Trump campaign chairman and chief strategist Paul Manafort has resigned from the campaign, the Washington Post reports.
Donald Trump confirmed the news in a statement: “This morning Paul Manafort offered, and I accepted, his resignation from the campaign. I am very appreciative for his great work in helping to get us where we are today, and in particular his work guiding us through the delegate and convention process. Paul is a true professional and I wish him the greatest success.”
“House Republicans are doubling down in their effort to bring perjury charges against Hillary Clinton over her testimony last year to the House Select Committee on Benghazi,” The Hill reports.
“GOP lawmakers have claimed that the Democratic presidential nominee broke the law by lying under oath about her private email setup during her marathon appearance in October.”
Greg Sargent: “Last night, Donald Trump delivered a speech in which he spoke in soothing tones about the need to unify the country and expressed ‘regret’ about any remarks that have caused ‘personal pain,’ though he didn’t specify which particular remarks he regrets. This led some commentators to suggest that another ‘pivot‘ is underway.”
“This morning, Trump released his first general election ad, an ugly and dishonest production which shows he isn’t changing a thing.”
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Nate Silver: “One quirk of the American political system is that a candidate can win a primary with a much narrower slice of the electorate than he’d need to win a general election. Donald Trump claimed 45 percent of the vote in Republican primaries and caucuses this year, about 14 million votes. That’s a healthy total as these things go: the highest number of votes ever received by a Republican in the primaries. But Trump will need four or five times as many votes — perhaps 65 million — to win in November. His primary voters are just a drop in the bucket.”
“All presidential candidates face some version of this problem. But most make at least some effort to expand beyond their base and build a majority coalition. Trump hasn’t — and he has his work cut out for him like no nominee in history. Trump’s decision this week to make Stephen Bannon of the combative, anti-establishment website Breitbart News his campaign’s chief executive suggests that he’s moving in the opposite direction.”
Donald Trump’s “latest staff shake-up reflects the growing behind-the-scenes influence of a wealthy backer relatively new in the nominee’s orbit: billionaire hedge-fund manager Robert Mercer,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“He and his daughter, Rebekah, had recommended both Breitbart News chairman Stephen Bannon and Republican pollster Kellyanne Conway, who already worked for the campaign… The Mercers met privately with Mr. Trump at a fundraiser last weekend at the East Hampton, N.Y., home of New York Jets owner Woody Johnson, according to a person at the event.”
“Top Trump donors said the staff reshuffling showed the Mercers’ widening role in the campaign and was a potential setback for Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who had sought to tailor Mr. Trump into a more traditional political figure.”
“Well first of all, I can just tell you about Mitch, I don’t know of anyone else that’s running for majority leader. Nobody wants the job.”
— Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), quoted by the Tampa Bay Times, dodging a question on whether he would support Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) as majority leader.
“An apparent Republican activist tried to join Democrat Russ Feingold’s team this week in what Feingold’s campaign suspects was a plot to dig up dirt on him,” the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports.
Steve Schale: “Most states are places. Think about Texas, or even a state like Iowa, there is a sense of place to it, a commonality of experience – or as marketers might say, almost a brand. Most states have it. Florida really doesn’t.”
“Florida isn’t a place in the same sense. It is a political circle, drawing 20 million people from vast, and I mean vast experiences and cultures into one spot. And almost everyone here has come from somewhere else.”
“Florida is the new Ellis Island, except our ships come as cars and planes, from inside the borders of the country, and outside. Over the next 15 years, we might add as many as 5 million more residents, grow to as much as 30% Hispanic, with a total population of well more than 50% coming from what are typically considered ethnic minorities.”
New York Times: “As comfortable as Mr. Trump may feel with Mr. Bannon’s style of politics, their unconventional alliance, and the possibility that the coming weeks could resemble a conservative publicity tour more than a conventional White House run, fueled speculation that Mr. Trump was already looking past November.”
“In recent months, Mr. Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, have quietly explored becoming involved with a media holding, either by investing in one or by taking one over, according to a person close to Mr. Trump who was briefed on those discussions.”
“Pressed by the F.B.I. about her email practices at the State Department, Hillary Clinton told investigators that former Secretary of State Colin Powell had advised her to use a personal email account,” the New York Times reports.
“The account is included in the notes the Federal Bureau of Investigation handed over to Congress on Tuesday, relaying in detail the three-and-a-half-hour interview with Mrs. Clinton in early July that led to the decision by James B. Comey, the bureau’s director, not to pursue criminal charges against her.”
A new Gallup poll finds Sen. Ted Cruz’s favorability rating among Republicans has dropped significantly — from 59% to 43% — since his speech at the Republican National Convention in which he refused to endorse Donald Trump as the party’s nominee.
“Three and a half months after sealing the Republican nomination, Donald Trump pivoted to contest the general election on Thursday night, expressing regret for his past failures to ‘choose the right words’ and delivering one of the most comprehensive, on-message rationales for his candidacy to date,” Politico reports.
“Speaking from prepared remarks on the heels of another staffing shakeup, Trump positioned himself as the champion of voiceless Americans against a corrupt and incompetent elite and the leader of an inclusive movement who repeatedly condemned ‘bigotry.'”
Washington Post: “The move marked a sharp departure from Trump, who has avoided apologizing or expressing regret in more than a year of campaigning, after a seemingly endless stream of feuds and controversies.”
“Facing criticism for some of the donations given to his family’s philanthropy, Bill Clinton said on Thursday that the Clinton Foundation would no longer accept foreign or corporate funds should Hillary Clinton win the presidency in November,” the New York Times reports.
Here are the latest polls from the presidential race:
Nevada: Clinton 44%, Trump 42% (Suffolk)
Georgia: Clinton 43%, Trump 43% (Opinion Savvy)
“I think it helps us to be a little bit behind, and we are. It lights a fire under us and reminds us what we need to do to get this done.”
— Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, quoted by Politico.
“Republicans are increasingly nervous about the Senate race in North Carolina, where Senator Richard Burr finds himself at sea in a year when some party insiders say a perfect storm may be gathering for Tar Heel State Democrats,” National Review reports.
“Burr faces Deborah Ross, a former state senator, in a race that few Republicans even considered competitive several months ago. Ross was not a top recruit, entering the race only after other Democratic hopefuls passed, and Burr — the well-liked chairman of the powerful Senate Intelligence Committee — seemed to have little to worry about. But with less than three months to go until election day, Burr has barely begun campaigning, and it’s increasingly clear that his reelection is threatened by two forces beyond his control: Donald Trump and Pat McCrory, the unpopular Republican Governor who’s also up for reelection this year.”
“In that speech, I concluded with the following line: ‘If Hillary Clinton can’t give us the truth, why should we give her the presidency?’ But weeks after the end of the 2016 GOP convention, I am confronted by an inconvenient fact: Despite what I wrote in that nationally televised speech about Hillary Clinton, I may yet have to vote for her because of the epic deficiencies of my own party’s nominee.”
— GOP speechwriter Richard Cross, writing in the Baltimore Sun,
First Read: “If Trump’s poll position doesn’t soon change, there will be two key GOP voices that everyone will want to hear from, especially after this campaign shakeup — House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Those two men have the potential power to declare the presidential race over, and to say that the Republican Party’s energies and resources should be devoted to saving the GOP House and Senate majorities. We’re not saying that moment is here or even a week or two away. But it’s definitely a story to watch.”
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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