Mitt Romney told the Wall Street Journal that the decision to take on Donald Trump was a matter of personal integrity.
Said Romney: “I know that some people are offended that someone who lost and is the former nominee continues to speak, but that’s how I can sleep at night. And there are some people, though it’s a small number, who still value my opinion.”
Politico: “If Clinton pushes away some of her potential supporters; fails to energize others to vote; and fires up Trump’s base by pandering to her own—well, she just might be able to make the numbers work out for him. If he does pull off the election of the century, Trump’s path to 270 Electoral College votes will begin with 164 practically in the bank, from 21 solid-red states generally considered sure things for the Republican nominee.”
“Trump survives a Latino surge in the South and West; Clinton fails to bring home young voters in the Southeast and Midwest; Libertarians give Trump a foothold in the Northeast; the Rust Belt puts the nail in the coffin—and with somewhere between 274 and 325 electoral votes, Donald J. Trump becomes the 45th president of the United States. Yes, the specifics could vary. But it’s clear Trump can cross the 270 electoral-vote threshold even on the low end, with plenty of cushion on the high end to make up for a state that slips through his fingers here or there.”
“For what it’s worth, it’s also possible Clinton wins in a landslide, as an increasingly unstable Trump shrinks deeper and deeper into racism, xenophobia and conspiracy theories. But what’s clear is that Democrats can no longer count on a lopsided race that even a problematic candidate running a clumsy campaign can’t lose.”
For members: The Consensus Electoral Map
Tennessee state Rep. Andy Holt (R) is urging Tennesseans to ignore traffic camera tickets and emphasizing his point by burning a citation in a video that has received more than 325,000 Facebook views, the Knoxville News reports.
Said Holt: “What do you do if you get one? Throw it in the trash. Personally, I prefer to burn mine.”
Jeff Weaver, the campaign manager for Sen. Bernie Sanders, suggested Donald Trump may now be trying to avoid a debate between the two candidates, Politico reports.
Said Weaver: “There’s a little bit of foot-dragging now it seems on their side. It may be that, you know, there may be some chickening out or, you know, an unwillingness to stand on stage and really debate with Bernie Sanders because they know Bernie Sanders is going to do quite well in that debate, frankly.”
Huffington Post: “When you take a closer look at the way various polls are conducted, there’s no one method that stands out as inarguably better than all the rest. Some people in the polling industry like to claim that polls done by live interviewers using randomly selected phone numbers are more accurate than surveys that use automated telephone technology or surveys conducted over the Internet. But research shows that’s not necessarily true.”
Politico: “Over the past 12 months of the presidential campaign, Donald Trump has dulled its power with his systematic evasions, contradictions and deceptions, making a general mockery of the form. Thanks to his skills at quibbling, his talent for the nonsequitur, and his willingness to reverse himself inside a single sentence, Trump has figured out how to soften rather than sharpen public discourse every time he is interviewed, blurring it into yet another form of meaningless PR, and—if he continues—destroying a journalistic institution in the process.”
“There’s one more thing that we must do to make America wealthy again, and you have to be wealthy in order to be great, I’m sorry to say.”
— Donald Trump, quoted by The Hill.
“The Republican National Committee has dedicated hundreds of thousands of dollars to bring the band Journey to Cleveland for a post-convention bash,” Politico reports.
“One source familiar with the details of the event said that the total cost of booking Journey is about $750,000. Another source has indicated the RNC has $500,000 to spend on the event.”
A new Vox Populi Polling survey shows Speaker Paul Ryan (R) is leading Republican primary challenger Paul Nehlen (R) by 73 points, 80% to 7%, and enjoys an almost 20 point lead over a generic Democratic candidate.
“It’s been called a hostile takeover of the Republican Party, but there’s little that has happened since Donald Trump became the GOP’s presumptive nominee to suggest he wants anything to do with the party. He’s borrowing the brand for his own purposes,” the Washington Post reports.
“In all ways, Trump continues to show that he is the anti-conventions candidate. That’s especially the case with any notions of him becoming the leader of a political party. Trump is a singular politician unlike any who has risen as fast and as far as he has in modern times. In the same way that he has demonstrated no consistency in his views on issues over time, there is nothing to suggest that he has much regard for the responsibilities and opportunities that come with being the leader of a party.”
“What has been apparent during Trump’s march through the primaries is how little he thinks or acts with the partisan — or party-building — instincts of typical politicians. The constituency he has attracted is certainly more conservative than liberal and far more Republican than Democratic. But the core issues that have brought him to this position — immigration, national identity, trade and jobs — which he projects with the posture of a strongman (or to his critics, a bully) speak to a candidate who looks at the electorate far differently than the typical Republican or Democrat.”
President Obama’s public disparagement of Donald Trump during a news conference in Japan “obliterated the now-quaint political convention that partisanship stops at the water’s edge. It also revealed a stark truth: The world is worried about Trump,” the Washington Post reports.
“Although he is not on the November ticket, Obama has a foreign policy legacy to protect, particularly against Trump, who has called the president’s approach weak and incoherent.”
Hillary Clinton doubled down on defending her email practices as Secretary of State, arguing that the use of a personal account was “allowed, and rules have since been “clarified,” ABC News reports.
Said Clinton: “This report makes clear that personal email use was the practice for other secretaries of state. It was allowed. And the rules have been clarified since I left.”
“Yesterday, a report released by the State Department’s Office of Inspector General said that Clinton shouldn’t have used a private email server to conduct official business and would have not been allowed to do so had she asked. It also found that she should have turned over emails after her tenure and violated department policy.”
New York Times: Emails add to Clinton’s central problem: Voters don’t trust her.
“The Republican National Committee is scrambling to respond to increasingly frantic concerns from state GOP officials that the party has not provided enough field organizers and will be badly outgunned by Democrats in battleground states,” Politico reports.
“It’s a development that could spell trouble for Donald Trump, who trounced his primary competition despite lacking a traditional field organization but is now relying on the national party for its infrastructure. And it has implications for the fragile Republican Senate majority, which is also depending on the RNC’s ground game.”
“President Obama made history Friday by becoming the first sitting U.S. head of state to visit Hiroshima since American forces dropped an atomic bomb on the city in 1945, killing an estimated 80,000 people and hastening the end of World War II,” USA Today reports.
Marco Rubio told CNN that he plans to attend the Republican convention, will release his delegates to vote for Donald Trump and would be willing to speak on Trump’s behalf.
Said Rubio: “I want to be helpful. I don’t want to be harmful, because I don’t want Hillary Clinton to be president.”
He also said his political aspirations aren’t over, calling it a “safe assumption” that he’ll run for office — the presidency or something else — again.
Sen. Marco Rubio talks about Donald Trump after leaving the GOP presidential race in March 2016.
Earlier today, Rubio said he would help Trump beat Hillary Clinton.
Amy Walter: “Finally, I’m asked a lot these days by friends and family if I am ‘having fun’ this election season. ‘This sure is an exciting election, isn’t it?’ they ask. ‘You must be in hog heaven.’ Actually, and sadly, I am not enjoying this. This year, the electorate will be divided along race, education/class and gender like never before. I’m preparing myself for a campaign that is going to be nasty and ugly and will leave the country more polarized than it is today. There’s nothing to be happy about there.”
Fox, CNN, CNBC and MSNBC all featured this shot of an empty podium waiting for a Donald Trump press conference this afternoon.
Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton was in Las Vegas discussing her plans to raise incomes for working families.
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.