The alt-right’s take on Clinton’s speech: Botched, but legitimizing

By David Weigel

Hillary Clinton's highly touted address on the "alternative right" sparked debates in every corner of American politics. For some commentators on the left, such as the historian Rick Perlstein, Clinton's decision to cleave "mainstream" conservatism from the alts was an unforced blunder.

"Republican congressional candidates have to be tied to a Trumpism that is understood as the apotheosis of the recent history of the Republican Party," Perlstein wrote. "Because if they are not, it would be oh so easy for the survivors to say, on November 9: It ain’t me, babe. I’m a Ryan conservative, not a Trumpite. We Ryanites are normal, respectable folk. After all, even Hillary Clinton says so."

For the alt-right and its allies — a group that temporarily included Republicans who accused Clinton of a strange diversion — the speech helped elevate a fringe. Jared Taylor, the editor of American Renaissance, told The Washington Post before the speech that his colleagues were taking bets on whether they'd be name-checked. After the speech, he was simply bemused. "She seems to be running against Nigel Farage and Alex Jones for president," Taylor said. "And maybe Steve Bannon."

Jones, the Texas-based radio host who has hitched his wagon to Donald Trump, derided Clinton as attacking free speech and trying to control what media was and wasn't worth listening to. In videos, Jones and his colleagues at InfoWars portrayed her as a sickly, doddering figure of desperation.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/08/28/the-alt-rights-take-on-clintons-speech-botched-but-legitimizing/?wpisrc=nl_headlines&wpmm=1

Jill Stein marks three months since gorilla Harambe’s death

Three months after a zoo worker in Cincinnati shot Harambe, a 17-year-old silverback gorilla, Green Party nominee Jill Stein is calling for expanded legal protections for animals.

Harambe’s death was national news in late May and sparked controversy among animal rights activists who questioned whether it was justified.
The gorilla was shot after it grabbed a 3-year-old boy who fell into his enclosure. It raised scrutiny over whether apes, human’s closest relatives, should be kept in zoos at all.

“The killing of Harambe at the Cincinnati Zoo highlights the need to adopt stronger legal protections for the rights of animals,” Stein said in a statement.

Stein tweeted out her statement on Sunday afternoon, writing the killing “reminds us to be a voice for the voiceless.”

Dr. Jill Stein
?@DrJillStein

The killing of Harambe 3 months ago today reminds us to be a voice for the voiceless.

http://www.jill2016.com/statement_by_jill_stein_for_president_on_the_killing_of_harambe_in_cincinnati …

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When politics and justice collide: Clinton case echoes Gore probe

Kevin Johnson, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — The Democratic presidential candidate’s interview with federal investigators was hours-long.

The questions, including tense exchanges about missing emails from a high-profile government archive, spanned years when the then-candidate was one of the most senior officials in government.

If the political drama sounds familiar, it should.

Hillary Clinton’s current struggles with an email scandal, the aftermath of a Justice Department investigation and serious questions about fundraising activities closely track the fraught political landscape then-vice president and Democratic presidential nominee Al Gore confronted in 2000.

Sixteen years ago, then-attorney general Janet Reno rejected for a third time a recommendation to appoint a special counsel to investigate Gore's campaign fundraising activities in 1996.

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http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2016/08/28/clinton-emails-justice-department-gore-reno/89351954/

Juan Williams: Trump's race politics will destroy GOP

By Juan Williams - 08/29/16 06:00 AM EDT

Now for some startling opinions about race relations and the current leader of the Republican Party, Donald Trump.

In the opinion of 50 percent of all Americans, the word 'racist' fits Trump either "very well" or "somewhat well," according to a July poll from the Associated Press and GfK. Most of those people — 35 percent of the overall population — said the term fits the GOP nominee "very well." Here’s another eye-opening opinion: Most Americans, 56 percent, “believe that Trump is biased against women and minorities,” according to an August Washington Post poll.

Last week, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton said Trump is “taking hate groups mainstream,” and “helping a radical fringe take over one of America’s two major political parties.” Trump tried to reduce the accusations to a game of tit-for-tat by calling her a "bigot.” But Clinton’s words simply amplified what Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said months ago, after Trump attacked an Indiana-born judge as being incapable of fairness because of his Mexican heritage. Ryan said Trump’s remarks amounted to a “textbook definition of a racist comment.”

The damage Trump is doing to the GOP is evident in polls showing more than 12 percent of registered Republicans intend to vote for Clinton. GOP-leaning independent voters are staying away from Trump, too. The latest Quinnipiac poll had Clinton with 51 percent support and the Republican nominee fading.

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http://thehill.com/opinion/juan-williams/293594-juan-williams-trumps-race-politics-will-destroy-gop

The devolution of the GOP - By Joe Scarborough

Friday started as it usually does: an early wake-up call, an interview with the next president of the United States and a hateful personal attack from Donald Trump. Such is life during these dog days of August in a nasty presidential campaign not even near its ugly end.

These days, a rudely out-of-bounds Trump attack surprises Mika and me about as much as a puppy relieving himself on a living room rug. We’ve figured out by now that it does no good to lose your cool with the puppy or Donald Trump since neither have and control over their bladder or mouth.

As Aristotle famously said, “It is what it is.”

Fortunately, things became a bit more interesting by the time we rolled into Kennebunkport for a speech on the 2016 campaign and made our way to Walker’s Point to visit President Bush and Barbara. Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and Bush biographer Jon Meacham was already inside the family home along with Nicolle Wallace when we arrived. Bush chief of staff Jean Becker joked when we joined the conversation that “all we need is Barnicle to complete the Morning Joe set!”

George and Barbara Bush were the same gracious and welcoming hosts Friday night that they had been when my family last visited Kennebunkport five years earlier. Mrs. Bush even asked about my youngest children, who she remembered remarkably well considering the countless guests that have streamed through their world since that summer’s day in 2011. But her human touch is the kind of thing the family always seems to manage with ease. They make others around them feel special despite the fact that they have lived the most remarkable of lives, serving in Congress, running the Republican National Committee, heading up the CIA, being the UN Ambassador as well as the US Ambassador to China, serving as Ronald Reagan’s vice president and then leading America as the 41st president of the United States.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2016/08/28/the-devolution-of-the-gop/?utm_term=.cf47965399f0&wpisrc=nl_headlines&wpmm=1

Wasserman Schultz goes down to wire against primary challenger

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the embattled former chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), will seek to survive a serious primary challenge from a liberal rival on Tuesday.

The primary will cap a tough summer for the Florida Democrat, who decided to resign from the DNC on the eve of the Democratic National Convention, after leaked emails showed that staffers at her organization appeared to be plotting ways to undermine the presidential campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

Wasserman Schultz took a public beating from the left during the presidential primaries, and was booed at a breakfast meeting of her own state delegation at the Democratic convention. Yet she is considered the favorite to win Tuesday's primary over law professor Tim Canova, who has sought to take advantage of her national difficulties.

Wasserman Schultz has deep relationships in her district that go back to 1992, when she first won election to the state legislature. When she was elected to the House in 2004, she became Florida’s first Jewish congresswoman. Party strategists said loyalty to Wasserman Schultz in the predominantly Jewish district will be tough for Canova to shake.

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http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/293506-wasserman-schultz-goes-down-to-the-wire-against-primary-challenger

Trump flunky Christie: Clinton ‘should be ashamed of herself’ for bringing race into this election

Heedless of GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump describing Mexicans as “rapists” and calling for a ban on Muslims entering the U.S., Trump surrogate Chris Christie pointed the finger at former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for injecting race into the campaign season.

Appearing on ABC’s This Week with host Martha Raddatz on Sunday morning, the New Jersey governor lashed out at Clinton for her speech earlier in the week when she attacked Trump’s courtship of white supremacists and the so-called “alt-right” which traffics in blatant bigotry.

Asked by Raddatz if Trump was correct in returning fire by calling Clinton a “bigot,” Christie neatly sidestepped the question and hammered Clinton for unfairly pointing out the obvious. “I’ll tell you this. This type of discourse in the campaign is just unwarranted, but it was started by Mrs. Clinton,” Christie insisted. “Mrs. Clinton has started the idea of calling Donald Trump those type of names, and the fact is that once you are the person, and Mrs. Clinton is the person, who injected this type of commentary into this race you can’t then sit back and start complaining about it or have some of your handmaidens in the media complain about it.”

“The fact is she’s been the person who started this type of conversation in the campaign,” he continued. “She should be ashamed of herself.”

A literary guide to hating Barack Obama

Inside the right-wing anti-Obama books, from 2008 to 2016

By Carlos Lozada

Secret Muslim. Socialist. Amateur. Anti-American. Criminal.

Throughout the presidency of Barack Obama, and even before it, a chorus of writers has stood stage right, reinterpreting the era but mainly eviscerating the man. Obama, initially little known, became a literary subgenre and publishing obsession, with countless volumes attacking the president, promising to unmask who he really is, what he really thinks and why he does the things he does. And for a while, at least, the books sold well.

Selecting a representative set among dozens and dozens of titles in the Obama hatred literature is not easy. Do you go with “Impeachable Offenses” or “The Manchurian President”? “Divider-in-Chief” or “The Obama Nation”? “Culture of Corruption” or “The Roots of Obama’s Rage”? A sample of such books, spanning 2008 to 2016, shows that, while the anti-Obama canon can be predictable, it is by no means static. The aversion to the president is always growing, and the nature of that aversion is always evolving toward harsher conclusions.

In the beginning, there was ignorance, and the void of our Obama knowledge was filled with speculation, bits of autobiography and family lore. The senator from Illinois was deemed dangerous for all that he might be: distant, unfamiliar, foreign in so many ways. Once he sat in the Oval Office, however, the attacks shifted, and the president became that most recognizable of political creatures: unprincipled, corrupt, Chicago. As conservative disdain intensified throughout his first term, Obama came to be seen as a bungler, in over his head (think the Libya intervention or Operation Fast and Furious). Yet soon he was redefined once more, this time as a brilliant subversive: It’s not that Obama doesn’t know what he’s doing but that he knows all too well. That leads, inevitably, to the final and most damning judgment — that this president is a criminal.

Donald Trump’s rise in GOP presidential politics has drawn sustenance and inspiration from the anti-Obama literature, regardless of whether its authors support the candidate. Indeed, the arc of Trump’s criticisms of the president, from his birtherism in 2011 to his more recent charge that Obama is “the founder of ISIS,” traces, in a distorted and exaggerated way, these portrayals of the president, from unknown outsider to recidivist lawbreaker.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/book-party/wp/2016/08/25/a-literary-guide-to-hating-barack-obama/?utm_term=.37554ad42d3c&wpisrc=nl_headlines&wpmm=1

Donald Trump hires Paul LePage’s daughter

By James Pindell GLOBE STAFF AUGUST 24, 2016

Donald Trump trusts his own children to help run his business empire, so maybe it shouldn’t be surprising that he decided to hire Maine Governor Paul LePage’s daughter to help his campaign win the Pine Tree State.

The Maine Republican Party announced that Lauren LePage will serve as the Trump campaign’s coalitions director. This is not her first job in politics. The third-year University of Maine law student also headed up a political non-profit and worked for her father. The campaign also announced a deputy state director, meaning the campaign now has three staffers in the state. Lauren isn’t the only LePage to get an interesting job this summer. The first lady is working as a waitress in Boothbay Harbor.

Trump has tried to turn Maine into a presidential campaign battleground. Maine and Nebraska are the only two states that award electoral votes by congressional district as well as by the statewide vote. While Trump is behind statewide, he is hoping to win a single electoral vote in the state’s 2nd Congressional District. That district, which includes Downeast Maine and Bangor, is currently represented by a Republican in Congress.

The Democrats, not surprisingly, appeared unimpressed with Trump’s new employee. “Regardless of his staffing choices, Donald Trump has a disastrous economic plan that would result in the loss of 3.5 million American jobs — which could mean 14,000 in Maine alone,” said Maine Democratic Party Chairman Phil Bartlett. “Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton has laid out a forward thinking plan that includes the largest investment in good-paying jobs since World War II, one that could mean 43,000 new jobs in Maine.”

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https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/politics/2016/08/24/trump-hires-lepage-daughter-maine/bq1YKxWsNDae0lFuREQkLN/story.html

Anti-Trump Republicans To Run Ads Against Trump In Key States

It is the longest of long games.

Yet, a group of Republicans who are dismayed by Trump and alarmed by his slipping poll numbers will be running ads in key states across the country, calling for Trump to step aside, according to a new report from Politico.

The ad, which was sponsored by the group "Free the Delegates" will run in suburbs in Florida, Virginia, Ohio and Michigan, according to Politico. Free the Delegates had tried to stop Trump at the Republican convention, but had fallen short. The ad is titled "Keep Your Promise," which is a throwback to a comment Trump made early in the campaign that he'd bow out of the presidential race if he was far behind in national polls.

"Resign the nomination. Let the RNC replace you so we can beat Hillary," the ad read at the end.

The ad buy was fairly limited and was only five figures, Politico reported. In an interview with Politico, Regina Thomson, who runs Free the Delegates, told Politico that eventually the group hoped to get enough money to run the ad on Fox News.