Clinton cheers Warren for her attacks on Trump

The Democrats on the House Benghazi committee released their final conclusions from the inquiry into attacks on Americans in that Libyan city in 2012, and in the report they say, once again, that the investigation is a politically motivated sham aimed at damaging the reputation of presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

But the report, which the Democrats published as a preemptive strike before the Republican majority releases findings likely to charge ineptitude and deception by the former secretary of State, also revealed, apparently unintentionally, details about the eye-popping amount of money a close Clinton friend and advisor made in a contract with a pro-Clinton nonprofit.

Democrats released but redacted a transcript of Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal answering the committee’s questions to make the point that Republicans do not want the public to know what went on during his interrogation, during which GOP members arguably used their subpoena power to conduct political opposition research unrelated to Benghazi.

But the redaction marks are easily erased by anyone able to use a computer’s cut-and-paste function. Once the marks are lifted, the transcript portion reveals some unflattering things for any partisans on the committee, Republican or Democrat. It shows that Republicans did, indeed, leverage their subpoena of Blumenthal for political gain, digging into his financial contracts with longtime Clinton loyalist David Brock and forcing him to reveal the details of a lucrative financial arrangement that congressional sources would ultimately leak to Fox News.

Read More

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump will help boost the economy before either of them gets into office. At the very least, they are expected to help the hospitality industry in the two cities that are hosting the Democratic and Republican conventions next month.

As expected, the hotel occupancy levels and nightly rates have already jumped for the dates of the conventions in Philadelphia for the Democrats and Cleveland for the Republicans.

What is unusual is that those high occupancy levels and rates are not dropping dramatically after the conventions, which suggests that delegates and others attending the political shindigs may be hanging around for a few days for some tourist activities.

Read More

Elizabeth Warren may not end up being Hillary Clinton’s running mate. But there’s no question she’s mastered one aspect of the job: attack dog.

Campaigning with the presumptive Democratic nominee for the first time here Monday, Warren spent nearly 15 minutes eviscerating Donald Trump as a “thin-skinned bully who’s driven by greed and hate.”

She even went after his most famous accessory.

“You want to see goofy? Look at him in that hat,” Warren said to roars from the audience at Cincinnati’s restored train station.

Warren said Trump’s response to the economic tumult triggered by Britain’s vote to leave the European Union — suggesting it would benefit Trump enterprises like his golf course in Scotland — was consistent with a career of exploiting poor and working-class Americans for personal gain.

“What kind of a man roots for people to lose their jobs, to lose their homes, to lose their life’s savings?” she said. “I will tell you what kind of a man — a small, insecure money-grubber who fights for no one but himself.”

Perhaps more important for Democrats, though, was Warren’s enthusiastic embrace of Clinton after a bitterly contested primary, one that Bernie Sanders still has not fully exited.

“Hillary has brains, she has guts, she has thick skin and steady hands. But most of all, she has a good heart. And that’s what America needs, and that’s why I’m with her,” she said.

Clinton reveled in the endorsement, and the Massachusetts senator’s tenacity.

“I do just love to see how she gets under Donald Trump’s thin skin,” she said.

Read More

When Stephenee Simms heard in 2006 that Donald Trump was building condo towers in Baja, the lure of a posh weekend getaway on the rustic coast just south of Tijuana was hard to resist.

Simms, then an aerospace purchasing agent living in Canoga Park, said she used her life savings to pay a deposit of just over $50,000 for unit No. 602, a one-bedroom overlooking the Pacific.

The sales team gave her a book, bound in blue suede, describing a resort where residents “relax by the infinity-edge pool, margarita in hand, as the cabana boy brings fresh towels.”

It featured Trump, shown smiling in a French gold-leaf chair, telling readers that no words or pictures “can possibly describe what is about to take shape here, but it is certainly going to be the most spectacular place in all of Mexico.”

Read More

A growing anti-Donald Trump movement will send a team this week to Cleveland to begin preparing to fight Trump’s expected nomination at the Republican National Convention there next month.

Leaders of the Courageous Conservatives PAC plan to start identifying pledged delegates at the convention whom they can persuade to abandon Trump, group members said in a Sunday conference call first reported by Politico. Such delegates’ votes are bound to the results of their states’ primaries or caucuses.

“Donald Trump is just about the worst candidate you can think of for the country, first, and for the party, second,” former Sen. Gordon Humphrey (R-N.H.) said on the call.

Colorado delegates Kendal Unruh and Regina Thomson are cultivating the anti-Trump movement and encouraging others to join.

“We don’t have enough time to be stealth anymore,” Unruh, who sits on the convention Rules Committee, said on the call.

Trump’s campaign has allocated staff and volunteer time to combat efforts to thwart his nomination.

(Patrick Semansky / Associated Press)

Marco Rubio as Donald Trump’s running mate? Not going to happen.

The Florida senator told CBS on Sunday that he isn’t a viable option as a running mate for the GOP’s presumptive nominee. He instead will focus on his campaign to be reelected to the Senate.

“The differences in policies that me and Donald have had are too big for something like that to work,” Rubio said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “It would be a distraction — quite frankly — to his campaign.”

Trump’s proposed ban on Muslims entering the U.S. is a nonstarter, Rubio said, and Americans wouldn’t stand for the immediate deportation of millions of people in the U.S. illegally, which Trump has also proposed. But Trump still has time to explain his vision to voters, the senator added, moving away from his criticism of the candidate.

“He’s going to have the next three months to go out and make the argument to the American people and help us envision him as president,” Rubio said.

Last week, Rubio reversed his decision not to run again for the Senate and announced he will seek reelection.

“It came down to whether or not you just give up on it,” he said. “Do you give up or do you say, ‘I’m going to take one more crack at really hoping that this place gets better?’”

Hillary Clinton speaks at the U.S. Conference of Mayors in Indianapolis on Sunday.

(Andrew Harnik / Associated Press)

Hillary Clinton pitched herself as an example of “steady, experienced leadership” and bipartisanship Sunday, just hours after the Senate’s Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, declined to say whether he thought Donald Trump was qualified to be president.

Speaking at a gathering of mayors here, Clinton said the market turmoil that has followed Britain’s vote to leave the European Union showed the need for pragmatic, nonpartisan problem-solving – a quality she said she would bring to the White House.

In the aftermath of the so-called Brexit referendum in the United Kingdom on Thursday, Clinton said her priority was protecting Americans from the negative effects of “tumult and uncertainty.”

She never named Trump in her remarks at the U.S. Conference of Mayors summer meeting. But she said the situation requires leaders at all levels of government “who understand that bombastic comments in turbulent times can actually cause more turbulence,” and who will “put the interest of American people ahead of their personal business interests.”

Read More

A presidential candidate needs 270 electoral votes to win the White House. Most states predictably vote red or blue, but a small handful swing either way and make up the main election battlegrounds. What does it take to win the presidency?

Read More