Rick Perry’s campaign continues to retrench, the New York Times reports.
“The Republican from Texas has whittled his staff in Iowa to one paid operative amid continuing fund-raising struggles… Mr. Perry led in the polls for a stretch during his first presidential bid four years ago. He spent significant time boning up on foreign policy and getting himself in physical shape for the grinds of the campaign trail.”
Rick Perry “is poised to reorganize his already under-funded and under-manned staff in Iowa — a development that some of his top aides concede may be the beginning of the end,” Politico reports.
“The Iowa chairman for Rick Perry’s faltering Republican presidential bid says he is no longer part of the campaign as Perry seeks to keep his longshot effort alive on limited funds,” the AP reports.
Politico: “Forty percent of early-state Republicans and nearly half of early-state Democrats believe Rick Perry will be the first candidate to drop out of the presidential race.”
Donald Trump told Breitbart that attacks against him by Rick Perry and Sen. Lindsey Graham backfired and caused their poll numbers to fall, knocking them out of the first GOP presidential debate.
Said Trump: “And I find that really interesting, and I find it a great honor that that would happen, because in all fairness Lindsey Graham and Perry were really hitting me hard, and they went down in the polls. I am greatly honored by that.”
Politico: “It appears increasingly unlikely that Rick Perry will get a chance to atone for his disastrous 2012 debate performance — or attack his 2016 nemesis, Donald Trump — when Republicans spar for the first time Thursday in Cleveland.”
Donald Trump “may be leading in the polls for the GOP presidential primary, but former Texas Governor Rick Perry knows how he can beat his rival candidate. Asked about Trump’s critique of his candidacy, Perry challenged Trump to a pull-up contest,” Time reports.
Said Perry: “Let’s get a pull-up bar out here and see who can do more pull-ups.”
Rick Perry (R) told CNN that if people could bring their guns to the movies, they could prevent the movie theater shootings.
Said Perry: “These concepts of gun-free zones are a bad idea. I think that you allow the citizens of this country — who have been appropriately trained, appropriately backgrounded, know how to handle and use firearms — to carry them. I believe that, with all my heart, that if you have the citizens who are well trained, and particularly in these places that are considered to be gun-free zones, that we can stop that type of activity, or stop it before there’s as many people that are impacted as what we saw in Lafayette.”
Wonk Wire: States with gun control have fewer gun deaths
“An appeals court on Friday rejected one of the criminal counts against former Gov. Rick Perry but said he must face the other one in the abuse-of-power case against him,” the Houston Chronicle reports.
“Perry was indicted by a grand jury in 2014 after being accused of abusing his veto power to try to force out the Democratic Travis County district attorney in the wake of her messy drunken-driving arrest. The former governor, who is running for the GOP nomination for president, repeatedly failed in efforts get the indictment dismissed by state Judge Bert Richardson.”
Rick Perry “is taking the gloves off in his assault on Donald Trump,” Time reports.
Said Perry: “He offers a barking carnival act that can be best described as Trumpism: a toxic mix of demagoguery, mean-spiritedness and nonsense that will lead the Republican Party to perdition if pursued. Let no one be mistaken – Donald Trump’s candidacy is a cancer on conservatism, and it must be clearly diagnosed, excised and discarded.”
Rick Perry is keeping up a public feud with GOP presidential rival Donald Trump, saying he was “Defending conservatism against the cancer of Trump-ism,” The Hill reports.
“I believe that scouting would be better off, if they didn’t have openly gay scoutmasters.”
— Rick Perry, in an interview with NBC News.
“Rick Perry failed on the border. He should be forced to take an IQ test before being allowed to enter the GOP debate.”
— Donald Trump, on Twitter.
“I saw a very, very naive man who does not know how the world works.”
— Rick Perry, quoted by the Huffington Post, on President Obama’s announcement of a nuclear deal with Iran.
First Read: “It’s bad, bad news for Rick Perry that his campaign raised just $1.07 million in the quarter — in fact, compare that with the $17 million his 2012 campaign raked in during its first quarter. What’s striking is that poor fundraising performance from Perry comes as he’s definitely improved as a candidate.”
Rick Perry (R) characterized the shooting in Charleston as an “accident” during an interview with Newsmax, while accusing President Obama of using the massacre to push a gun control agenda.
Said Perry: “This is the MO of this administration anytime there is an accident like this.”
Texas Tribune: “The one presidential candidate who cannot make a mistake did just that Friday.”
Rick Perry suggested that psychiatric drugs could be to blame for the mass shooting at a black church in Charleston, South Carolina, MSNBC reports.
Said Perry: “I don’t know, but I think the facts—once we get them—there were more people than that killed in Paris. This was a crime of hate, we know that.”
But Perry continued: “It seems to me, again without having all the details about this, that these individuals have been medicated and there may be a real issue in this country from the standpoint of these drugs and how they’re used.”
Rick Perry will announce today his intentions to run for the Republican presidential nomination.
But McClatchy notes “unlike the more than a dozen other Republicans who are either in the presidential race already or on the verge, he has another factor at play. Hanging over his head is an indictment in Texas on charges of abuse of power when he was governor.”
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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