“Donald Trump on Thursday reached the number of delegates needed to clinch the Republican nomination for president, completing an unlikely rise that has upended the political landscape and sets the stage for a bitter fall campaign,” the AP reports.
“Trump was put over the top in the Associated Press delegate count by a small number of the party’s unbound delegates who told the AP they would support him at the convention.”
Rick Klein: “Did we close the door on debate season too soon? Donald Trump told Jimmy Kimmel Wednesday that he’d consider debating Bernie Sanders one-on-one … and Sanders quickly indicated that he’s interested. There are plenty of reasons to be skeptical of whether this is real, starting with Trump’s insistence that Sanders pony up cash for charity as a precondition. (We’ve seen where such demands ended in the past.) But this might be a wacky enough idea to happen.”
“Trump would love to elevate Sanders as a means of tweaking Hillary Clinton before the general election is officially upon us; Clinton, of course, is refusing to debate Sanders in California. And Sanders would love to showcase the general-election matchup he is pitching as stronger for Democrats in advance of voting in California June 7. The matchup only ‘SNL’ could imagine might be a fitting end to a wacky primary season.”
Jonathan Chait: “Sanders would get to be elevated to the role of imaginary Democratic candidate, using the platform to display himself outperforming Trump, as he has always claimed he could. The Trump debate would be a media spectacle, providing him with gobs of free publicity. Trump’s incentive is, perhaps, even stronger.”
Donald Trump tells Bloomberg that he won’t need to raise $1 billion to win the presidency.
Said Trump: “No, I’d say over $500 million. I just don’t know why you need that much money.”
He added: “They’ve been wrong so much. Nate Silver, I watched him. It destroyed his career. He was this big guru that never missed a call. He wasn’t even close. And he actually did say a few months ago, Trump is a whole phenomenon that’s a hard thing to figure. He sort of gave up.”
Jimmy Kimmel asked Donald Trump about his once-effusive take on the Clintons, ABC News reports. Trump took the bait, acknowledging his past kind words. “She’s wonderful, the husband, everybody’s wonderful including contributions.”
Kimmel interjected and asked, “So you were full of shit?”
Trump’s response? “A little bit.”
Donald Trump thinks his former rival Jeb Bush is going to be able to shake off that “low energy” problem, and endorse him, Politico reports.
Said Trump: “He will get a burst of energy and he will do it.”
“Donald Trump is man who cares about no one but himself—a small insecure money-grubber who doesn’t care who gets hurt so long as he makes a profit off of it.”
— Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), quoted by Fortune.
“She screams and drives me crazy.”
— Donald Trump, quoted by Time, saying he “can’t listen” to Hillary Clinton’s attacks against him.
Donald Trump responded to Hillary Clinton’s attempt to tie him to the 2008 housing crisis saying he was being a good businessman, the New York Times reports.
Said Trump: “I am a businessman, and I have made a lot of money in down markets. In some cases, as much as I’ve made when markets are good. Frankly, this is the kind of thinking our country needs, understanding how to get a good result out of a very bad and sad situation. Politicians have no idea how to do this — they don’t have a clue.”
Donald Trump took several jabs at New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez (R) after she said she was “too busy” to appear with him at a rally, the Washington Examiner reports.
Said Trump: “Since 2000, the number of unemployed people in Albuquerque has doubled. Who’s fault is it? Is it your fault or is it your government’s fault? Since 2000, the number of people on food stamps in New Mexico has tripled. We have to get your governor to get going, OK? She’s got to do a better job.”
He added: “Your governor has got to do a better job. She’s not doing the job.”
A top RNC official sought to soothe business leaders worried about Donald Trump’s influence on the Republican party, saying at a private meeting that the presumptive nominee would not dictate the party’s platform, The Hill reports.
“House Speaker Paul Ryan has begun telling confidants that he wants to end his standoff with Donald Trump in part because he’s worried the split has sharpened divisions in the Republican Party,” Bloomberg reports.
“Ryan aides say nothing has been decided about a possible Trump endorsement. But Trump’s campaign manager, Paul Manafort, told a small group of Republican lawmakers Thursday that he expects Ryan to endorse the party’s nominee as early as this week.”
Robert Reich: “Trump’s rise suggests a new kind of politics. You might call it anti-politics.”
“The old politics pitted right against left, with presidential aspirants moving toward the center once they cinched the nomination. Anti-politics pits Washington insiders, corporate executives, bankers, and media moguls against a growing number of people who think the game is rigged against them. There’s no center, only hostility and suspicion.”
“Americans who feel like they’re being screwed are attracted to an authoritarian bully – a strongman who will kick ass. The former reality TV star who repeatedly told contestants they were ‘fired!’ appears tough and confrontational enough to take on powerful vested interests. That most Americans don’t particularly like Trump is irrelevant.”
Michael Gerson: “As a leader, Trump has succeeded by appealing to stereotypes and ugly hatreds that most American leaders have struggled to repress and contain, His political universe consists of deceptive experts, of scheming, of criminal Mexicans, of lying politicians and bureaucrats and of disloyal Muslims. Asked to repudiate David Duke and the Ku Klux Klan, Trump hesitated, later claiming a ‘bad earpiece.’ Asked to repudiate the vicious anti-Semitism of some of his followers, Trump responded, ‘I don’t have a message to the fans.’”
“This is not flirting with the fringes; it is French-kissing them. Every Republican official endorsing Trump should know: This is the company he keeps. This is the company you now keep.”
Erick Erickson: “If the Republican Party wants to go in his direction, I guess I’m not a Republican anymore.”
A new video from the Clinton campaign links Donald Trump to the housing market collapse in 2008.
“Very fishy.”
— Donald Trump, quoted by the Washington Post, describing the 1993 death of former Clinton White House aide Vincent Foster.
Washington Examiner: “The presumptive GOP nominee enters the general election with an organization even thinner than Mitt Romney’s four years ago. Trump won the primary by dominating media coverage. He didn’t bother to develop a ground game or data analytics program, believing those modern tools overrated.”
“The Republican National Committee is filling the void. The party invested more than $100 million, and counting, since 2012 to construct and refine cutting edge voter turnout and digital operations after being outclassed by President Obama. The plan was to create a turnkey operation for the 2016 nominee that could compete with the Democrats.”
“An army of Hillary Clinton’s surrogates in battleground states will blast Donald Trump on Tuesday over his past statements about the housing market and his business record,” the Washington Post reports.
“The coordinated push is the first of their efforts to frame the likely Republican nominee in the minds of swing voters… About a dozen surrogates and local elected officials in Ohio, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Florida, New Hampshire, Iowa, Colorado, Nevada and elsewhere will host calls, events and release statements focused on Trump’s response to the housing crisis that precipitated the economic recession.”
“Donald Trump is reviving some of the ugliest political chapters of the 1990s with escalating personal attacks on Bill Clinton’s character — centered on past accusations of sexual assault — amid a concerted effort to smother Hillary Clinton’s campaign message with the weight of decades of controversy,” the Washington Post reports.
“Trump’s latest shot came Monday when he released an incendiary Instagram video that includes the voices of two women who accused the former president of sexual assault, underscoring the presumptive Republican nominee’s willingness to go far beyond political norms in his critique of his likely Democratic rival.”
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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