MSNBC’s Chuck Todd takes show to Alabama ahead of Tuesday’s special election
With just four days to go before the special election, MSNBC’s Chuck Todd took “MTP Daily,” a spinoff of the Sunday show “Meet the Press,” on the road to Alabama Friday ahead of the state’s Tuesday Senate race. “It’s snowing heavily in Alabama, really, and that’s nowhere near the craziest thing that’s happening here,” said Todd from Wintzell’s Oyster House in downtown Mobile, Ala. introducing the show. There, he sat down with several guests to discuss the heated race between Republican Roy Moore and Democrat Doug Jones. Todd sits down with Dean Young His first guest of the show was Dean Young, campaign strategist for Roy Moore. Young told Todd that Moore will help the country “get back to the Constitution and godly principles that made this country great” and he has “no doubt” his candidate will win on Tuesday. “How does he effectively serve in the United States Senate, when his fellow republican senator, if he gets elected, Richard Shelby, didn’t won’t to vote for him, said he wrote somebody in. Mitch McConnell doesn’t want him there. I’d say at least half of the Republican Senate conferences on the record, saying they want to see him potentially expelled from the Senate. How can he represent Alabama effectively?” Todd queried. “He’ll be effective,” Young responded. “Look at what’s happening now, so when he goes up to Washington, they count on him standing for what’s right, what’s just and what’s fair.” When pressed whether or not he had any doubt as to whether Moore would win, Young simply answered, Nope.”
Analysis: Rigged election claims may leave lasting damage
Donald Trump keeps peddling the notion the vote may be rigged. It’s unclear whether he understands the potential damage of his words, or simply doesn’t care. Trump’s claim, made without evidence, undercuts the essence of American democracy, the idea that U.S. elections are free and fair, with the vanquished peacefully stepping aside for the victor. His repeated assertions are sowing suspicion among his most ardent supporters, raising the possibility that millions of people may not accept the results on Nov. 8 if Trump loses. The responsibilities for the New York billionaire in such a scenario are minimal. Trump holds no public office and has said he’ll simply go back to his “very good way of life” if Democrat Hillary Clinton wins. Instead, Clinton and congressional Republicans, should they retain control, would be left trying to govern in a country divided not just by ideology, but also the legitimacy of the presidency. As Trump’s campaign careens from crisis to crisis, he’s broadened his unfounded allegations that Clinton, her backers and the media are conspiring to steal the election. He’s accused Clinton of meeting with global financial powers to “plot the destruction of U.S. sovereignty” and argued his opponent shouldn’t have even been allowed to seek the White House. “Hillary Clinton should have been prosecuted and should be in jail,” Trump tweeted on Saturday. “Instead she is running for president in what looks like a rigged election.” Trump is referring to Clinton’s use of a private email system while serving as secretary of state. Republicans, and some Democrats, have harshly criticized her decision to do so, but the FBI did not recommend anyone face criminal charges for her use of a private email address run on a personal server. Trump has offered only broad assertions about the potential for voter fraud and the complaints that the several women who have recently alleged he sexually accosted them are part of an effort to smear his campaign. “It’s one big ugly lie, it’s one big fix,” Trump told a rally in North Carolina on Friday, adding later: “And the only thing I say is hopefully, hopefully, our patriotic movement will overcome this terrible deception.” Trump’s supporters appear to be taking his grievances seriously. Only about one-third of Republicans said they have a great deal or quite a bit of confidence that votes on Election Day will be counted fairly, according to poll from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. During a campaign event Tuesday with Trump’s running mate, Mike Pence, a voter said she was deeply concerned about voter fraud and pledged to be “ready for a revolution” if Clinton wins. Pence waved away the woman’s rallying cry, saying, “Don’t say that.” And on Sunday, in an interview with NBC’s “Meet The Press,” he said the campaign will “accept the will of the American people, you bet.” There is no evidence voter fraud is a widespread problem in the United States. A study by a Loyola Law School professor found that out of 1 billion votes cast in all American elections between 2000 and 2014, there were only 31 known cases of impersonation fraud. Trump’s motivations for stoking these sentiments seem clear. One of his last hopes of winning the election is to suppress turnout by making these final weeks so repulsive to voters that some just stay home. Trump advisers privately say they hope to turn off young people in particular. This group leans Democratic but doesn’t have a long history of voting and is already skeptical of Clinton. Trump is also likely considering how he would spin a loss to Clinton, given that he’s spent decades cultivating a brand based on success and winning. His years in public life offer few examples where he’s owned up to his own failings and plenty where he’s tried to pass the blame on to others, as he’s now suggesting he would do if he’s defeated. Clinton appears increasingly aware that if she wins, she’d arrive at the White House facing more than the usual political divides. “Damage is being done that we’re going to have to repair,” she said during a recent campaign stop. But that task wouldn’t be Clinton’s alone. The majority of Trump’s supporters are Republicans. If he loses, party leaders will have to reckon with how much credence they give to claims the election was rigged and how closely they can work with a president whom at least some GOP backers will likely view as illegitimate. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell‘s office wouldn’t say Saturday whether he agreed with Trump’s assertions the election is being rigged. A spokeswoman for House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said Ryan is “fully confident the states will carry out this election with integrity.” Republicans have already experienced the paralyzing effect of Trump stirring up questions about a president’s legitimacy. He spent years challenging President Barack Obama‘s citizenship, deepening some GOP voters’ insistence that the party block the Democrat at every turn. Jim Manley, a former adviser to Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., recalled the skepticism some Republicans had about Obama. “I’m afraid a President Clinton is going to start off with far too many people raising similar questions,” he said.
Donald Trump works to right campaign before Wisconsin votes
Donald Trump worked to right his campaign on Sunday after a shaky week, brushing off verbal missteps about abortion, nuclear weapons and GOP rival Ted Cruz as he cast forward to Tuesday’s Republican presidential primary in Wisconsin. Trump, acknowledging the possibility of a loss to Cruz in Wisconsin, said it would be better to win the state but was confident he would capture the nomination regardless. He acknowledged that the past few days had marked a difficult patch for his campaign. “I think I get there anyway” — meaning the nomination — Trump told “Fox News Sunday. The Republican race is overshadowed by a persistent effort by Trump’s rivals in the campaign and the party to force the nomination fight into the July convention. Amid talk of the Republican establishment trying to block the front-runner, GOP Chairman Reince Priebus said the nomination process will be clear, open and transparent. Cameras will be there “at every step of the way” at the convention, he said on ABC’s “This Week.” If the race isn’t settled after all the primary contests, then “we’re going to have a multi-ballot convention,” with more and more delegates free to pick a candidate of their choice in each round. But Priebus was clear: “Nothing can get stolen from anyone.” On the Democratic side, the race between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders has grown increasingly bitter, too, though it has not matched the GOP contest for raw hostility. Their attention will quickly turn to an even more consequential contest, in New York on April 19, where Clinton hopes to avoid an upset in the state she served as senator. Clinton told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that she was confident the two campaigns could settle on a debate date before that primary. In recent days, Clinton has taken issue with Sanders’ suggestions that her campaign is being aided by fossil-fuel interests, and in the broadcast interview, she accused Sanders’ aides of doing insufficient research about her record of standing up to oil and gas companies. “We were not lying,” Sanders told CNN’s “State of the Union.” ”We were telling the truth.” Wisconsin has emerged as a proving ground for anti-Trump forces as the front-runner’s campaign hit a rough patch. Cruz has little chance to overtake Trump in the delegate hunt before the convention. Ohio Gov. Kasich has none. Both hope to deny Trump a delegate majority in what’s left of the primary season, forcing the nomination to be settled at a contested convention at which one of them might emerge. Kasich expressed confidence that Republicans would have an “open convention,” but suggested it wouldn’t involve the type of unseemly chaos that party leaders fear will play out on national television, dampening their prospects for winning the presidency and possibly House and Senate races, too. Kasich told ABC that a contested convention will be “so much fun.” “Kids will spend less time focusing on Bieber and Kardashian and more time focusing on how we elect presidents,” Kasich said. “It will be so cool.” Republished with permission of the Associated Press.
Wrong number? Donald Trump’s TV telephone interviews in spotlight
In television news, a telephone interview is typically frowned upon. Donald Trump‘s fondness for them is changing habits and causing consternation in newsrooms, while challenging political traditions. Two organizations are circulating petitions to encourage Sunday morning political shows to hang up on Trump. Some prominent holdouts, like Fox’s Chris Wallace, refuse to do on-air phoners. Others argue that a phone interview is better than no interview at all. Except in news emergencies, producers usually avoid phoners because television is a visual medium — a face-to-face discussion between a newsmaker and questioner is preferable to a picture of an anchor listening to a disembodied voice. It’s easy to see why Trump likes them. There’s no travel or TV makeup involved; if he wishes to, Trump can talk to Matt Lauer without changing out of his pajamas. They often put an interviewer at a disadvantage, since it’s harder to interrupt or ask follow-up questions, and impossible to tell if a subject is being coached. Face-to-face interviews let viewers see a candidate physically react to a tough question and think on his feet, said Chris Licht, executive producer of “CBS This Morning.” Sometimes that’s as important as what is being said. Trump tends to take over phone interviews and can get his message out with little challenge, Wallace said. “The Sunday show, in the broadcast landscape, I feel is a gold standard for probing interviews,” said Wallace, host of “Fox News Sunday.” ”The idea that you would do a phone interview, not face-to-face or not by satellite, with a presidential candidate — I’d never seen it before, and I was quite frankly shocked that my competitors were doing it.” Since Trump announced his candidacy in June 2015, Wallace has conducted three in-person interviews with him on “Fox News Sunday,” and four via satellite. Chuck Todd, host of NBC’s “Meet the Press,” has done phoners with Trump but now said he’s decided to stick to in-person interviews on his Sunday show. He’s no absolutist, though. “It’s a much better viewer experience when it’s in person,” Todd said. “Satellite and phoners are a little harder, there’s no doubt about it. But at the end of the day, you’ll take something over nothing.” Morning news shows do phoners most frequently. At the outset of the campaign, Trump was ratings catnip. The ratings impact of a Trump interview has since settled down, but it’s still hard to turn him down. He’s the leading contender for the Republican presidential nomination. He’s news. There appear to be no network policies; different shows on the same network have different philosophies. Licht has turned Trump down for phoners on CBS but concedes there may be exceptions for breaking news. “CBS This Morning,” in fact, aired Trump commenting by phone following Tuesday’s attack in Belgium. Since the campaign began, Trump has appeared for 29 phone interviews on the five Sunday political panel shows, according to the liberal watchdog Media Matters for America. Through last Sunday, ABC’s “This Week” has done it 10 times, CBS’ “Face the Nation” seven and six times each on “Meet the Press” and CNN’s “State of the Union.” None of these shows has done phoners with Ted Cruz, John Kasich, Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders, said Media Matters, which is urging that the practice be discontinued. The activist group MomsRising said the disparity “sends the message that some candidates can play by different rules, without consequences, and that’s just un-American.” A study by mediaQuant and The New York Times estimated that Trump has received the equivalent of $1.9 billion in free advertising given the media attention paid to his campaign. A Trump spokeswoman did not immediately return a request for comment. What’s unclear is whether other candidates were denied opportunities given to Trump. CNN chief executive Jeff Zucker said Trump opponents frequently turn down interview requests. During an appearance on CNN last week, former GOP candidate Carly Fiorina complained about media attention paid to Trump, leading Anderson Cooper to shoot back: “Donald Trump returned phone calls and was willing to do interviews, which was something your campaign, frankly, was unwilling to do.” Cruz spokeswoman Catherine Frazier tweeted last week that she saw Trump being interviewed via phone on “Fox & Friends” a day after Cruz was told that he couldn’t do a phone interview with the show. Fox said that since then, “Fox & Friends” has offered to conduct a phone interview with Cruz five times and has been turned down each time. Cruz did appear in the studio Wednesday. Frazier did not return requests for comment. NBC’s Todd believes that complaints about phoners are a surrogate for people who want to blame the media for Trump’s success. “You’re shooting the messenger while you’re ignoring what he is tapping into,” he said. “It becomes a little silly when you look at the bigger picture here. The media is getting criticized for interviewing Donald Trump. If we weren’t questioning him, we’d be criticized for not questioning him.” For years, cautious candidates have tended to be stingy with press access. Trump is the complete opposite. In a fast-moving information age, he may be changing the expectations for how often a candidate submits to interviews. Todd doesn’t believe it’s a coincidence that he’s had more access to Clinton during the past six weeks than he had during the six years she was in the Obama administration. Both Clinton and Cruz appeared in phone interviews following the Belgium attacks. “Trump’s opponents fall into two camps: Those who complain and continue to get crushed by the media wave, or those who grab a surfboard and try to ride it,” said Mark McKinnon, veteran Republican political operative and co-host of Showtime’s political road show, “The Circus.” Republished with permission of the Associated Press.
Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz jostle to claim ‘alternative-to-Donald Trump’ vote
Republicans Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz battled to emerge as the true anti-Trump on Sunday as the billionaire businessman took an ever-so-brief break from his trademark braggadocio to say his drive for the GOP nomination isn’t unstoppable — yet. Fresh off a commanding victory in South Carolina, Donald Trump declined to say the nomination was his to lose. But he quickly went on to declare, “I’m really on my way.” Soon enough, in a television interview, he was toting up electoral math all the way through Election Day and concluding, “I’m going to win.” The candidates’ diverging flight plans demonstrated how the campaign spreads out and speeds up now. Nevada’s GOP caucuses are Tuesday, and then a dozen states vote in the March 1 Super Tuesday bonanza. Trump was in Georgia exulting over his latest victory, Cruz headed for Nevada, and Rubio embarked on a Tennessee-Arkansas-Nevada trifecta. On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton savored her weekend win in the Nevada caucuses as Bernie Sanders acknowledged that while his insurgent campaign has made strides, “at the end of the day … you need delegates.” He looked past Tuesday’s Democratic primary in South Carolina to list Colorado, Minnesota, Massachusetts and Oklahoma as places where he has a “good shot” to do well. Rubio and Cruz used the Sunday morning news shows to spin rosy-road-forward scenarios after complete but unofficial returns in South Carolina put Trump way up top, with Rubio squeaking past Cruz for second. But with roughly 70 percent of Republicans in national polls declining to back Trump, Cruz and Rubio tried to cast themselves as the one candidate around whom what Rubio calls the “alternative-to-Donald-Trump vote” can coalesce. Rubio also took an aggressive run at Trump, faulting him for a lack of specifics on policy. “If you’re running for president of the United States, you can’t just tell people you’re going to make America great again,” he said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” At a later rally in Franklin, Tennessee, a Nashville suburb, Rubio took note of the smaller GOP field after Jeb Bush‘s departure from the race, and celebrated his biggest crowd of the campaign, estimated at more than 3,000 people. Rubio avoided criticizing his GOP rivals, instead highlighting his efforts to help middle-class families. Cruz, for his part, stressed his conservative bona fides and said he was the lone “strong conservative in this race who can win. We see conservatives continuing to unite behind our campaign,” he told NBC’s “Meet the Press.” With Bush gone from the race, Rubio was hoping to pick off past donors to the Bush campaign and looking to benefit as well from a cessation in the millions of dollars in negative ads run by the Bush campaign and its allies. Rubio also suggested it was only a matter of time before John Kasich and Ben Carson folded as well. He hinted it would be better to get that winnowing over with, saying, “the sooner we can coalesce, the better we’re going to be as a party in general.” Not so fast, Kasich countered. “We’re getting big crowds everywhere we go,” the Ohio governor insisted, listing Vermont, Massachusetts and Virginia as places he can shine. Cruz tried to brush right past his apparent third-place finish in South Carolina and instead hark back to his victory over Trump in leadoff Iowa. “It is becoming clearer and clearer that we are the one campaign who can beat Donald Trump,” Cruz told reporters before a campaign stop in rural Nevada. The Texas senator said his path to victory calls for a strong showing on Super Tuesday, and that Texas was “clearly the crown jewel” of that day. Rubio, a Florida senator, highlighted the big delegate take available in the five-state round of voting on March 15, which includes his home state. He noted that round offers victors a “winner-take-all” share of delegates rather a proportional share. Cruz scoffed at Rubio’s strategy, saying: “They’re trying to wait until March 15 to win a state.” Trump suddenly had nice things to say about Bush, the candidate he had hammered so relentlessly when they were rivals. As for Rubio, Trump told “Fox News Sunday” that “I start off liking everybody. Then, all of a sudden, they become mortal enemies.” At a rowdy Atlanta rally, Trump crowed over his big South Carolina win, saying “we’re just doing one after another.” Spitting out the superlatives, he called his sweep of all 50 delegates there “amazing,” ”beautiful,” ”conclusive” and “very, very decisive.” Clinton was happy with her Nevada win but acknowledged she has work to do in persuading voters that she has their best interests at heart. “I think there’s an underlying question that maybe is really in the back of people’s minds and that is, you know, is she in it for us or is she in it for herself?” Clinton said on CNN. “I think that is a question that people are trying to sort through.” Working to increase his support among black voters, Sanders visited a Baptist church luncheon following services in West Columbia, South Carolina, and talked up the country’s economic recovery under President Barack Obama. Republished with permission of the Associated Press.
One-time presidential favorites engage longshot rivals
Parallel political clashes were igniting Sunday in the volatile presidential primary races, as one-time Republican and Democratic favorites battled once-unlikely rivals in their own party over guns and foreign policy ahead of the Feb. 1 Iowa caucuses. Fueling the back-and-forth: President Barack Obama‘s address heralding two developments in U.S. relations with Iran as triumphs for “smart” diplomacy. Across the Sunday talk shows hours before their next debate, Hillary Clinton battered Bernie Sanders over his new opposition to a law that shields gun manufacturers from lawsuits. On the Republican side, Donald Trump pounded rival Ted Cruz for not reporting bank loans that Cruz had called an oversight. The Texas senator stuck to his debate sneer that Trump represents “New York values.” And from the margins, far from the front-runner position that was once presumed his, Jeb Bush condemned some of his rivals — especially Trump. “The guy’s entertaining, for sure. But his ideas aren’t gonna help people,” the former two-time Florida governor said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” ”He’s not going not win the nomination. And I am.” That’s far from clear just two weeks before the Feb. 1 Iowa caucuses, given the unsettled Republican field and Bush’s fade. But ambiguity rules the Democratic contest too: Sanders, the Vermont senator and self-described democratic socialist, was giving former secretary of state and first lady Hillary Clinton a strong challenge in Iowa and New Hampshire. On the eve of the debate, Sanders may have handed Clinton the tool she’s seeking. Sanders on Saturday night abruptly announced he now supports legislation that would expose gun manufacturers to some legal liability. Clinton jumped on the “flip-flop” and said on several Sunday shows that she hopes he changes his mind about other proposals tightening gun policy. Sanders denied he was changing position. In the past, he has said his support for the 2005 was in part an effort to protect small shops in home-state Vermont. The new proposal includes an amendment that would require the government to monitor and report on the law’s effect on small stores that serve the hunting community in rural areas. Among Republicans, as Cruz surged in Iowa, Trump grumbled that the Texas senator is “nasty” and said he would bring up Cruz’s loans that had been unreported. Cruz has said that was an oversight. Even President Barack Obama made an appearance during the Sunday morning shows to highlight back-to-back developments on Iran that he held up as victories: the release of Americans long-held by the Islamic Republic as part of a prisoner swap and the end of some sanctions against Iran as part of nuclear talks. “This is a good day,” Obama said. Republicans said they were glad the hostages were being released, but they cast the tangle of deals and developments as ultimately risky. “A very dangerous precedent,” is how Cruz, who is surging in Iowa, described the agreement’s implementation on Fox News’ “Fox and Friends.” ”The result of this, every bad actor on earth has been told, ‘Go capture an American’ … President Obama is in the let’s-make-a-deal business.” Clinton, formerly Obama’s secretary of state, backed the developments but said the U.S. needs to monitor Iran’s behavior on other matters. “If you’re committed to making the world safer and to show strong American leadership, you have to engage in patient, persistent diplomacy with people who are not your friends,” she said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” Republished with permission of The Associated Press.
Guest lineups for the Sunday news shows
Guest lineups for the Sunday TV news shows: ABC’s “This Week” — Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump; Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders; Reps. Peter King, R-N.Y., and Adam Schiff, D-Calif.; Defense Secretary Ash Carter. ___ NBC’s “Meet the Press” — Trump, Sanders; Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina; Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. ___ CBS’ “Face the Nation” — Trump; Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson; Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y. ___ CNN’s “State of the Union” — Trump; Republican presidential candidate Rand Paul. ___ “Fox News Sunday” — Republican presidential candidate Chris Christie; Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas. Republished with permission of the Associated Press.
On MTP, Jeb Bush says Marco Rubio has “given up” on his day job
Although he’s been hammered by the punditry class for getting schooled by Marco Rubio for daring to bring up his poor voting record in the U.S. Senate at last week’s GOP presidential debate, Jeb Bush said today that he has no regrets about doing so. “I got to be governor of a state and accomplish big things,” Bush told Meet The Press’s (MTP) Chuck Todd in an interview taped on Saturday in Miami and aired on Sunday morning. “And in this era of gridlock, it’s really hard to break through, and I think he’s given up. And I think that’s the wrong thing to do. This is about public service, about solving problems. If you look at the three people on the stage from the United States Senate, all three of them have a combined two bills that became law that they’ve sponsored. If you look at Hillary Clinton, in ten years, three bills she sponsored that became law. This is the gridlock that I’m running to try to break up. I can change the culture in Washington.” Bush insisted that he hadn’t seen the 112-page memo from his presidential campaign detailing why Rubio is a “risky bet” for the Republican Party before it leaked. “I didn’t see it,” he said. “Well, I read about it when it was leaked for sure. I didn’t know about the PowerPoint.” Bush told Todd that while he knows he needs to get better at debates after being considered to done poorly at last Wednesday night’s affair in Boulder, he hasn’t watched a tape of it, and doesn’t intend to. Bush answered a question by CNBC’s Carl Quintanilla about whether there should be an investigation of daily fantasy sports products DraftKings and FanDuel, but Chris Christie seemed to be impugning both men afterwards in expressing revulsion at such a question asked at a debate. Bush seemed to concede that he should have answered it differently. “My focus in the debate, I will change the whole conversation,” he told Todd. “So if someone asks me about Fantasy Football next time, which was kind of bizarre if you think about it, I’ll talk about the people I’ve met that are really worried that they have declining income.” Bush will appear in Tampa, Orlando and Jacksonville on Monday. He said that his speech in Tampa will be about how Republicans need to be hopeful and optimistic and have an aspirational message, which doesn’t seem like something he hasn’t been saying on the stump for sometime. Bush said he maintain a belief he’s had for decades – that there should be no litmus tests for Supreme Court Justice appointees, which is usually said in reference to the abortion issue. Interestingly, he said he’s having an internal debate about his feelings on the death penalty. “I’m conflicted,” he confessed to Todd.”I am. It was the law of the land when I was governor, and I faithfully dealt with it. To be honest with you, it is not a deterrent anymore because it’s seldom used. It clogs up the courts, it costs a ton of money. And– CHUCK TODD: Are you one of those that look at the fiscal part of it and say, “You know what? Maybe it makes more fiscal sense to not do it”? JEB BUSH: Here’s the one thing, and it’s hard for me, as a human being, to sign the death warrant, to be honest with you. I’m informed by my faith in many things, and this is one of them. So I have to admit that I’m conflicted about this. But here’s the deal, when you meet people, this happens in rare cases where the death penalty’s given out and you meet family members that have lost a loved one and it’s still in their heart. It’s etched in their soul. And this is the way that they get closure, I get more comfortable with it, to be honest with you. But we should reform it. If it’s to be used as a deterrent, it has to be reformed. It can’t take 25 years. That does no one any good. Neither the victims nor the state is solving this problem with that kind of tangled judicial process. CHUCK TODD: So you’re still in favor of it, but? JEB BUSH: Yeah, but I’m just saying, look, this is life, Chuck. It’s not all either/or. Sometimes you can see both sides. And I believe life is truly a gift from God, and innocent life particularly should be protected at all cost, for sure. But people that commit these crimes, there should be– justice can’t be denied. And it shouldn’t be delayed. And maybe there’s a better way to do this where victims feel as though they’re being served, because that should be front and center, the first obligation of the state.
Guest lineups for the Sunday news shows
Guest lineups for the Sunday TV news shows: ABC’s “This Week” — Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders; Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson; Reps. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., and Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii. ___ NBC’s “Meet the Press” — Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz; Reps. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and Mike Pompeo, R-Kansas. ___ CBS’ “Face the Nation” — Reps. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., and Elijah Cummings, D-Md. ___ CNN’s “State of the Union” — 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney. ___ “Fox News Sunday” — Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. Republished with permission of the Associated Press.
Hillary Clinton compares email attacks to White House controversies
Hillary Rodham Clinton on Sunday again defended her use of a private email server while she was secretary of state, comparing the multiple investigations to Republican-led probes into her husband’s administration more than two decades ago. “It is like a drip, drip, drip. And that’s why I said, there’s only so much that I can control,” she said in an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “I can’t predict to you what the Republicans will come up with, what kind of, you know, charges or claims they might make.” Clinton likened the inquiries into her correspondence to controversies like the Whitewater land deal that trailed her husband’s campaign and much of his administration, saying that voters in New York elected her to the Senate despite years of political questions. “During the ’90s, I was subjected to the same kind of barrage. And it was, it seemed to be at the time, endless,” she said. “When I ran for the Senate, people said, ‘Hey, we are more concerned about what you’re going to do for us.’ And I trust the voters to make that decision this time around too.” The historical comparison marks a new line of defense for Clinton, who’s seen her poll numbers fall amid lingering questions about her email usage. In a separate interview with CNN released on Saturday, former President Bill Clinton also equated the current investigations being conducted by congressional Republicans and federal agencies with questions faced by his administration. “This is just something that has been a regular feature of all our presidential campaigns, except in 2008 for unique reasons,” Clinton said. “Ever since Watergate, something like this happens.” He added: “We’re seeing history repeat itself.” Earlier this week, newly discovered email correspondence between Clinton and retired Gen. David Petraeus when he headed the military’s U.S. Central Command, raised fresh questions about whether she truly provided to the government a full record of her work-related correspondence as secretary of state. In August, Clinton submitted a sworn statement to a U.S. District Court saying she had directed all her work emails to be provided to the State Department. “On information and belief, this has been done,” she said in a declaration submitted as part of a lawsuit with Judicial Watch, a conservative advocacy group. Clinton said there was about a monthlong gap between her use of a Senate account and her move over to the private server, which was already set up in her basement to handle the former president’s personal correspondence. Her lawyers later tried to recover messages from that period, she said. After the State Department requested her records, Clinton said her lawyer combed through her correspondence to determine what was work-related — a process she said she did not participate in. She then requested they dispose of any personal emails, saying she didn’t “need them.” “I’m not by any means a technical expert. I relied on people who were,” she said. “And we have done everything we could in response to the State Department asking us to do this review.” Republished with permission of the Associated Press.
Dominating TV, Donald Trump a ratings draw
Opinion polls are one thing, but Nielsen numbers speak more loudly to television executives: Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump‘s ability to pull in viewers makes him catnip for news programs and wins a level of coverage that feeds on itself. NBC’s “Meet the Press” had its biggest audience in more than a year for its Trump interview on Aug. 16, leading that show’s biggest competitors — ABC’s “This Week” and CBS’ “Face the Nation” — to feature phone interviews with the New York businessman this past Sunday. After CNN turned Jake Tapper‘s interview with Trump into a prime-time special last week and earned its best ratings at that hour in a month, the network repeated it two nights later. Two Trump interviews on Sean Hannity‘s Fox News Channel show this month both brought in around 2.2 million viewers, well above his typical audience. Trump is generally considered the biggest reason why Fox reached a startling 24 million people for the first GOP presidential debate earlier this month — the most watched program in Fox News history. That instantly made him a big “get” for TV producers, and the media savvy ex-reality show host has eagerly played along. Keenly aware of his drawing power, Trump suggested in a Time magazine interview that he could ask CNN to pay $10 million to charity for his participation in the next GOP debate. “He’s getting a lot of attention that he should get because he’s doing so well in the polls and he’s getting a lot of attention because he’s Donald Trump, and you never know what he’s going to say,” said David Bohrman, a television consultant and former CNN Washington bureau chief. “It’s not negligence to cover him,” he said. Aware of that drawing power, cable news outlets cover Trump events with an intensity the other 16 Republican candidates can only envy. A town hall meeting in New Hampshire last week drew live coverage. CNN and Fox News both cast aside regular programming Friday to pick up Trump speaking at a rally in Alabama. Trump’s unpredictability is a bonus. His critical comments about Fox’s Megyn Kelly for her debate questions, made during an interview with CNN’s Don Lemon on what would normally be a sleepy August Friday night, put that show in headlines for the entire weekend. Viewership during the seven call-in interviews that Trump has given to MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” since June 18 rose 22 percent from what the talk show averaged 10 minutes prior to his call, the Nielsen company said. On July 24, the size of the audience jumped 47 percent in only a few minutes when Trump spoke. Danny Shea, editorial director of The Huffington Post, compared the attention news networks are giving to Trump to CNN’s non-stop coverage of the missing Malaysian airliner last year. He was on “Morning Joe” last week to defend HuffPo’s declaration that it would only cover Trump’s candidacy in its entertainment section, a decision that grows harder to defend with each new poll. “There’s an open secret that (Trump’s campaign) is a joke and a spectacle,” Shea said, “and by going wall-to-wall on it you’re just legitimizing it.” Morning Joe co-host, Joe Scarborough, rejected the argument that Trump had more ratings than news value. During off-the-air meetings, “nobody ever says, ‘OK, Donald Trump is great for ratings.’ What we say is, ‘what the hell is going on? Can you believe this? What is happening?’ He is a very real story, and the longer he stays in front, the more of a story he’s going to be.” In past campaigns, the media’s “invisible primary” gave bursts of early attention to candidates before voters settled things, to which Gary Hart, Howard Dean, John McCain, Jimmy Carter can attest. None matched Trump for attention, said Thomas Patterson, acting director of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. Only two months ago the GOP had a shapeless field of candidates, and now the non-Trumps are so starved for attention that some will struggle to survive until voting begins. Bohrman said Trump is getting a level of attention he normally doesn’t see until spring of an election year, when nominations are all but decided. “It’s kind of a ‘no time for losers’ policy in the newsroom,” Patterson said. Trump frequently mixes it up with the media, often through Twitter. Sometimes he’s playful, like suggesting that “Morning Joe” co-host Mika Brzezinski be paid more than Scarborough. Often he’s quite serious, and his reaction to Fox’s Kelly struck some who heard it as offensive. At the Alabama rally, Trump asked the audience what they thought of cable networks. Fox got cheers and MSNBC boos, making the latter network’s decision not to televise the speech live fortunate. At this point, it’s hard to tell how much attention Trump is receiving because he’s a frontrunner, and how much is because producers know he’ll provide a reliable ratings bump. “At the end, does it really matter if both are valid reasons for covering him?” Bohrman said. “There’s not a lot of other compelling stuff on television now. It’s the reality show of the season.” Republished with permission of the Associated Press.
No retreat, no surrender for free-speaking candidate Donald Trump
Once again, Donald Trump isn’t backing down from comments that have inflamed the Republican presidential race. And some of his rivals are no longer treating him with kid gloves. Republican presidential contenders Marco Rubio and Rick Perry said Trump, with his latest bombast, has demonstrated he is not fit to be president. At an Iowa candidate forum on Saturday, Trump dismissed Republican Sen. John McCain‘s reputation as a war hero, saying the aviator was merely taken captive after being shot down in Vietnam and “I like people who weren’t captured.” “I will say what I want to say,” Trump said Sunday, claimed a strong record of supporting veterans and accused McCain of failing them in Washington. “I will do far more for veterans than John McCain has done for many, many years, with all talk no action,” Trump said on ABC’s “This Week.” ”He’s on television all the time, talking, talking. Nothing gets done.” A McCain spokesman has said the Arizona lawmaker would have no comment about Trump’s remarks. Although unrepentant, Trump allowed after the Iowa event that McCain might be a hero after all, but said people who “fought hard and weren’t captured and went through a lot, they get no credit.” And he said Sunday about the Republican race: “I’m certainly not pulling out.” McCain spent more than five years as a prisoner of war, enduring torture. He stirred Trump’s anger last week when he said Trump’s comments about immigrants had “fired up the crazies” at a Phoenix rally. Weeks ago, after Trump asserted that Mexican immigrants are rapists and drug dealers, Hispanic leaders were incensed not only about those remarks but about the slow and halting response from others seeking the GOP nomination. But the fallout from Trump’s latest salvo has spread quickly and indicates that at least some of his competitors are losing their inhibitions about repudiating him. Rubio, a Florida senator, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” that Trump insulted all prisoners of war, not just McCain, the 2008 GOP nominee defeated by Barack Obama. “He’s saying that somehow if you’re captured in battle you’re less worthy of honors,” Rubio said. “It’s not just absurd, it’s offensive. It’s ridiculous. And I do think it’s a disqualifier as commander in chief.” Rubio said as the campaign goes on and Trump commands attention, “it’s required people to be more forceful in some of these offensive things that he is saying.” Perry, one of the few veterans running for president, said Trump has demonstrated he has neither the character nor the temperament for the White House. “Over the top,” the former Texas governor said of Trump on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” ”Really offensive.” Jeb Bush, whose wife is from Mexico, took sharp offense at Trump’s earlier comments as others hedged. After Trump’s comments about McCain, the former Florida governor tweeted, “Enough with the slanderous attacks.” But both Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, while agreeing McCain is a genuine hero, sidestepped when asked if they condemned Trump’s remarks. Republished with permission of the Associated Press.
