When asked by Bloomberg if the late Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) would have been a better president than Barack Obama, President Trump “declined to say, even as his press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, stared at him.”
Said Trump: “I don’t want to comment on it. I have a very strong opinion, all right.”
He then joked that Sanders was “having a nervous breakdown” over his response. “Maybe I’ll give you that answer some day later.”
“John McCain’s funeral will spotlight some of the late senator’s political rivals – but some of his closest campaign aides are being excluded from the proceedings,” Politico reports.
“Three of the most prominent members of his 2008 presidential campaign – campaign manager Steve Schmidt, senior adviser Nicolle Wallace, and longtime strategist John Weaver — were not invited to any of McCain’s services.”
“It’s not clear whether McCain ordered the snubbing of formerly high-ranking aides before his death.”
The HuffPost notes Sarah Palin was also not invited to the services.
Sarah Palin told the Daily Mail that Sen. John McCain, who picked her as his vice presidential running mate in 2008, was surrounded by “disloyal” people.
Said Palin: “I think it’s unfortunate that he had people around him—and they continued to be around him for a very long time—who weren’t serving him well.”
She added: “I think that’s unfortunate because he had some strange people around him and… disloyal people, and you know, I don’t say that as like hate speech or griping about it, it’s just a fact they were just some not nice people.”
“In a contest as long as difficult as this campaign has been, his success alone commands my respect for his ability and perseverance.”
— Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), telling supporters to stop booing Barack Obama during his 2008 concession speech.
Former McCain campaign manager Steve Schmidt explained on the Words Matter podcast how Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) settled on Sarah Palin as his running mate.
Said Schmidt: “I have regret about that every day that I wake up. But what happened here was — that my idea, and McCain supported it, was that he was going to pick Joe Lieberman.”
He continued: “What happened though is Lindsey Graham went out, not maliciously, but he let the secrets spill, it leaked when he was talking to a group of activists in South Carolina, and within a very short period of time we had heard from Limbaugh from Hannity, directly from President Bush, from Karl Rove saying ‘you can’t do it.”
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“Oh yes, I would do it again in a heartbeat. I woulda pushed back harder on some of those who were trying to mold me into something that I was not during the campaign. I would’ve pushed back and gotten more truth out there, but heck yeah.”
— Sarah Palin, quoted by TPM, on whether she would run for office again.
“A senior adviser to Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign who was accused of repeatedly sexually harassing a young subordinate was kept on the campaign at Mrs. Clinton’s request,” the New York Times reports.
“Mrs. Clinton’s campaign manager at the time recommended that she fire the adviser, Burns Strider. But Mrs. Clinton did not. Instead, Mr. Strider was docked several weeks of pay and ordered to undergo counseling, and the young woman was moved to a new job.”
Chris Liddell-Westefeld: “How did one of the whitest states in the union propel the first African-American president to the nomination? What about him captured Iowans’ imaginations? What compelled hundreds of young people to uproot their lives and join a movement considered so unlikely in its nascent stages? What was unique about his organization that future candidates, aides, volunteers, and activists can learn from?”
“I spent a year looking for answers to these questions… The Obama campaign billed itself as an organic effort whose success would be built upon bringing new voters into a caucus process that discouraged broad participation. I wanted to tell that story from the perspective of the bit players history usually forgets.”
“I’m a journalist.”
— Sean Hannity, on Fox News in 2008.
“I never claimed to be a journalist.”
— Hannity, quoted by the New York Times on how he’s been advising Donald Trump.
In a previously unreported exchange from 2008, Donald Trump threw his support behind then-Senator Hillary Clinton’s bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, calling her “fantastic,” BuzzFeed reports.
Said Trump: “Well, I support Hillary. I think she’s fantastic.”
“Melania Trump earned praise for her speech on Monday at the opening night of the Republican National Convention, but her remarks almost immediately came under scrutiny when striking similarities were discovered between her speech and one delivered by Michelle Obama at the Democratic convention in 2008,” the New York Times reports.
CNN: “Side-by-side comparisons of the transcripts show the text in Trump’s address following, nearly to the word, the first lady’s own from the first night of the Democratic convention in Denver nearly eight years ago.”
Said a campaign spokesman: “In writing her beautiful speech, Melania’s team of writers took notes on her life’s inspirations, and in some instances included fragments that reflected her own thinking. Melania’s immigrant experience and love for America shone through in her speech, which made it a success.”
Donald Trump said in 2008 that Hillary Clinton would “make a good president,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“His kind words for Mrs. Clinton came in a previously unreported clip from ‘Trumped!,’ a syndicated radio feature that aired from 2004 to 2008 and consisted of a daily commentary of about 60 seconds from the real-estate mogul.”
“A frequent topic of the radio broadcasts was sex and women. In one segment, Mr. Trump advised men to do more chores around the house because psychological research showed they would get more sex from their wives.”
It actually took Hillary Clinton four days to concede the Democratic nomination after Barack Obama secured the necessary delegates in 2008.
As NBC News reported at the time:
“Advisers indicated earlier Tuesday that the former first lady would publicly acknowledge in her speech that Obama had crossed the delegate threshold. But she changed her mind and refused to do so … Her advisers said they considered the delegate numbers to be unreliable, even as the AP estimated Obama had several more than the 2,118 needed to nominate.”
Alan Abramowitz: “Perhaps the key lesson that we can learn from the results of the 2008 battle between Clinton and Obama is that Sanders supporters probably do not have to love Clinton in order to vote for her in the general election. They merely have to like her as well or better than Trump, and that should be a very easy bar to clear.”
“Trump has far less appeal to Democratic voters in 2016 than McCain had in 2008. According to the 2008 ANES data, McCain was viewed favorably by 23% of all Democratic identifiers and leaners and unfavorably by 58%. In contrast, according to four recent national polls… Donald Trump is viewed favorably by only 5% to 12% of Democratic voters and unfavorably by 82% to 89%. And while these polls did not provide data on Trump favorability among Clinton and Sanders supporters, it seems unlikely that he is viewed more favorably by Sanders voters, who tend to be, if anything, further to the left and more suspicious of billionaires than Clinton supporters.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Wonk Wire, Political Job Hunt 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.
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