A contentious Republican National Convention is coming to an end, with Donald Trump finally addressing the delegates as his party’s nominee. Can he turn things around?
Add your own observations in the comments.
A Man Who Shouldn’t Be President
Ezra Klein: “Tonight, Donald J. Trump will accept the Republican Party’s nomination for president of the United States. And I am, for the first time since I began covering American politics, genuinely afraid.”
“Donald Trump is not a man who should be president. This is not an ideological judgment. This is not something I would say about Mitt Romney or Marco Rubio. This is not a disagreement over Donald Trump’s tax plan or his climate policies. This is about Trump’s character, his temperament, his impulsiveness, his basic decency.”
“He pairs terrible ideas with an alarming temperament; he’s a racist, a sexist, and a demagogue, but he’s also a narcissist, a bully, and a dilettante. He lies so constantly and so fluently that it’s hard to know if he even realizes he’s lying. He delights in schoolyard taunts and luxuriates in backlash.”
Ailes Is Out at Fox News
Roger Ailes has resigned as Chairman and CEO of Fox News.
Convention Dispatch: Pride Comes Before a Fall
This piece is only available to Political Wire members.
Join today for exclusive analysis, new features and no advertising.
Convention special: Use coupon code “LovePW” to get 10% off your membership.
Sign in to your account or join today!
Monthly – $5 per month or Annual – $50 per year
McConnell Says Trump Wrong on NATO
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell “stressed that he disagrees with Donald Trump’s assertion that the United States shouldn’t immediately defend NATO allies, seeking to reassure the international community the U.S. would continue to come to the aid of countries in the alliance if they are attacked,” Politico reports.
Said McConnell: “I disagree with that. NATO is the most important military alliance in world history. I want to reassure our NATO allies that if any of them get attacked, we’ll be there to defend them.”
Wonk Wire: Trump’s NATO comments reaffirm his popularity in Russia.
Michelle Obama Does ‘Carpool Karaoke’
This is really great:
Trump’s Feud with Kasich Backfires In Ohio
BuzzFeed: “Despite months of public tension between the Trump and Kasich camps, the governor’s loyalists in Ohio had been making plans for the state party to unify and coordinate with the Trump campaign, according to two sources with knowledge of the effort. One of the governor’s key strategists had been tapped to coordinate get-out-the-vote efforts with Trump, and other Kasich allies were expected to follow suit.”
“But on Monday, Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort took the unexpected, and unprecedented, step of blasting Kasich to reporters in his own home state, calling him ‘petulant’ and ’embarrassing’ for his refusal to endorse Trump. Since then, ‘all the top political talent in the state has been called to the sidelines,’ said one Republican close to Kasich.”
Trump Loyalist Threatens Primary Challenge to Cruz
Ex-Trump adviser Roger Stone suggested that Donald Trump may put his extensive political capital behind boosting a primary challenger to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) in 2018, the Huffington Post reports.
Stone harshly criticized Cruz as “an odious, greasy figure who doesn’t have any of Reagan’s warmth or likeability.”
He added: “Conservatives have long memories. So in four years or eight years after the Trump presidency, conservatives will remember that he walked out on us.”
The Science of Trump
Just published: The Science of Trump: Explaining the Rise of an Unlikely Candidate by John Sides and Henry Farrell.
Extra Bonus Quote of the Day
“You’re on fire, stupid.”
— Police officer, quoted by the Los Angeles Times, bringing a fire extinguisher to a flag-burning demonstrator outside the GOP convention.
Cruz Campaign Manager Slams Christie
Sen. Ted Cruz’s campaign manager responded to Gov. Chris Christie’s criticism of Cruz’s convention speech, saying that the New Jersey governor had “turned over his political testicles long ago.”
Said Jeff Roe said on the Chris Stigall Show: “That guy turned over his political testicles long ago. So I don’t take what he has to say with any meaning. You know, he embarrassed himself pretty quickly in this.”
Dead Heat In Ohio
A new Suffolk University poll in Ohio finds Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump tied in Ohio at 44% each with 11% still undecided.
In a four-way scenario, with Green Party nominee Jill Stein and Libertarian Gary Johnson added into the mix, Clinton edges Trump 43% to 39%, with Johnson getting 5%, Stein 1% and 12% undecided.
Which Path Will the GOP Take?
Rick Klein: “The central, huge personality of the 2016 campaign has set up a larger-than-life contest for the future of the Republican Party, with battle lines etched long before Donald Trump’s fate is decided. Wednesday night laid out the future paths of the GOP in dramatic, boisterous fashion. If Trump wins, Trumpism, along with its angry populism and strains of nativism, prevails. If he doesn’t, the party will have Mike Pence, whose answer to Trump was to join him, while offering a twist of earnestness and conservative commitment. On the opposite side, there’s John Kasich, rejecting it all by not even showing up at the Trump convention in his home state. There’s Paul Ryan, seeking a middle path though leaning in enough to speak twice – and even wield the gavel – at the convention.”
“And then there’s Ted Cruz, who laid down unmistakable markers with three words: ‘vote your conscience.’ Cruz anticipated a backlash, but he couldn’t have anticipated angry delegates yelling ‘Goldman Sachs’ at his wife. However this breaks, Cruz’s gambit figures to have the longest tail. He will have either sounded conservative alarms about Trump – so much so that his wife and father were threatened with physical harm – or he will have rained on a parade that’s marching to a drummer that’s very much not like him. Cruz’s play may prove to be the boldest, since it’s predicated on the assumption that the Trump phenomenon hasn’t changed the Republican Party in any fundamental way.”
Bonus Quote of the Day
“Corey Lewandowski is like Bob Haldeman without the charm. I mean, he’s an advance man. I’m a political strategist. I have elected other people to public office… He’s a pimple on the ass of history.”
— Ex-Trump adviser Roger Stone, quoted by Yahoo News.
Trump’s Speech Scrubbed for Potential Problems
New York Times: “By Tuesday morning, word had spread throughout his campaign that any language in Mr. Trump’s address even loosely inspired by speeches, essays, books or Twitter posts had to be either rewritten or attributed.”
“Mr. Trump’s chief speechwriter, Stephen Miller, reassured colleagues that the acceptance speech was wholly original, according to two staff members who spoke with him and described those conversations on the condition of anonymity. Mr. Miller also told campaign aides that he had looked closely at passages that Mr. Trump had contributed — handwritten on unlined white pages — and was confident they contained no problems. Even so, one of the staff members downloaded plagiarism-detection software and ran a draft of the speech through the program. No red flags came up.”
“The intense scrutiny of Mr. Trump’s words added new pressure to a speechwriting process that has been one of the most unpredictable and free-form in modern presidential campaigns.”