Today in Campaign 2016
- Clinton addressed Trump’s insinuation yesterday that people who disagreed with her possible Supreme Court justice picks should exercise their Second Amendment right to bear arms and assassinate her. “Words matter, my friends...Yesterday we witnessed the latest in a long line of casual comments from Donald Trump that cross the line,” she said.
- CNN reports that the Secret Service spoke to the Trump campaign about his Second Amendment comments. Just an update, The Guardian was not able to independently verify a previous item referred to Secret Service discussions with the Trump campaign.
- A new batch of emails from Hillary Clinton’s private server have been released by the legal group Judicial Watch.
- Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, hinted on Dutch TV that a DNC staffer killed in Washington, DC, recently may have been a source for the leaked DNC emails.
- A man is continuing to scale the Trump Tower in Manhattan, in a very impressive Spiderman style. So far his motivates remain unclear, although a video found by Boing Boing and claiming to be the man says he is a researcher seeking a private audience with Trump. He’s been climbing for over two hours so far.
The man attempting to scale the facade of Trump Tower in Midtown East appears close to being apprehended.
As witnessed on an ABC News stream, the climber - a young white male with long brown hair and muttonchops - has been shuffling around the size of the skyscraper’s glass windows, roughly ten floors above Fifth Avenue.
The young man in question is shuffling using four suction cup-like devices, each with ropes attached for him to stand upon. The 58-story building’s windows are apparently too dirty for the cups to attach to, as he frequently stops and cleans the windows before attempting to attach them.
Law enforcement and building security have blown out a window directly above the climber, broken through a grate to prevent his ascent and lowered a window-washing platform to block him further. The sections of Fifth Avenue and East 56th Street by Trump Tower have been closed to traffic.
Donald Trump appears to be dismissing CNN reports that the Secret Service has spoken to his campaign regarding yesterday’s remarks:
No such meeting or conversation ever happened - a made up story by "low ratings" @CNN.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 10, 2016
Man attempts to climb Trump Tower
A fly has been attracted to a massive pile on East 56th Street...
NYPD has cut through a vent and will likely attempt to grab Trump Tower climber. pic.twitter.com/opPe2dSMjZ
— Dan Linden (@DanLinden) August 10, 2016
The last time Hillary Clinton was here, she stood on a stage in the early hours of the morning, declaring victory with a “big sigh of relief” as the caucus results continued to show her neck-and-neck with Democratic rival, Bernie Sanders.
In the end, she pulled off a narrow victory eight years after a third-place finish that devastated her presidential ambitions in 2008. With 90 days left before Americans elect their next leader, Clinton returned to Abraham LincolnHighSchool, which she held at her last rally before the Iowa caucuses in February.
Here she condemned Trump’s most recent remarks as a “casual inciting of violence”. At a rally on Tuesday, Trump suggested gun owners could take matters into their own hands to prevent Clinton from appointing liberal Supreme Court justices if she is elected president.
“Words matter, my friends,” Clinton said, drawing loud cheers from the crowd.If you are running to be president or you are President of the United States words can have tremendous consequences.”
“Yesterday we witnessed the latest in a long line of casual comments from Donald Trump that cross the line,” she said. “And now his casual inciting of violence,” Clinton said.
“Every single one of these incidents shows us that Donald Trump simply does not have the temperament to be President and Commander in Chief of the United States.”
Donald Trump does have an economic policy, it seems. But if you’re trying to find any hint of ideological coherence in the odd mish-mash of positions that the GOP presidential candidate laid out in his nearly hour-long speech in Detroit on Monday, your quest will be in vain.
Trump’s speech was meant to put his campaign back on track and it did – briefly, before he derailed it again with his suggestion that gun-supporters might take aim at Hillary Clinton, so to speak.
To many voters, he is stronger on the economy than rival Hillary Clinton, who will speak on the issue Thursday. But while the speech clarified some details of his plans, it also showcased their many faults and their favoring, for this supposedly populist candidate, of the 1%.
Trump’s stated objectives range from the outright protectionist (tear up the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal) to the business friendly goals of putting a moratorium on new regulations and introducing an energy policy that pays no heed to concerns about climate change or global warming.
Then there are the measures that are downright tricky to evaluate on the surface. It sounds great when a presidential candidate promises to simplify the tax code, cutting the number of tax brackets from seven to three and reducing the tax owed by those in the top tier to 33% from 39.6%.
It’s a plan that enables Trump to claim that everyone will be paying less, since individuals earning less than $25,000, and couples making less than $50,000, wouldn’t owe any federal tax. The problem, of course, is that while all the attention is focused on the absolute rates, less is devoted to unravelling the complicated question of just how the taxes would be levied.
US Secret Service agents rushed onto the stage as Hillary Clinton spoke in Des Moines, Iowa, on Wednesday to prevent an activist from reaching the stage.
The individual was taken down by agents before reaching the steps to the stage. It was not initially clear what he was protesting.
“Some people get a little carried away,” Clinton said, not missing a beat as two agents removed the protester from the gymnasium. She added: “but I get a little carried away about all the jobs we’re going to create.”
This is the second time in one week agents have had to rush onto the stage to protect Clinton while she spoke because of an activist. A group of animal rights activists were also escorted out of the event. They held a sign that was unreadable from the vantage point of this reporter. Volunteers moved to cover the sign with a white sheet before the activists were removed.
Speaking before a crowd made up largely of coal miners in Abingdon, Virginia, Donald Trump extolled the virtues of fair trade, manufacturing and his own followers. Trump also called coal mining essential to national security.
“The US - I just took a look at this, somebody just handed it - the US has lost nearly 200,000 mining jobs since 2014,” Trump said. “And that’s not a long period of time. 200,000 jobs.”
“During times of national problems - we were talking about the defense of our country - having those mines and having that potential energy source available to us is an awfully important thing. It’s an awfully important thing. And nobody thinks in terms of that, they don’t think in terms of… And I fully, and I fully understand that. But, it’s been an honor.”
Donald Trump campaigns in Abingdon, Virginia
Donald Trump is offering an exciting opportunity to his supporters today: Executive Membership of the Trump Campaign.
“Please know that not just anyone is eligible for Executive Membership,” Trump says in an email sent to supporters this morning. “It’s a power, duty, and responsibility reserved only for those supporters who have displayed a steadfast commitment to our movement.”
I like power, duty and responsibility as much as the next man, particularly if it is only reserved for specific individuals, so imagine how disappointed I was to learn that this was another Trump lie.
The truth is anyone can become a Trump executive member. All you need is to do is a) have access to a computer and b) go to his website. And pay a $35 fee.
It is unclear what executive membership actually means. At the moment it seems all you get is a gold card with the word “Trump” at the top.
This afternoon Trump’s executive membership was sullied even further, when the campaign actually advertised it on Facebook. It seems that, contrary to Trump’s assertion that “not just anyone is eligible for Executive Membership”, literally everyone is eligible for Executive Membership.
Oh, and another thing: when you opt for Trump membership through the Facebook advert, you’re taken to a donaldjtrump.com page where that membership is priced at $72.
That’s $37 more than the price of membership on the donaldjtrump.com page that reporters were sent this morning.To me it doesn’t seem very savvy to offer exactly the same product at two different prices, but then I’ve never written a best-selling book about business practices.
Although I also haven’t filed for corporate bankruptcy four times, so I guess it’s a tie.
Updated
Report: Secret Service spoke to Trump campaign about second amendment comments
The US Secret Service, the law enforcement branch tasked with protecting the lives of the president, vice president and presidential candidates, told CNN today that the Secret Service has spoken to Donald Trump’s campaign in response to comments the candidate made yesterday that seemed to suggest that supporters of the second amendment should take matters into their own hands if Hillary Clinton were elected.
“There has been more than one conversation” in relation to the remarks, according to CNN.
The latest controversy to embroil the Republican nominee followed a rally in Wilmington, North Carolina, during which Trump elaborated on the next president’s power to appoint supreme court justices. “Hillary wants to abolish, essentially abolish, the second amendment,” Trump said. “If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the second amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know. But I’ll tell you what, that will be a horrible day.”
The Guardian has reached out to the US Secret Service for further comment.
Updated
Donald Trump is facing a growing backlash to his comments that gun owners may be the only ones able to stop Hillary Clinton from implementing a liberal agenda if she is elected in November, Lauren Gambino, Lois Beckett and Amber Jamieson report.
The oblique reference on Tuesday drew swift condemnation from Democrats, gun control advocates, victims of gun violence and even the daughter of Martin Luther King, who denounced the Republican presidential nominee’s remarks as “distasteful, disturbing and dangerous”.
At a rally in Wilmington, North Carolina, Trump repeated his claim that if elected Clinton would abolish the second amendment, which is the right of Americans to keep and bear arms. In that vein, he lamented that it would be a “horrible day” if Clinton were elected and appointed a liberal justice to fill the current vacancy on the supreme court.
“If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks,” Trump said as the crowd began to boo. “Although the second amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know.”
Robby Mook, Clinton’s campaign manager, said: “This is simple – what Trump is saying is dangerous. A person seeking to be the president of the United States should not suggest violence in any way.”
Clinton’s running mate, Tim Kaine, told reporters after an event in Texas: “Nobody who is seeking a leadership position, especially the presidency, the leadership of the country, should do anything to countenance violence.”
In an interview with Fox News on Tuesday night, Trump rejected accusations that he had advocated gun owners take matters into their own hands to stop Clinton from appointing liberal justices to the bench.
“This is a political movement,” Trump said, referring to gun rights groups. “This is a strong powerful movement, the second amendment. Hillary wants to take your guns away. She wants to leave you unprotected in your home.
“There can be no other interpretation,” Trump said of his comments. “I mean, give me a break.”
A timely throwback when Donald Trump accused Chris Christie of knowing about the George Washington Bridge closure for political reasons:
Submitted without comment:
Donald thanks for continuing to obsess over our irrelevant show that you watch everyday. Highest ratings ever. Glad! https://t.co/nff7rD9C2y
— Joe Scarborough (@JoeNBC) August 10, 2016
The newest poll from Marquette University has Hillary Clinton leading Donald Trump by 15 points in Wisconsin:
Among likely voters in WI, Clinton 52%, Trump 37%, with 10% supporting neither. In July, it was 45%/41%/14%. #mulawpoll
— MULawPoll (@MULawPoll) August 10, 2016
Ex-aide: Chris Christie 'flat out lied' about staff's Bridgegate involvement
A former aide to Chris Christie texted to a colleague that the New Jersey governor “flat out lied” about the involvement of his senior staff and campaign manager during a news conference about the George Washington Bridge lane-closing scandal, according to a new court filing.
A transcript of the text is contained in court filings submitted late Tuesday by attorneys representing Bill Baroni, who faces trial next month with Christie’s ex-deputy chief of staff, Bridget Kelly, on charges they helped orchestrate the September 2013 lane closures.
The closures were meant to create traffic jams in the city of Fort Lee to punish its Democratic mayor for not endorsing the Republican governor, prosecutors say.
Speaking to reporters in New York after appearing on a sports talk radio show on Wednesday morning, Christie denied the claim that he lied.
“I absolutely dispute it. It’s ridiculous. It’s nothing new,” Christie said. “There’s nothing new to talk about.”
He also noted that the information came from a filing from a defense lawyer and wasn’t from someone who was under oath.
Christie wasn’t charged in the lane-closing scandal and has denied knowing anything about it.
Video: Donald Trump’s “clarification” of his remarks.
Hillary Clinton pitches candidacy in Mormon-owned newspaper op-ed
In an apparent bid to capitalize on rock-bottom approval ratings for the Republican nominee in Utah, Hillary Clinton has penned an op-ed in the Deseret News to pitch herself to Mormon voters in the traditionally red state.
“As Americans, we hold fast to the belief that everyone has the right to worship however he or she sees fit,” Clinton wrote in the Mormon Church-owned newspaper. “I’ve been fighting to defend religious freedom for years. As secretary of state, I made it a cornerstone of our foreign policy to protect the rights of religious minorities around the world - from Coptic Christians in Egypt to Buddhists in Tibet. And along with Jon Huntsman, our then-ambassador in Beijing, I stood in solidarity with Chinese Christians facing persecution from their government.”
Mormon voters have been unreceptive to Donald Trump, whose braggadocious personality and materialism run counter to church teachings on modesty and generosity, and whose proposals to ban Muslims from immigrating to the United States evoke the Church of Latter Day Saints’ own history of religious persecution by the US government.
Clinton hammered that last point in the editorial, writing that Trump’s Muslim ban “would undo centuries of American tradition and values”.
“To this day, I wonder if he even understands the implications of his proposal,” Clinton continued. “This policy would literally undo what made America great in the first place.”
Citing popular Mormon leaders and Utah politicians like Mitt Romney, former South Dakota senator Larry Pressler and Utah governor Gary Herbert, who Clinton lauded for “setting a compassionate example and welcoming Syrian refugees fleeing religious persecution and terrorism”.
Updated
House speaker Paul Ryan has released a video warning that “the loudest voices” shouldn’t be listened to in government, instead urging voters to remember that “ideas are really what make this country great, and we have ideas for making this country great.”
Big ideas are what make this country great, and we have a lot of them. → https://t.co/ydyjcutJIx. #BetterWayhttps://t.co/sgVGzvjKVp
— Paul Ryan (@SpeakerRyan) August 10, 2016
“Ideas are really what make this country great, and we have ideas for making this country great,” Ryan said in the video, which directs his Twitter followers to a site wherein Ryan outlines his direction for America.
“It’s very clear that there are going to be noise and news of the day that can clearly distract government, it can distract Congress, it can distract the people,” Ryan continued.
Who could he be talking about? We’ll be taking guesses in the comments!
Donald Trump’s campaign is fundraising off of comments he made during a rally in North Carolina yesterday in which he seemed to suggest that supporters of the second amendment take matters into their own hands if Hillary Clinton is elected president, emailing supporters that “the media” are trying to “stop the momentum of the campaign.”
In an email sent by Donald Trump, Jr., titled “More lies form the liberal media,” the candidate’s son decries the implication that his father encouraged the assassination of either Clinton or of federal judges as “ALL lies and spin,” before asking for money to support the campaign.
“The media are trying to stop the momentum of the campaign and they are failing badly,” the younger Trump wrote. “You know everything the media says about my father is ALL lies and spin - and they are all objectively FALSE. Yet the liberal media are pushing this narrative 24 hours a day! They are DESPERATE to stop the Trump movement. So we are going to go DIRECTLY to the people.”
The younger Trump announced the launch of a one-week “Power the Trump Train” event, in which the campaign hopes to raise $1m per day for a week “to smash through the liberal media filter and connect directly with voters”.
“As you know, my father thinks big,” Trump wrote. “That’s why we decided to set a huge goal to raise $1 million each day over the next week.”
In a withering editorial for the Washington post, MSNBC breakfast television host Joe Scarborough has called upon the Republican party, of which he is a member, to remove Donald Trump as its presidential nominee, calling Trump’s implication that his supporters should take the second amendment into their own hands in response to Hillary Clinton’s possible election “a bloody line” to cross.
“A bloody line has been crossed that cannot be ignored,” Scarborough, a onetime Republican congressman from Florida, wrote. “At long last, Donald Trump has left the Republican Party few options but to act decisively and get this political train wreck off the tracks before something terrible happens.”
Trump has been accused of a making an “assassination threat” against Clinton at a rally in Wilmington, North Carolina, after riffing on the next president’s power to appoint supreme court justices. “Hillary wants to abolish, essentially abolish, the second amendment,” said Trump, eliciting boos from the crowd. “If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the second amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know. But I’ll tell you what, that will be a horrible day.”
This, in Scarborough’s view, amounts to a threat against the former secretary of state.
“Trump and his supporters have been scrambling wildly all day to explain away the inexplicable, but they can stop wasting their time,” Scarborough wrote. “The GOP nominee was clearly suggesting that some of the ‘Second Amendment people’ among his supporters could kill his Democratic opponent were she to be elected.”
Scarborough and his co-host, Mika Brzezinski, were once accused of being overly familiar with Trump during the early days of the Republican presidential primary, but have landed on the candidate’s “blacklist” after Brzezinski appeared disappointed in House speaker Paul Ryan’s decision to endorse his campaign.
I don't watch or do @Morning_Joe anymore. Small audience, low ratings! I hear Mika has gone wild with hate. Joe is Joe. They lost their way!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 3, 2016
About last night: Paul Ryan, the Republican party’s most senior elected official, has survived an insurgent challenge in his own backyard from an outsider candidate dubbed a “mini-Donald Trump”.
The US House speaker comprehensively beat maverick businessman Paul Nehlen in Tuesday’s Republican primary in Wisconsin’s 1st congressional district.
Ryan, who did not accept Nehlen’s challenge to a debate during the campaign, told reporters in Janesville on Tuesday night: “We knew we were going to do well. The outcome is exactly what we were hoping for and what we were expecting. Desperate candidates do desperate things for attention and I think that’s what we saw here.”
Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee, said: “Congratulations to my friend Paul Ryan on a well-earned victory. Speaker Ryan’s commitment to faithfully representing the people of Wisconsin and making the case for conservatism have never changed, and his years of principled public service make him a trusted leader in our party.”
Julian Assange, editor of the nonprofit Wikileaks, told a Dutch TV station that a Democratic National Committee staffer who was killed in Washington, DC earlier this summer may have been a “source” for the organization.
“Whistleblowers go to significant efforts to get us material and often very significant risks,” Assange told Dutch TV, according to the New York Post. When asked to clarify, Assange said: “I’m suggesting that our sources take risks.”
“Why make the suggestion about a young guy being shot in the streets of Washington?” Assange was asked.
“Because we have to understand how high the stakes are in the United States,” Assange said. “Our sources face serious risks. That’s why they come to us. So we can protect their anonymity.”
The young DNC staffer in question, Seth Rich, was shot and killed in the Bloomingdale neighborhood of Northeast DC in early July.
New batch of Hillary Clinton emails obtained by legal group
The US state department has turned over 44 previously unreleased Hillary Clintonemail exchanges that the Democratic presidential nominee failed to include among the 30,000 private messages she turned over to the government last year. They show her interacting with lobbyists, political and Clinton Foundation donors and business interests as secretary of state.
The conservative legal group Judicial Watch obtained the emails as part of its lawsuit against the state department. They cover Clinton’s first three months as secretary of state in early 2009, a period for which Clinton did not turn over any emails to the state department last year. The government found the newly disclosed messages during a search of agency computer files from longtime Clinton aide Huma Abedin.
In one instance, Clinton exchanged messages with a senior Morgan Stanley investment executive whom she met with later that year at her office in Washington. They were among 246 pages of Abedin messages turned over to Judicial Watch.
Clinton campaign officials did not immediately answer questions about the issue.
For the past 14 months, covering Donald Trump’s presidential campaign has frequently entailed attempting to answer the question: “Has he finally gone too far?”
From implying that an aggressive debate moderator was menstruating to dismissing five years spent as a prisoner of war as unheroic to questioning the impartiality of a federal judge because of his racial background, Trump has broken through the floorboards and into the subbasement of what has been considered acceptable behavior by a major-party candidate for president. But hinting that his supporters might take the issue of the second amendment into their own hands if opponent Hillary Clinton were elected, prompting allegations that he had threatened Clinton with assassination, is uncharted territory even for Trump.
His campaign has accused “dishonest media” of reading into Trump’s remarks something that wasn’t there; House speaker Paul Ryan stated that the line “sounds like a joke gone bad”.
Here are his comments in full:
Hillary wants to abolish – essentially abolish – the second amendment. By the way, if she gets to pick, if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you could do, folks. Although the second amendment people, maybe there is, I dunno. But, but I’ll tell you what, that will be a horrible day. If Hillary gets to put her judges, right now we’re tied, you see what’s going on. Because Scalia, this was not supposed to happen. Justice Scalia was going to be around for 10 more years at least. And this is what happens, that was a horrible thing. So now look at it. Hillary essentially wants to abolish the second amendment.
Trump’s off-script remarks will likely dominate a chunk of today’s political news cycle – as they often do – but the pageant of American electoral politics marches on. Here is the official schedule for the candidates today:
- Clinton will tour Raygun, a popular printing and design company in Des Moines, Iowa, followed by a rally at Abraham Lincoln high school in Des Moines at 1.45pm ET (doors open at 11.45am local time). Running mate Tim Kaine is campaigning in Dallas, Texas, but has no public events scheduled.
- Trump will be making remarks at the Southwest Virginia Higher Education Center in Abingdon, Virginia, at 3pm ET, followed by a rally at the BB&T Center in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, at 7pm ET. Running mate Mike Pence will be holding a town hall at the Mandalay in Dayton, Ohio, at 3pm ET, followed by a rally at the Pritchard Laughlin Civic Center in Cambridge, Ohio, at 7pm ET.
