This story was co-published with The New York Times’ Sunday Review. Even as Hillary Clinton appears poised to win easily against a highly erratic candidate with a campaign in meltdown, a sobering reality awaits Democrats on Nov. 9. It seems likely that they will eke out at most a narrow majority in the Senate, but will…
WASHINGTON -- Donald Trump, trailing in opinion polls, entered the final six weeks of the campaign with a financial deficit as well, having almost $25 million less to spend than Hillary Clinton, new Federal Election Commission filings show. Trump reported $34.8 million in the bank as of Sept. 30, compared with $59.7 million for Clinton. She…
A ‘Victory Bus' bearing the Trump-Pence logo will tour the Heart of Dixie next week. While the reality show star turned Republican presidential nominee won't appear in person, Rep. Robert Aderholt and ALGOP Chairman Terry Lathan will barnstorm the interstate, visiting GOP headquarters, the state capital, and a pair of stores doing brisk business in guns.…
Donald Trump rode to the top of the Republican ticket promising a "big, beautiful, powerful" border wall with Mexico to stop the flow of undocumented immigrants. Along that border, however, Americans are more likely to call the wall a "waste of money", according to a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll.
The results show that while the New York businessman may have expected his tough stance on immigration to fire up support nationally, it seems to be falling short in a state heavily affected by illegal immigration, and where he is now facing a surprising challenge from his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.
Asked if a wall would be “an effective barrier or a waste of money,” 47 percent of Arizona residents picked “waste of money” and 34 percent picked “effective barrier”, with the rest picking neither, according to the poll. Among Republicans, 21 percent picked "waste of money” and 57 percent picked “effective barrier."
Most Arizonans also believed it is not realistic to expect Mexico to pay for the wall, something Trump has vowed would happen if he’s elected president on Nov. 8, according to the poll.
The results lined up closely with nationwide opinions of Trump’s immigration policy: 49 percent of American adults say the wall would be a “waste of money” and 31 percent say it would be an “effective barrier.”
“As big and powerful, as rich as this nation is, we cannot just leave the door open,” said Tony Estrada, Santa Cruz County Sheriff, who has served in law enforcement in the border county for 49 years. “But, we need a realistic and humane process. Donald Trump is … catering to people’s fear.”
Polls show Arizona, a state that has voted Democrat only once in a presidential election since 1952, has become competitive. The Real Clear Politics average of polls showed Clinton ahead there by 1.3 percentage points. Reuters/Ipsos polling shows Trump ahead there by 4 points.
Clinton’s campaign said last week it would spend $2 million more campaigning in Arizona before the election.
DRIVING LATINOS TO THE POLLS
Arizona’s border with Mexico is 370 miles long, covering an isolated desert terrain that has drawn millions seeking to cross illegally. The state's number of undocumented immigrants has fallen 35 percent from a 2007 peak to 325,000, according to the Pew Research Center, as Arizona cracked down on that population. Nationwide, the number has dropped 9 percent from a high in 2007 to 11.1 million undocumented immigrants.
Wendy Cornacchio, a 45 year-old Trump supporter from Phoenix, said she believes illegal immigration is still a problem – but she would rather see technologies like drone surveillance than Trump’s wall to address it. “I don’t think that necessarily building a wall will work, but the concept of closing the borders I agree with,” she said.
Florida is another closely-fought state that has seen large levels of illegal immigration, though by sea rather than by land. Some 41 percent of voters there said they believed Trump’s wall would be a “waste of money”, while 36 percent thought it would be an “effective barrier”.
Progressive activist groups in both Florida and Arizona have been using Trump’s hard line on immigration against him to mobilize Latinos for Clinton, who advocates a path to citizenship for some undocumented immigrants. Mi Familia Vota, for example, says they registered more than 15,000 people in Arizona this year.
The Reuters/Ipsos poll was conducted online in English and Spanish in Arizona and Florida. The Arizona poll ran from Oct. 5 to Oct. 19 and gathered responses from 2,600 people. The Florida poll ran from Oct. 5 to Oct. 12 and gathered responses from 2,610 people. Both polls have a credibility interval, a measure of accuracy, of 2 percentage points for the total group and 3 percentage points for likely voters.
(Additional reporting by Paul Ingram in Tuscon; Editing by Richard Valdmanis and Mary Milliken)
Former Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders offered a compelling argument this week to those of his supporters still hesitant about a Hillary Clinton presidency. He explained that the success of the revolution relies not on who is president, but on the people continuing to fight for progressive ideals.
Armand Aviram—who said his personal rise from unemployed Sanders campaign volunteer to NowThis election producer is a “direct result” of the Vermont senator’s political revolution—asked the former Democratic candidate to explain “how your political revolution continues under a Hillary Clinton administration.”
“It’s not my political revolution; it’s your political revolution,” Sanders began, calling his supporters’ efforts during the Democratic primary “perhaps the most consequential campaign in the modern history of America.”
“Ideas that at one point were thought to be crazy and fringe are now incorporated in the Democratic National Platform,” Sanders said. “You did that.”
Holding up a copy of the Democratic National Platform, Sanders noted that at least 80 percent of the policies are “what we believe in.”
“Where do we go from here?” he asked. “We implement this.”
Sanders’ historic run as a registered Independent vying for the Democratic Party’s nomination rallied progressive voters, particularly millennials, who overwhelmingly supported the Vermont senator over Clinton. After conceding the primary, Sanders worked to ensure the Democratic platform would include many of his progressive policy proposals, withholding his endorsement of Clinton for almost a month.
"There was a significant coming together between the two campaigns and we produced, by far, the most progressive platform in the history of the Democratic Party,” Sanders said at the Democratic National Convention in July. “Our job now is to see that platform implemented by a Democratic Senate, a Democratic House and a Hillary Clinton presidency. And I am going to do everything I can to make that happen.”
Asked what he would say to voters who plan on casting their ballots for a third-party candidate in order to "send a message" to the Democratic Party, Sanders, the longest serving Independent in the history of Congress, told Aviram, “people have to vote their conscience.” But he added that he hopes his supporters “understand Donald Trump would be a real, real disaster for this country. He stands in opposition to everything that we believe in.”
Sanders urged his supporters not to see a Clinton presidency as an end to the political revolution. “The day after the election, we don’t sit back and say, well, Clinton is president," Sanders said. He insisted the next step is to "mobilize our people” and make sure the government “moves forward with an agenda that helps transform this country.”
“I want to see Clinton become president,” Sanders continued. “And the day after that, I and the progressive members of Congress, and hopefully millions of other people will say, President-elect Clinton, here is the Democratic National platform, it is a progressive document. We are going to be introducing legislation piece by piece by piece—on trade, on raising the minimum wage, on making public colleges and universities tuition-free, on a Medicare-for-all single-payer program, on rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure.”
Sanders said those who still don’t believe Clinton will follow through with the progressive party platform are “going to have to work with [him] to make sure that it happens.”
“This is not trust,” Sanders argued. “We’re not here to trust. It is the very opposite of what I am saying: To say, oh sit back, elect Clinton and then trust.”
“No,” he continued. “Mobilize. Educate. Fight.”
And if (worst case scenario) our elected leaders don’t follow through?
“Let them know how you feel about it,” Sanders said.
Watch the interview below, via NowThis.
Saturday Night Live guest host Tom Hanks played debate moderator Chris Wallace in this week's cold opener, which featured Alec Baldwin and Kate McKinnon as Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.
"I'm Chris Wallace," Hanks said, "and welcome to the third and final presidential debate. Tonight is going to be a lot like the third 'Lord of the Rings' movie. You don't really want to watch, but hey, you've come this far."
Baldwin mocked Trump's subdued opening tone by calling himself a "sweet little Baby Trump" and then ran down the list of celebrities who support him, "I've got Sarah Palin, I've got Chachi and I'e got the best Baldwin brother, Stephen Baldwin."
When Wallace asked if Trump had an answer to the sexual harassment allegations against him, Trump said, "Chris, of course I do. I'm completely innocent. I've said this before and I'll say it again. Nobody has more respect for women than I do."
This set off the "entire planet" into gales of laughter, forcing Wallace to say, "All right, all right, settle down down. Settle down, settle down, entire planet, settle down."
As Clinton began to speak about Trump's tax evasion, Trump said the now-infamous, "What a nasty woman" line.
Clinton responded, "That's exactly the kind of language that has poisoned and debased this election. And if you agree, go to hillaryclinton.com and buy a limited edition 'Nasty Woman' mug."
"I am winning in every single poll taken outside of a Cracker Barrel," Trump said. "And on November 9, be sure to check out Trump TV. You're gonna hate it."
Watch the video, embedded below:
Here's a gif of the opening moments:
A trio of campaign advisers from the Donald Trump campaign reportedly took a group of media personnel to a Las Vegas strip club the night before the third and final presidential debate.
Page Six.com reported Saturday evening that senior communications director Jason Miller, deputy communications director Jessica Ditto and spokesperson A. J. Delgado went to Sapphire Las Vegas Gentlemen's Club and took a group of media workers from CNN, NBC and ABC with them.
Sapphire calls itself the largest strip club in the world, boasting over "70,000 square feet of topless entertainment."
Sources told Page Six that the Trump delegation were accompanied by "CNN producer Noah Gray, NBC News reporter Anthony Terrell and a 'camerman' from ABC News."
Given the ever-growing number of women alleging that the Republican presidential nominee touched or kissed them against their will, one media insider said, going to Sapphire "was a pretty bad idea, especially the day before the final debate. It’s a serious lapse in judgment.”
"Reps for NBC, ABC, CNN and the Trump campaign did not comment," wrote Page Six's Emily Smith and Carlos Greer. "Guest dancers scheduled at the club this weekend include porn stars Asa Akira and Britney Amber."
The Trump staffers of course have every right to enjoy themselves however they like in their off hours, even if that means stuffing dollar bills into sex workers' g-strings, but the inclusion of media personnel in the excursion raises ethical questions.
Web commentators were quick to point out the issue.
Audience members at a Trump rally on Saturday insulted members of the media with a Nazi term for World War II journalists who refused to toe the party's line.
"Lügenpresse!" shouted a man in full "Make America Great Again" regalia in video posted by political reporter Rosie Gray.
"Lügenpresse!" shouted a man next to him. "Did I say it right?"
"You said it right," said the first rally goer.
"You're all in bed with the Clintons," said the second man. "You're all bought and paid for."
CNN's Jake Tapper pointed out that "Lügenpresse" was a Nazi term.
"Lügenpresse, "lying press," literally a Nazi-era term. You know, Nazis -- the evil forces the US and allies defeated," he tweeted, along with a link to a Reuters article about the term's history and its recent resurgence among modern neo-Nazis.
"'Luegenpresse' is a word contaminated by the Nazis," said linguist Nina Janich -- a professor at the Technical University Darmstadt -- to Reuters.
"It's used deliberately in the PEGIDA [the neo-Nazi group, "Patriotic Europeans against the Islamisation of the West"] movement to steer it against those (in the media) who criticize their movement," Janich explained.
Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton may have spoken for all of us when she said she thinks about Donald Trump as little as possible these days.
According to TheHill.com, Clinton was asked by a reporter in a press huddle aboard her campaign jet to respond to the Republican nominee's charges that the media is biased against him.
“I debated him for four and a half hours. I don’t even think about responding to him anymore,” Clinton said, according to Ruby Cramer of CBS News. "I'm going to let the American people decide between what he offers and what we offer. So he can say whatever he wants to, he can run his campaign however he wants to. He can go off on tangents, he can go to Gettysburg and say he’s gonna sue women you’ve made accusations against him."
"I'm going to keep talking about what we want to do," Clinton continued, "what we think the country deserves in the next president and vice president. And actually when it comes right down to it, I think that's what people end up voting on."
AT&T Inc said on Saturday it agreed to buy Time Warner Inc for $85.4 billion, the boldest move yet by a telecommunications company to acquire content to stream over its high-speed network to attract a growing number of online viewers.
The biggest deal in the world this year will, if approved by regulators, give AT&T control of cable TV channels HBO and CNN, film studio Warner Bros and other coveted media assets. The tie-up will likely face intense scrutiny by U.S. antitrust enforcers worried that AT&T might try to limit distribution of Time Warner material.
AT&T will pay $107.50 per Time Warner share, in a combination of cash and stock, worth $85.4 billion overall, according to a company statement. AT&T said it expected to close the deal by the end of 2017.
Dallas-based AT&T said it and Time Warner were determining which Federal Communications Commission licenses, if any, would be transferred to AT&T in the deal.
Several U.S. lawmakers were already worried about cable company Comcast Corp's $30 billion acquisition of NBCUniversal, creating an industry behemoth. They argued for close regulatory scrutiny of the AT&T deal.
U.S. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, who has complained about media coverage of his campaign, said at a rally on Saturday he would block any AT&T-Time Warner deal if he wins the Nov. 8 election.
"It's too much concentration of power in the hands of too few," said Trump.
Representatives of his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
CONTENT PLUS DELIVERY
AT&T, whose main wireless phone and broadband service business is showing signs of slowing, has already made moves to turn itself into a media powerhouse. It bought satellite TV provider DirecTV last year for $48.5 billion.
It had about 142 million North American wireless subscribers as of June 30, and about 38 million video subscribers through DirecTV and its U-verse service.
New York-based Time Warner is a major force in movies, TV and video games. Its assets include the HBO, CNN, TBS and TNT networks as well as the Warner Bros film studio, producer of the “Batman” and “Harry Potter” film franchises. The company also owns a 10 percent stake in video streaming site Hulu. The HBO network alone has more than 130 million subscribers.
The deal is the latest in the consolidation of the telecom and media sectors, coming on the heels of AT&T's purchase of NBCUniversal. AT&T's wireless rival Verizon Communications Inc is in the process of buying internet company Yahoo Inc for about $4.8 billion.
Time Warner Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bewkes rejected an $80 billion offer from Twenty-First Century Fox Inc in 2014.
5G IS COMING
Owning more content gives cable and telecom companies bargaining leverage with other content companies as customers demand smaller, hand-picked cable offerings or switch to watching online. New mobile technology including next-generation 5G networks could make a content tie-up especially attractive for wireless providers.
"We think 5G mobile is coming, we think 5G mobile is an epic game-changer," Rich Tullo, director of research at Albert Fried & Co, said in a research note, adding that mobile providers would be in position to disrupt traditional pay-TV services.
A previous Time Warner blockbuster deal, its 2000 merger with AOL, is now considered one of the most ill-advised corporate marriages on record.
(Additional reporting by David Shepardson, Liana Baker, Malathi Nayak and Diane Bartz; Writing by Bill Rigby; Editing by David Gregorio)
As Donald Trump has ratcheted up his hateful rhetoric against the media, his fans have grown increasingly hostile to the reporters on the ground covering the campaign.
On Saturday, CNN's Jim Acosta posted video of Trump supporters screaming at him as he tried to file a live report.
"Tell the truth," the crowd chanted, and "CNN sucks!"
When Acosta tried to engage some members of the crowd, they became even more abusive, Mediaite said, telling Acosta he looks "like a woman" and shouting insults.
Watch the video, embedded below:
Here's longer video posted by Mediaite:
Economic adviser to Donald Trump Peter Navarro made a rude, dismissive appearance on MSNBC Saturday evening while discussing new accusations against the Republican presidential nominee.
Navarro told Reid that he wants media figures to "talk policy" when it comes to Trump and not the harassment allegations against him.
"If you want me to talk policy -- which is an intelligent thing for you to want to do -- don't you wish your candidate would talk policy?" said Reid.
"Here's the hashtag Trump policy challenge, ok?" Navarro said. "A hundred bucks to anybody on the set of MSNBC that can get through a segment without pivoting to other stuff than policy."
"How about you offer that to your candidate?" Reid replied.
Watch the video, embedded below:
U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump promised on Saturday to foil a proposed deal for AT&T to buy Time Warner if he wins the Nov. 8 election, arguing it was an example of a "power structure" rigged against both him and voters.
Trump, whose candidacy has caused ruptures in his party, listed his policy plans for the first 100 days of his presidency in a campaign speech in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, near the site of a Civil War battlefield and a celebrated address by President Abraham Lincoln.
But he also defiantly raised personal grievances, describing how, if elected, he would address them from the White House in a way he said would benefit Americans.
Moments after promising Americans that he represented a hopeful break from the status quo, he promised to sue nearly a dozen women who have come forward in the last two weeks to accuse him of sexual assault, calling them liars.
And he added a new threat to his repeated castigation of U.S. media corporations, which he says cover his campaign unfairly to help Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.
"They're trying desperately to suppress my vote and the voice of the American people," Trump, who often rails against media outlets and journalists covering his events, told supporters in his speech. Trump has not provided evidence for his assertion that the election would be rigged.
"As an example of the power structure I'm fighting, AT&T is buying Time Warner and thus CNN, a deal we will not approve in my administration because it's too much concentration of power in the hands of too few," Trump said.
Telecommunications company AT&T Inc has agreed in principle to buy Time Warner Inc, one of the country's largest film and television companies, for about $85 billion and an announcement could be made as early as Saturday.
Trump also said he would look at "breaking" up the acquisition by Comcast Corp of the media company NBC Universal in 2013.
"Deals like this destroy democracy," he said in explaining his apparent deviation from the traditional Republican position that seeks to minimize the taxation and regulation of American companies.
Amazon.com Inc, the online retailer, should also be paying "massive taxes", Trump said, reminding voters that Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos also owns the Washington Post, a newspaper whose coverage Trump dislikes.
Trump, a wealthy New York building developer and television star, acknowledged in a debate with Clinton on Oct. 9 that he had used investment losses to avoid paying taxes. The New York Times reported on Oct. 1 that Trump's declared loss of $916 million in 1995 was so large that he could legally have avoided paying any federal income taxes for up to 18 years.
Although Trump on Saturday described his plans at least in part as a response to his belief such organizations had treated him unfairly, he argued that less wealthy voters had even greater cause to worry.
"When a simple phone call placed with the biggest newspapers or television networks gets them wall-to-wall coverage with virtually no fact-checking whatsoever, here is why this is relevant to you," he said. "If they can fight somebody like me who has unlimited resources to fight back, just look at what they could do to you, your jobs, your security, your education, your health care."
Trump, who has said he may not accept the election's outcome if he loses, is trailing Clinton in most polls - although he has narrowed the gap according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Friday. Clinton maintained her commanding lead in the race to win the Electoral College, however, and claim the U.S. presidency, a Reuters/Ipsos States of the Nation project poll released on Saturday showed.
The speech was billed by his campaign as major outlining of his policies and principles. Many of the policy ideas Trump listed on Saturday were familiar, not least his promise to build a wall on the border with Mexico to deter illegal immigration.
Trump has bluntly said that Mexico will pay for the wall, an idea the Mexican government has scoffed at. He tweaked his language on Saturday, saying the United States would fully fund the wall with the understanding that Mexico would reimburse the cost.
He also proposed a new mandatory minimum sentence of two years in federal prison for anyone caught re-entering the country after deportation. Trump reiterated his promises to use tariffs to discourage American companies from shifting operations abroad, to repeal the Affordable Care Act and to increase spending to improve infrastructure.
The Clinton campaign mocked the speech, saying his only new policy was to promise to sue his female accusers.
"Like Trump's campaign, this speech gave us a troubling view as to what a Trump State of the Union would sound like," spokeswoman Christina Reynolds said in a statement. She called the speech "rambling, unfocused, full of conspiracy theories and attacks on the media, and lacking in any real answers for American families."
Trump's campaign was thrown into crisis two weeks ago when a 2005 video was released showing him bragging about groping and kissing women, prompting several prominent Republicans to announce they would not vote for him.
Since then, at least 10 women have said Trump made unwanted sexual advances, including groping or kissing, in incidents from the early 1980s to 2007, all of which Trump has denied.
Trump, 70, said he was being attacked because he was an outsider who had never previously run for office, which he argues is a virtue.
"The fact that Washington and the Washington establishment has tried so hard to stop our campaign is only more proof that our campaign represents the kind of change that only arrives once in a lifetime," he said.
(Reporting by Emily Stephenson and Jonathan Allen; editing by Grant McCool)
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