Bonus Quote of the Day
“If the disgusting and corrupt media covered me honestly and didn’t put false meaning into the words I say, I would be beating Hillary by 20%.”
— Donald Trump, on Twitter.
Romney and Trump
A Deliberate Remix of the Southern Strategy
The Atlantic: “But, particularly over the past two months, Trump’s campaign seems less like a haphazard effort, and more like a deliberate and conscious attempt to resurrect these discarded GOP tactics, recasting them for the current moment.”
“One glaring, underreported clue about the method behind the post-primary Trump madness is his selection of Paul Manafort as chair of his national campaign. Manafort’s appointment, followed by the ousting of Corey Lewandowski in June, was widely seen as a move to professionalize Trump’s disorganized campaign staff just ahead of the convention. But along with credentials earned from working with top GOP politicians… Manafort also brought decades of experience as an overseer of the Southern Strategy. Since the 1980s, Manafort’s business partners have included Charles Black, who helped launch the Senate career of outspoken segregationist Jessie Helms, and Lee Atwater, who was behind the infamously racist Willie Horton ads run by the George H. W. Bush campaign.”
“And it was Manafort who arranged for Ronald Reagan to kick off his post-convention presidential campaign at the Neshoba County Fair just outside of Philadelphia, Mississippi, where three young civil rights workers were brutally murdered in 1964.”
Trump Struggles to Find a Path to 270
Associated Press: “Right now, Trump doesn’t have a lead in any of the states where he will need to win and where recent polling exists, and in several states, he’s significantly behind Clinton.”
Quote of the Day
“It may be that he may make more insensitive statements because he’s not a polished politician.”
— Rudy Giulini, quoted by The Hill, defending Donald Trump.
RNC Mulls Cutting Funding of Trump Campaign
“Publicly, Republican Party officials continue to stand by Donald Trump. Privately, at the highest levels, party leaders have started talking about cutting off support to Trump in October and redirecting cash to saving endangered congressional majorities,” Politico reports.
“Since the Cleveland convention, top party officials have been quietly making the case to political journalists, donors and GOP operatives that the Republican National Committee has done more to help Trump than it did to support its 2012 nominee Mitt Romney and that, therefore, Trump has only himself and his campaign to blame for his precipitous slide in the polls.”
My Kirsten Gillibrand Story
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Well, If It’s a Book About Me…
A telling anecdote on how the Washington Post came to write a book on Donald Trump:
Hicks cut him off, calling the decision to write a book “incredibly disingenuous… You are profiteering off Mr. Trump. This isn’t something we’re participating in; you all are making money on this.”
Fisher pointed out that in every election year, The Post publishes a comprehensive series of articles tracing the candidates’ lives. This would be no different, except that the same reporting that was going toward newspaper articles was also being used to tell the story in one narrative, in book form. The Post planned a similar examination of the life and record of the Democratic nominee. Hicks was unimpressed. She reiterated icily that no cooperation would be forthcoming and she ended the call.
After the weekend, Hicks called back, her tone now bright and friendly. “I told Mr. Trump about your project, and he loves it,” she said. “He’s happy to meet with you.”
De Niro Compares Trump to Travis Bickle
Award winning actor Robert De Niro compared Donald Trump to his mentally unstable character Travis Bickle in the 1976 movie Taxi Driver, calling the Republican nominee “totally nuts,” The Hill reports.
Said De Niro: “What he has been saying is totally crazy, ridiculous, stuff that shouldn’t be even… he is totally nuts.”
He added: “I don’t know, it’s crazy that people like Donald Trump… he shouldn’t even be where he is, so God help us.”
Has Trump Hit Bottom Yet?
Dan Balz: “The unraveling of Donald Trump’s candidacy continues apace, a long and steady decline since the high point three months ago. If he were deliberately trying to avoid winning the election, he could hardly be doing a better job.”
“The hole he has dug for himself is wide and deep. National polls and battleground state polls all tell a similar story. Hillary Clinton has opened up a small-to-significant lead over Trump almost everywhere it counts. Unless Trump can reverse course, Clinton, despite persistent questions about her honesty, is on track to win a handsome electoral college majority. The lone bright spot for Trump: It’s August not October. But that comes with a caveat.”
“Republicans hope Trump is bottoming out. They are waiting for a pivot that could and should have happened before Memorial Day. They wonder whether it will happen by the end of the month or at all… The general election is already half over, and Trump has lost the first half decisively.”
For members: Only an Epic Comeback Can Save Trump Now
Effort to Save Trump from Himself Has Failed
New York Times: “Advisers who once hoped a Pygmalion-like transformation would refashion a crudely effective political showman into a plausible American president now increasingly concede that Mr. Trump may be beyond coaching. He has ignored their pleas and counsel as his poll numbers have dropped, boasting to friends about the size of his crowds and maintaining that he can read surveys better than the professionals.”
“In private, Mr. Trump’s mood is often sullen and erratic, his associates say. He veers from barking at members of his staff to grumbling about how he was better off following his own instincts during the primaries and suggesting he should not have heeded their calls for change.”
“But in interviews with more than 20 Republicans who are close to Mr. Trump or in communication with his campaign… they described their nominee as exhausted, frustrated and still bewildered by fine points of the political process and why his incendiary approach seems to be sputtering.”
How Obama Embraced Executive Power
New York Times: “Blocked for most of his presidency by Congress, Mr. Obama has sought to act however he could. In the process he created the kind of government neither he nor the Republicans wanted — one that depended on bureaucratic bulldozing rather than legislative transparency. But once Mr. Obama got the taste for it, he pursued his executive power without apology, and in ways that will shape the presidency for decades to come.”
“The Obama administration in its first seven years finalized 560 major regulations… An army of lawyers working under Mr. Obama’s authority has sought to restructure the nation’s health care and financial industries, limit pollution, bolster workplace protections and extend equal rights to minorities. Under Mr. Obama, the government has literally placed a higher value on human life.”
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Are Republicans Ready to Give Up on Trump?
“The Republican Party could be nearing a breaking point with Donald Trump,” the AP reports.
“As he skips from one gaffe to the next, GOP leaders in Washington and in the most competitive states have begun openly contemplating turning their backs on their party’s presidential nominee to prevent what they fear will be wide-scale Republican losses on Election Day.”
“Back in 1996, the party largely gave up on nominee Bob Dole once it became clear he had little chance of winning, so it’s not without precedent. Nevertheless, it’s a jolting prospect now, with roughly three months still left before the Nov. 8 vote and weeks before the three presidential debates.”
Quote of the Day
“Frankly, a lot of stuff over the last week … it’s him being distorted. For the last week or so, he’s been very focused and very much on his game.”
— Trump adviser Paul Manafort, quoted by the AP.
Trump Recruiting ‘Election Observers’
Donald Trump’s campaign is now looking for “election observers” to prevent “Crooked Hillary Clinton” from “rigging the election” in November, the Weekly Standard reports.
However, Rick Hasen notes “there’s a longstanding consent decree that bars the RNC afrom engaging in such activities.”
Clinton Says Email Rules are Different for Hillary
“Bill Clinton says it was a mistake for Hillary Clinton to maintain a personal email server even though her predecessors and her successor at the State Department did it,” the AP reports.
“But the former president says his wife should have known that there would be a different set of rules applied to her if she ran for the presidency.”
