Rep. Jason Chaffetz told KSTU that he is withdrawing his support for Donald Trump after a video surfaced showing the Republican candidate for president making vulgar remarks in 2005 about touching and kissing women without their consent.
Said Chaffetz: “I’m out. I can no longer in good conscience endorse this person for president. It is some of the most abhorrent and offensive comments that you can possibly imagine.”
Huffington Post: “Just a few pages into the Republican National Committee rulebook is some good news for officials horrified by Donald Trump’s latest meltdown: It’s not too late to replace him on the November ballot.”
“Now the bad news: Trump would have to quit on his own. His official nomination last month in Cleveland leaves the party no way to remove him.”
Speaker Paul Ryan said that he was “sickened” by Donald Trump’s lewd comments about women, and announced that the GOP nominee would no longer campaign with him in Wisconsin on Saturday, Politico reports.
“The speaker did not, however, comment on whether he still supports Trump for the presidency.”
“Less than two years after a female journalist supposedly rebuffed Donald Trump’s sexual advances—as heard on newly discovered video—he allegedly tried to have her fired from one of his beauty pageants,” the Daily Beast reports.
“That married woman (identified as ‘Nancy’ by Trump) was subsequently identified by Access Hollywood as former host Nancy O’Dell during the show’s Friday night episode.”
“Trump interacted with O’Dell, who now works on Entertainment Tonight, in her side-gig as a host at Trump beauty pageants… In 2007, TMZ reported that the real-estate mogul wanted to kick O’Dell to the curb as Miss USA host because he allegedly didn’t like the way she looked while she was several months pregnant.”
“One week after explaining why he planned to vote for Donald Trump, former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman said it is time for the Republican nominee to drop out of the race and allow vice presidential nominee Mike Pence to represent the party,” the Salt Lake Tribune reports.
Here are the latest state polls from the presidential race:
Virginia: Clinton 46%, Trump 34% (Hampton University)
Florida: Clinton 47%, Trump 45%, Johnson 2% (Gravis)
Wisconsin: Clinton 48%, Trump 40%, Johnson 4% (Gravis)
“Mike Pence took the stage here just over an hour after a tape emerged of Donald Trump crudely bragging about sexually harassing women and pretended as though no such tape existed,” Politico reports.
“And then, confronted by multiple reporters on the rope line after the speech, he simply ignored repeated questions about his reaction to the tape.”
“Excerpts from Hillary Clinton’s closed-door paid speeches, including to financial firms, appeared to be made public for the first time on Friday when WikiLeaks published thousands of hacked emails from her campaign chairman,” BuzzFeed reports.
“The speech transcripts, a major subject of contention during the Democratic primary, include quotes from Clinton about her distance from middle-class life (‘I’m kind of far removed’); her vision of strategic governing (‘you need both a public and a private position’); and her views on Wall Street, health care, and trade policy (‘my dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders’).”
“Donald Trump bragged in vulgar terms about kissing, groping and trying to have sex with women during a 2005 conversation caught on a hot microphone — saying that ‘when you’re a star, they let you do it,'” — according to a video obtained by the Washington Post.
The conversation was with Billy Bush of “Access Hollywood” in which Trump describes an attempt to seduce a married woman.
The video is worth watching, but here’s a brief excerpt:
TRUMP: “You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything.”
BUSH: “Whatever you want?”
TRUMP: “Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.”
Trump responded in a statement: “This was locker room banter, a private conversation that took place many years ago. Bill Clinton has said far worse to me on the golf course – not even close. I apologize if anyone was offended.”
“A woman at the center of sexual assault allegations against Donald Trump has spoken for the first time in detail about her personal experience with the billionaire tycoon who this week became the Republican nominee for president,” The Guardian reports.
“Jill Harth, a makeup artist, has stayed quiet for almost 20 years about the way Trump pursued her, and – according to a lawsuit she instigated – cornered her and groped her in his daughter’s bedroom.”
Hillary Clinton’s latest ad doesn’t get any more direct than this: Donald Trump can’t be trusted with nuclear weapons.
“The Obama administration officially accused Russia of carrying out a wide-ranging campaign to interfere with the 2016 elections, including by hacking the computers of the Democratic National Committee and other political officials,” the Washington Post reports.
“I don’t need to rehearse being human.”
— Donald Trump, quoted by the New York Times, scoffing at the need to practice his body language and facial expressions ahead of this weekend’s town hall debate.
“Citing a border patrol union leader, Donald Trump said that agents have been told to allow immigrants into the United States illegally ‘so they can vote in the election,'” the AP reports.
Said Trump: “That’s a massive story. They are letting people pour into the country so they can go ahead and vote.”
“But he offered no evidence to support his most recent claim that presidential voting may be tainted by fraud.”
Washington Post: “But Trump was still Trump. As his motorcade pulled into Denver’s Ritz-Carlton hotel for the night, Trump was in a fury. He lashed out at aides for booking such luxurious accommodations, saying he would have preferred to stay at a Holiday Inn Express — a chain he considers reliably clean — as he did on occasion during the primaries, according to three people familiar with the episode who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.”
“So it went throughout the rest of this week, as pressure mounted on Trump to rebound or risk losing to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in a landslide. Although Trump understood that he needed to improve his standing, he continued to boast behind the scenes about unscientific online polls showing he won the first debate.”
“Trump resisted suggestions from his advisers to practice exhaustively for the second debate, a town hall-style forum that will be held Sunday night in St. Louis. He flat-out refused to participate in mock sessions, saying such playacting was annoying.”
“Russia’s government lodged a formal complaint last month with the United Nations over a top U.N. official’s condemnations of Donald Trump and some European politicians, diplomats told the Associated Press, an intervention that underscores the unusual links between the Republican presidential nominee and the Kremlin.”
Donald Trump told CNN that he still thinks the Central Park 5 — who had been accused of brutally raping a jogger — are guilty, even though they have since been exonerated.
Said Trump: “They admitted they were guilty. The police doing the original investigation say they were guilty. The fact that that case was settled with so much evidence against them is outrageous. And the woman, so badly injured, will never be the same.”
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.