GOP outsider Blankenship emerges as factor in West Virginia Senate race, ahead of 4 state primaries Tuesday

Candidates in West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana and North Carolina made closing arguments this weekend ahead of key primaries Tuesday -- showing in many ways how Republican hopefuls are aligning behind President Trump while Democrats move to the left in more divided paths that threaten to undermine the party.
Ahead of West Virginia’s GOP primary Tuesday to unseat Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, each of the top three candidates has claimed to be the closest in ideology to Trump. Meanwhile, Don Blankenship has taken direct aim at Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell -- calling him “Cocaine Mitch.” Blankenship apparently has tried to link McConnell to a 2014 news report about drugs purportedly found on a ship owned by his in-laws.
Blankenship also has accused McConnell of creating jobs for "Chinapeople" and said his "China family" has given him millions of dollars. McConnell's wife is Trump's transportation secretary, Elaine Chao, who was born in Taiwan. Her father, entrepreneur and philanthropist James S.C. Chao, was born in China.
The leading GOP candidates are state Attorney General Patrick Morrisey and Rep. Evan Jenkins. They have until recently largely ignored Blankenship -- a former coal industry executive who served a year in prison in connection with the Upper Big Branch Mine explosion in West Virginia in 2010 that killed 29 workers.

Dennis Kucinich, left, and Richard Cordray are top candidates in the Ohio Democratic primary for governor.

But this weekend, Morrisey started using “robo-calls” to potential voters saying: “Convicted criminal Don Blankenship didn’t vote for President Trump and is a resident of Nevada, where he must report to his parole officer.”
On Sunday, Morrisey moved to have Blankenship disqualified from the primary for failing to submit a financial disclosure, in violation of election law and perhaps of his probation.
Blankenship’s campaign said the candidate has already spoken to his probation officer, who wasn’t concerned about the financial disclosure.
Washington Republicans have said they thought the Manchin seat was very winnable, based in part on Trump having won the state in 2016 over Democrat Hillary Clinton by 42 percentage points.
The GOP candidates in Ohio have been pushing for change. “I’m tired of the career politicians we have in Washington. That’s why I’m running,” Mike Gibbons, a Republican businessman and first-time candidate trying to unseat Ohio Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown, told Fox News’ “America’s News HQ” on Saturday.
Such talk likely sounds familiar, considering Trump, a Republican, won the 2016 White House race as a successful businessman and first-time candidate vowing to “drain the swamp” of career politicians in Washington.
Trump has, however, endorsed Ohio Rep. Jim Renacci. And the president on Saturday included the four-term congressman in a public event in Cleveland.
"He’ll be fantastic,” Trump said of Renacci. "We need his vote very badly."

Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a champion of her party's "progressive" wing, is backing Richard Cordray for Ohio governor.

Gibbons, a fundraising co-chairman in Ohio for the 2016 Trump presidential campaign, also told Fox News that the largest personal donation he ever gave to a candidate went to Trump.
Trump won each of the four states holding primaries Tuesday.
In Indiana, Republicans are set to pick from three candidates who have spent much of the race praising Trump and bashing each other, in a bid to unseat Democratic Sen. Joe Donnelly.
In attempts to appeal to Trump voters, they’ve adopted the president's harsh immigration rhetoric and penchant for personal insults. The candidates have even channeled Trump by assigning derisive nicknames to one another: “Lyin’ ”Todd Rokita, Luke “Missing” Messer and “Tax Hike” Mike Braun.
Ohio also has a Democratic and Republican primary to replace term-limited GOP Gov. John Kasich.
In the GOP primary, state Attorney General Mike DeWine has a double-digit lead over Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor. Both are Trump-agenda supporters.
The top Democrats in the Ohio governor’s race are former Rep. Dennis Kucinich and Richard Cordray, a former state attorney general and onetime Consumer Financial Protection Bureau director.
Kucinich is backed by Our Revolution, the self-described “next step in the Bernie Sanders' movement.” Cordray is being endorsed by Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who helped start the federal protection bureau.
Warren is a potential 2020 presidential candidate whose efforts to regulate Wall Street have made her a champion of the party’s “progressive” wing.
Sanders, an Independent Vermont senator, ran for president in 2016 as a Democrat. The self-described Democratic socialist is weighing a potential 2020 bid and would very likely compete with Warren for the Democratic Party’s most liberal wing.
Cordray on Saturday downplayed the Warren-Sanders narrative and suggested he was more concerned about connecting with voters, citing his “kitchen table” platform aiming to address concerns such as jobs and health care.
“I don’t think it represents any big split,” he told Fox News. “We’re presenting a case to voters in Ohio.”
Polls have shown the race essentially tied or Cordray having a slight lead. Race handicappers, including the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, have rated the general election contest “lean Republican,” which means the GOP has a slight edge.
Trump won Ohio in 2016 by 8 percentage points, and the state has had a Republican governor for roughly 23 of the past 27 years.
"The far left and the far right always think they are going to dominate these elections," said John Weaver, a Trump critic and top strategist to Kasich. "You may think it's wise in a primary to handuff yourself to the president. But when the ship goes down, you may not be able to get the cuffs off."
Still, primary candidates historically must appeal strongly to their bases to win, before they often try presenting more moderate platforms to win over general election voters.
In North Carolina, GOP Rep. Robert Pittenger faces a primary challenger who almost upset him two years ago. Pittenger features Trump prominently in his campaign. Challenger Mark Harris, a prominent Charlotte pastor, has tried to turn the table, saying Pittenger is a creature of Washington who refuses to help Trump "drain that swamp."
The leading Democrat for the seat is Marine veteran Dan McCready, who has raised almost $2 million, slightly more than Harris and Pittenger combined, in a district Trump won by about 12 percentage points.
Democrats must flip about two dozen Republican-held seats to reclaim a House majority, and they must do it with Republican-run legislatures having drawn many districts to the GOP's advantage.

Michelle Obama still questioning why women voted for Trump in 2016

Former first lady Michelle Obama said Saturday that she was "concerned about us as women and how we think" in the wake of Donald Trump's victory over Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election.

Obama was the keynote speaker at the United State of Women Summit in Los Angeles, where she was joined on stage by "Black-ish" star Tracee Ellis Ross.

"When the most qualified person running was a woman, and look what we did instead, I mean that says something about where we are," said Obama in reference to the election, in which 41 percent of all women -- and 52 percent of white women -- pulled the lever for Trump.
"If we as women are still suspicious of one another, if we still have this crazy, crazy bar for each other that we don't have for men," Obama added, "if we're not comfortable with the notion that a woman could be our president ... then we have to have those conversations with ourselves as women."
Since leaving the White House last year, Obama has emphatically denied that she will run for elected office and did so again on Saturday.
"Change starts close to home. So looking for the next person to run ... that's been our distraction," she said. "We're just going to wait for the next person to save us."
"All of us here in the room are the answer to our own problems," Obama added. "It is not finding the one right person that we think can save us from ourselves. It's us."

Illinois counties form 'sanctuaries' for gun owners to thwart state's push for gun control

Multiple rural Illinois counties have passed resolutions establishing a so-called “sanctuary” for gun owners in a bid to thwart the state legislature’s efforts to enact stricter gun control.
At least five counties declared themselves sanctuary counties for gun rights, co-opting a word that most conservatives associate with the liberal policy of ignoring federal immigration laws.
The resolutions aim to send a message to the Democratic-controlled Legislature in the state that if it passes the proposed gun bills, such as increasing the minimum age for owning a gun or a bump stock ban, the counties will instruct their employees to ignore the new laws.
“It’s a buzzword, a word that really gets attention. With all these sanctuary cities, we just decided to turn it around to protect our Second Amendment rights,” said David Campbell, vice chairman of the Effingham County Board.

“It’s a buzzword, a word that really gets attention. With all these sanctuary cities, we just decided to turn it around to protect our Second Amendment rights."

He added that around 20 other counties in Illinois have asked for copies of his county’s resolution. He also said officials in Oregon and Washington, have also asked for copies.
County officials say it’s unlikely their symbolic move will be enough to stop the state legislators from passing new gun control measures as the legislature is dominated by lawmakers from in and around Chicago, a city with rampant gun crime.
But it might be enough to make some lawmakers worried.
“I don’t think you can say, ‘I don’t agree with the law so I won’t enforce it,’” said Kathleen Willis, a Democratic state representative from suburban Chicago who sponsored some of the gun legislation. “I think it sends the wrong message.”
Bryan Kibler, the Effingham County’s top prosecutor, claims the resolutions passed by counties aren’t much different from cities such as Chicago which refused to cooperate with federal immigration authorities.
By using the language of sanctuary states, the counties also draw attention to the rural-urban political divide in the state. The “downstate” areas of Illinois voted for Donald Trump while Chicago backed Hillary Clinton.
“We’re just stealing the language that sanctuary cities use,” said Kibler. “We wanted to … get across that our Second Amendment rights are slowly being stripped away.”

WH says Gina Haspel CIA nomination ‘won’t be derailed by partisan critics’ after reports she offered to withdraw

The White House is standing behind President Trump's nomination of Gina Haspel to run the CIA, saying Sunday that “partisan critics” would not torpedo the president's pick.
The administration's response came after multiple reports said Haspel offered to withdraw her nomination Friday. Fox News could not independently verify those reports.
Raj Shah, a White House spokesman, called Haspel a highly qualified nominee. “Her nomination will not be derailed by partisan critics who side with the ACLU over the CIA on how to keep the American people safe,” he said.
A senior White House official also said Sunday that Haspel will not withdraw her nomination. Meantime, a former senior intelligence official said there had been a lack of visible support from the White House until this weekend. Her confirmation hearing in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee is set for Wednesday.
Haspel, who would be the first woman to lead the CIA, is the first career operations officer to be nominated to lead the agency in decades. She served almost entirely undercover and much of her record is classified. Many Democrats have said she should be disqualified because she was the chief of base at a covert detention site in Thailand where two terrorism suspects were subjected to waterboarding, a technique that simulates drowning.
“There has been a fascinating phenomenon over the last few weeks. Those who know the true Gina Haspel — who worked with her, who served with her, who helped her confront terrorism, Russia and countless other threats to our nation — they almost uniformly support her. That is true for people who disagree about nearly everything else. There is a reason for that,” CIA spokesman Dean Boyd told Fox News on Sunday. “When the American people finally have a chance to see the true Gina Haspel on Wednesday, they will understand why she is so admired and why she is and will be a great leader for this Agency.”
Also backing Haspel’s nomination recently was former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, during an appearance last week on “Fox and Friends.”
“If you were not in a position of authority on September 11th, you have no idea the pressures that we faced to try and make sure that this country wasn’t attacked again,” Rice said.
On the opposing side are groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union, which says she should have stood up against the interrogation practices then.
Chris Anders of the American Civil Liberties Union lamented last week: “If confirmed, Gina Haspel would be the first and only person confirmed by the Senate — we believe in its entire history — with a known operational role in using torture.”
Haspel’s vow to fight any attempt to resurrect the previous CIA program puts her in the same camp as Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who has advised Trump that he doesn’t think torture is an effective interrogation tactic. But it’s at odds with Trump, who spoke in the campaign about toughening the U.S. approach to fighting extremists and vowed to authorize waterboarding and a “hell of a lot worse.”

Al Gore Global Warming Nobel Prize Cartoons

A Nobel Prize nomination for Trump? One more nonsensical reason for the media to attack him

This past week, 18 Republican members of Congress nominated President Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize for his work to “end the Korean War, denuclearize the Korean peninsula, and bring peace to the region.” You’d think the media would applaud this potential honor – right?

Strangely enough, no.

The left-wing New York Daily News headlined its article: “Republican stooges push for Trump to win Nobel Prize as critics bash the idea.”
Lefty Splinter News ran its own tastefully understated anti-Trump headline: “Some Dumb--- Congressmen Nominated Donald Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize.”
CNN ran a piece in a similar vein: “Trump’s possible Nobel Prize nomination mocked.” It began with National Correspondent Jeanne Moos sarcastically asking, “Trump, Nobel laureate?” She then cut to comedian Dana Carvey humorously impersonating Trump during his acceptance speech: “I love prizes, I love Cracker Jacks.”
Moos followed with anti-Trump comedian Seth Meyers commenting that Trump supporters chanting “Nobel,” was “like going to a monster truck rally and chanting Pulitzer.”
CNN clearly was not pleased.
Neither was Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank, doing his impression of the better Dana – Carvey. Milbank wrote up his version of the Trump acceptance speech, but delivered it via column, without the same voice or wit. “I love Norwegians!” he wrote. “I want more immigrants from Norway and others who have the same merit-based complexion that Norwegians have.”
Everyone wanted a piece of the joke. Conan O'Brien told his TV audience: “A group of House Republicans has nominated president Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize. Yeah. As evidence they pointed out that Trump has managed to avoid an all-out war with North Korea and Melania.”
Of course, all of this quasi-news and comedy downplays a very real fact – President Trump accomplished something important.
South Korean President Moon Jae-in was among those who supported the idea of the peace prize for President Trump, saying: “It’s really President Trump who should receive it; we can just take peace,” The New York Times reported.
Back when President Obama won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, even some in the media were stunned. “Today” Co-Host Matt Lauer (pre-scandal) called it out: “We’re less than a year into the first term of this president and there are no – I'm not trying to be, you know, rude here – no major foreign policy achievements, to date.”
Lauer was right. Obama won the Peace Prize shortly after taking office. The reason? The prize was for something he hadn’t done, "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples." He was the fourth U.S. president to receive the award. Presidential wannabe Al Gore also won in 2007.
2. Brokaw Story Gets Worse: Sexual misconduct allegations escalated against former NBC anchor and current Special Correspondent Tom Brokaw. First he denied the allegations in a letter that “couldn’t be stronger,” according to The Washington Post’s Erik Wemple.
But Wemple followed by detailing the disturbing charges. He noted: “The 20-plus-year anchor of ‘NBC Nightly News’ isn’t on trial here.” Then he added, “NBC News, however, enjoys no such casual luxury.”
NBC has a major problem with transparency, a word often demanded from politicians by journalists. It had the same problem with the demotion of anchor Brian Williams. There is an identical issue involving the disastrous Joy Reid investigation at sister network MSNBC.
Brokaw was hit with back-to-back exclusives about the alleged support he received from women.
The New York Post reported how “NBC staffers felt pressured to sign letter defending Brokaw.”
Variety broke its own story about the support letter. Headlined: “NBC News Urged Its Anchors to Report on Supportive Tom Brokaw Letter.” The combination undercut any support Brokaw received from it. A third woman also said Brokaw “gave her an unwanted ‘French kiss’ some 50 years ago.”
3. Just Desserts: The 2018 White House Correspondents Dinner will long be remembered for crossing the line. The April 28 media event went mostly as planned. Predictably liberal comedian Michelle Wolf was also predictably anti-Trump. She made the first of 25 references to “Trump” just 36 words into her pathetic monologue with a porn star joke that attacked all men, not just the president.
It was like watching reruns of “The Daily Show with Trevor Noah.” (Heaven help you.) For three years running, the so-called neutral White House Correspondents Association plucked its comedians from Comedy Central, the land of little-known, anti-conservative comics. Wolf was deservedly obscure, so much so that the journalist association that hired her apparently didn’t even do a background check and missed numerous offensive tweets.
When she hit the stage, journalists realized she went too far. Her attacks on White House women seemed particularly tone deaf for the #MeToo era. ABC Chief White House Correspondent Jonathan Karl was critical. Karl is the 2019 president of the association and he called the jokes “mean-spirited.”
But this is 2018 and anti-Trump comments always have media supporters. Seth Meyers and Noah soon chimed in on Wolf’s side. Stephen Colbert joined them.
A common theme of the defense of Wolf was echoed by NBC’s “Today” Co-host Savannah Guthrie, who quoted defenders arguing that “the president has said much worse.” Of course, the president is also a partisan and Wolf was hired by so-called neutral journalists.
4. It’s Porn Star Time: The only thing CNN likes more than a porn star is her lawyer. The network spent 41 minutes ogling a strip club performance by alleged former Trump paramour Stormy Daniels in March.
The CNN reporter team rained 1,500 words and maybe a lot of dollar bills in pursuit of their “journalism.” “Screens around the club advertised Daniels' performance with revealing photos and the slogan ‘#MAGA – Make Adult Great Again,’” said reporter Hadas Gold.
If Daniels raked in the cash performing, her lawyer Michael Avenatti raked in the media coverage. Avenatti appeared on March 7 for the first time and has visited the supportive CNN team 59 times total – in just about two months. Anderson Cooper’s program accounted for 19 of those appearances.
CNN wasn’t quite done with Daniels, however. The CNN Politics Twitter account commented Thursday: “President Trump makes no mention of the porn star payment storm at the National Day of Prayer.” Neutral journalism doesn’t have a prayer some places.
CNN Editor-at-large Chris Cillizza followed up the Thursday press conference by saying President Trump “is a boss no one should be willing to work for. That includes Sarah Sanders.” His piece was headlined: “Why Sarah Sanders should quit.”
As a side note about how the media really work: Avenatti isn’t shy in the self-promotion department, allegedly pushing MSNBC for a job after the court battle is over. Interestingly, he’s had eight appearances on MSNBC in just four days.
5. Harassing a High School Student: One of the most idiotic stories of the week came courtesy of a Twitter war. Utah teen Keziah Daum was criticized for “cultural appropriation” for wearing a Chinese-style dress to her high school prom.
Twitter user Jeremy Lam gathered more than 40,000 retweets and 176,000 likes for his whine about what she wore. “My culture is NOT your g------ prom dress,” he posted. That set in motion a mob frenzy of attacks and stories, many of which got the most basic elements of the issue wrong.
The New York Times wrote: “Teenager’s Prom Dress Stirs Furor in U.S. – but Not in China.” Like many media outlets, The Times seemed to blame Daum for wearing the dress rather than Lam for his bullying reaction to what a high school student wore to prom. Yahoo wrote a similar headline: “Teen defends Chinese prom dress that sparked cultural appropriation debate: 'I would wear it again.'”
The dress didn’t “stir” or “spark” anything. That’s victim-blaming.
Cosmo, theoretically a pro-women site but really a pro-loon site, was worse. “Girl Slammed on Twitter for Culturally Appropriating Her Prom Dress Says She Would Wear it Again.” Even the Chinese admit it was “cultural appreciation, not appropriation.”
That was a point so clear that ABC’s lefty Anchor George Stephanopoulos got it right, saying: “It seems like, to me, I don’t know, on the right side of the line.”
When George thinks the left has gone too far, it’s hard to argue otherwise.

California's Orange County may play key midterm election role

David Hernandez, left, Genevieve Peters, center, and Jennifer Martinez celebrate after the Orange County Board of Supervisors voted to join the U.S. Department of Justice lawsuit against the State of California's sanctuary cities law, March 27, 2018.  (Associated Press)

Once coveted as a conservative bastion in liberal California, Orange County has become a last stand for the state's Republicans.
Chased out of much of California by Democrats who hold every statewide office and a 39-14 advantage in U.S. House seats, the state's GOP is trying to hold its ground in a historically Republican stronghold.
Republican elected officials in a string of cities and two counties — Orange and neighboring San Diego — have passed ordinances or taken other actions in opposition to the state's so-called sanctuary law, enacted by the Democratic-run Legislature in response to Trump's calls for more deportations and a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.
"Orange County is undergoing the biggest political challenge we've ever had," Republican National Committeeman Shawn Steel, who lives in the county, told volunteers at the GOP headquarters.

"Orange County is undergoing the biggest political challenge we've ever had."

Ten years ago, the GOP held a 13-point edge in Orange County, but that's shriveled to 3 points while the number of independents, who tend to vote like Democrats in California, has climbed to 25 percent.
National Republican leaders, hoping to retain control of the House, have opened a 10,000-square-foot war room in an office tower near John Wayne Airport, filled with computers and phones in a last-ditch attempt to reach potential voters in the June 5 primary election.
It's in suburbs that "we are going to either hold the majority in '18, or lose the majority," said U.S. Rep. Steve Stivers, who heads the party's campaign arm in the House.

U.S. Rep. Steve Stivers heads the GOP's campaign arm in the House.  (Associated Press)

The risks are plain for Republicans in the state that is home to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi: Democrats dominate California politics, and midterm elections generally favor the party not in control of the White House.
President Donald Trump lost the state by more than 4 million votes in 2016.
Political observers say recent Democratic victories in Pennsylvania and Alabama, and House Speaker Paul Ryan's decision to retire at the end of the term makes likelier the prospect of Democrats gaining the 23 seats needed to take control of the chamber.

Rosie O'Donnell's donations to Dems exceeded limit: report

Rose O'Donnell exceeded the legal limit for campaign contributions to individual candidates, a report says.  (Associated Press)

Liberal comedian and inveterate Trump adversary Rosie O’Donnell exceeded the legal limit with campaign donations to five Democratic candidates, a new report finds.
Federal Election Commission rules dictate that an individual candidate may not receive more than $2,700 from any one person per election. (The limit applies separately to primaries, runoffs and general elections.)
The star appeared to put the onus on the candidates, not herself, to correct the alleged errors.

I don’t look to see who I can donate most to … I just donate assuming they do not accept what is over the limit

“If 2700 is the cut off – [candidates] should refund the money,” O’Donnell wrote in an email to the New York Post. “I don’t look to see who I can donate most to … I just donate assuming they do not accept what is over the limit.”

“If 2700 is the cut off – [candidates] should refund the money. I don’t look to see who I can donate most to … I just donate assuming they do not accept what is over the limit.”
- Rosie O'Donnell, in an email

O’Donnell told the paper that donating to anti-Trump candidates eases her anxiety.
U.S. Sen. Doug Jones, D-Ala., who defeated accused child molester Roy Moore, disclosed receiving $4,700 in campaign donations from O’Donnell.
According to filings, O’Donnell donated $3,600 to Conor Lamb, a Democrat who in March won a special election to fill a U.S. House vacancy in Pennsylvania. O'Donnell donated an additional $1,000 for Lamb’s current campaign for a different congressional district, because of Pennsylvania's redrawn congressional map.
O’Donnell has also donated $2,950 to U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, and  $4,200 for the primary campaign of Lauren Underwood, a candidate for a U.S. House seat in Illinois.
She also donated $3,450 to Omar Vaid, a congressional candidate in a district that covers parts of Staten Island and Brooklyn in New York City, fillings cited by the Post show.
O’Donnell told the Post she donates through the online liberal fundraising platform ActBlue, which, she assumed, “limits donations to the max allowed.”
Filings show that O’Donnell has donated more than $90,000 to 50 different federal candidates and committees during the 2017-18 election cycle.