Summary
- Donald Trump added Muslim Americans to Hispanic Americans on his list of “possible” biased jurists against him, insisting that a judge born in Indiana is “a Mexican” because his parents were immigrants and that ethnicity is unfairly affecting a civil suit against him.
- “He’s a member of a club or society very strongly from Mexico, which is fine, but I say he’s got bias,” Trump told CBS’s Face the Nation. “I’m going to build a wall. I’m going to build a wall.”
- The Republican candidate for president was also caught in a contradiction about his past support for military intervention in Libya. Faced with proof that he had supported intervention, even though he now claims to have opposed it, Trump said he wanted a “surgical” strike to kill dictator Muammar Ghaddafi.
- “I was for something, but I wasn’t for what we have right now,” he said, adding that the dictator “paid me a fortune” when he was trying to find a place to stay in New York. “And it became sort of a big joke.”
- Hillary Clinton rejected conclusions of a State Department inspector general’s report about her emails, saying only: “It was a mistake, I would not do it again, but the rules were not clarified until after I had left, and the first secretary of state who used a government email account was John Kerry, after I had left.”
- Bernie Sanders raised concerns about donations received by the Clinton Foundation from foreign autocratic governments, and more broadly about her hawkish foreign policy, eg her support for military intervention in Libya. “Our job is to think about what happens the day after,” Sanders said.
Updated
New polls from CBS suggest Bernie Sanders may perform well against Hillary Clinton in California but that his campaign’s fate will be sealed in New Jersey.
California has 475 pledged delegates and 71 unpledged delegates at stake; New Jersey has 126 pledge delegates and 16 unpledged delegates.
Depending on how Puerto Rico’s Democratic primary plays out – its 60 delegates could bring Clinton to within a handful of victory – the race could be over very soon.
CBS battleground polls
— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) June 5, 2016
CALIFORNIA
Clinton 49%
Sanders 47%
Clinton 48%
Trump 33%
NEW JERSEY
Clinton 61%
Sanders 34%
Clinton 49%
Trump 34%
“Renee was the first congresswoman to endorse me and she really was terrific, and boy is she a fighter. I need her help in Washington.”
So sayeth Don, who’s started to endorse candidates for Congress. Ellmers is a North Carolina representative running for re-election.
Trump: Muslim judges also 'possibly' biased
Dickerson asks about the federal judge whom Trump has accused of “bias” because the judge has parents from Mexico. The judge is from Indiana.
“I think it has a lot to do with it,” Trump says. “I had a judge previously and it would’ve been a very short case.”
He starts rambling about his theory that the case should’ve been dismissed. “The plaintiff in the case was a woman, she was so bad that after the deposition it was over … they went before the judge they said we don’t want her to be the plaintiff. So we said that’s fine you have to dismiss the case.”
“How do you allow a case to proceed when the plaintiff asks to be dismissed?”
In class action suits that involve a large number of plaintiffs, as does the case against Trump University, it is not unusual to replace the lead plaintiff.
Dickerson: what does any of this have to do with the judge having parents from Mexico?
Trump interrupts, until Dickerson nearly manages to pin him down to the question.
“He’s a member of a club or society very strongly from Mexico, which is fine, but I say he’s got bias. I’m going to build a wall. I’m going to build a wall.”
“This judge is treating me very unfairly,” he continues, adding without any evidence or specifics: “there’s something going on.”
He again starts talking about the lead plaintiff who was dismissed from the case, before Dickerson interrupts and asks if this were a Muslim judge would they, too, be “biased” because of Trump’s suggestion to “temporarily” ban Muslims from entering the US?
Trump: “Uh… it’s possible yes, That would be possible, absolutely.”
Dickerson invokes one of the United States’ founding principles: that Americans do not judge each other according to who their parents were, or where they came from.
“I’m not talking about tradition, I’m talking about common sense,” Trump says.
“He’s not treating me fairly,” he complains. “I’ve had numerous lawyers, I have a case where thousands of people have said it’s a great school … It has nothing to do with anything except common sense.”
Trump’s lawyers have not asked the judge to recuse himself. The chief justice of the second circuit court of appeals wrote in 1998 that “matters such as race or ethnicity are improper bases for challenging a judge’s impartiality”. Courts around the US have ruled similarly for decades.
Updated
Dickerson asks Trump about his claims that Hillary Clinton “has to go to jail”.
Trump insists that Clinton has done “everything wrong” but speaks only vaguely about how he believes she broke the law in her use of a private email server. “The word judgment,” he says. “Under those rules and regulations, judgment is even criminal.”
“Why would a person and how could a person, with this kind of judgment, become the president of the United States,” he continues.
This is a cyber world. This is a cyber world. … We’re being hacked all over the place by Russia, by China, probably. … We’re in a cyber world and she’s playing around with servers and emails, who could she be running this country?”
Trump says that Clinton should be jailed for being “stupid”.
Dickerson has a retort for this: “If stupidity were criminal we’d all be in jail.”
Over on Fox News Sunday, meanwhile, Newt Gingrich has said Trump’s criticism of judge Gonzalo Curiel is “inexcusable” and one of his “worst mistakes”, but declined to accuse the nominee of racism. Like Mitch McConnell on NBC earlier, he isn’t going to go quite that far.
Gingrich also said Trump had to recognize that he is now the “potential leader” of the US, and should thus up his game. This is perhaps an exclusive look at the kind of vice-presidential advice the former House speaker might give should Trump take him into the White House.
Though the Trump campaign has reportedly been narrowing its list of potential VPs – and though we don’t know if Gingrich is still on it, or ever was – he does at least fit the profile of such an appointment as outlined by campaign chair Paul Manafort this week: he’s white and male. Anything else would be “viewed as pandering”, according to Manafort.
Fox News Sunday also spoke to Clinton campaign chair (and sometime Guardian contributor) John Podesta, about his candidate’s move on to the offensive this week. And he said: “I think the card we’re going to play against Trump is that he has always been for himself.
“He’s a self-aggrandiser at the expense of literally thousands of people. And when it comes to Trump University what we learned this week was even his own employees called it a fraudulent scheme.”
Updated
Trump: I was for something, but not this
Donald Trump has a second appearance, on CBS’s Face the Nation with host John Dickerson, who asks him about foreign policy.
Trump says he doesn’t think that generals know much about the terror group Isis. “They don’t know much because they’re not winning. I think they’re not winning for a different,” he says.
“From what I hear, it’s all being run form the White House,” he adds. “I’ve spoken to certain generals” – he won’t say who – and they say it’s being run form the White House, where the commander in chief works.
Dickerson asks who. “In one case in office, in one case out of office.”
But Dickerson points out that Trump was in fact for intervention in Libya, despite all his claims in the last few months.
Trump: “I did? Where did you see that?”
Dickerson: “In a video blog from 2011, you said, “Now we should go in. We should stop this guy,” this guy being Ghaddafi, “which would be very easy and very quick. We could do it surgically, stop him from doing it, and save these lives.”
Trump: “That’s a big difference from what we’re talking.”
Dickerson: But you were for intervention…
Trump: “Don’t forget, I’m the only one, I made a lot of money with Ghaddafi, if you remember. He came to the country and he had to make a deal with me because he needed a place to stay, he paid me a fortune, never got to stay there, and it became sort of a big joke. But the fact is that Libya was a disaster from the standpoint of the way it was handled, I mean … “
John Dickerson: Wait, what? You were for intervention, just to clear that up? I’m confused …
Trump: “I was for something, but I wasn’t for what we have right now.
“And right now, Isis has their oil, John, Isis is selling – that’s among the finest oil in the world. Isis has taken over the Libyan oil. And we don’t do blockades, we don’t do anything, they’re selling it, they’re making a fortune with it. So we go out, we do Libya, we do it poorly, as poorly as you can do it. You can’t do worse. And then now, if you look at what’s happened, the result is Isis is selling the oil and it’s a total mess.”
Trump insists that he was for a “surgical” strike to kill Ghaddafi alone – an arbitrary assassination, in other words, and he does not admit that the contradiction of his past support for intervention with more recent claims that he opposed any intervention.
Clinton insists no email wrongdoing
Stephanopoulos concludes with questions about Clinton’s email practices while she was secretary of state and about her gun control proposals.
He asks first about a scathing State Department report that sharply criticized Clinton’s practices, but Clinton inches her way away from it.
I thought that the report made it clear that the practice I used was used by other secretaries … If I had to it over again I certainly wouldn’t, but I think the rules were not clarified until after I had left because it had been the practice of others. There was certainly reason to believe, which I did, which is what I practiced was in keeping with others’ practices. …
It was a mistake, I would not do it again, but the rules were not clarified until after I had left, and the first secretary of state who used a government email account was John Kerry, after I had left.
“Everybody in the department knew that I was emailing from a personal address,” Clinton promises – even though the State Department found that two staffers had raised concerns about the practice, and warned that her emails could contain federal records that needed to be preserved under law.
There were also guidelines about cybersecurity, and warnings about using mobile devices to conduct official business. Clinton did not seek approval from senior information officers, according to the inspector general’s report. There were also reports of hacking attempts, the IG found, though it did not conclude that any attack was successful. The FBI is investigating whether the private server endangered security.
Stephanopoulos asks whether Clinton has sat down with agents. “I have not been asked to come in for an interview and I have said I am more than willing,” she says.
Finally he asks about her proposals to increase background checks and repeal a liability law that protects gun manufacturers from lawsuits by families of gun victims.
Clinton says she will defend the right to bear arms, but that it cannot be a right beyond all limits. “If it is a constitutional right then it is like every constitutional right is subject to regulations.”
The words “a well regulated militia” begin the text of the second amendment.
“Responsible gun owners have a right, I have no objection to that, but the rest of the American public has a right to [actions] to protect everyone else.”
Updated
Hillary Clinton has joined George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s This Week, and conversation inevitably circles round to Donald Trump.
Did you suggest he’s “mentally unstable” in your speech last week, Stephanopoulos asks.
Clinton says not quite, but “he makes bizarre rants and engages in personal feuds and outright lies. He does apparently seem to have very thin skin, and I think these attributes, that kind of temperament is unsuited to be our commander in chief.”
She keeps it up, calling Trump: “someone who doesn’t tell the truth, doesn’t seem to be bothered by the constant and inherent contradictions, I said that he would not mind other countries having nuclear weapons, including Korea, Japan Saudi Arabia.
She continues:
His unpredictability, his putting everything in highly personal terms, has rattled … our closest allies … has caused a lot of serous concern around the world, because people are not used to seeing anyone, a Republican or a Democrat, who is so loose with the truth, so divisive, and so dismissive of very legitimate concerns about our safety, our security our values.
Clinton picks up on Trump’s attacks on the federal judge as an example, saying it was “very vicious” and without any basis in reality. Judge Gonzalo Curiel is “a judge with an impeccable record as a prosecutor … appointed first by the Republican governor of California, Governor Schwarzenegger, then appointed by a Democratic president, president Obama.”
These attacks, she says, are Trump “trying to divert attention from the very serious fraud charges against Trump University that have basically been confirmed by some of the highest officials who worked with him.”
“Judge Curiel is as American as I am and certainly as American as Donald Trump is.”
Sanders: Clinton's foreign policy worries me
Tapper asks Sanders a bit about foreign policy, in particular Hillary Clinton’s suggestion that Donald Trump would quickly land the US in a war because of his apparent inability to handle any criticism.
“Trump would be a disaster and she and I agree on that,” Sanders says. Trump gives in to “ugly words about people,” he adds, saying: “he doesn’t to have the temperament.”
But he doesn’t mince words about his own misgivings regarding Clinton. He makes great hay of her vote for the Iraq war, and her support for military intervention in Libya while she was secretary of state for Barack Obama.
“I worry about that, yeah I do. I think her support for the war in Iraq was not just an aberration. I think her willingness to kind of push President Obama to overthrow Muammar Ghaddafi [is] not inconsistent with her views on Syria where she wants a no-fly zone, which I think could suck us into never ending conflict in that area.”
Sanders admits that he sees the argument for intervention, though “in that particular instance” (Libya) he says he would “probably not” have intervened.
“You can always make the case: Saddam Hussein was a murdering thug. You can make the case about [Bashar al-]Assad in Syria, my god,” he adds.
“But our job is to think about what happens the day after.”
Tapper asks whether the world we be better with these autocrats in power.
“The world would be better off with these dictators out of power but there are ways to get them out of power without causing mass instability and deaths,” Sanders replies.
He draws a few more distinctions with Clinton, for instance her position that hydraulic fracking should be regulated versus his call to ban it outright, and says that he doesn’t like how the philanthropic Clinton Foundation has taken donations from foreign governments.
“Do I have a problem when a sitting secretary of state and her husband, a former president [collecting] many millions of dollars from foreign governments that are dictatorships?” Sanders asks rhetorically, citing the lack of free speech, women’s rights, gay rights in Saudi Arabia, as an example. He does have a problem with that. (You can read more about those foreign donations here.)
Last question: But will you do everything in your human power to stop Donald Trump from becoming president?
Sanders says, without hesitation, that he will.
Updated
CNN now airs an interview with Hillary Clinton, in which Jake Tapper asks her about the violence that’s broken out at Donald Trump rallies, recently by anti-Trump protesters.
“I condemn all violence in our political arena, I condemned it when Donald Trump was inciting it and congratulating people for [committing it],” Clinton says.
“I condemn it when people are [protesting] Donald Trump.”
“He created an environment where it seems acceptable,” she says, and “now we’re seeing people who are against him responding in kind. It should all stop! It is not acceptable.”
“ I want it to just end,” she says. “I don’t want to parse it, I don’t want to talk [about its politics], the police have a hard enough job trying to make sure that we’re able to gather and talk about the issues facing our country, and Trump has lowered the bar.
“Is it a surprise that people who don’t like him are stepping over that bar? I don’t think so.”
Tapper moves on to the Democratic primary race, and Clinton waxes confident.
“I believe on Tuesday I will have decisively won the popular vote, and I wil lhave decisively won the pledged delegate majority. You can’t get much more than that out of the primary season.”
“The contest between then senator Obama and myself was actually much closer,” she says – even going os far to say that by some measure she won the popular vote (she doesn’t provide and specifics).
“I ran to become president because I have deep values and beliefs about what should be done in our country,” she says, before drawing similarities with Bernie Sanders. “We both want to raise the minimum wage, we both want to get the universal healthcare coverage, we both want to make sure Wall Street never wrecks Main Street again.”
She says that if you look at the campaign, and her and Sanders’ positions, “it’s nothing like what you saw on the Republican side.”
She says that after Tuesady she’s going to reach out and do everything she can to unify the Democratic party.
Trump: judge 'is a Mexican'
Finally Tapper moves on to ask about Trump University, which the businessman says has had “thousands and thousands of people have said great reviews, great reviews.”
“It’s gotten tremendous marks. I don’t mean, like, two people, I mean thousands.”
Tapper asks about Trump’s accusation of bias by the federal judge overseeing the lawsuit against the enterprise, which alleges it defrauded people of tens of thousands of dollars.
“This judge is of Mexican heritage,” Trump says. “I‘m building a wall, I’m building a wall.
The judge, Gonzalo Curiel, was born in Indiana and is an American.
“He’s a member of a society that’s very pro-Mexico and that’s fine, that’s fine,” he continues. “I think he should recuse himself.”
He then starts a new conspiracy: “Does he know the lawyer on the other side? And a lot of people say yes, and I don’t know, and that’s a problem.”
Trump repeats himself over and over again. “I’m building a wall, OK? … He’s of Mexican heritage, and he’s very proud of it, and that’s fine, as I am.”
Tapper interrupts, repeatedly: “But he’s an American …”
“It’s a case that should’ve been dismissed already,” Trump says. “He lets the plaintiff off the case out.” The case is a class action suit, so the removal of a lead plaintiff is not that unusual.
Trump continues: “I’ve had lawyer s come up to me and say you are being treated so unfairly, it’s unbelievable … If he was giving me fair rulings I wouldn’t be talking to you this way.”
Trump’s lawyers have not asked the judge to recuse himself. Appellate courts have repeatedly held that “matters such as race or ethnicity are improper bases for challenging a judge’s impartiality”, the second circuit ruled in 1998.
Tapper points out that Paul Ryan and Hillary Clinton have lambasted Trump for the remarks.
“Paul Ryan doesn’t know the case,” Trump says. “Hillary Clinton is a stiff.”
Then he spins yet another conspiracy theory, saying that “these people” have approached attorney generals around the nation trying to induce them to sue – the lawsuit began before the presidential campaigns.
“We’re building a wall. He’s a Mexican. We’re building a wall between here and Mexico.”
The judge is from Indiana. He is an American.
Updated
Trump weaves and bobs verbally around to talk about his idea that Japan and South Korea should pay the US for the military bases.
Those nations do pay for the US presence. But Trump insists that people “never talk about economics, they never talk.”
“It’s got to go two ways,” he says.
Tapper moves on to the violence that broke out at Trump’s California rally last week. Trump says that protesters are “thugs and they’re agitators. They’re bad people. I think they’re sent by the Democrats.”
What proof do you have?
Trump: “Uh… Well they’ve got a lot of Bernie signs.”
“I would be very strong if I were the police,” he continues. Sheriff Joe Arpaio would not have let a thing like that happen.”
Arpaio had to settle last year with the Justice Department over charges that he violated civil and discrimination laws.
Next up Donald Trump appears on CNN’s State of the Union with host Jake Tapper, who’s with all the candidates in California ahead of Tuesday’s primary.
Trump invited Tapper to his mansion in Beverly Hills for an interview. Trump tells Tapper “I told you” that he would be the nominee.
The host asks about how Republican leader Paul Ryan and others have asked Trump to stop making remarks demeaning other races. “Look he’s a good man he wants what’s best for the party,” Trump says of Ryan.
He says he’s going to win the five states voting Friday “by a lot” – he is the only remaining Republican candidate for president.
Then he starts talking about Hillary Clinton’s description of him: “thin skin”.
“I don’t have very thin skin. I have very strong, very thick skin,” Trump says. “I have a strong temperament, and it’s a great temperament, and it’s a very in control temperament.”
He says that evidence of his temperament is in his business record: “Number one bestsellers, one of the bestselling books of all time.”
“I’ve been successful in every business I’ve been in. Real estate, one of the most successful. Television, I mean, forget it.”
These claims are not exactly true. The Art of the Deal is not even the bestselling business book of all time. Several Trump businesses have gone bankrupt, and he has had failed ventures at a professional football league, an airliner, steaks and more.
“You can’t have that success without good temperament,” Trump continues.
“I was thinking about the word temperament. We need a strong temperament in this country,” he goes on. “We have people with weak temperaments. And I have a temperament that’s totally in control.”
He has another example: “I said I don’t want to go into Iraq,” he says, “and I was 100% right.”
Tapper points out that this too is not true. Trump told Howard Stern in 2003, “Yeah, I guess,” about his support for invading Iraq, and did not speak against the war until after it had begun. Tapper says that if Trump has evidence he should provide it.
“I think there is evidence, I’ll see if I can get it.”
Next up on Meet the Press is the Libertarian candidate for president, Gary Johnson.
Johnson’s third-party run is trying hard to lure Republicans disaffected by Donald Trump and Democrats who distrust Hillary Clinton.
“Most people are fiscally conservative and socially liberal, and most people recognize that our military interventions” create more problems than solve, Johnson says.
“I don’t think I’m going to be a spoiler in this, I think really it’s a draw from both sides.”
Johnson points out that his running-mate is Bill Weld, another former Republican governor from a mostly Democrat state (Johnson governed in New Mexico, Weld in Massachusetts).
Todd asks for philosophy: what should the federal government regulate?
“Less government. I mean, smaller government,” he says. Government, in his mind, should “protect us against individuals groups, corporations, foreign governments that would do us harm.
“I’m going to sign off on any reduction on agencies,” Johnson continues, avoiding specifics. “I think that we should provide a safety net, i just think we’ve gone way over the line in defining those who are in need.”
As of military intervention, Johnson says Congress should get back to declaring war rather than arbitrary drone use, special forces strikes, etc. Todd presses him hard abotu when it would be the right decision to intervene militarily, as in Bosnia in the 1990s, for instance.
Johnson hedges: “How about having a skeptic at the table with regard to these military interventions?”
Back to the election: if your candidacy helps elect Donald Trump would that
Successful candidacy would be talking about issues that aren’t being talkeda bout right now. Johnson says his quest at the moment is to get onto the presidential debate stage, which requires 15% in the polls.
He ends with a little spiel about libertarianism, saying it always comes down to “a person’s right to choose. Always come down on the right of choice.”
McConnell: couldn't disagree more with Trump on judge
First up this morning is Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, the chief Republican in Congress aside from House Speaker Paul Ryan.
McConnell is on NBC’s Meet the Press with host Chuck Todd, who asks McConnell about his fellow Louisville, Kentucky, native: the late legend Muhammad Ali.
The Republican says he was proud to have come from the same town. “He sort of moved beyond some of the controversial positions he took on early in life and he sort of became the most interesting man in the world.”
Then he plays a series of clips of McConnell’s statements about Donald Trump: admissions that he disagrees with a lot of what Trump says, that Trump is extremely unpopular, that he’s a “different kind” of candidate.
“I think eight years of Barack Obama’s administration is enough,” McConnell tells Todd. “Whatever you think about Donald Trump, he’s certainly a different direction and I think that’s what the country needs.”
What about his rhetoric about “rapist” Mexicans and banning Muslims?
“I am concerned about the Hispanic vote,” McConnell concedes. “America’s changing.”
He notes that the white population of the US has been declining for decades. “I think it’s a big mistake for our party to write off Latino Americans, [who are] soon to be if not already the largest minority in our country.”
McConnell says he wants Trump to get his act together: “I hope he’ll change his direction .”
But he insists that Republicans will be unified. “You unify the party by not settling scores” of the primary election, he says. “We’re all behind him now and I’d like to see him reach out and pull us all together and give us a real shot of winning this November.”
Todd asks about the federal judge who Trump has declared “biased” in a Trump University fraud lawsuit, saying the judge’s Hispanic ethnicity makes him “Mexican” and creates a “conflict of interest”.
“I couldn’t disagree more with [that] statement,” McConnell says.
Todd: Is that a racist statement?
McConnell repeats that he completely disagrees.
“This is a man who was born in Indiana,” McConnell says of the judge. “All of us came here from somewhere else almost all Americans, like my wife who came here at age eight and couldn’t speak a word of English, or whose ancestors were risk takers who came here and made this country great.”
The NBC host tries a different tact: what would the party of Abraham Lincoln make of this rhetoric?
“I think the party of Lincoln wants to win the White House,” McConnell says. “Donald Trump has won the nomination the old fashioned way.”
Anything is better than Hillary Clinton, McConnell says.
“Is he the perfect candidate? He isn’t. But we have a two party system … I’d rather be working with Donald Trump. For one thing he’d put the right person on the supreme court. … He’s going to be right of center.”
As for Senate re-election races, McConnell says that senators are running races independently of Donald Trump. “We don’t know what’s going to happen,” he says. “But the se Senate races are big enough to stand on their own two feet and that’s how.”
Updated
Hello and welcome to our rolling coverage of the final days of the 2016 primary elections for president.
Bernie Sanders is making a final push for an upset in California, defying calls from Democrats to concede that he is nearly out of the race, mathematically.
Hillary Clinton has unleashed her satirical wits at the presumptive Republican nominee, even as she and her husband campaign in Los Angeles to fend off Sanders.
And Donald Trump keeps insisting that an American federal judge is, despite his Indiana birth certificate, Mexican – “we believe”. Last week the judge ordered documents released in the lawsuit alleging that Trump University was a scam to defraud people of tens of thousands of dollars. Trump did not like this decision, which revealed his former employees calling the enterprise a “total lie”.
All three candidates face the press this Sunday morning.
Sanders is hoping for overwhelming turnout in California, but will need surprising and significant wins in other states this Tuesday to have any chance at preventing Clinton from winning the nomination outright. Polls show Clinton ahead of Sanders by double-digits in New Jersey, meaning she could clinch a victory before ballot centers in the Golden State close. She also won most if not all of the Virgin Island’s seven delegates on Saturday’s Democratic caucuses.
Crisis-riddled Puerto Rico, which votes Sunday in the Democratic race, has 60 delegates at stake and could put Clinton – needing only 60 for victory, per the AP – on the brink of the nomination.
Trump meanwhile continues to enrage and alienate new groups of Americans with language that frustrates his would-be allies. After the press revealed that he had not sent checks to veterans’ groups, as promised, he sent those checks and held a press conference to single out reporters as “sleaze”, “disgusting” and “a beauty”.
Then he went after the federal judge, disturbing usually unflappable attorneys around the US, and flustering his supposed allies. The highest ranking Republican in the US, House Speaker Paul Ryan, said “I completely disagree with the thinking” that a judge’s ethnicity should disqualify him or her from a given case, and a conservative law professor warned that such disrespect for courts smacks of “authoritarianism”.
Some young Republicans could barely bring themselves to say his name this week, as they unveiled a “playbook” to woo “freedom-loving millennials”.
Then Trump went to California, where protesters attacked Trump supporters and the candidate pointed at a solitary African American and shouted: “There! Look at my African American!”
Not long afterward Ben Stein, the conservative economist and occasional celebrity, told my colleague Jana Kasperkevic that Trump’s ideas about the economy are “preposterous” and “disastrous”.
Plus: “He is not a great businessman.”
Rushing to Trump’s defense today will be Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, possible VP pick Newt Gingrich, and foreign relations chair Bob Corker.
Rushing to attack him will be Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate for president, and John Podesta, chairman of the Clinton campaign and a diehard believer in UFOs.
