“Good guy, he said the worst things about me and I always liked him. This politics is a dirty business, I’ve never seen people pivot like politicians.”
— Donald Trump, quoted by The Hill, on finally being endorsed by Rick Perry.
“Good guy, he said the worst things about me and I always liked him. This politics is a dirty business, I’ve never seen people pivot like politicians.”
— Donald Trump, quoted by The Hill, on finally being endorsed by Rick Perry.
Donald Trump lashed out at Mitt Romney, saying he “walks like a penguin,” The Hill reports.
Said Trump: “Poor Mitt Romney. I have a store that’s worth more money than he is” before adding that he “choked like a dog, he’s a choker.”
A new Economist/YouGov poll finds 50% of Bernie Sanders voters are not yet ready to support Hillary Clinton in a Clinton-Trump general election match up.
“In fact, the percentage of Sanders supporters willing to vote for Clinton has dropped in the last few weeks. At the end of April, 63% of Sanders supporters said they would vote for Clinton. Importantly, however, these supporters are not going directly to Trump; instead they are moving into the undecided category, going for a third candidate, or opting out of the race altogether.”
For members: Clinton Must Make Peace with Sanders to Win
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Donald Trump thinks his former rival Jeb Bush is going to be able to shake off that “low energy” problem, and endorse him, Politico reports.
Said Trump: “He will get a burst of energy and he will do it.”
Open Secrets: “With the 2016 election cycle bringing previously unmatched amounts of ‘dark money‘ spending by politically active nonprofits, one group stands out for blazing its own trail: Conservative Solutions Project, the 501(c)(4) social welfare organization supporting Sen. Marco Rubio’s aborted presidential campaign.”
“New tax documents obtained by the Center for Responsive Politics show that within weeks of Rubio throwing his hat in the ring on April 13, 2015, the nonprofit had raised $13.8 million — $13.5 million of which came from a single, unnamed donor. And most of the money that went out the door went to firms and consultants running the group or to other agencies closely linked to Rubio and his campaign.”
“Donald Trump, who in recent days has accused Bill Clinton of rape and suggested he and Hillary Clinton may have had a role in the death of one of their close friends, plans to focus next on the Whitewater real estate scandal,” Politico reports.
Trump campaign adviser Michael Caputo emailed a researcher at the Republican National Committee asking him to “work up information on HRC/Whitewater as soon as possible. This is for immediate use and for the afternoon talking points process.”
Coming this summer: Bush by Jean Edward Smith.
“Smith demonstrates that it was not Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, or Condoleezza Rice, but President Bush himself who took personal control of foreign policy. Bush drew on his deep religious conviction that important foreign-policy decisions were simply a matter of good versus evil. Domestically, he overreacted to 9/11 and endangered Americans’ civil liberties.”
“The State Department’s inspector general sharply criticized Hillary Clinton’s exclusive use of a private email server while she was secretary of state, saying she had not sought permission to use it and would not have received it if she had,” the New York Times reports.
The report said that Clinton “had an obligation to discuss using her personal email account to conduct official business” with officials responsible for handling records and security but that inspectors found “no evidence” that she had.
Greg Sargent: “Early in the 2012 campaign, when top Democratic strategists were debating how to target Mitt Romney, they worked to hone their message about him down to a single, tight, pithy phrase. According to one senior Democrat in on the discussions, they finally settled on this: ‘When people like him do well, people like you get screwed.'”
“While this sentence never appeared in any Dem messaging, it functioned as a thematic guide, the senior Dem tells me. Now Democrats are wrestling with how to deliver a similar message about Trump, while also dealing with a key strategic problem: In many ways, Trump is a very different kind of billionaire from Romney.”
“Donald Trump is man who cares about no one but himself—a small insecure money-grubber who doesn’t care who gets hurt so long as he makes a profit off of it.”
— Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), quoted by Fortune.
First Read: “Maybe the biggest political story over the past couple of weeks has been how Trump has consolidated the GOP vote. Our own NBC/WSJ poll found the percentage of Republicans backing him in a contest vs. Clinton has gone up from 72% in April to 86% now. And if that holds, it’s significant for Republicans because it helps them on the down-ballot front.”
“In particular, more Republicans rallying around Trump means that the Democratic outside Senate targets — in Arizona, Iowa, Missouri, and North Carolina — are a steeper climb. After all, there is a big difference between Trump being at 47% in the popular vote and being at 42%-44%.”
“She screams and drives me crazy.”
— Donald Trump, quoted by Time, saying he “can’t listen” to Hillary Clinton’s attacks against him.
Donald Trump responded to Hillary Clinton’s attempt to tie him to the 2008 housing crisis saying he was being a good businessman, the New York Times reports.
Said Trump: “I am a businessman, and I have made a lot of money in down markets. In some cases, as much as I’ve made when markets are good. Frankly, this is the kind of thinking our country needs, understanding how to get a good result out of a very bad and sad situation. Politicians have no idea how to do this — they don’t have a clue.”
Donald Trump took several jabs at New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez (R) after she said she was “too busy” to appear with him at a rally, the Washington Examiner reports.
Said Trump: “Since 2000, the number of unemployed people in Albuquerque has doubled. Who’s fault is it? Is it your fault or is it your government’s fault? Since 2000, the number of people on food stamps in New Mexico has tripled. We have to get your governor to get going, OK? She’s got to do a better job.”
He added: “Your governor has got to do a better job. She’s not doing the job.”
A top RNC official sought to soothe business leaders worried about Donald Trump’s influence on the Republican party, saying at a private meeting that the presumptive nominee would not dictate the party’s platform, The Hill reports.
“Seeking to dispel the notion that his robotic utterances in the run-up to the New Hampshire primary alone doomed the trajectory of his campaign, Marco Rubio pointed to his decision to quarrel with Chris Christie over the point of his repeated lines on the debate stage rather than let it go,” Politico reports.
Said Rubio: “I think if we had made a strategic decision in New Hampshire different from the one I made — which was not to engage with Chris Christie, but to try to just ignore it and just stay on message — that would have been a nothing.”
“House Speaker Paul Ryan has begun telling confidants that he wants to end his standoff with Donald Trump in part because he’s worried the split has sharpened divisions in the Republican Party,” Bloomberg reports.
“Ryan aides say nothing has been decided about a possible Trump endorsement. But Trump’s campaign manager, Paul Manafort, told a small group of Republican lawmakers Thursday that he expects Ryan to endorse the party’s nominee as early as this week.”
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.
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