Just dropped · Trial Balloon · Ep. 194
What Just Happened?
Donald Trump suggested that when he seeks the military’s advice on how to defeat the Islamic State “they’d probably be different generals, to be honest with you,” Politico reports.
“The comments could make for an awkward introduction between Trump and Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, the current Joint Chiefs chairman, the top adviser to the commander-in-chief. Dunford has a two-year term that ends September 2017 — a position that is normally extended for another two years.”
“Mexico’s finance minister, who helped arrange U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump’s visit to Mexico, has resigned, further roiling a political crisis that has been swirling here in Trump’s wake,” the Washington Post reports.
“In formally announcing the resignation Wednesday, President Enrique Peña Nieto offered no explanation for the departure of Luis Videgaray, one of his closest aides and the architect of some of the government’s signature economic reforms. But it came a week after Trump appeared with Peña Nieto in a meeting that was widely viewed across Mexico as an embarrassment for the country’s leader. Videgaray had served as a behind-the-scenes liaison to the Trump campaign and advocated for the visit over the opposition of other ministers.”
“Even after the tumultuous Summer of Trump, Republicans still insist that he won’t doom their hopes of retaining control of Capitol Hill,” Politico reports.
“Returning to Washington after their long August recess, Republican lawmakers are cautiously optimistic that GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump can remain disciplined enough over the next two months to keep them from getting blown out — and give them a fighting chance to hold the Senate and protect their sizable House majority.”
New York Times: “In the 1980s, Mr. Trump was compelled to testify under oath before New York State officials after he directed tens of thousands of dollars to the president of the New York City Council through myriad subsidiary companies to evade contribution limits. In the 1990s, the Federal Election Commission fined Mr. Trump for exceeding the annual limit on campaign contributions by $47,050, the largest violation in a single year. And in 2000, the New York State lobbying commission imposed a $250,000 fine for Mr. Trump’s failing to disclose the full extent of his lobbying of state legislators.”
The Dallas Morning News won’t be endorsing Donald Trump:
We have no interest in a Republican nominee for whom all principles are negotiable, nor in a Republican Party that is willing to trade away principle for pursuit of electoral victory.
Trump doesn’t reflect Republican ideals of the past; we are certain he shouldn’t reflect the GOP of the future.
Donald Trump is not qualified to serve as president and does not deserve your vote.
Glenn Thrush: “It’s the obvious strategy to hammer Trump for everything he’s said – and the campaign has slashed at his jugular with mechanical consistency, producing a series of devastating ads intended to slay the GOP nominee with his own words. They have succeeded in pushing the Republican nominee off the popularity cliff (or at least nudged him as he jumped), trapping Trump below the critical 40 percent threshold in the vast majority of national and battleground state polls.”
“It’s not enough… The problem, and it has dogged Clinton since she first ran for office in 2000, is that she’s lousy at self-definition, doesn’t like to make the campaign about her (not one of Trump’s problems) and reveals herself only in jagged broken-mirror shards, not a portrait in full for voters to warm themselves by. Back in July, Clinton’s campaign manager Robby Mook told me he thought the only way people would get to know Clinton was to watch her govern.”
“But politics doesn’t work that way. Never mind questions of character: Many voters simply don’t have a clear idea of what her personality is, so it’s easy to accept caricature imposed upon her by her enemies. People don’t like her because they don’t know her – that’s the core counterargument from her intimates – but Clinton (who coined the term ‘zone of privacy’ in 1992 to define her attitude toward self-revelation) is an uncooperative client. So that makes her uncommonly vulnerable to events, or changes in campaign climate that undermine faith in her cause – such as her August-long hiatus to fundraise, various new stories on her emails and the Clinton Foundation, and the sudden professionalization of Trump’s messaging operation.”
The Washington Examiner, citing an anonymous “insider” from the Trump campaign, reports that Donald Trump will eventually launch a “Trump TV” media venture.
“In addition to this valuable database, Trump will have all the talent and capital he needs to launch what, according to Fortune will be a, ‘right-wing media outlet of his own, a cable channel and digital-media platform based on the Trump brand, like a cross between Fox News and the website Breitbart News.'”
“I just don’t think she has a presidential look.”
— Donald Trump, in an interview with ABC News.
Donald Trump “dismissed questions about his failure to disclose an improper $25,000 contribution in 2013 to a political group connected to Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, who was at the time considering whether to open a fraud investigation against Trump University,” the Washington Post reports.
“The donation, made by the Donald J. Trump Foundation, violated federal rules that prohibit charities from donating to political candidates. Trump and his team also failed to disclose the gift to the Internal Revenue Service, instead reporting that the donation was given to an unrelated group with a similar name — effectively obscuring the contribution.”
Said Trump: “I never spoke to her, first of all. She’s a fine person, beyond reproach. I never even spoke to her about it at all. She’s a fine person. Never spoken to her about it, never,. Many of the attorney generals turned that case down because I’ll win that case in court. Many turned that down. I never spoke to her.”
Donald Trump’s campaign will release an open letter from about 90 retired generals and military officials endorsing his presidential campaign, urging a “long overdue course correction in our national security posture,” the New York Times reports.
Donald Trump said that he has an “obligation” to go head-to-head with his rival Hillary Clinton in all three upcoming general election debates, Politico reports.
Said Trump: “I think you have an obligation to do the debates. I did them with the other, you know, the other cases. We had, I guess 11 debates. Obviously I did well in the debates. Obviously according to the polls. The online polls they did right after the debates. And I think I’m doing the same thing.”
He added that only a “natural disaster” could deter him from sparring against Clinton.
“Donald Trump has run head-first into an electoral wall,” Politico reports.
“In poll after poll, Trump isn’t even close to winning a majority of the vote. While he’s narrowed the gap between his campaign and Hillary Clinton in recent weeks, in the past 21 national polls conducted using conventional phone or internet methodologies over the last five weeks, Trump’s high-water mark in a head-to-head matchup with Clinton is 44 percent.”
“And when third-party candidates — Libertarian Gary Johnson and Green Party nominee Jill Stein — are included, Trump’s highest poll score is only 40 percent, well below Clinton’s high of 50 percent.”
Wayne Barrett: “Rudy has actually been more visible in his buddy’s campaign than he was at times in his own $50 million presidential attempt in 2008, when he managed to convert the months-long top ranking in the polls into a single delegate. The imperial 2016 candidate who hates losers, especially ones who wind up in Vietnamese prisons, has instead embraced an epic dud, his solitary act of empathy in a campaign of callousness. He could’ve trashed Rudy like he did John McCain: ‘I like people who weren’t caught with their command center down.’
“But the onetime comb-over twins just had too much in common. Though bombs-away hawks today, they got multiple draft deferments during the Vietnam War, with athlete Donald citing bad feet as his excuse and Rudy using an ear defect to sidestep his ROTC obligations.”
“Then there’s the wife trifecta. No one in American public life, other than perhaps their kindred spirit Newt Gingrich, has ever mastered the art of a bad divorce like Rudy and Donald, carrying on as if spousal humiliation was the point.”
Politico: Is Rudy Giuliani losing his mind?
The RNC had high hopes that Donald Trump “would deliver a compassionate and measured speech about immigration on Wednesday, and prepared to lavish praise on the candidate on the party’s Twitter account,” the New York Times reports.
“So when Mr. Trump instead offered a fiery denunciation of migrant criminals and suggested deporting Hillary Clinton, Reince Priebus, the party chairman, signaled that aides should scrap the plan, and the committee made no statement at all.”
“The evening tore a painful new wound in Mr. Trump’s relationship with the Republican National Committee, imperiling his most important remaining political alliance.”
First Read: “More than two months before Election Day, it’s already happening: Downballot Republicans and top GOP leaders are dumping Trump. There was no public memo or major announcement in August — just actions…”
“But here’s the bad news: After Labor Day, almost every single Democrat in a House and Senate race will be tying their GOP opponent to Trump. So up and down the ticket, hundreds of millions of dollars in Democratic messaging will be ‘Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump.’ And when there’s been that kind of disparity in messaging when one party is talking about one thing and the opposition is talking about everything else — see 2006 and 2008 (‘Bush, Bush, Bush’) or 2010 and 2014 (‘Obama, Obama, Obama’) — there’s been a wave. November is going to go one of two ways. One, this kind of GOP separation from Trump is going to work like we saw in 1996. Or two, the bottom is going to fall out for the Republican Party.”
“Instead of speaking to the congregation at Great Faith Ministries International, Mr. Trump will be interviewed by its pastor in a session that will be closed to the public and news media, with questions submitted in advance. And instead of letting Mr. Trump be his freewheeling self, his campaign has prepared lengthy answers for the submitted questions, consulting black Republicans to make sure he says the right things.”
“An eight-page draft script obtained by the New York Times shows 12 questions that Bishop Wayne T. Jackson, the church’s pastor, intends to ask Mr. Trump during the taped question-and-answer session, as well as the responses Mr. Trump is being advised to give. The proposed answers were devised by aides working for the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee.”
“Online volunteers seeking to help Donald Trump by making phone calls might be signing up for more than they bargained for,” the Cincinnati Enquirer reports.
“To sign up on Trump’s website, potential volunteers must agree to a 2,271-word non-disclosure agreement in which they also promise they won’t compete against or say anything bad about Trump, his company, his family members or products – now and forever.”
New York Times: “Mr. Trump’s course adjustment emerged in an atmosphere of growing urgency and alarm within his campaign. Over the last week, close associates have told both Mr. Trump and members of his family that he is in real danger of losing the race…”
“Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, who lobbied in favor of the trip to Mexico, has told Mr. Trump that he must make immediate changes to regain his footing, associates said. And on Monday, Mr. Trump’s son Eric met with senior officials at the Republican National Committee in Washington and heard a grim prognosis of his father’s campaign, according to people briefed on the meeting.”
“Without a major shake-up of the electoral map, strategists indicated to the younger Mr. Trump, his father’s already narrow path to the 270 electoral votes he needs to win could vanish.”
Taegan Goddard
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire -- which for more than two decades has been one of the nation's most influential political news sites.
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