“I think you’d have riots. I think you’d have riots. I’m representing a tremendous many, many millions of people.”
— Donald Trump quoted by NBC News in March 2016, warning what would happen if he failed to secure the Republican presidential nomination.
Donald Trump’s victory in 2016 and Joe Biden’s in 2020 were by the same electoral vote margin, 306 to 232, according to the preliminary tally.
But in the Electoral College, which is the official count, Trump won just 304 electoral votes in 2016 because two Texas electors cast their votes for John Kasich and Ron Paul.
There were no “faithless electors” in 2020, so Biden won 306 electoral votes.
Ivanka Trump sat for a deposition Tuesday with investigators from the Washington, DC, attorney general’s office as part of its lawsuit alleging the misuse of inaugural funds, CNN reports.
Jonathan Chait: “White women voted for Trump. Or so you have probably heard. In the immediate aftermath of Donald Trump’s 2016 victory, the finding from early exit polls that 53 percent of white women voted for Trump formed the basis for a million social-media posts, op-eds, and rally placards. That this “fact” is not true is not even close to the biggest problem with its ubiquitous place in progressive social-justice discourse.”
“The 53 percent figure turned out to be erroneous, and corrected analyses eventually pegged Trump’s share of the white female electorate closer to 47 percent. Nonetheless, the impulse that propelled so many writers to blame white women for electing Trump proved strong enough to survive even after the factual basis was undercut. Indeed, left-wing opinion writers continued churning out polemics based on the erroneous 53 percent figure for years.”
Jenna Ellis has been one of President Trump’s most ardent defenders since joining his campaign as a legal adviser and surrogate a year ago, but CNN finds in early 2016 she was deeply opposed his candidacy.
Said Ellis in a 2016 radio interview: “Why should we rest our highest office in America, on a man who fundamentally goes back and forth and really cannot be trusted to be consistent or accurate in anything.”
Said Ellis in a Facebook post: “I could spend a full-time job just responding to the ridiculously illogical, inconsistent, and blatantly stupid arguments supporting Trump. But here’s the thing: his supporters DON’T CARE about facts or logic. They aren’t seeking truth.”
“President Trump and his intelligence chief have pushed for quick declassification of a document disputing the 2017 intelligence community finding that Russia acted to help Trump get elected in 2016,” Reuters reports.
“But their effort faces strong objections from inside the intelligence agencies… One reason for their opposition is the proximity of the Nov. 3 election.”
Associated Press: “The president’s attempts to recycle attacks he used on Hillary Clinton that year have so far failed to effectively damage Democrat Joe Biden. And Trump has found himself dwelling more and more in the conservative media echo chamber, talking to an increasingly smaller portion of the electorate.”
“Fueled by personal grievance, the president has tried to amplify stories that diehard Fox News viewers know by heart but have not broken through to a broader public consumed with the sole issue that has defined the campaign: the president’s management of the pandemic. Though firing up his base to turn out in huge numbers is a vital part of his campaign’s strategy, Trump’s insistence on fighting the last war has sounded alarms within the Republican party.”
“For more than three years, federal prosecutors investigated whether money flowing through an Egyptian state-owned bank could have backed millions of dollars Donald Trump donated to his own campaign days before he won the 2016 election,” CNN reports.
“The investigation, which both predated and outlasted special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe, examined whether there was an illegal foreign campaign contribution. It represents one of the most prolonged efforts by federal investigators to understand the President’s foreign financial ties, and became a significant but hidden part of the special counsel’s pursuits.”
“The investigation was kept so secret that at one point investigators locked down an entire floor of a federal courthouse in Washington, DC, so Mueller’s team could fight for the Egyptian bank’s records in closed-door court proceedings following a grand jury subpoena. The probe, which closed this summer with no charges filed, has never before been described publicly.”
Using President Trump’s leaked tax records, the New York Times reports on how Trump in 2016 “engineered a sudden financial windfall — more than $21 million in what experts describe as highly unusual one-off payments from the Las Vegas hotel he owns with his friend the casino mogul Phil Ruffin.”
“The new findings cast light on Mr. Trump’s financial maneuverings in that time of fiscal turmoil and unlikely political victory. Indeed, they may offer a hint to one of the enduring mysteries of his campaign: In its waning days, as his own giving had slowed to a trickle, Mr. Trump contributed $10 million, leaving many people wondering where the burst of cash had come from.”
“The tax records, by their nature, do not specify whether the more than $21 million in payments from the Trump-Ruffin hotel helped prop up Mr. Trump’s campaign, his businesses or both. But they do show how the cash flowed, in a chain of transactions, to several Trump-controlled companies and then directly to Mr. Trump himself.”
“Senior U.S. officials urged Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe not to release information about a Russian intelligence product containing unverified allegations about Hillary Clinton and the 2016 election, advice that President Trump’s spy chief ignored,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
Deadline: “In fast-affiliate results, last night’s 9-10:30 PM ET slugfest was watched live by an audience of 27.3 million on ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox.”
“Total to total, that’s a drop of 36% from what Trump vs. Clinton drew on September 26, 2016 among the four networks.”
The numbers will increase as cable and other outlets are added.
Ryan Lizza: “After watching hours of Trump’s debates from 2015 and 2016, what comes across in hindsight is that he had an under-appreciated style, strategy, and message. He was not the Donald Trump of Twitter, where he launches his crudest attacks. He was not the Donald Trump of MAGA rallies, where he feeds off the crowd and plays a role that is a mix of demagogue, right-wing pundit, and entertainer.”
“The matchup with Biden will be much different. Trump is an unpopular incumbent with a record to defend. He no longer has as clear a message as he did in 2016. Biden has the benefit of four extra years to study Trump.”
“But the conventional wisdom about Trump arriving in Cleveland Tuesday as a manic and extremely, well, Trumpy, debater could be wrong. Trump won the Republican nomination partly on the strength of his debate appearances. And while post-debate polls were generally favorable to Hillary in 2016, Trump’s three general election debates were crucial to his victory.”
Channel 4 News obtained a 2016 Trump campaign database which exposes how 3.5 million Black Americans were listed as “Deterrence” in an effort to try to prevent them voting.
A new book by 2016 Trump deputy campaign manager Rick Gates claims Donald Trump wanted his daughter, Ivanka, as his running mate, the Washington Post reports.
“In Gates’s telling, Trump’s suggestion of naming to the ticket his then-34-year-old daughter — a fashion and real estate executive who had never held elected office — was no passing fancy.”
“Instead, he brought up the idea repeatedly over the following weeks, trying to sell his campaign staff on the idea, insisting she would be embraced by the Republican base, Gates writes.”
David Wasserman “finds that if 2016’s turnout and support rates were applied to 2020’s new demographic realities, Trump would narrowly lose Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — more than enough to swing the presidency to Joe Biden.”
“And, Trump would lose the popular vote by about four points, roughly double his 2016 deficit.”
“President Trump’s campaign manager didn’t vote for his boss in the last presidential election. He didn’t vote at all,” the Washington Post reports.
“The last time Bill Stepien voted, according to public records, was in 2015, when he lived in New Jersey and was registered there.”
“Stepien registered to vote in Washington, D.C., where he has been living since 2017, at the end of July — two weeks after he was tapped to take over Trump’s reelection bid.”
BuzzFeed News reports that during the summer of 2016, Trump backer and investor Peter Thiel “hosted a dinner with one of the most influential and vocal white nationalists in modern-day America — a man who has called for the creation of a white ethnostate and played a key role in an effort to mainstream white nationalism as the ‘alt-right.’ And then Thiel emailed the next day to say how much he’d enjoyed his company.”
“Among those on the racist right, Thiel’s outreach raised hopes that his financial bet on Trump would extend into the ascendant alt-right movement, which despite its prominence was a collection of small and often cash-strapped organizations. One avowed white nationalist privately speculated that Thiel’s money and influence could have made him ‘our George Soros.'”
A new ad released by President Trump’s reelection campaign that looked to capitalize on the August jobs report to portray the country as being in the middle of a “great American comeback” features foreign stock footage, ABC News reports.
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.