In blow to GOP unity, Donald Trump refuses to back Paul Ryan, John McCain
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said Tuesday that he is refusing to endorse House Speaker Paul Ryan and Sen. John McCain just two weeks after pledging to bring the fractured GOP together at the party’s nominating convention. He also ripped into New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte in the same interview with the Washington Post. All three have primary challengers, and all three disapproved of Trump’s criticism of the Muslim American parents of an Army captain killed in Iraq. Trump’s refutation of Ryan, the nation’s most senior elected Republican, carried particular derision. “I’m just not there yet,” Trump said in the interview. Those are very close to the words Ryan used in the long months before he endorsed Trump, telling CNN on May 6, “I’m not there right now.” Ryan never sought Trump’s endorsement, his spokesman said. “Neither Speaker Ryan nor anyone on his team has ever asked for Donald Trump’s endorsement,” said Zack Roday, Ryan’s campaign spokesman. “And we are confident in a victory next week regardless.” The billionaire celebrity famous for retaliating when he feels insulted also refused to endorse McCain, a prisoner of war in Vietnam who Trump previously derided for having been captured. “I’ve never been there with John McCain because I’ve always felt that he should have done a much better job for the vets,” Trump told the newspaper Tuesday. “So I’ve always had a difficult time with John for that reason, because our vets are not being treated properly. They’re not being treated fairly.” As for Ayotte, who is running for a second Senate term and skipped the Republican National Convention, Trump said: “You have a Kelly Ayotte who doesn’t want to talk about Trump, but I’m beating her in the polls by a lot.” “We need loyal people in this country,” Trump added in the interview. “We need fighters in this country. We don’t need weak people.” McCain is a locked in a three-way race ahead of an August 30 primary. The primary for Ryan’s House seat is next week and Ayotte’s primary is next month. All three have said they would support Trump as the GOP presidential nominee. All three chided Trump for engaging in a flap with Khizr and Ghazala Khan, the parents of U.S. Army Capt. Humayun Khan, who was posthumously awarded a Bronze Star and Purple Heart after his death in 2004. From the podium of the Democratic National Convention, Khizr Khan criticized Trump’s position on Muslims and asked whether the real estate mogul had read the Constitution. Trump said the grieving father had “no right” to criticize him but later acknowledged their son is a hero. McCain’s response was a lengthy denunciation in which he said the GOP nomination does not confer on Trump “unfettered license to defame those who are the best among us.” Ryan condemned any criticism of Muslim-Americans who serve their country. “Captain Khan was one such brave example. His sacrifice – and that of Khizr and Ghazala Khan – should always be honored. Period,” Ryan said. Ayotte declared she was “appalled” by Trump’s spat with the Khans. Republished with permission of the Associated Press.
Ala. House Republicans unanimously nominate Rep. Mac McCutcheon as Speaker
Members of the Alabama House Republican Caucus have unanimously named Republican state Rep. Mac McCutcheon of Huntsville as the group’s official nominee for Speaker of the House. The decision essentially assures McCutcheon will be selected speaker when the House convenes Aug. 15 — Republicans hold 70 seats in the House compared to the Democrats’ 33 — for a special session Gov. Robert Bentley called to consider his lottery proposal. McCutcheon says he will treat both Republicans and Democrats with fairness and honor. “I’m humbled by the faith and confidence that my fellow Republicans have placed in me, and, if elected as speaker, I pledge to preside in a manner that treats all members of both parties in a fair and honorable manner,” McCutcheon said in a news release after his nomination. “Our state faces many challenges ranging from education to ethics to ensuring adequate funding for even the most basic government services, and finding needed solutions will require all of us to work together.” A veteran of the U.S. Army, McCutcheon was first elected to the House in 2006 where he serves as chairman of the powerful House Rules Committee. Prior to his time in House, he worked with Huntsville Police Department for 25 years. His work there included serving as a hostage negotiator and an investigator with the Major Crimes Unit. McCutcheon was not the only representative seeking the position. He defeated five of his colleagues, Steve Clouse of Ozark, Lynn Greer of Rogersville, Mike Jones of Andalusia, Barry Moore of Enterprise and Phil Williams of Huntsville, who were also interested in the position. Pending the formal House vote, McCutcheon will succeed former House speaker Mike Hubbard, who was automatically removed from office after he was convicted in June on multiple counts of using his office for personal gain. He was later sentenced to four years in prison.
Need a Job? Congresswoman to host Birmingham Job Fair Aug. 11
Alabama 7th District U.S. Congresswoman Terri Sewell will host her 5th Annual Congressional Job Fair next week, bringing together 125 employers from a diverse range of sectors throughout the 7th Congressional District. On Thursday, Aug. 11 from 10 a.m.-2 p.m., Sewell will host the job fair, a continuation of the inaugural event held in Birmingham in 2012, at the Birmingham-Jefferson Convention Complex in the North/South Exhibition Halls. Sewell’s Job Fair comes at a welcome time as Alabama’s June unemployment rate was 6 percent, representing 130,349 unemployed people. “I am thrilled to have the job fair return to Birmingham where I launched this effort in 2012,” said Sewell. “My top priority remains getting Alabamians back to work, and as representative of Alabama’s 7th Congressional District, it is important that I address unemployment in every area that I represent.” Individuals are encouraged to come dressed for success with resumes in hand, as employers will be looking to fill current openings in numerous job sectors. The event is open to the public and free to attend.
Hillary Clinton sees best-yet fundraising numbers as general begins
Hillary Clinton raised $63 million in July for her presidential campaign, her best month yet and a summertime haul that puts her ahead of President Barack Obama‘s fundraising at the same point in his re-election race. The Democratic nominee also may have outraised her Republican opponent once again. In addition to her campaign money, she brought in another $26 million last month for the Democratic National Committee and state parties, bringing her total monthly fundraising to about $90 million. Donald Trump said Monday that he’d raised $35.8 million for his campaign in small donations, but he has not disclosed his full July total. Like Clinton, Trump has a fundraising partnership with party allies through which he can collect checks of hundreds of thousands of dollars from individual donors. Both campaigns must provide their latest fundraising details to federal regulators by August 20. The Clinton campaign said it began August with $58 million in the bank. And that’s not because she is penny-pinching. Clinton has maintained a 700-plus-person campaign payroll and spent $35 million on television commercials between the last week of June and last week, according to Kantar Media’s campaign advertising tracker. Clinton notched a number of fundraising “bests” last month. July was her first full month as the party’s clear nominee, and that showed in her finances. She saw a 75 percent increase over her previous best fundraising month, which was June, when her campaign collected $36 million. Looking back at the previous presidential race, Obama’s campaign took in about $49 million in July 2012, finance records show. Clinton has worked to build out her online fundraising operation and saw her top total in that area just last week as she officially accepted her party’s presidential nomination at its convention in Philadelphia. The campaign said she raised more than $8.7 million in the 24 hours around her speech. Her onetime Democratic opponent, Bernie Sanders, raised more than $6 million in the 24 hours after winning the New Hampshire primary, after declaring in a nationally televised victory speech that he was “going to hold a fundraiser right here, right now, across America.” Trump also has trained his attention on online fundraising, netting more than $3 million in the 24-hours after making his first email solicitation for campaign cash in June. Republished with permission of the Associated Press.
Trial date set for suspended Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore
A September trial date has been set for suspended Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore. An order released Monday by the Alabama Court of the Judiciary says Moore’s trial on ethics charges will begin Sept. 28 if the court doesn’t rule before then. A hearing is set for Aug. 8 where the case could be decided before the trial, if the court comes to an agreement with judicial prosecutors and decides to remove Moore based on legal arguments. Moore opposes such a move and believes a fair trial is necessary. Moore, a conservative Christian Republican, opposes same-sex marriage on the basis of faith and the law. In January, he issued an administrative order to state probate judges that said state laws against gay marriage remained in place months after the U.S. Supreme Court had effectively legalized gay marriage nationwide. In May, the Judicial Inquiry Commission (JIC) filed judicial ethics charges against him for that order.
Sally Bradshaw’s bolt from GOP a sign of Donald Trump’s impact on party
Less than four years ago, the Republican Party tapped a few respected party officials to help the GOP find its way forward. This week, one of them says she’s leaving the party — driven out by Donald Trump. While not a household name, Sally Bradshaw‘s decision to leave the GOP rocked those who make politics their profession. The longtime aide to former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush was one of the five senior Republican strategists tasked with identifying the party’s shortcomings and recommending ways it could win the White House after its losing 2012 presidential campaign. Now, she says, she’ll vote for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton if the race in her home state of Florida appears close come Election Day. “Sally is representative of an important segment of our party, and that is college-educated women, where Donald Trump is losing by disastrous margins,” said Ari Fleischer, who worked with Bradshaw on the GOP project and was a senior adviser to President George W. Bush. “Trump has moved in exactly the opposite direction from our recommendations on how to make the party more inclusive.” Fleischer still supports Trump over Clinton. But Bradshaw is among a group of top Republican operatives, messengers, national committee members and donors who continue to decry Trump’s tactics, highlighting almost daily — with three months until Election Day — the rifts created by the billionaire and his takeover of the party. This past weekend, the billionaire industrialist Charles Koch (coke) told hundreds of donors that make up his political network that Trump does not embrace, nor will he fight for, free market principles. That’s one reason Koch‘s network, which has the deepest pockets in conservative politics, is ignoring the presidential contest this year and focusing its fundraising wealth on races for Congress. Donors and elected officials gathering at a Koch event in Colorado said they accepted the Koch brothers’ decision, even if it hurts the GOP’s White House chances. Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin, among the high-profile Republicans on hand, refused to endorse Trump and referenced now defunct political parties, such as the Whigs, when asked about the health of the modern-day GOP. “The party is not really what matters. It’s the principles,” Bevin told The Associated Press. Another of those in attendance, House Speaker Paul Ryan, didn’t even mention his party’s presidential nominee during his speech to the group. Yet he referenced an election he called “personality contest” devoid of specific goals or principles. Liberals and those on the political left are hardly fully united around Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, whose convention was interrupted on occasion by supporters of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. But after beating Sanders in the primaries, Clinton took steps to win over Sanders and his supporters — including agreeing to changes to the party’s platform. Trump has shown little such inclination, pushing ahead instead with the approach and policy proposals that proved successful in the GOP primary. Among the key recommendations of the post-2014 report that Bradshaw helped write was for the party to be more inclusive to racial and ethnic minorities, specifically Latino voters. One of Trump’s defining policies is his call to build a wall on the U.S. border with Mexico, and forcibly deport the millions of people — many of whom are Hispanic — living in the country illegally. Bradshaw told The Associated Press her decision to change her voter registration in her home state of Florida was “a personal decision,” with the tipping point being Trump’s criticism of the Muslim mother of a U.S. soldier killed in Iraq in 2004. In an email to CNN, Bradshaw wrote that the GOP was “at a crossroads and have nominated a total narcissist — a misogynist — a bigot.” Her decision to leave the party isn’t “a good sign, given the role she’s played at the national level with the RNC and the high esteem in which she’s held,” said Virginia Republican Chris Jankowski, among the nation’s leading GOP legislative campaign strategists. Another member of the panel that examined Mitt Romney‘s 2012 loss is Henry Barbour, a Republican National Committee member from Mississippi. In a message to the AP, he joined the many Republicans who called on Trump to apologize to the family of the late Capt. Humayun Khan, a suggestion the billionaire has rejected to date. Like Fleischer, he does not plan to follow Bradshaw out of the party, but insisted that Trump must work harder to unify it. “If we are to gain anything by this, Donald Trump must show he wants to unite Americans so he can win in November and the best way to do this would be to apologize,” Barbour said. “There’s no excuse, particularly for his comments about Mrs. Khan.” Republished with permission of the Associated Press.
Robert Bentley makes ‘peach’ offering to Jim Zeigler
Alabama State Auditor Jim Zeigler said Gov. Robert Bentley offered him a peace — or rather “peach” — offering last week. On Wednesday, Bentley stopped by Zeigler’s Montgomery office and to deliver Chilton County peaches to the auditor, who has been among his strongest critics. Zeigler was out of the office in Mobile for the day, and according to Zeigler, when Bentley was told he left and did not leave the peaches behind. In a statement Monday evening regarding the incident, Zeigler queried the public how he should respond: Should I: Go to the governor’s office (where I have never been invited nor granted an appointment) and ask for my peaches? OR Call the ethics commission and report this offer of a thing of value to a public official. (I doubt it exceeded the $25 limit.)? OR Attempt to go to the governor’s office and take him some Zeigler Bologna? OR Forget about it and keep working against government waste and corruption? Zeigler has long been a critic of Bentley’s. Just last week he, along with state Rep. Johnny Mack Morrow, filed a lawsuit against the governor and other state officials for illegally using BP oil spill settlement funds to build a four-star beachfront hotel and conference center at Gulf State Park.
Donald Trump’s trap: GOP nominee can’t let go of perceived slights
For Donald Trump, it’s become a familiar pattern. The Republican nominee can’t let go of a perceived slight, no matter the potential damage to his presidential campaign or political reputation. Trump spent the days after winning the Republican nomination criticizing a U.S. district court judge’s Mexican heritage. The morning after accepting the Republican nomination at the party’s convention, Trump re-litigated months-old grievances with primary rival Ted Cruz. Now, he’s sparring with an American Muslim family whose son was killed in Iraq. Republican leaders have urged Trump to drop his attacks on Khizr and Ghazala Khan, who appeared at last week’s Democratic convention and harshly criticized the GOP nominee. It’s not just the optics of picking a fight with a military family that has GOP officials eager for Trump to move on, but the timing of his attacks: Election Day is just three months away. Those who have worked with Trump say that in private meetings, he can often appear amenable to putting a controversy aside. But the businessman can quickly be drawn back in by an interview, especially if he believes he’s already answered the question, or if he grows irritated by commentary on cable television. “It’s just who he is,” said Stuart Jolly, a former campaign staffer and current political director for the pro-Trump Great America PAC. Others who have worked with Trump say the only way to ensure he moves on is to wait for him to tire of an issue or get drawn into another matter. Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker who has advised Trump, said the candidate’s inability to back away from a political land mine “makes him vulnerable.” “His whole experience up until running for office was in a very combative New York media market,” Gingrich said. “He’s been doing it now for over 30 years. It’s a very deeply held habit.” Khizr Kahn delivered an emotional address at last week’s Democratic convention, with his wife standing by his side. The Pakistan-born Khan told the story of his son, U.S. Army Capt. Humayun Khan, who was posthumously awarded a Bronze Star and Purple Heart after his death in 2004. Khan said that if Trump were president and enacted his proposed temporary ban on foreign Muslims coming to the U.S., a position Trump has backed away from in recent weeks, his son would have never been allowed into the country. He also questioned whether Trump had ever read the Constitution. Trump responded by implying Ghazala Khan’s religion preventing her from speaking at the convention, though she later said talking publicly about her late son was still too difficult. On Monday, Trump tweeted that he was being “viciously attacked” by Khizr Khan. Trump’s unwillingness to let the matter subside sparked outrage Monday from a chorus of Republicans. Arizona Sen. John McCain, a former prisoner of war, said Trump did not have “unfettered license to defame those who are the best among us.” Rep. Mike Coffman, a vulnerable Republican in a competitive Colorado district, said he was “deeply offended when Donald Trump fails to honor the sacrifices of all of our brave soldiers who were lost in that war.” Missouri Sen. Roy Blunt said the Khans “deserve to be heard and respected.” “My advice to Donald Trump has been and will continue to be to focus on jobs and national security and stop responding to every criticism whether it’s from a grieving family or Hillary Clinton,” Blunt said in a statement. However, none of the Republican lawmakers pulled back their support of Trump’s White House campaign. In his first rally after a weekend of controversy, Trump spoke at length and took several questions at an event Monday in Columbus, Ohio — never once mentioning the Khans. But when asked about Khizr Khan on Fox News Channel’s “Hannity,” Trump responded, “I guess it’s part of my life.” “His son died 12 years ago,” Trump added. “If I were president, his son wouldn’t have died, because I wouldn’t have been in the war, if I was president back then.” Trump backers attending the Ohio rally dismissed the issue, underscoring how the businessman was able to survive numerous such firestorms in the GOP primaries. “I think the Democrats laid a trap for him,” said Tom McClanahan, a 54-year-old from Johnston, Ohio. “I think they knew what they were doing when they asked that family to speak at the convention. They knew he’d respond.” Dale Brown, a maintenance supervisor from Grove City, Ohio, whose son is in the Navy, said Democrats were blowing Trump’s comments out of proportion and had “politicized this by asking that family to speak.” But the real test for Trump isn’t the opinion of the loyal supporters who attend his rallies. It’s the broader general election audience, a far more diverse group still weighing Trump’s readiness for the White House. Republished with permission of the Associated Press.
