“Donald Trump has been privately asking confidants what they would think of his appointing his former White House domestic policy adviser, Brooke Rollins, as his chief of staff if he wins the election,” the New York Times reports.
“In multiple private conversations in recent weeks, Mr. Trump has said that he thinks Ms. Rollins would make ‘a great chief of staff’ and that ‘she’s tall’ and ‘she’s got the look,’ among other attributes.”
Several cities are seeking more than $750,000 in unpaid fees from Donald Trump’s campaign for rallies held over the past several years, NBC News reports.
Four cities say Trump owes them reimbursements for the costs of local law enforcement and first responder support at his campaign events.
“Donald Trump turned down Fox News’s invitation to debate Vice President Kamala Harris on the air this month,” the New York Times reports.
“But the Republican nominee will appear on the network next week for an unusual televised town hall, fielding questions from an all-female audience.”
Kamala Harris plans to air a new TV commercial this weekend spotlighting a negative remark Donald Trump made about Detroit, the Detroit News reports.
The spot will air during the broadcasts of the Detroit Tigers’ playoff game on Saturday and the Detroit Lions’ game on Sunday.
Barack Obama at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania:
OBAMA: Do you think Donald Trump has ever changed a tire in his life?… You think Donald Trump’s ever changed a diaper?
AUDIENCE MEMBER: His own!
OBAMA: I almost said that, but I decided I shouldn’t say it.
“Donald Trump’s campaign quietly has changed a key part of its messaging operation, tapping Trump 2020 veteran Tim Murtaugh to lead its communications in the final month before the election,” Axios reports.
Pollster John Della Volpe to Semafor: “I think that many folks underestimated the degree to which younger people were looking for political leaders they could connect with. There’s not a lot of daylight in the policy between Harris and Biden, but there’s just a tremendous amount of confidence in Vice President Harris that you can feel from this data. There’s a genuine enthusiasm for voting among Democrats now.”
He added: “And I’ve said, for a decade, that for a Democrat to have a strong chance of winning the Electoral College, you need to be at 60% plus with younger people. It’s going to make the pathway much, much easier. And she’s in the ballpark. She needs to stay there and build.”
“Mark Milley, the US Army general who Donald Trump appointed as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, now says the current Republican presidential nominee is a “fascist to the core” and says no person has ever posed more of a danger to the United States than the man who served as the 45th President of the United States,” The Independent reports.
Wall Street Journal: “John Thune, the second highest-ranking Republican in the Senate, was in Palm Beach, Fla., for fundraisers with his wife, Kimberley Thune, and called to see if Trump might be able to sit down and chat.”
“It wasn’t a sure date. Less than four years prior, Trump had called Thune a ‘RINO,’ or Republican in name only, and urged others to try to oust him in a GOP primary, saying on social media that ‘South Dakota doesn’t like weakness!'”
“But in the hourlong meeting with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort, Thune and his wife helped defuse some of the tension in the relationship. Those strains have loomed as a problem for Thune as he vies to lead the GOP in a possible Trump second term, and shows how the complicated politics of the party and the uncertain election are pushing the onetime antagonists to mend fences.”
Said Thune: “I think we have an understanding, and it’s professional.”
“JPMorgan Chase said the U.S. economy remains strong for both consumers and big companies, a sign that the Federal Reserve may have achieved the much-discussed soft landing with lower inflation and healthy growth,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“The biggest bank in the country continued to earn more than expected on lending in the third quarter and raised forecasts of what it will earn this year, even after the Fed recently cut interest rates for the first time in four years. Executives said consumers continued to spend and big businesses are confident, the kind of economy the Fed had been hoping to engineer.”
Vanity Fair: “Bannon, a self-declared general of global populists, wants to break the world order. And he’s tapped into something much bigger than Trumpism.”
Charlie Warzel: “The truth is, it’s getting harder to describe the extent to which a meaningful percentage of Americans have dissociated from reality. As Hurricane Milton churned across the Gulf of Mexico last night, I saw an onslaught of outright conspiracy theorizing and utter nonsense racking up millions of views across the internet…”
“Even in a decade marred by online grifters, shameless politicians, and an alternative right-wing-media complex pushing anti-science fringe theories, the events of the past few weeks stand out for their depravity and nihilism. As two catastrophic storms upended American cities, a patchwork network of influencers and fake-news peddlers have done their best to sow distrust, stoke resentment, and interfere with relief efforts.”
“But this is more than just a misinformation crisis. To watch as real information is overwhelmed by crank theories and public servants battle death threats is to confront two alarming facts: first, that a durable ecosystem exists to ensconce citizens in an alternate reality, and second, that the people consuming and amplifying those lies are not helpless dupes but willing participants.”
Donald Trump has not played golf since an apparent assassination attempt near one of his courses on Sept. 15, and he will not do so until after the election, NBC News reports.
Trump was told that federal agents could not ensure his safety to a degree that they were comfortable with if he were to play.
A new Pew Research survey finds Kamala Harris edging Donald Trump nationally among registered voters, 48% to 47% with another 5% opting for a third-party candidate.
The poll also shows there are just 13% who might change their minds.
Nate Silver: “So as long as I’ve been covering politics, people have been fascinated by internal polls (surveys that the campaigns themselves or closely affiliated partisan groups conduct). Especially given the high-profile public polling misses in recent years, surely the campaigns know the real story of the race?”
“Well, no. Or at least, not necessarily. If you really knew what the campaigns knew, that would probably provide valuable information. But unless you’re an Iranian or Russian hacker, you probably don’t. Instead, you know what the campaigns want you to know.”
“The word ‘grocery,’ it’s a sort of simple word. But it sort of means, like, everything you eat. The stomach is speaking, it always does. And I have more complaints about that ― bacon, and things going up double, triple, quadruple.”
— Donald Trump, while giving a speech yesterday in Michigan.
William Kristol: “Credit to Obama for trying to persuade members of his own community, who voted overwhelmingly for him, to turn out as strongly for Harris. It would be nice if others who’d gotten tens of millions of votes for president, such as George W. Bush and Mitt Romney, were also out there trying to persuade those Americans who voted for them—which includes a majority of white voters—to do the same.”
“But that’s apparently too much to ask.”
“What’s not too much to ask is that we recognize this fact: If Trump wins on November 5, it will be because of his support from a majority of white America. As a white American, and a white American man to boot, I’ve got to say, in the immortal words of Pogo: We have met the enemy and he is us.”
“Donald Trump’s campaign has requested a series of additional security measures, including military assets, in conversations with the White House and the Secret Service because of continuing threats to his safety,” the New York Times reports.
“The conversations came amid suggestions from some Trump aides that they felt hamstrung from having Mr. Trump campaign the way they would like to because of the security threats, including his ability to travel where he wants and appear outside at rallies.”
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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