“Why would we change if we won the debate?”
— Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, quoted by the Associated Press, on whether Donald Trump would change his tactics for the next debate.
“Why would we change if we won the debate?”
— Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, quoted by the Associated Press, on whether Donald Trump would change his tactics for the next debate.
“Since the spring, U.S. intelligence and law-enforcement agencies have seen mounting evidence of an active Russian influence operation targeting the 2016 presidential election. It is very unlikely the Russians could sway the actual vote count, because our election infrastructure is decentralized and voting machines are not accessible from the Internet. But they can sow disruption and instability up to, and on, Election Day, more than a dozen senior U.S. officials tell Time, undermining faith in the result and in democracy itself.”
Eric Trump says it took “a lot of courage” for his father not to attack former President Bill Clinton on his extramarital affairs, NBC News reports.
Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway said Trump showed “presidential virtue” by not talking about the Clinton scandals.
“The scandals, of course, have been successfully revived by Trump and his allies this week — including in this article — by pretending not to talk about them.”
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“The fact that Donald Trump’s doing so well, it proves that I’m winning. I am winning.”
— David Duke, quoted by the Los Angeles Times.
“Donald Trump is angry that his aides and advisers have conceded to reporters — largely without attribution — that the Republican nominee struggled in his first presidential debate,” CNN reports.
Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson struggled to name a single foreign leader when asked who his favorite was during an MSNBC town hall, NBC News reports.
Said Johnson: “I guess I’m having an Aleppo moment.”
Los Angeles Times: “After the Trump National Golf Club in Rancho Palos Verdes opened for play in 2005, its world-famous owner didn’t stop by more than a few times a year to visit the course hugging the coast of the Pacific.”
“When Trump did visit, the club’s managers went on alert. They scheduled the young, thin, pretty women on staff to work the clubhouse restaurant — because when Trump saw less-attractive women working at his club, according to court records, he wanted them fired.”
“Colin Kaepernick, the San Francisco 49ers quarterback who has refused to stand during the national anthem as a way of protesting discrimination, called both major presidential candidates liars and said they seemed to be trying to ‘debate who’s less racist,'” the New York Times reports.
Said Kaepernick: “To me, it was embarrassing to watch that these are our two candidates. Both are proven liars, and it almost seems like they’re trying to debate who’s less racist. And at this point, talking with one of my friends, it was, you have to pick the lesser of two evils, but in the end, it’s still evil.”
“With just six weeks to go until Election Day, younger voters are shunning the two major political parties on a scale not seen since Ross Perot’s third-party bid for the presidency in 1992, a striking swing in public opinion that is slicing into Hillary Clinton’s thin margin for error,” the New York Times reports.
“Though young people are notoriously fickle about showing up at the polls, they are a growing and potentially pivotal bloc of voters. Millennials now outnumber baby boomers as the country’s largest generation. And while they may be more predisposed than other groups to vote Democratic, they are not moving toward the party and its nominee as quickly and predictably as they have in past elections.”
Wall Street Journal: Sanders helps Clinton court young voters
“Hillary Clinton’s and Donald Trump’s preparations for taking over the federal government are as wildly different as their campaigns for the White House — and for once, Trump’s operation is the more elaborate one,” Politico reports.
“While the Republican’s campaign is marked by light staffing, a scant policy agenda and the nominee’s gut-instinct style on the stump, the Trump transition team led by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has assembled nearly 100 advisers who are weighing details on issues ranging from taxes and national security to decisions on which Obama administration policies should be quickly overturned, according to people familiar with its inner workings.”
“In contrast, Clinton’s transition team is still largely bare bones — one Democrat who has met with it said it has about 20 staffers, including part-timers.”
“The House on Wednesday approved a bill to fund the federal government through December 9, averting a costly shutdown two days ahead of the deadline,” The Hill reports.
“The 10-week bill, which passed comfortably 342 to 85, now heads to the president’s desk and sends lawmakers back to their district early for campaigning.”
“A company controlled by Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for president, secretly conducted business in communist Cuba during Fidel Castro’s presidency despite strict American trade bans that made such undertakings illegal, according to interviews with former Trump executives, internal company records and court filings,” Newsweek reports.
Politico: “Whether he goes that route or not, Ryan is likely in for a tumultous next few years. If Trump wins and Ryan retains the speakership, the Wisconsin Republican will be forced to continue to wedge his positions into Trump’s alternate Republican universe.”
“If Clinton wins, Ryan will have to preside over a slimmed Republican majority, more heavily populated with burn-the-house-down conservatives. He’ll have to cut deals and do business with Hillary Clinton — a woman he’s met with privately just twice — while at the same time keeping conservatives content.”
“It’s a governing scenario that people close to him are beginning to envision, according to multiple sources in his political orbit — and not a particularly pleasant one.”
President Obama denounced Donald Trump as someone who was unqualified to sit in the Oval Office and “doesn’t do his homework, doesn’t know basic facts that you’d need to know,” the New York Times reports.
Said Obana: “You had somebody who basically insulted women and then doubled down. In terms of how he talks about them and talks about their weight and talks about how they look instead of the content of their character and their capabilities, which is not something that I want, not somebody I want in the Oval Office.”
“Unmoved by harsh debate reviews, a defiant Donald Trump renewed his attacks against a former Miss Universe winner on Wednesday, showing no sign of making big changes to his message or debate preparation before his second faceoff with Hillary Clinton,” the AP reports.
“The outspoken Republican nominee instead pressed ahead with an aggressive strategy focused on speaking directly to his white, working-class loyalists across the Midwest.”
TPM: Trump goes after Machado again
“Donald Trump’s campaign is instructing its supporters to use figures like Monica Lewinsky and Gennifer Flowers to beat back concerns about how Trump described a former winner of Miss Universe,” according to a copy of campaign talking points obtained by CNN.
“Even though Trump and his children celebrated him for not bringing up the women associated with Bill Clinton’s marital scandals during Monday’s presidential debate, Trump is encouraging his supporters to do just that.”
A new NBC News-Survey Monkey poll finds 52% of those who watched this week’s debate thought Hillary Clinton won compared to just 21% who thought Donald Trump prevailed.
Here are the latest state polls from the presidential race:
North Carolina: Clinton 38%, Trump 35%, Johnson 6% (Meredith College)
Ohio: Clinton 40%, Trump 37%, Johnson 8% (TargetSmart)
Michigan: Clinton 46%, Trump 41% (Mitchell Research)
Missouri: Trump 49%, Clinton 39% (Remington)
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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