Trump battles criticism from rivals, former campaign aide

It sounds like Republicans want to cherry-pick someone as the nominee.

ATLANTA (AP) — Donald Trump is showing no signs of curbing his battle with a Fox News television host, the Republican Party establishment and several presidential primary rivals who are accusing him of disrespecting women

Even a former Trump campaign aide suggests that the businessman's bid for the White House has become a side show.

Trump's unconventional, insurgent campaign has excited many anti-establishment conservatives while confounding Republican Party leaders already facing the prospects of a bruising fight among 17 candidates.

The latest controversy started Thursday night when Fox News debate moderator Megyn Kelly recounted Trump's history of incendiary comments toward women. Angry over what he considered unfair treatment at the debate, Trump told CNN on Friday night that Kelly had "blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever." That remark cost Trump a prime-time speaking slot at the RedState Gathering, the Atlanta conference where several other presidential candidates spoke to about 1,000 conservative activists.

RedState host Erick Erickson said in a statement that Trump had violated basic standards of decency, even if his bluntness "resonates with a lot of people." The Trump campaign retorted by calling Erickson a "total loser" who backs other "establishment losers."
Jeb Bush, the presidential favorite for many top Republican donors, said at RedState that Trump's bombast would hurt the GOP's chances with women, who already tilt toward Democrats in presidential elections. "Do we want to win? Do we want to insult 53 percent of our voters?" the former Florida governor asked.

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FILE- In this Aug. 6, 2015, file photo, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks to the …

A parade of other candidates criticized Trump as well. Mike Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor, seemed exasperated by it all, at one point snapping at reporters after being asked several Trump-related questions. "I'm running for president," he said. "I'm not running for social media critic of somebody else who's running for president."
By Saturday evening, Trump's campaign announced that he had fired one of his top campaign consultants. Roger Stone retorted on Twitter that he'd "fired Trump," not the other way around. According to an email obtained by the Associated Press, Stone wrote to Trump, "The current controversies involving personalities and provocative media fights have reached such a high volume that it has distracted attention from your platform and overwhelmed your core message."
Trump's campaign manager said he never received that message.
Among RedState attendees, opinions varied about whether Trump should be criticized for the remark he made about Kelly. But if there was anything close to a consensus, it was that the activists still want to hear from Trump and hope that other candidates heed his rise.

"It sounds like Republicans want to cherry-pick someone as the nominee," said Jane Sacco of New Port Richey, Florida, who was angry at Erickson's decision to dump Trump. "And," she added, "they want everyone to fall in line."

Black Lives Matter activists push Sanders off stage at Seattle event

Sanders Takes a back Seat.

Black Lives Matter activists stole the spotlight away from Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders on Saturday in Seattle, prompting Sanders to leave without giving his speech.
Sanders was just about to address several thousand people who gathered shoulder to shoulder at Westlake Park when two women took over the microphone. Organizers couldn’t persuade the two to wait and greed to give them a few minutes.
The women spoke about Ferguson and the killing of Michael Brown. They also held a four minute moment of silence.
When the crowd asked the activists to allow Sanders to speak, one activist called the crowd "white supremacist liberals," according to event participants.
After waiting about 20 minutes while the women talked, Sanders was pushed away again when he tried to take the microphone back. Instead, he waved goodbye to the crowd and left the stage with a raised fist salute. He shook hands and posed for photos with supporters for about 15 minutes, and then left.
“I am disappointed that two people disrupted a rally attended by thousands at which I was invited to speak about fighting Social Security and Medicate,” Sanders said in a statement later Saturday. “I was especially disappointed because on criminal justice reform and the need to fight racism. There is no other candidate who will fight than me.”
Sanders did end up speaking to a crowd Saturday night at the University of Washington campus about his commitment to criminal justice reform as well as addressing income equality.
He addressed the protesters' concerns in his speech saying, "No president will fight harder than me to end institutional racism and reform the criminal justice system. Too many lives have been destroyed by war on drugs, by incarceration; we need to educate people. We need to put people to work."
Saturday afternoon's fireworks weren't the first time Black Lives Matters activists disrupted the Vermont senator’s event.
Last month in Phoenix, protesters affiliated with the movement took over the stage at a Phoenix event and disrupted an interview with Sanders and former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley.
In his campaign, Sanders has chiefly focused on issues like the middle class, climate change and criminal justice reform. In addition to advocating a $15-an-hour minimum wage and raising taxes on the rich, Sanders also supports a massive government-led jobs program to fix roads and bridges, a single-payer health care system, an expansion of Social Security benefits and debt-free college.
Sanders will hold a campaign rally at the University of Washington this evening. He will be driving to Portland on Sunday and is scheduled to hold a Sunday night rally at Portland's Moda Center, which has a capacity of about 19,000 and is home of the NBA's Portland Trail Blazers. The event had originally been scheduled at Veterans Memorial Coliseum, which can handle about 12,000.
Sanders heads to an event in Los Angeles on Monday.

Clinton campaign Abedin's history at State Department poses liability for Clinton White House bid

Anthony Weiner's Wife.

Huma Abedin -- a close aide to Hillary Clinton at the State Department and now a top campaign official -- is facing more questions about her activities at the agency, causing potential problems for Clinton’s presidential bid.
A federal judge ordered the State Department to have Clinton, Abedin and Cheryl Mills, another Clinton aide when she was secretary of state, confirm they have turned over all government records and describe how they used Clinton’s private server to conduct official business.
They had until Friday to turn over the information “under penalty of perjury.”
Clinton is already facing questions about using the server and private email accounts while she was the country’s top diplomat from 2009 to 2013.
The former secretary of state has turned over about 55,000 pages of private emails but deleted those she deemed personal, resulting in voters increasingly doubting her trustworthiness, according to recent polls.
Some emails show the extent to which Clinton's closest aides managed the details of her image. Abedin, for example, sent her an early-morning message in August 2009 advising Clinton to "wear a dark color today. Maybe the new dark green suit. Or blue."
Clinton later held a joint news conference with the Jordanian foreign minister. She wore the green suit, according to The Associated Press.
Abedin has for months been facing scrutiny about being part of a controversial State Department program that allowed her to work part time at the agency and have a private sector job.
She went from full-time deputy chief of staff for Clinton to a part-timer, then started working for Teneo, a consulting firm led by former President Clinton aide Douglas Band.
The agency’s inspector general’s office this spring confirmed an investigation on the matter and on email exchanges between Abedin and Clinton.
Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has since 2013 led the effort to learn more about Abedin’s time at the State Department.
Last week, he sent a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry and others asking about an investigation into possible “criminal” conduct by Abedin over her pay and her possibly violating rules that govern vacation and sick time.
The purported State Department inspector general report found Abedin was overpaid by nearly $10,000 because she violated such rules while at the agency.
The 39-year-old Abedin, vice chairwoman of the Clinton campaign, is contesting the findings and has requested an administrative review of them, while her lawyer calls the report “fundamentally flawed.”
The Clinton campaign did not respond to a request Saturday for comment.
Abedin is married to former New York Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner, who resigned from Congress in 2011 over a sexting scandal.
Larry J. Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, told The Washington Times that only political insiders will even know Abedin's name.
“But she's another building block in the image of Clinton being conveyed to voters," he said. "More and more, the current Clinton campaign is starting to remind me of the Clintons in the 1990s. At times, their controversies came in waves and filled news pages. It's happening all over again for Hillary in this campaign."
Abedin made roughly $69,000 in the first quarter of 2015, which would put her on  pace to make $276,000 this year, according to news outlets’ analysis of federal reports.
The inspector general’s office has declined to respond to a request by FoxNews.com to verify the existence of the Abedin report and its finding.
Grassley and his staffers are also having problems getting information from the office.
And on Wednesday, he vowed to try to block -- or “place a hold” -- on the nomination of David Malcolm Robinson to become the State Department’s assistant secretary for conflict and stabilization operations until the agency complies with inquiries from the Republican-controlled Congress.
“The nominee is an innocent victim of the State Department’s contemptuous failures to respond to congressional inquiries,” Grassley said.

Trump camp says it has fired infamous strategist Roger Stone

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has fired high-profile political adviser Roger Stone, a campaign spokesperson said Saturday.
“Roger wanted to use the campaign for his own personal publicity,” the spokesman told FoxNews.com. “He has had a number of articles about him recently, and Mr. Trump wants to keep the focus of the campaign on how to Make America Great Again."
To be sure, Stone has attracted his share of publicity as a behind-the-scenes guy, starting soon after he began working on the Committee to Re-elect the President, the successful 1972 fundraising effort for Richard Nixon’s second term.
And Stone's connection to Trump, particularly his rise from TV celebrity and New York real estate tycoon to the top of the 2016 Republican presidential field, has unsurprisingly become the subject of several recent news stories.
Stone’s departure was first reported early Saturday by The Washington Post. However, Stone said several hours later that he quit the campaign on Friday night, citing in part Trump’s “provocative” battles with the news media, politicians and others.
“Your initial and still underlying message -- is a solid conservative message,” Stone writes in a letter he has made public. “In fact, it catapulted you instantly into a commanding lead in the race. …  Unfortunately, the current controversies involving personalities and provocative media fights have reached such a high volume that it has distracted attention from your platform and overwhelmed your core message. With this current direction of the candidacy, I no longer can remain involved in your campaign.”
Stone also worked on a Ronald Reagan presidential campaign.
He is considered skilled in opposition research and so-called political “dirty tricks.” Stone reportedly has a tattoo of Nixon on his back and has written or co-written at least two book including “The Man Who Killed Kennedy: The Case Against LBJ,” published in 2013.
He also reportedly was once a lobbyist for Trump.

Obama Cartoon

Getting More Stupider Everyday.

Rebel recall: Virginians told to turn in Confederate-themed license plates

Stupid Political Correct Politicians.

Virginia is targeting 1,691 license plates bearing the Confederate battle flag in a statewide recall that will replace the existing tags with new ones without the controversial image.
The Virginian-Pilot reported that it’s unclear how quickly the flag tags will disappear from state highways now that the plates are being recalled and replaced following a federal judge’s ruling Thursday lifting a 2001 injunction that allowed the image.
“We’re working as quickly as possible to get this done,” Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles spokeswoman Brandy Brubaker told the paper.
Vehicle owners with the flag plates will be sent new Sons of Confederate Veterans tags along with a letter of notification informing them that the old plates will become invalid in 30 days.
However, the replacement tag doesn’t exist yet. The DMV plans to come up with a new flag-less plate design in consultation with the veterans group.
Judge Jackson Kiser issued the injunction 14 years ago after the SCV sued the state over the license plate battle flag ban. The group argued the ban violated its First Amendment rights.
Kiser cited a recent Supreme Court ruling in a Texas case that said special license plates represent the state’s speech, and not the driver’s speech. A Texas board had rejected the flag tags over concerns the license plate would offend many Texans. The SCV was also the plaintiff in the Texas case.
The judge lifted the injunction in a ruling from the bench July 31 but Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring waited until the decision was issued in written form before announcing the recall.
Brubaker said the DMV is sending holders of the tags self-addressed envelopes with a request that they mail them back to the state for recycling.
But that many not stop holders from keep the tags, if only as a souvenir.

The DMV spokeswoman acknowledged to the Pilot that the agency can’t force motorists to turn them in.

Debate about Confederate symbols gained new traction after the June 17 mass shooting of nine black worshippers at a church in Charleston, South Carolina, in what police say was an attack motivated by racial hatred. The white man charged in the slayings had posed with a Confederate battle flag in photos posted online before the killings.

Did Trump Actually Win the Debate? How to Understand All Those Instant Polls That Say Yes.

Thursday’s GOP debates produced a slew of surprises—Carly Fiorina’s demolition of her opponents at the kids’ table, John Kasich’s stirring defense of Medicaid, and Fox News’ incredible job wrangling a historically crowded field, to name just a few. The night also produced one predictable outcome: A massive chasm between how pundits and journalists reacted to Donald Trump’s performance and how the public at large did.

Josh Voorhees

Josh Voorhees is a Slate senior writer. He lives in Iowa City.

The chattering class was near unanimous in its verdict: Trump lost. “The Trump bubble will burst,” Politico’s Mike Allen confidently declared after the debate. The current GOP frontrunner’s momentum has stalled and is “[definitely] not going up,” predicted ABC News’ Matthew Dowd. “Trump was a clown show,” tweeted Fox News contributor Stephen Hayes. “The last month has been Trump making the rest of the field look small; [Thursday] was the opposite,” wrote the National Review’s Rick Lowry. “Finally, perhaps we’ve really seen peak Trump,” concluded the Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol.

Much of the public, though, saw something else entirely: A Trump victory. As of late Friday morning, more than 46 percent of the nearly half-million votes cast in a Drudge Report poll asking who won the primetime debate went to the once-and-future reality TV star. In Time magazine’s version of the survey, the real estate mogul claimed 47 percent of the more than 70,000 online responses. And even here at Slate—not exactly the friendliest playing field for Trump—the self-hype-man with the $10-million private jet garnered 39 percent of the roughly 44,000 votes that had been cast. In all three polls, meanwhile, the runner-up barely broke into the double-digits. Other online surveys showed similarly convincing wins for Trump.

But these competing instant-reactions each deserve giant disclaimers. First to the pundits: Previous predictions of The Donald’s imminent demise were also a bust. To date, the belligerent billionaire has refused to obey even basic rules of campaign decorum and yet his candidacy has yet to bend to the usual laws of politics that long-time observers hold dear.

They didn't tune in to see what Jeb Bush was going to do.

Meanwhile, the online results rely on a self-selecting group of respondents with no regards to political affiliation, age, or even country; no one should mistake them for the scientific surveys done by professional pollsters. Online, a vote from a liberal who is laughing at Trump counts the same as one from a conservative who actually like the man. The results also need the same necessary caveats we attach to the more scientific polls that currently show Trump leading the GOP field: The Donald may be the favorite right now, but his momentum is unsustainable and his political future is bleak. If Trump’s campaign doesn’t end with a bang, it’ll eventually go out with a whimper.

So how best to explain the current opinion gap between the professional class and the public? I think the more telling question isn’t whether you think Donald Trump won or lost Thursday night—it is whether you wanted him to win or lose going into the debate.

Politicos, pundits, and journalists see Trump as a sideshow that is preventing everyone from getting down to the serious business of selecting the GOP nominee. Many of us make no secret that we want him gone. So when the Fox News moderators roughed him up with a series of questions on everything from his views about women to his previous support for single-payer healthcare, it looked to us like Trump falling on his face.

But for many people watching at home, Trump didn’t stumble—he stood tall. They saw what they’ve been seeing for months: A tough-talking businessman who refused to back down and is incapable of apologizing. For a certain, significant subset of conservatives that’s a message they’ve been craving and for others, it’s one they’re willing to entertain six months before the first actual nominating contest begins. It’s also obvious that not everyone who watched the debate or voted in those polls is even a Republican primary voter—many just wanted to enjoy the free show—which means Trump’s GOP support could still slip in the days to come. (A Fox News focus group of actual Republican voters, for instance, showed signs of turning on Trump after he refused to rule out a third-party run.)

But, regardless, the debate’s massive ratings and those unscientific insta-polls remind us of a larger and more immediate truth: Love him or hate him, the public’s thirst and curiosity for All Things Trump remains incredibly strong. The early overnight numbers suggest that Thursday’s primetime event was the most watched primary debate in U.S. history—potentially doubling the previous record. It’s a safe bet that few of those people tuned in to see what Chris Christie, Jeb Bush, or even Ted Cruz was going to do. It’s also a safe bet that many of them would be willing to watch a repeat performance from the man who stood center stage in Cleveland.

Trump, then, is unlikely to be forced from the national spotlight any time soon and, as a result, will continue to play an outsized role in the GOP primary for the foreseeable future. His impact may wane as the early primaries draw closer. But for now, his presence is something the professional class should get used to.

Trump Loses Zero Ground After Fox’s Unfair, Unbalanced Attack In Debate

CLEVELAND, Ohio: A Wall Street Journal report suggests that despite critics’ opinions predicting GOP frontrunner Donald Trump’s poll numbers would fall, two early – though unscientific – polls predict that may be wrong.
“Time Magazine found that Mr. Trump took 47% of nearly 55,000 votes.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL)

80%

of Florida was in second place with just 10%. The Drudge Report’s poll found more than half of nearly 362,000 voters favored Mr. Trump, well above everyone else,” the Wall Street Journal noted. After Frank Luntz’s made his opinion on Trump’s performance suggesting “tonight his act wore thin,” conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh stood up for Trump, and instead went after Fox News’ performance.
“I have never seen this kind of public backlash against Fox News personalities since the network launched in 1997,” the radio legend stated.
Even Bloomberg Politics went after Fox News host Megyn Kelly for her questioning comparing it to “something Rachel Maddow would ask.”
Bloomberg reported:

A few hours before Thursday’s Fox News debate, a friend of Donald Trump’s confided to me that Trump was nervous. Not about the competition—he could handle them. No, Trump worried about Fox News, and in particular, debate moderator Megyn Kelly. She’d been hammering him all week on her show, and he was certain she was out to get him. He’d canceled a Fox News appearance on Monday night, the friend said, in order to avoid her. (Trump’s spokeswoman wouldn’t confirm or deny this.)
It turns out Trump was right. His toughest opponents Thursday night weren’t the candidates up on stage, but the Fox News moderators, who went right after him—none with more gusto than Kelly…
But Trump saw her coming a mile away and cut her off.