she now says she wants to renegotiate the Nafta trade deal, and opposes the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which Barack Obama supports. But the 90s were great, she insists.
“But I ask people, when you criticize the 90s, what do they criticize? The peace, or the prosperity? Because I think a lot of Americans, as I travel around the country, think of that as being a time when they thought they were getting ahead. Then we ran smack dab into the failed Republican economic policy.”
Updated
Clinton: Trump poses 'immediate dangers'
The next question to Clinton is whether she’s considered some of Bernie Sanders’ calls to change the party, for instance opening primary elections to independents.
Clinton demurs: “Well, certainly we’re going to talk with him when he’s ready to talk, and listen to him. And we will take into account what he is asking for.”
Todd asks whether she would support getting rid of superdelegates. Clinton says she won’t talk about this here: “I’m not going to negotiate with him today on your show.”
Then she makes a familiar call to unify the party: “I’m going to say when it’s time, I am reaching out to do my part to try to unify the party. I expect him to do the same. I did that when I lost a much closer race to Senator Obama.
“Because I knew that whatever our differences were, just as whatever our differences are between me and Senator Sanders, they pale in comparison to Donald Trump and the Republicans. And I think most of Senator Sanders’ supporters understand that as well.”
She adds that she hasn’t thought about doing another debate with Sanders, in California ahead of that state’s primary. They bring it back around to Donald Trump.
Clinton says she believes “deeply” that Trump is “unqualified to be president”, and that this is not a normal election. She says his ideas are “beyond the pale”.
“And I do not want Americans, and you know, good thinking Republicans, as well as Democrats and independents to start to believe that this is a normal candidacy. It isn’t.
“What he is advocating – look what he’s done this past week. You know, attacking our closest ally, England. Heaping praise on a dangerous dictator in North Korea. Reiterating his call to pull out of Nato, our strong military alliance.
“Talking about letting other countries have nuclear weapons. Advocating a return to torture, and even murdering the families of suspected terrorists. That is beyond the pale. And it poses immediate dangers.
Then she says she hears from people around the country, from Republicans, from women who can’t stand Trump’s “demeaning comments” to a Texas businessman who’s defecting from party ranks, about how reprehensible Trump is.
“There’s no evidence he has any ideas about making America great, as he advertises. He seems to be particularly focused on making himself appear great.”
Todd points out that Trump and Sanders have their striking “big ideas” – does Clinton?
She doesn’t really say. She’s after unity and jobs and “even nonpartisan foreign policy”.
“You know, slogans come and go, and all the rest of it. But when I look at where we are in our country together, we need to unify the country.”
Updated
Clinton: Sanders can run as he likes
Hillary Clinton is next on NBC’s Meet the Press, with host Chuck Todd, who asks her off the bat whether Democratic rival Bernie Sanders is helping Republican Donald Trump.
Clinton says she doesn’t think so. “I don’t think so. I think that Senator Sanders has every right to finish off his campaign however he chooses.”
“I do think there will then be the obvious need for us to unify the party. I faced the same challenge in 2008. I will certainly do my part, reaching out to Senator Sanders, reaching out to his supporters. And I expect him to do his. And he said about a week ago, he was going to spend seven days a week trying to defeat Donald Trump. And I believe that’s the case.”
Why the sudden confidence that you’re going to be the nominee, Todd asks, when a week ago you wouldn’t say?
Clinton says that her declaration that she will be the nominee comes from her experience in 2008, when she lost a closer race to Barack Obama, and her from an increasingly urgent demand: confronting Donald Trump.
And I want to spend a lot of my time, as you’ve seen me do, really taking on Trump. Because I find what he says, the kind of candidacy he’s presenting, to pose a danger to our country.
Todd brings his question back around to Bernie Sanders, asking whether he might be more electable: polls consistently show Sanders is better liked than Clinton and Trump, and that he has a higher margin of support than Trump in a hypothetical general election.
Clinton responds by pointing out that she is winning the Democratic primary in the popular vote, pledged and “super” delegates both. “It’s also fair to say that I have been vetted and tested, and I think that that puts me in a very strong position”
Todd stops her for a second: “You don’t think Bernie Sanders’ been vetted? You don’t think this one long year of campaign, your campaign against him, has vetted him?”
Clinton makes a striking claim: “Let me say that I don’t think he’s had a single negative ad ever run against him. And that’s fine. But we know what we’re going into, and we understand what it’s going to take to win in the fall.”
Then she says she doesn’t care about polls. “I would say that, you know, polls this far out mean nothing. They certainly mean nothing to me. And I think if people go back and look, they really mean nothing in terms of analyzing what’s going to happen in the fall.”
And now on Fox, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, of Alabama, senator and adviser to Donald J Trump, Esq.
Was Trump wrong to jump so quickly on to Egypt Air as an act of terror?
“It certainly appears to be a terrorist act,” says Trump’s national security adviser.
But if it isn’t? Was Trump too quick, too unpresidential?
“Well, look, one of the things that’s undermining our ability to be effective is we’re so politically correct. If it’s not a terrorist attack that’s great news but if it is… we need to be able to talk about it and act.”
So that sorts that, then. Sessions is then asked about Trump’s meeting with Henry Kissinger this week, which he says was productive and was about being cautious in engagement around the world. Which Kissinger, if memory serves, wasn’t. Really.
Trump believes in “peace through strength”, Sessions says. Nice slogan.
Sessions is asked about dissent from James Baker and Robert Gates, foreign policy and security titans who have not been too impressed with Trump, particularly over his suitability for taking care of the nuclear trigger. Does Trump need to moderate and become more informed?
Gates and Trump are closer to agreement than many think, Sessions says, rather than answering the question.
Then we’re on to the NRA, its endorsement of Trump, Hillary Clinton’s evil designs on the second amendment and Trump’s list of possible supreme court nominees, released this week. Sessions cheerleads for Trump and attacks Clinton. Of course he does.
Updated
Trump: some teachers should have guns
Early this morning Donald Trump made an unexpected call to the Fox program Fox and Friends, where he was asked to clarify his ideas about guns.
In particular he was asked about classrooms, and gave a waffling answer: “I don’t want to have guns in classrooms although in some cases teachers should have guns in classrooms, frankly.”
“Because teachers are you know the things that going on in our schools are unbelievable. You look at some of our schools, unbelievable what’s going on. But I’m not advocating guns in classrooms.”
But then he says: “trained teachers should be able to have guns in classrooms.”
They ask him about whether he or anyone can unite the US.
“As far as bigotry our country has never [been worse],” Trump says. “We have a president who’s a total divider and Hillary is weak, a weak person.”
Then the Fox crew ask him about reports that many major Republican donors are refusing to contribute at all to his campaign.
“These are people that won’t have access to the White House, they’re not going to be able to tell me what to do,” Trump threatens.
He says these donors “would’ve had total control over Jeb” Bush and “would’ve had total control over many of these people.”
Trump hedges a bit when asked whether he’ll self-fund through the general election, which is expected to cost $1bn for each party.
“What I have done is I said I would self-fund through primaries then make a decision,” Trump says. He says now he’s helping the Republican party fund other Congressional and governors’ races – he doesn’t mention that the party will also help fund his campaign.
“I’m going to be putting a lot of my own money, a tremendous amount of my own money, in the race.”
He also does not directly answer a question about whether he is worth $10bn, as he claims but has yet to prove, for instance through tax returns that he has refused to release. The Wall Street Journal found that, based on his 2016 claimed income, Trump would not have the funds to self-fund a general election campaign.
Last week Bernie Sanders joked that Trump is “probably as broke as everybody else is”.
Now Fox News Sunday is on to Michael McCaul.
“Clearly something catastrophic occurred,” he says of the Egypt Air crash. “I think many signs do point to terrorism [and] an explosive device on the aircraft.”
The Republican says he is concerned about extremists working at European and north African airports. It could’ve been a mechanical problem, McCaul says, but “it happened so quickly I question that”.
McCaul discusses enhanced airport security and what can be done – the Senate is holding up two bills that would help Secretary Johnson increase it, he says. He also says President Obama doesn’t take the threat of Isis seriously, although his points are largely obscured in a jumble of past Republican talking points.
Was Trump wrong to propose his Muslim ban?
“I don’t think you can ban an entire population,” he says.
Would such a ban foster more terrorism?
“I think it would cause in the Muslim community a bit of a backlash.”
Johnson is given a chance to respond to McCaul’s claim that Obama “doesn’t get” Isis. He gives a rote answer… progress, concern, security. Etc.
Bernie Sanders is back on TV, this time on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos.
Sanders says he doesn’t want to see the race devolve into a choice between “the lesser of two evils”. He points out that Clinton is historically disliked, surpassed only by the dislike Americans feel for Donald Trump.
“We need a campaign, an election, coming up which does not have two candidates who are really very, very strongly disliked,” he says.
“I don’t want to see the American people voting for the lesser of two evils. I want the American people to be voting for a vision of economic justice, of social justice, of environmental justice, of racial justice.”
Stephanopoulos asks the senator whether he’s ready to back Clinton, who has the math in her favor, in terms of popular vote and delegates both.
Sanders says that if Clinton is “prepared to stand up to Wall Street,” ready to confront climate change, for instance with a tax on carbon, “is prepared to say that the grotesque level of income and wealth inequality”, then: “if she is strong on those issues, yeah, I think she will win and win by a large vote.”
But if she’s not ready, he warns, Clinton will have trouble ahead.
The host then asks about whether his most passionate supporters are threatening the unity of the Democratic party – and threatening Democrats personally, as they did after the Nevada convention.
Sanders condemns those threats but says that reports of violence were overblown: “to the best of my knowledge was nobody was touched.”
“What happened was people were rude, that’s not good. They were booing, that’s not good. “They were behaving in ways that were boorish, that’s not good. But let’s not talk about that as violence.”
Should his supporters want to go to the national convention in Philadelphia, he says, they have the right to go and protest.
“We’re not encouraging anybody, but of course people have the right to peaceably assemble and to make their views heard.”
Finally Stephanopoulos asks the weekly question: would you be accept an offer to be Hillary Clinton’s vice-presidential pick?
“It’s a little bit early to talk about that,” Sanders demurs. “We’re going to do everything that we can to get every vote, every delegate.”
Updated
Homeland Security secretary Jeh Johnson is first on Fox News Sunday. Host John Roberts asks him about the strike against Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansoor. “Did we get him?”
Johnson is not quite prepared to “positively confirm that he’s been killed”, but if he has been he says it will be significant because Mansoor was actively undermining “efforts at reconciliation”.
“I think we’ll know pretty soon,” if Mansoor is dead, he says.
He continues to Egypt Air: “At this point we can not rule out some sort of terrorist attack but it’s still very early.” Johnson then deflects a question about terrorist “chatter” in preceding days.
What about Trump and Clinton suggesting the plane may have been brought down by terrorists? Are they over their skis?
Johnson ignores the question, so he gets another about presidential candidates jumping too soon: “I have no comment about that.”
He does say Trump’s proposed ban on Muslims entering the US, even temporarily and in the name of security, is “unwise and counter-productive, quite frankly”.
Finally, Johnson is asked about a protest during his commencement speech at Georgetown on Saturday night, from undocumented students.
“We live in a noisy democracy and they made some noise,” he says. “And then I went on with my commencement address. It was fine.”
Over on Fox News Sunday, Homeland Security secretary Jeh Johnson and House homeland security committee chair Michael McCaul are talking Egypt Air. Despite Donald Trump’s certainty, it is not known if the plane came down because of terrorism. Jeff Sessions, the Alabama senator and Trump adviser, is also due to discuss the issue.
McCaul has trailed his line of argument on Twitter, retweeting thus:
.@RepMcCaul: Many signs do point to terror. #EgyptAirMS804 #FNS
— FoxNewsSunday (@FoxNewsSunday) May 22, 2016
Updated
Republican Representative Peter King is next on CNN, talking about the crashed EgyptAir flight MS804.
He links the crash, without evidence, to terrorism. He draws a clearer line between security concerns in general at airports and reports that MS804 had, two years ago, had political graffiti written on it saying the plane would go down – a play on words between the plane’s registration letters and the name of Egyptian president Abdel Fatah al-Sisi.
“People behind the scenes, those with the access,” King says, “airport workers, the cleaners, the scrubbers, anyone who does not face the same scrutiny as the passengers,” must be of greater concern.
King grows more cautious when asked about what exactly brought down MS804 over the Mediterranean last week. “Right now the indicators are tip[ping] the scales” toward terrorism, he says, but “the longer it goes without responsibility being claimed it could also be a malfunction on the plane itself, an electrical malfunction.”
No terror group has claimed responsibility in the several days since the plane crashed, unlike a quick claim by Isis after a Russian jet exploded over Egypt last year.
King says “we should find out sooner rather than later” from studying debris about what caused the crash. “We always have to start off with the premise that terrorism is the most likely option,” he adds, “not to say that it was certain, [but] that it was the most likely, but to work our way back.”
Donald Trump has said, without evidence, that the crash was caused by terrorism and that anyone who does not “And if anyone doesn’t think it was blown out of the sky, you’re 100% wrong.”
King has said he will support Trump’s nomination but expressed reservations about his lack of knowledge on foreign policy, national security and terrorism.
Hillary Clinton has also said she believes terrorism the most likely cause of the crash.
Libertarian candidate: Trump plan akin to Kristallnacht
Former Massachusetts governor Bill Weld is next on the CNN program, talking about a third-party campaign that’s already happening: the Libertarian party.
Weld is the vice-presidential pick for the Libertarian ticket, which is led by former New Mexico Gary Johnson. “You can have an administration that’s fiscally conservative and socially inclusive,” Weld says.
“I think that may be 40-[percent]-plus of the country” may feel that way, he adds.
But he hasn’t gone around to any Republicans disaffected by Donald Trump yet, he says.
“I think we have our positions, we’re going to press them. I think we’d ideally nudge the Democrats” to the economic center, he continues. “I’d like to nudge the Republicans to get them away from their anti-abortion stance, their queasiness with gay and lesbians [and] the believable proposals made up in the immigration area.”
“This is really not prime time and we don’t mind saying so.”
Tapper then asks whether Weld stands by his comparison of Donald Trump’s ideas to Kristallnacht, the pogroms in 1938 when Nazis burned synagogues, vandalized homes and killed nearly 100 Jews.
Weld stands by the comparison of Trump’s proposal to deport immigrants to the Nazis, saying it’s not hyperbole or overstatement.
“I served five years on the US Holocaust commission” under George W Bush, he says. “You have to forget a lot of things if you think it’s a good idea to round up and deport 11 million people living peaceable.”
That could happen in “China maybe, but not the United States,” he concludes.
Sanders: Democrats 'anointed' Clinton
Bernie Sanders is first up this morning on CNN’s State of the Union, where host Jake Tapper asks him about concern among Democrats that the senator’s campaign is damaging Hillary Clinton’s general election chances against Donald Trump.
“That’s nothing that I have ever said. The last that I heard is that we are a democracy,” Sanders says. “Elections are about vigorous debates over the issues. Secretary Clinton and I disagree on many issues.”
He lists a few: a national $15 minimum wage, tax on carbon, universal healthcare, foreign intervention.
“Those are legitimate issues to debate. What we are trying to do is bring more people into the political process.”
Tapper asks Sanders about the math – it’s steeply stacked against him. Sanders says he’s fighting to win the pledged delegates, and that he while “it may not be a bad idea” to get rid of the superdelegates – party officials who can vote however they please – he thinks those unbound delegates should be thinking a lot more about their votes, rather than following orders from party leadership.
“I assume that most of the people that come to my rallies can do arithmetic,” he says. But the fact that about 400 superdelegates had pledged to Clinton so early, he adds, “was an anointment, and that is bad for the process.”
“The current situation is undemocratic and it is ill-advised,” he adds.“The status quo clearly is unacceptable to me, and that has got to be changed.”
He again pitches the superdelegates: “We have the energy, we have the excitement, we have the young people, we have the working people.”
He hints at what he wants to change in the Democratic party on a larger level, too. “Not all of my supporters go to these fancy fundraising dinners. They are working people who are hurting now and want real change,” he says. “I hope the Democratic leadership understands they have got to open up and let those people in.”
Sanders adds that if elected president he would not reappoint the current chairperson of the Democratic National Committee, Representative Debbie Wasserman-Schultz.
As for accusations that he has not been “vetted”, he says he’s had a few “very ugly, very vicious” campaigns. “I’m not saying she cannot beat I am the stronger candidate because we appeal to independents, people who are not in love with either the Democratic or the Republican party, often for very good reasons.”
Hello and welcome to our rolling coverage of the 2016 presidential election, as it moves into the final days of its primaries most likely pitching a former reality TV star versus a former secretary of state who would be the most disliked candidate in history were it not for the former TV star.
Washington state will hold its Republican primary this week, though Donald Trump stands alone as the party’s presumptive nominee. Hillary Clinton is on the brink of sealing the Democratic nomination, with her lead all but unassailable by Senator Bernie Sanders.
The senator from Vermont will make his case nonetheless, despite accusations from fellow Democrats that his diehard supporters threaten to cause chaos within the party by rejecting Clinton. Sanders is scheduled to appear three times this morning.
Trump has not deigned to meet the press this Sunday, though the businessman remains as unpredictable as ever. After telling the National Rifle Association he would “cherish” their gun rights on Friday, he tweeted on Saturday that Clinton’s secret service protection should disarm if she really wants to reduce the number of guns in America.
Crooked Hillary wants to get rid of all guns and yet she is surrounded by bodyguards who are fully armed. No more guns to protect Hillary!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 21, 2016
And then on Sunday.
Hillary Clinton is not qualified to be president because her judgement has been proven to be so bad! Would be four more years of stupidity!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 22, 2016
Trump’s speech before the NRA nearly coincided with a visit by Clinton to the family of Trayvon Martin, a black, unarmed teen who in 2012 was shot dead by a neighbor who considered himself a vigilante. The pair of speeches in many ways brought the primary process full circle: a year ago the US was reeling from mass shooting after mass shooting, protests over police violence and questions of systemic racism – questions raised in part by the violence and by Trump’s inflammatory remarks about minorities.
Those remarks include a proposal by Trump to bar all Muslims from entering the US until leaders “can figure out what is going on”. After an EgyptAir flight crashed in the Mediterranean this week, Trump immediately blamed – with no evidence – terrorism, a theme that is sure to loom large in the election and this Sunday. Several members of Congress – including a senator who supports Trump and is one of his main foreign policy advisers – are scheduled for interviews.
They may also discuss the news overnight from Pakistan, where the leader of the Taliban was killed by a US drone strike on Saturday.
And finally, one of the last hopes of the vaunted but not very competent “Never Trump” movement will also appear: Mark Cuban, the owner of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks. Like Trump, Cuban is a brash, wealthy businessman who gets involved in professional wrestling, reality TV and politics. Several Republicans in the anti-Trump coalition reportedly asked Cuban if he would assume the mantle of a third-party campaign for disaffected conservatives. He said no.
But Cuban still doesn’t like Trump, and will undoubtedly share his opinions. Trump loves it when his critics do that. Word fight.
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