Today in Campaign 2016
- Top Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin announced this morning that she had separated from her husband, former congressman Anthony Weiner, after the publication of newly revealed, explicit Twitter messages sent by Weiner to a woman he met online. “After long and painful consideration and work on my marriage, I have made the decision to separate from my husband,” Abedin said in a statement. “Anthony and I remain devoted to doing what is best for our son, who is the light of our life. During this difficult time, I ask for respect for our privacy.”
- Donald Trump issued a statement on the separation: “I only worry for the country in that Hillary Clinton was careless and negligent in allowing Weiner to have such close proximity to highly classified information. Who knows what he learned and who he told? It’s just another example of Hillary Clinton’s bad judgment. It is possible that our country and its security have been greatly compromised by this.”
- The highly respected pollsters at Monmouth University, who earn an A+ in FiveThirtyEight’s pollster ratings, have published a new survey depicting Hillary Clinton as seven points ahead of Donald Trump, 46-39, among likely voters in a four-way presidential race. That margin is right in line with polling averages.
- Our strategy for figuring out what Donald Trump’s plan is on immigration is to wait and see what he says in his big speech on the topic announced for Wednesday. Here’s an episode from this morning that illustrates why. Talk by Trump surrogates about features of a “virtual wall” along the border with Mexico was reported by MSNBC as another potential shift in Trump’s policy, except now the Trump camp has said there’s no shift:
Sr. Trump adv: Reports of "virtual wall" are false. Trump determined to build wall, adv says: "It will be an impenetrable physical barrier."
— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) August 29, 2016
- Onetime New York City mayor and full-time Donald Trump surrogate Rudy Giuliani has condemned onetime child of destiny and fulltime music icon Beyoncé’s performance at last night’s MTV Video Music Awards, calling her influence on young people “a shame.” When asked by Fox & Friends cohost Ainsley Earhardt how he felt about Beyoncé’s 15-minute performance, in which backup dancers dressed in white “died” onstage due to stylized gunshots, Giuliani said that he had saved more black lives from violence than Beyoncé ever has.
- White supremacist and onetime Ku Klux Klan imperial wizard David Duke has released a robocall encouraging Louisiana voters to cast their votes for his senate bid - and for Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.
Hillary Clinton is taking aim at blood-red Utah in a new campaign advertisement, hitting Donald Trump as “unfit and unprepared” to serve as president in a state that has been tepid in its response to the Republican nominee, according to the Salt Lake Tribune.
The campaign mailer, sent to an unknown number of Utah residents, shows a stern-looking woman above a line of dialogue calling Trump’s potential administration “alarming”:
You care about your community and the future of the country. That’s why the thought of Donald Trump as president is so alarming.
In an interview with CNN’s Erin Burnett, longtime Trump friend and business associate Tom Barrack said he did not want Donald Trump to talk about Huma Abedin and Anthony Weiner - despite the campaign’s release of a statement critiquing the disgraced former congressman as a national security risk.
“Personally, I don’t,” Barrack said. “Because I think it detracts from the substance. I understand it, right? In other words, he’s saying, look, I’m here - the American people want a leader, they want somebody who stands in the middle of that fire and fights and fights to win.”
“So if I have all these issues, I’m going to use them and they can use them on me. Bring it on, right? Nobody else does that. Everybody says, I’m not going to bring that up because somebody is going to bring it up on me,” Barrack continued. “He walks into the fire and says, I’m going to use everything that I have. I don’t personally agree with that.”
Trump campaign CEO accused of sexual harassment in '90s lawsuit
Trump campaign CEO Stephen Bannon was accused of workplace sexual harassment in a legal dispute during his time as director of a scientific research facility that aimed to prepare human for terraforming the planet Mars, according to a report from Buzzfeed News.
The lawsuit, filed in 1994, was the result of alleged comments made by Bannon during his tenure as the director of Biosphere 2, a scientific research facility in Oracle, Arizona, that was created as a closed system of biomes aimed to replicate the Earth.
The suit, filed by former Biosphere 2 director Margret Augustine, accused Bannon of disparaging female employees of the facility and making sexualized comments towards her personally. Bannon denied the charges at the time, which were later dropped, and the Trump campaign released a statement denying the charges today:
The Bass Organization sued Ms. Augustine for fraud for embezzling $800,000. She then sued two representatives of the Bass Organization having never complained about any behavior. Subsequently, she dropped her legal action. Ms Augustine was removed as CEO in a corporate restructuring in 1993.
In her complaint, Augustine accused Bannon of “insulting to the plaintiff and other females employees of Biosphere 2, and in their presence, and against their will, made lewd remarks, told offensive off-color stories, made disparaging remarks about females, made sexually suggestive remarks, discussed females they had known in a lewd and derogatory fashion and in general acted with total indifference to the feelings of the plaintiff and other female employees of Biosphere 2.”
Republican Meg Whitman to campaign for Hillary Clinton
Billionaire Republican fundraiser Meg Whitman, a former CEO of Ebay and California gubernatorial candidate, will stump for Hillary Clinton in Denver tomorrow to campaign for the Democratic presidential nominee in a meeting with Colorado business leaders.
Whitman “discuss Clinton’s plan to create jobs, invest in tech businesses, and make it easier for small business owners to succeed,” according to a campaign release that trumpets Whitman as a “35-year business veteran” and her declaration earlier this year that Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is “unfit to be president.”
Donald Trump is trumpeting - sorry - an opt-in internet poll that shows him tied with Hillary Clinton:
#MakeAmericaGreatAgain #ImWithYou pic.twitter.com/IoYMdjvWHf
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 29, 2016
Oomf.
.@DRUDGE_REPORT Um, the fight of his life was when he was captured and imprisoned for 5.5 years, but go with this obnoxious headline...
— Meghan McCain (@MeghanMcCain) August 29, 2016
The Clinton campaign’s response to Donald Trump’s statement on Huma Abedin’s separation from Anthony Weiner:
We’re not dignifying that with a response.
Pastor Mark Burns, recently upgraded to a high-profile surrogate for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, just went on what might be generously called an aggressive shouting jag with an MSNBC journalist on-air, at one point asking the host where her ancestors are from.
Here's part of @KWelkerNBC's interview with pro-Trump Pastor Mark Burns just now on MSNBC. Wow. Do watch. https://t.co/cgW972uvu2
— Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) August 29, 2016
In an interview with a Seattle-area radio talk show host, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump called disgraced former congressman Anthony Weiner a “disaster,” calling news of his separation from wife and Hillary Clinton adviser Huma Abedin a national security risk.
“I said a long time ago she’s married to a guy who is a disaster,” Trump told the Dori Monson Show, a conservative afternoon talk-radio program in the Seattle area. “I’ve known him for a long time. Here’s a guy - what he’s done over the internet is disgusting, and he’s a pervert and just a very sick guy. And she is married to him.”
Trump appeared to imply that Abedin’s marriage to Weiner was a lapse in judgment, and put national security at risk by virtue of what he described as her access to classified information.
“She’s married to a guy that is uncontrolled and uncontrollable. He’s a sick person, and you know she has access to classified information,” Trump said. “Huma Abedin has access to classified information. How Hillary got away with that one, nobody will ever know. But to think that it’s very likely that much of this information Anthony Weiner would know about, and I think it’s something that was terrible.”
On Weiner, Trump did not hold back.
“He’s a sick person. He’s a sick puppy. And so you know it just happened and it’s actually sad in many ways. He’s a very sick guy and I said if you look back you’ll see that I said at the beginning the worst thing she can do is marry this guy. I’ve known him because he’s a politician, I’ve known him for quite a while and I understood that that he had difficulties. And certainly when it came out, I don’t know if these people get cured, it doesn’t seem like it.”
The Obama administration could end its use of private immigration detention centres, the US homeland security secretary, Jeh Johnson, said today.
The announcement follows a landmark decision by the US Department of Justiceto phase out private prisons, after a stinging independent review found they were drastically less safe than publicly operated centres. The move, made earlier in August, led to intense pressure on the homeland security department to conduct a similar review, as it relies more heavily on the use of privatised facilities.
Johnson said his department’s advisory council has been tasked to examine whether “immigration detention operations conducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) should move in the same direction” as the justice department. The panel will have until the end of November to make recommendations, and will consider “all factors … including fiscal considerations” related to ICE’s use of private centres.
The agency’s use of private detention centres has long been criticised by human rights advocates. An investigation published by Human Rights Watch in July found evidence of substandard medical care at a number of facilities, while protests at privately operated family detention centres in Texas have become commonplace.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) detains a total of 33,676 people, as of the beginning of August, with an overwhelming 24,567 (or 72%) of these held in the country’s 46 private detention facilities. Conversely, the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Prisons operates only 13 private prisons, which hold around 11% of the federal prison population. The federal prison population has also declined in recent years, while the numbers of those detained in ICE facilities has increased.
David Duke releases robocall in support of Donald Trump
White supremacist and onetime Ku Klux Klan imperial wizard David Duke has released a robocall encouraging Louisiana voters to cast their votes for his senate bid - and for Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.
“Hi, this is David Duke,” the call begins. “I’m sorry I missed you. I’m running for US Senate. I’ll tell the truth that no other candidate will dare say. Unless massive immigration is stopped now, we’ll be out numbered and outvoted in our own nation. It’s happening. We’re losing our gun rights, our free speech. We’re taxed to death. We’re losing our jobs and businesses to unfair trade. We’re losing our country. Look at the Super Bowl salute to the Black Panther cop killers.”
“It’s time to stand up and vote for Donald Trump for president and vote for me David Duke for the US Senate. I’d love to hear from you. To find out more contribute or volunteer for the DavidDuke.com. Go to Davidduke.com. Together, we’ll save America and save Louisiana.”
In a comment to Politico, the Trump campaign repudiated Duke’s support (much more rapidly than the first time):
“Mr. Trump has continued to denounce David Duke and any group or individual associated with a message of hate,” the campaign said in a statement to Politico. “There is no place for this in the Republican party or our country. We have no knowledge of these calls or any related activities, but strongly condemn and disavow.”
Barack Obama will head to Asia this week assuring allies that the US intends to press ahead with the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) - despite Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump’s vehement opposition to it.
Clinton supported the 12-nation deal as secretary of state but has come out against it as a presidential candidate, saying it does not do enough to protect American jobs. This puts her directly at odds with Obama even as he joins her on the campaign trail.
“TPP is in many ways seen as litmus test for whether or not the US has staying power in this region,” Ben Rhodes, Obama’s deputy national security adviser, told reporters ahead of Obama’s trip to China and Laos this week. “We are a Pacific power, and we have been traditionally, but we’re also on the other side of the Pacific ocean and what the countries of the Asia Pacific region want to know, particularly the Asian countries, is whether or not we can be counted on.”
The TPP brings countries such as Vietnam and Malaysia up to regulatory standards set by the US, Rhodes added, and to reject it would be to cede crucial ground to China.
He warned: “When they see such an evidently good deal for the United States, and then see the United States not following through on that, it will cause them to question our leadership in the Asian Pacific and our leadership in the world, and that is profoundly important economically to the United States because we need access to these markets, but it’s also important to our national security because it would be seen as a significant setback, I think, for American leadership if we don’t move forward.”
Rhodes declined to comment directly on Clinton and Trump but insisted that TPP would create jobs and avoid the pitfalls of past trade deals. “I won’t speak to the domestic issues beyond saying that many of the questions that have been raised about trade agreements for many years are actually specifically addressed in TPP. So some of the things that we heard about the shortcomings of Nafta, that the president agrees with, were actually addressed in the negotiation of TPP.”
He added: “I think the logic of it is overwhelming. We’d be cutting against our interests to walk away from TPP. The next president will benefit enormously from TPP.”
John Earnest, the White House press secretary, claimed that the TPP has strong backing from both Democrats and Republicans and indicated the White House hopes it will be ratified during the post-election “lame duck” session of Congress. “There is a reservoir of support across the country that we can draw from,” he said. “The president’s going to make a strong case that we have made progress and there is a path for us to get this done before the president leaves office.”
Rhodes also told a press briefing on Monday that Myanmar state counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi, once among the world’s most prominent political prisoners, will visit the White House soon.
Donald Trump, on a potential wall on the Canadian border:
I think it’s unlikely, to be honest with you.”
The drip-drip-drip of embarrassing anecdotes and criminal allegations against Trump campaign CEO Stephen Bannon continues today, with revelations that Bannon dismissed progressive women as a “bunch of dykes” who criticize conservative women because they didn’t attend historic women’s colleges.
“These women cut to the heart of the progressive narrative,” Bannon said of Ann Coulter, Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin during a radio interview in 2011 while promoting his film Fire From the Heartland: the Awakening of the Conservative Woman.
“That’s why there are some unintended consequences of the women’s liberation movement,” Bannon continued. “That, in fact, the women that would lead this country would be pro-family, they would have husbands, they would love their children. They wouldn’t be a bunch of dykes that came from the Seven Sisters schools up in New England. That drives the left insane and that’s why they hate these women.”
The so-called Seven Sisters schools are historic women’s college in the Northeast, roughly analogous to the Ivy League. The colleges include Barnard College, Bryn Mawr College, Mount Holyoke College, Radcliffe College, (which has since merged with Harvard University), Smith College, Vassar College, and Wellesley College, from which current Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton graduated in 1969.
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Pastor Mark Burns, Donald Trump’s adviser on issues relating to black voters, announced earlier today that Trump will be speaking to The Impact Network, an African American-owned Christian television network, this coming Saturday as part of his outreach attempts to minority communities who are deeply suspicious of the candidate.
This afternoon, he tweeted this:
Black Americans, THANK YOU FOR YOUR VOTES and letting me use you again..See you again in 4 years. pic.twitter.com/c4BOc6Tgkt
— Pastor Mark Burns (@pastormarkburns) August 29, 2016
Donald Trump says Colin Kaepernick should 'find a country that works better for him'
San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick “should find a country that works better for him”, Donald Trump has said in response to the furore over the black footballer’s decision to sit during a performance of The Star-Spangled Banner because he believes the United States oppresses African Americans and other minorities.
“I have followed it and I think it’s personally not a good thing,” Trump told the Dori Monson Show, a conservative afternoon talk-radio program in the Seattle area, of the controversy. “I think it’s a terrible thing, and you know, maybe he should find a country that works better for him. Let him try - it won’t happen.”
Kaepernick sat on the team’s bench on Friday night for the first time during the anthem before the Niners played host to the Green Bay Packers in an exhibition game.
“I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color,” Kaepernick said in an interview with NFL Media afterwards. “To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.”
The 49ers issued a statement saying that Americans have the right to protest or support the anthem.
“The national anthem is and always will be a special part of the pregame ceremony,” the team said. “It is an opportunity to honor our country and reflect on the great liberties we are afforded as its citizens. In respecting such American principles as freedom of religion and freedom of expression, we recognize the right of an individual to choose to participate, or not, in our celebration of the national anthem.”
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Rudy Giuliani: Beyoncé's VMA performance 'a shame'
Onetime New York City mayor and full-time Donald Trump surrogate Rudy Giuliani has condemned onetime child of destiny and fulltime music icon Beyoncé’s performance at last night’s MTV Video Music Awards, calling her influence on young people “a shame.”
When asked by Fox & Friends cohost Ainsley Earhardt how he felt about Beyoncé’s 15-minute performance, in which backup dancers dressed in white “died” onstage due to stylized gunshots, Giuliani said that he had saved more black lives from violence than Beyoncé ever has.
“I ran the largest and best police department in the world, the New York City Police Department, and I saved more black lives than any of those people you saw on stage by reducing crime, and particularly homicide, by 75%,” Giuliani said, declaring that “maybe 4,000 or 5,000” African-Americans are alive today because of his policies.
“So if you’re going to do that, then you should symbolize why the police officers are in the neighborhoods and what are you going to do about it?”
Cohost Brian Kilmeade added that, as “an extremely popular and powerful performer,” Beyoncé’s message to young people is “pretty indelible.”
“It’s a shame,” Giuliani responded. “It’s a shame.”
It’s far from Giuliani’s first criticism of the reigning queen of pop - in February, Giuliani criticized Beyoncé’s halftime show at the Super Bowl as “an attack” on police officers due to its theme of black pride.
Judge Beyoncé’s Lemonade medley yourself:
Huma Abedin has been the reluctant star of two political psychodramas in the past year.
The first – involving painfully public strains in her marriage to Anthony Weiner, the former New York congressman – ended, perhaps predictably, on Monday with news that she had decided to separate from him following yet another sexting scandal.
But the second – Abedin’s emerging role as a central figure in the likely return ofHillary Clinton to the White House – may be only just beginning and remains of far greater public interest.
Just how crucial this 40-year-old campaign aide is to the presidential project became clear last July when emails revealed the inner workings of Clinton’s hectic life as secretary of state.
Then serving as deputy chief of staff to the secretary, Abedin appeared frequently in the email traffic, as a gatekeeper, personal assistant and professional confidante so close that Clinton said she was “like a second daughter”.
Initially, the tranches of emails painted Clinton’s right-hand woman in a flattering, but somewhat subdued, light: advising her boss on how to operate a secure fax machine and suggesting when it was time to take a nap.
But more recent batches underlined how far Abedin has come since this George Washington University student started out as intern working for the then first lady in the East Wing of an earlier Clinton White House.
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The Hillary Clinton campaign has produced a “behind-the-scenes” video of the candidate’s visit with vice president Joe Biden to Scranton, Pennsylvania, earlier this month:
Joe and Hillary went home to Scranton. Take a behind-the-scenes look at their visit: pic.twitter.com/xdiqa0dbdP
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) August 29, 2016
It’s unclear what platforms this new Trump campaign video will be disseminated on – but it’s for sure on Twitter.
The spot hits Clinton for saying she never sent or received classified information on her private email when the FBI found she had.
There’s an animation of Clinton with a growing Pinnochio nose:
#CrookedHillary pic.twitter.com/vXhcC8PaPy
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 29, 2016
huh, even the "failing" Washington Post can be useful from time to time https://t.co/u1n6kxaTdd
— Glenn Kessler (@GlennKesslerWP) August 29, 2016
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Trump on wall: 'impenetrable physical barrier'
Our strategy for figuring out what Donald Trump’s plan is on immigration is to wait and see what he says in his big speech on the topic announced for Wednesday.
Here’s an episode from this morning that illustrates why. Talk by Trump surrogates about features of a “virtual wall” along the border with Mexico was reported by MSNBC as another potential shift in Trump’s policy, except now the Trump camp has said there’s no shift:
Sr. Trump adv: Reports of "virtual wall" are false. Trump determined to build wall, adv says: "It will be an impenetrable physical barrier."
— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) August 29, 2016
Last week Trump himself said “We’re going to build a wall, don’t worry about it” and elaborated that “we’re going to have protection for tunnels, so people can’t tunnel under.”
It’s unknown whether Trump still supports a deportation force for undocumented migrants or whether he supports a path to legal status for some; it’s unknown where he stands on birthright citizenship, which he has second-guessed in the past; it’s unknown where he stands on the status of DREAMers. The basics of his policy are unknown.
We’ll be listening Wednesday.
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Clinton maintains healthy lead in new Monmouth poll
The highly respected pollsters at Monmouth University, who earn an A+ in FiveThirtyEight’s pollster ratings, have published a new survey depicting Hillary Clinton as seven points ahead of Donald Trump, 46-39, among likely voters in a four-way presidential race. That margin is right in line with polling averages.
Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson scores 7% in the poll and Green party candidate Jill Stein earns 2%.
The poll reveals once again that Americans loathe these candidates:
In the current poll, 34% of voters have a favorable opinion of Clinton and 51% have an unfavorable view of her. Even fewer (26%) have a favorable opinion of Trump and 57% have an unfavorable view of him.
Great work everyone! https://t.co/y0hespqzxA pic.twitter.com/jnBzJfMdYM
— Liam Donovan (@LPDonovan) August 29, 2016
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Trump ad makes claims for tax plan. Just not Trump's tax plan
Here’s a good catch by Benjy Sarlin, writing on nbcnews.com. The new Donald Trump ad (see earlier) describing the economic benefits of a Trump presidency takes credit for tax plans that Trump explicitly disagrees with.
In one place the ad cites analysis of a plan Trump ditched a year ago. Elsewhere the ad cites analysis of a plan advanced by House Republicans, which Trump partially disagrees with, Sarlin writes:
For the ad’s claim that “working families get tax relief,” it refers viewers not to an analysis of Trump’s own tax proposals, but to a white paper by House GOP leaders about their own tax reform plan. [...]
The ad’s next two claims that Trump would make “wages go up” and “small businesses thrive” refer to his old tax plan from last year, which had drastically different rates,
Read the full piece here. Here’s the ad:
Update: The Trump campaign has released this statement to NBC, saying they expect analysis of their plan to be “similar to the prior analysis”:
Trump camp on why their ad cites tax plan he no longer favors: They think it's close enough https://t.co/bOoZbAcov8 pic.twitter.com/rnf2NUMoRh
— Benjy Sarlin (@BenjySarlin) August 29, 2016
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Trump warns Weiner's conduct may have 'greatly compromised' national security
Donald Trump has issued a statement on Abedin’s separation from Weiner.
“Huma is making a very wise decision. I know Anthony Weiner well, and she will be far better off without him,” the statement says, continuing:
I only worry for the country in that Hillary Clinton was careless and negligent in allowing Weiner to have such close proximity to highly classified information,. Who knows what he learned and who he told? It’s just another example of Hillary Clinton’s bad judgment. It is possible that our country and its security have been greatly compromised by this.
How is this Huma/Weiner security leak supposed to work?
— daveweigel (@daveweigel) August 29, 2016
"Anthony, I am never around and you've humiliated me. Here's some state secrets."
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Abedin announces separation from Weiner
Here’s a new statement from Huma Abedin:
After long and painful consideration and work on my marriage, I have made the decision to separate from my husband. Anthony and I remain devoted to doing what is best for our son, who is the light of our life. During this difficult time, I ask for respect for our privacy.
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Online scam targeting Trump donors nets more than $1m
A man unconnected with the Donald Trump campaign has collected more than $1m in donations online by dangling the promise of a dinner with Trump on a site called dinnerwithtrump.org.
“Enter for a chance for you and a guest to have dinner with Donald Trump,” the site says. The flight, food & stay are on us.”
Visitors who enter their personal information to enter for free are invited to donate and increase their chances. Donations pour into the coffers of a political action committee run by a 25-year-old Maryland man called Ian Hawes.
The fine print “discloses that this ‘dinner’ actually amounts to the PAC buying two tickets ‘at a Sponsor-selected fundraising evening event held with Donald Trump and other attendees’,” Politico reports:
As of Sunday, Hawes’ group had raised $1.1 million from 21,253 donors, he said. More than 410,000 people had signed up for the dinner contest — giving him a massive email list he can leverage for more money for years to come.
Read the full piece here.
Trump: 'I will stop the slaughter going on' in American cities
Donald Trump tweets this morning that he “will stop the slaughter going on” in inner cities, and the candidate wonders how much more violence “will it take” for voters to turn to him.
Inner-city crime is reaching record levels. African-Americans will vote for Trump because they know I will stop the slaughter going on!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 29, 2016
Look how bad it is getting! How much more crime, how many more shootings, will it take for African-Americans and Latinos to vote Trump=SAFE!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 29, 2016
Trump’s Twitter storm this morning (there are more tweets where those came from) rests on an assertion he made prominently at the Republican convention last month, that “decades of progress made in bringing down crime are now being reversed by this administration’s rollback of criminal enforcement.”
In fact, there has been a recent spike in murders in 36 of the 50 biggest cities in America (in 2015 the homicide rate increased 54.3% in Washington and 58.5% in Baltimore), the Guardian’s David Smith and Scott Bixby wrote:
But in the first three months of 2016, the picture was more mixed, according to the Major Cities Chiefs Association: New York, for example, recorded a 25% fall in homicides. The Brennan Center responds: “Over the past 25 years, crime in major cities has fallen 66%. In the country as a whole, violent crime is half of what it was in 1991, and has gone down 26% in the last decade. Property crime is down 43% in the past 25 years. No single year change has reversed that trend. Instead, the murder rate for 2015 remains close to 2012 levels – just barely above recent, historic lows.”
Trump says urban crime is reaching record levels, cities are war zones. Chicago statistics. https://t.co/rRKlOHiSPo pic.twitter.com/V4mreiZVfx
— Josh Greenman (@joshgreenman) August 29, 2016
It can seem a bit silly, though, to brandish statistics to illustrate the fundamental wrongness of Trump’s vision of the American city as an unmitigated hellscape. Hillary Clinton made the point last week in a speech about Trump’s “long history of racial discrimination.” “When I hear them, I think to myself: How sad. Donald Trump misses so much,” Clinton said, continuing:
He doesn’t see the success of black leaders in every field, the vibrancy of black-owned businesses, the strength of the black church.
He doesn’t see the excellence of historically black colleges and universities or the pride of black parents watching their children thrive. And he apparently didn’t see Police Chief Brown on television after the murders of five of his officers conducting himself with such dignity. He certainly doesn’t have any solutions to take on the reality of systemic racism and create more equity and opportunity in communities of color and for every American.
It really does take a lot of nerve to ask people he’s ignored and mistreated for decades, “What do you have to lose?” Because the answer is: Everything.
Now, Trump’s lack of knowledge or experience or solutions would be bad enough.
But what he’s doing here is more sinister.
Trump is reinforcing harmful stereotypes and offering a dog whistle to his most hateful supporters.
It’s a disturbing preview of what kind of president he’d be.
Trump has not said what he would do to stop, for example, gun violence in some cities. Indiana governor Mike Pence, Trump’s running mate, was asked on Sunday about consistent findings by Chicago police that most out-of-state guns recovered in Chicago originated in Indiana. Pence rejected the correlation between his state’s lax gun laws and violent crime across the border, saying that “firearms in the hands of law abiding citizens” make everyone safer.
Trump accuses the Obama administration of a “rollback of criminal enforcement.” Will he stop crime by hiring more cops? Does Trump advocate stop-and-frisk? Or the kind of “broken-windows” law enforcement tactics his adviser Rudy Giuliani advanced in New York? Does he plan to solve urban crime with new employment, education or housing policies?
Asked about 8-year-old girl killed by stray bullet in Camden and what a President Trump could do in city, Christie says: "Nothing."
— Maddie Hanna (@maddiehanna) August 29, 2016
When do we find out? Maybe next Saturday, when Trump is scheduled to speak at a Detroit church and “answer questions that are relevant to the African American community,” his campaign has announced.
Now that African-Americans are seeing what a bad job Hillary type policy and management has done to the inner-cities, they want TRUMP!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 29, 2016
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The Hillary Clinton campaign was confronted with an unpleasant distraction on Monday morning as the New York Post published a front-page story about newly revealed, explicit Twitter messages sent by former congressman Anthony Weiner to a woman he met online. Weiner is married to Huma Abedin, Clinton’s closest aide.
The latest messages appear to be another installment in a long-running pattern of conduct by Weiner online that has made a public spectacle of his marriage and recalled the sex scandals attached to Clinton’s own marriage.
Weiner resigned from Congress in 2011 after similar explicit messages came to light. His 2013 New York City mayoral bid foundered on a similar scandal.
Weiner’s Twitter account has been deleted. The Clinton campaign did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
The Post on Monday published texts and images said to have been sent and received by Weiner about a year ago, in July 2015. The images include one that appears to have been sent by Weiner in which his young son, asleep, is visible in the background.
As his mayoral bid collapsed, Abedin, already anticipating Clinton’s presidential run, appeared alongside Weiner and expressed support for him. She did not appear at a concession speech he gave at the end of the campaign. She travels constantly with Clinton.
The disintegrating mayoral bid, and the couple’s efforts to prevent the same from happening to their marriage, were the subject of an award-winning documentary released this year, Weiner.
Earlier this month, Weiner revealed that Abedin never agreed to the documentary.
Update: Donald Trump has sent a tweet questioning Clinton’s judgment, without mentioning Weiner by name:
Crooked Hillary's brainpower is highly overrated.Probably why her decision making is so bad or, as stated by Bernie S, she has BAD JUDGEMENT
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 29, 2016
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Hello and welcome to our live-wire coverage of the 2016 race for the White House. Donald Trump has announced a date for what he bills as “a major speech on ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION” – Wednesday in the “GREAT State of Arizona”.
I will be making a major speech on ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION on Wednesday in the GREAT State of Arizona. Big crowds, looking for a larger venue.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 28, 2016
Trump surrogates have said he will use the speech to clarify his immigration proposals. The candidate appears to be backing away from a proposal to stand up a “deportation force” to remove millions of undocumented migrants from the country. Trump’s running mate Mike Pence and New Jersey governor Chris Christie insisted at the weekend that the candidate’s position on immigration had not changed.
The Trump campaign has reserved “upward of $10m” in TV ad time in nine states “in the next week or so”, AP reports, including states where Trump’s poll numbers have lagged such as Virginia and Colorado. The buy brings the Trump campaign’s total TV ad spending to about $15m, versus $77m for the Hillary Clinton campaign.
The Trump campaign is also out with a new ad this morning, offering contrasting visions of what would happen to the American economy under a Trump presidency versus a Clinton presidency:
Can Trump catch Clinton in the 71 days remaining until election day (with early voting in dozens of states a month away)? Polling averages depict a static race through the month of August, with Clinton leading by between six and eight points. New polling by Emerson College, which FiveThirtyEight has found has a measurable house effect in favor of Republicans, has Trump within three points of Clinton in a four-way race in Pennsylvania, where head-to-head averages have her up seven points. Morning Consult released a national poll yesterday showing Trump within three points of Clinton after having trailed by six points a week earlier. Is he gaining? The signals are mixed.
In conversations in Nascar country, Guardian Washington bureau chief Dan Roberts found some skepticism about the Republican candidate.
New Weiner sexts revealed
This has happened:
.@anthonyweiner's Twitter account has been deleted pic.twitter.com/l0DftDzJIn
— Jacob Kornbluh (@jacobkornbluh) August 29, 2016
Presumably because this happened (that link takes you to the New York Post coverage of previously unseen, by the public, sexts by Anthony Weiner, from a year ago).
When you see Anthony Weiner is trending. pic.twitter.com/h9xT3Gzyn7
— Justice Don Willett (@JusticeWillett) August 29, 2016
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