Presumptuous Politics

Tuesday, July 19, 2016

Trump campaign calls Kasich convention absence 'embarrassing'

The Republican National Convention kicked off with fireworks Monday morning between the Donald Trump campaign and the governor of the host state, with campaign manager Paul Manafort calling former Trump rival Gov. John Kasich’s absence from the event “embarrassing.”
The Ohio governor has been an outspoken Trump critic, and has not buried the hatchet with the presumptive Republican nominee since suspending his own presidential campaign earlier this year. Manafort, who also is the convention manager for the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, told NBC’s “Today” that Kasich missing the convention “makes no sense.”
“He is embarrassing his state, frankly,” Manafort said.
Chief Kasich strategist John Weaver hit back at Manafort late Monday morning.
“Manafort’s problem, after all those years on the lam with thugs and autocrats, is that he can’t recognize principle and integrity,” Weaver told The New York Times. “I do congratulate him though on a great pivot at the start of the convention after such a successful vice-presidential launch. He has brought great professionalism, direct from Kiev, to Trump world.”
The barbs underscored the lingering tensions between Trump and certain wings of the party, as the campaign tries to use to weeklong convention to forge unity going into the general election campaign against Hillary Clinton.
Manafort said on MSNBC it was a “big mistake” for Kasich to stay home.
"Most of the Republicans who aren't coming are people who have been part of the past," Manafort said.
Kasich, a rival of Trump’s for the Republican nomination, has not endorsed his party’s likely standard bearer and has been critical of Trump.
"Why would I feel compelled to support someone whose positions I kind of fundamentally disagree with?" he told Fox News in June.
Kasich’s lone win during the Republican primary was his home state of Ohio.
Despite the absence of Kasich and a number of other prominent Republicans, including Jeb Bush and several former presidents and presidential nominees, the Trump campaign is eager to use the convention to bring disparate wings of the party together.
While Kasich is sitting out the convention, several former GOP rivals are set to speak.
They include former Texas Gov. Rick Perry on Monday, to be followed later in the week by Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson.
Perhaps the biggest headliner Monday, though, is Trump’s wife Melania.
Trump told Fox News that he plans to attend on Monday; sources confirmed to Fox News he plans to introduce his wife.

Watchdog: HUD's Castro violated federal law by touting Clinton in interview

Housing Secretary and potential Democratic vice-presidential prospect Julian Castro violated federal law when he touted Hillary Clinton's candidacy in a media interview earlier this year, according to a federal watchdog report released Monday.
The seven-page report by the U.S. Office of Special Counsel concluded Castro violated the Hatch Act, which bars most Executive Branch officials from expressing their political views while on official business. According to the report, he crossed the line during an April 4 interview that mostly was about HUD’s plans to increase Internet access to children and other agency-related issues.
Castro, though, responded to a question during the Yahoo News interview about Clinton’s presidential bid.
“Taking off my HUD hat for a second and speaking individually,” Castro said, while going on to call Clinton the most experienced 2016 candidate and criticizing Republicans. BuzzFeed News first reported on the OSC findings.
“Castro’s statements during the interview impermissibly mixed his personal political views with official agency business, despite his efforts to clarify that some answers were being given in his personal capacity,” states the OSC report, which will now be referred to President Obama, who will decide on what if any action to take.
Castro is considered a potential running-mate pick for Clinton as she prepares to name her choice going into the Democratic convention next week.
Castro, in response to the report findings, said he thought during the interview that he avoided violating the act but agreed with the OSC findings.
“I offered my opinion to the interviewer after making it clear that I was articulating my personal view and not an official position,” he said. “At the time, I believed that this disclaimer was what was required by the Hatch Act. However, your analysis provides that it was not sufficient.”
He also purportedly plans to provide training for top agency officials to avoid future violations.
The Obama administration recently said Cabinet-level officials like Castro cannot speak at next week’s Democratic National Convention in support of Clinton, the party’s presumptive presidential nominee.
In 2012, the OSC, which focuses on Hatch Act violations, concluded then-Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius also was in violation when she said at a Human Rights Campaign event that Obama should be reelected.

Some of Melania Trump's speech at GOP convention similar to Michelle Obama remarks

Melania Trump’s speech Monday to the Republican National Convention on Monday has come under fire as it appears that two of the passages are strikingly similar to the speech first lady Michelle Obama gave in 2008 at the Democratic National Convention.
The passages in question focus on lessons that Melania Trump, the wife of presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, said she learned from her parents and the relevance of their lessons in her experience as a mother.
The remarks came toward the beginning of her speech, which was otherwise distinct from the address that Michelle Obama gave when her husband, then-Sen. Barack Obama, was being nominated for president.
"From a young age, my parents impressed on me the values that you work hard for what you want in life, that your word is your bond and you do what you say and keep your promise, that you treat people with respect. They taught and showed me values and morals in their daily life,” Melania Trump said in her speech in Cleveland.
In Michelle Obama's 2008 speech in Denver, she said: "And Barack and I were raised with so many of the same values: like, you work hard for what you want in life, that your word is your bond, that you do what you say you're going to do, that you treat people with dignity and respect, even if you don't know them and even if you don't agree with them."
Another passage with some similarities that follows two sentences later in Melania Trump’s speech addresses her attempts to instill those values in her son.
"We need to pass those lessons on to the many generations to follow," she said. "Because we want our children in this nation to know that the only limit to your achievements is the strength of your dreams and your willingness to work for them."
In the first lady's 2008 speech, she said, "Barack and I set out to build lives guided by these values and to pass them onto the next generation, because we want our children — and all children in this nation — to know that the only limit to the height of your achievements is the reach of your dreams and your willingness to work hard for them."
The Trump campaign said in a statement early Tuesday that Melania Trump’s speech “included fragments that reflected her own thinking,” but didn’t say whether it was plagiarized from Michelle Obama’s speech.
"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 such a success,” the statement read.
An interview of the Trump’s is set to air Tuesday on NBC News in which Melania Trump discusses her speech and how she wrote it. In the preview for the interview, Melania Trump said “I wrote it, with little help.”

Monday, July 18, 2016

Delegate Cartoons

rump family, a few celebs and former rivals round out GOP convention speaker list

RNC communications director shares preview of convention

Republican officials released the full list of national convention speakers on the eve of the weeklong party gathering in Cleveland – an agenda that includes several members of Donald Trump’s family, a handful of celebrities and a host of former campaign rivals.
One of the big headliners on Monday’s agenda is Trump’s wife Melania. Other Trump family members – including daughter Ivanka on the closing night – will speak later in the week.
Sen. Jeff Sessions, the first U.S. senator to endorse Trump and one of his most full-throated supporters in Congress, also is set to speak Monday, as are former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., and Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa.
A partial list of speakers was out earlier, but the full agenda was not made public until late Sunday afternoon.
The agenda is not exactly the celebrity-studded roster some had expected. The only professional athlete on the program is pro golfer Natalie Gulbis, after college football star Tim Tebow called his attendance "a rumor."
“Duck Dynasty” star Willie Robertson and actor Scott Baio plan to speak Monday.
Campaign manager Paul Manafort defended the program at a briefing in Cleveland late Sunday.
“It will be a different kind of convention,” he said, noting there won’t be “wall to wall” speakers from Washington. He said the list includes people from Trump’s personal and business life, among others.
“The personal story of Donald Trump is something that needs to be told,” he said.
A number of former rivals will be on stage, however.
Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry is set to speak Monday, to be followed later in the week by several other ex-2016 candidates including Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson.
Retired Navy SEAL and author of “Lone Survivor” Marcus Luttrell and other military figures also are set to speak. Pat Smith, the mother of Benghazi attack victim Sean Smith, is set to speak on Monday as well.

Trump ready to define the true ‘change’ needed in convention speech, Manafort says

Donald Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort said Sunday that Trump’s speech accepting the Republican presidential nomination at the party’s convention will focus on telling Americans that “it’s time for a change” and that Democratic rival Hillary Clinton is the “epitome of the establishment” that should no longer rule politics.
“Her 25 years in the national spotlight are the 25 years where America has gone into decline,” Manafort told “Fox News Sunday.” "It’s time for dramatic change -- not just change where people promise changes and then go to Washington and do nothing.”
He also tried to put an end to speculation that Trump had or still has second thoughts about taking Indiana Gov. Mike Pence as his running mate.
“There was never any doubt,” Manafort said about reports that Trump was unsure as late as Thursday night about announcing Pence on Friday.
He said the Thursday night discussions were about the terror attack in Nice, France, that delayed the Pence announcement.
“What we were talking about on Thursday night was … the tragedy,” Manafort said. Trump “called Gov. Pence on Wednesday. Gov. Pence was in New York. He wasn’t there to shop.”
He also said Trump will continue to remind voters, as he did successfully in the GOP primaries, that he is not a career politician or a Washington insider.
“We’re going to be talking about he’s not part of Washington,” Manafort said. “He’s going to come in and, like he’s done in business, and like he’s always done in his life, he’s going to make a difference because he’s going to bring focus, purpose and change to Washington.”
He also said the Nice attack, in which at least 84 people were killed, and several other deadly terror strikes recently in the United States and elsewhere in the world should reinforce to voters why they should pick Trump, who has vowed to tighten U.S. borders and put a temporary ban on Muslims coming into the country.
“The world today is a mess because of the failure of U.S. leadership -- the leadership that (President) Obama and Clinton, as secretary of state, put in place,” Manafort said.

Dissident delegates seek last-minute showdown to block Trump from GOP nomination

CLEVELAND – Dissident delegates making a last-gasp attempt to prevent Donald Trump's nomination at the Republican National Convention say they will try forcing a state-by-state vote on the rules governing the gathering when it opens on Monday.
But even if the rebels succeed in even getting such a roll call to occur, it's one they seem very likely to lose.
"What will happen on the floor, if there's any attempt, is the party and Trump are going to rise against it," Paul Manafort, Trump's campaign chairman, told reporters on the convention floor on Sunday.
The convention's rules committee decisively defeated the dissidents seeking to make the changes late last week, thanks to an alliance between the Trump campaign and RNC leaders on that panel. Manafort said there was no longer a viable "stop Trump" movement, only some "malcontents" who don't represent the broader Republican Party.
The Trump opponents want to change the rule that requires delegates to vote for the candidate to which they were committed after state primaries and caucuses. Trump's nomination is essentially automatic under the current rules, as he has far more than the 1,237 delegates to required to win.
In what has become a bitter internal battle, a group of social conservatives also want to shift party decision-making away from GOP leaders to rank-and-file activists. They also want to ban lobbyists from serving on the 168-member Republican National Committee and prevent states from allowing independents and Democrats to vote in Republican primaries, which helped Trump.
Ken Cuccinelli, a former Virginia attorney general and Cruz adviser who's helped organize the conservative effort, said in an interview Sunday that Trump "had a chance to be the anti-establishment candidate, but he got in bed with the RNC" at the rules committee meeting.
Some rebellious delegates are threatening to walk out if they are thwarted, perhaps on Monday. Should that occur in significant numbers, that could leave television cameras panning across rows of empty seats.
"We won't sit around and coronate a king," said Colorado delegate Kendal Unruh, who like many insurgents has backed vanquished presidential contender Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas.
The full convention will consider the rules approved last week on Monday, and the rebels want to force a state-by-state roll call, with the chairman of each state delegation announcing the vote of its delegates.
They say if the question is decided by a voice vote of the entire convention, they don't trust the presiding officer to announce the results fairly.
To force that roll call vote, the rebels must gather signatures of a majority of delegates from at least seven states and submit them to convention officials.
It's questionable they have that level of support, and even if they managed to force a roll call vote, it is not likely to succeed. Shawn Steel, a RNC national committeeman from California, said Sunday his delegation was behind Trump "100 percent."
"It's the ultimate firewall," he said, referring to California, the largest of any delegation.
Separately, Cuccinelli and his allies would need signatures from at least 28 members of the 112-member rules committee to force votes on specific rules changes they want — a threshold they reached only rarely during the rules committee votes last week.

Trump, GOP say convention 'unity' key in effort to defeat Clinton

Donald Trump and other top Republicans say they want the national convention that starts Monday to be a unifying moment to bring together a divided party and defeat Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.
Trump became the party's presumpitve presidential nominee in a stunning primary contest in which he defeated 16 major challengers with a message that appealed to millions of Americans disaffected by few economic opportunities, career politicians and a growing concern about national security.
“Trump isn’t part of Washington, and we’re going to be talking about he’s not part of Washington,” campaign manager Paul Manafort told “Fox News Sunday" about the convention. “He’s going to make a difference because he’s going to bring focus, purpose and change to Washington.”
However, Trump, a first-time candidate, and his insurgent campaign has alienated many Washington Republicans and donors whom he will need to defeat Clinton, in large part as a result of his comments about women, Muslims and Mexicans.
Such comments have resulted in a roller-coaster campaign that has at times appeared ready to go off the tracks. Still, Trump has continued to keep his likely general election race close with Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee.
A Washington Post/ABC poll released Sunday, the day before the start of the GOP convention in Cleveland, shows Clinton leading Trump 47-43 percent among registered voters, compared to the same poll showing her ahead last month by 12 percentage points.
Trump took a big step Friday in trying to bridge the gap with establishment Republicans in selecting Indiana Gov. Mike Pence as his running mate.
Pence, a former member of House Republican leadership with strong ties to top Republican donors, should help Trump better connect with social and fiscal conservatives and Capitol Hill leaders such as House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who remain cautious supporters.
“I am here to introduce the man who will be my partner in the campaign and in the White House to fix the rigged system,” Trump said Saturday in officially introducing Pence as his running mate. “I found a leader who will help us deliver a safe society and a prosperous society.”
From the onset of their event Saturday, Pence made clear his willingness to go after Clinton, whose trustworthiness remains a concern among likely voters, particularly amid her email scandal as secretary of state.
“Americans can choose a leader who will fight to make America great again or we can elect someone who personifies failed establishment,” the 57-year-old Pence said. “Seven-and-a-half years of Obama and Hillary Clinton weakened the world."
He said Trump wants to cut taxes while Clinton plans to raise them and that Trump wants to repeal ObamaCare “lock, stock and barrel,” while Clinton is pushing a progressive agenda to expand government-backed, mandatory health insurance.
Party officials, with the backing of Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, appear to have squashed efforts to deny Trump the nomination by manipulating the rules for delegates awarded in the state primaries and caucuses.
Whether the so-called Never Trump movement makes a last-ditch effort before Trump makes his scheduled nominee acceptance speech remains unclear.
But Priebus told “Fox News Sunday” that convention security is in place and Trump’s acceptance speech Thursday will be a pivotal moment in the White House race.
“It's Thursday night, it's Donald Trump giving that speech, the balloons coming down and people saying I can see him in the White House,” Priebus told “Fox News Sunday.”
Priebus suggested Trump will be like Ronald Reagan in 1979, capable of delivering the kind of acceptance speech that took the steam out of Democratic rival Jimmy Carter’s campaign.
“I think we're in the same place,” he said.
Priebus also dismissed concerns about the convention being disorganized, in part because the final list of convention speakers has not been made public.
“It’s not disorganized. It’s just different,” he told Fox. “I can assure you that Donald Trump and his campaign can put on a show.”
Priebus said one of his biggest convention goals is to create more party unity -- considering Washington Republicans and other wings of the party have been slow to embrace Trump and his unconventional campaign.
“I want to show the unification process continuing and for me,” he said. “I'm serious. I think Thursday night is a really big deal for our party. Trump delivering that consistent, measured, pointed message -- the balloons drop, the band plays Donald Trump running for president in the White House, that's where we need to be.”
Trump said at a rally earlier this month in North Carolina: "We need unity in the Republican Party -- and I have to be honest, I think I can win without the unity, but we need it.”