Asked about the use of a private email server, Hillary Clinton campaign communications director Jennifer Palmieri told Bloomberg that the former secretary of state “didn’t really think it through.”
Said Palmieri: “She has said, had she, she would have done it differently.”
“If I were, not president, but if I were king of America, I would abolish all teachers’ lounges, where they sit together and worry about ‘woe is us.'”
— Gov. John Kasich, quoted by the Columbus Dispatch.
Wonk Wire: How Trump fills a policy void
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“For Donald Trump, it wasn’t enough to upstage Jeb Bush by booking a town hall meeting at the same time as the former Florida governor. Trump had to attack him, too,” Politico reports.
Said Trump: “Right down the road, we have Jeb — very small crowd. You know what’s happening to Jeb’s crowd right down the street? They’re sleeping now.”
New York Times: “In an apt sign of the enthusiasm imbalance, Fox News at one point cut away from Mr. Bush, midsentence, to focus on an empty lectern awaiting Mr. Trump.”
In hypothetical general-election matchups in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania, a new Quinnipiac poll finds Vice President Joe Biden performed as well or better than Hillary Clinton against the top Republican candidates.
Clinton is the only candidate with worse honesty ratings than Donald Trump in all three states, with just 32% each finding her honest and trustworthy in Florida and Pennsylvania and 34% in Ohio.
“I didn’t want to look back in ten years and say I could have done that or I could have done that… I had to do it for myself.”
— Donald Trump, quoted by Poliito, on why he’s running for president.
Washington Post: “The dynamic here reflects the extent of the broader tumult that has gripped the Republican race nationally, with 17 candidates vying for overlapping factions of the party. At the moment, the campaign is dominated by Trump and other political neophytes drawing enthusiastic crowds and preaching an anti-establishment message, although party strategists anticipate attention will shift to more traditional candidates eventually.”
“But for now, at least, Bush faces a squeeze. Ohio Gov. John Kasich is moving swiftly to take advantage of the former Florida governor’s difficulties and make inroads with the kind of mainstream voters who otherwise would migrate to Bush.”
Ben Carson is open to using military drone strikes on American soil to secure the border, CNN reports.
Said Carson: “You look at some of these caves and things out there one drone strike, boom, and they’re gone. I’m suggesting we do what we need to do to secure the border — whatever that is.”
Here’s what’s trending on Wonk Wire today:
Josh Marshall: “We’ve gone far enough now with the Trump political phenomenon to know that it is no mere or momentary matter of name recognition which has placed him as the top contender for the Republican nomination, as bizarre an eventuality as that might appear. He now leads all national polls and all polls in the key early primary and caucus states – and by significant margins. We’ve also witnessed key GOP stakeholder Fox News try to derail Trump’s campaign and fail miserably at it. Lots of top Republicans jumped on that bum-rush Trump bandwagon only to be damaged in turn when it collapsed. We’re now in a categorically different phase. Trump is now defining the GOP policy agenda. And that makes him far more than a top candidate or even a nominee.”
“Ending birthright citizenship used to be an idea embraced on the far right of the House GOP caucus and bandied about by rightwing policy wonks. Trump has now not only made it a signature of his campaign. He’s also pulling all the other candidates along with him.”
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) “has transferred $250,000 to the Republican Party of Kentucky as a down payment on the presidential caucuses he has asked the party to conduct in March,” the Lexington Herald Leader reports.
“Paul is seeking the party’s help in bypassing a state law that prohibits him from running for president and for re-election to his Senate seat on the same ballot next year. He wrote to the party’s state central committee, which has nearly 350 members, in an effort to quell concern about the cost of a caucus.”
Los Angeles Times: “Antonio Villaraigosa has kept out of the news in the six months since he opted to skip the race for U.S. Senate. But a reception at his Hollywood Hills home on Monday to raise money for Hillary Clinton was the latest of many signs the former Los Angeles mayor is preparing quietly to run for governor of California in 2018.”
“Maine’s top court has ruled unanimously against Gov. Paul LePage (R) in his dispute with the Legislature over whether he has more time to veto 65 bills already processed into law,” the Portland Press Herald reports.
The ruling “delivered a significant blow to the governor, who has been engulfed in criticism and scrutiny in the seven months since he began his second term… LePage indicated in interviews before the ruling that he would not enforce the 65 laws and would seek additional court relief to block their implementation. But Adrienne Bennett, the governor’s spokeswoman, said in an email Thursday that the governor will implement and enforce the laws now that the court has ruled.”
“She isn’t as natural a politician as Barack Obama or Bill Clinton, but that’s like saying Scottie Pippen isn’t as talented as Michael Jordan or Magic Johnson. She is as good or better than just about everyone in the current GOP field.”
— Former White House aide Dan Pfeiffer, quoted by the Washington Post, on Hillary Clinton.
First Read: “Usually, what happens in August tends to stay in August — think Michele Bachmann’s straw poll win in 2011 or Rick Perry electrifying conservatives at the Red State convention that same year. And a year from now, we MIGHT (for emphasis on that word) add the Summer of Donald Trump to this list. But there are some things that happen in August that stick around for another 14 months, and the birthright citizenship debate within the Republican Party could be one of them.”
“Indeed, maybe the most significant storyline over the last 72 hours has been the discussion that Donald Trump started when he unveiled his immigration plan — ending birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants born in the United States. The GOP field is divided: Trump, Paul, Santorum, Graham, Christie, Carson and Jindal are in favor of ending birthright citizenship; Bush and Rubio are opposed; Kasich has flip-flopped (used to support it now opposes it); and Scott Walker appeared to support but also appeared to walk it back. We always knew that immigration was going to be a hot topic inside the GOP field. But we doubt that anyone was counting on birthright citizenship being a subject we’d be talking about this August.”
Greg Sargent: “The 14th amendment and birthright citizenship rank among the great and defining accomplishments of the Republican Party, back when it was the Party of Lincoln.”
First Read: “After watching Hillary Clinton’s testy news conference yesterday over her emails and server, here is this stark reality for the Clinton campaign: This issue isn’t going away — at least for a couple of more months (when Clinton testifies before the Benghazi committee in October). And there’s just no other way to look at this story but to conclude she has done it to herself. She tried to conflate the private server issue a bit, claiming that we’d have the same questions for her regarding classified information if her emails were on a state.gov server or her own. But that ignores a few facts, including: the existence of the private server only came to light via congressional investigation and the fact that she doesn’t yet have a good explanation of why she decided to have a private server in the first place.”
The Hollywood Reporter runs a must-read interview with Donald Trump.
On apologizing: “I believe in apologizing. But to apologize for me is very difficult. I definitely would apologize if I were wrong on something.”
On Rosie O’Donnell: “Rosie actually saved me because that was a rough question. So Rosie, finally you saved me. Because the room went wild. Between the laughing and the applause — it really stopped the rest of the question, which was just a continuation of “kill.” That was a question that could have ruined my whole evening.”
“I’d move heaven and Earth to access the private e-mail account of a foreign minister. And I’d really go after an e-mail account in which the official and the unofficial e-mails were co-mingled.”
— Former CIA Director Michael Hayden, on MSNBC, about Hillary Clinton’s private email server.
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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