The rumor mill is still spinning over how exactly WikiLeaks obtained tens of thousands of emails from the Democratic National Convention that reveal blatant favoritism of Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders within the party.
This whodunnit saga will no doubt continue this week as the Democratic National Convention kicks off in Philadelphia tomorrow. Which means the Clinton campaign will need as much help as it can get from her volunteer base in pushing back against that narrative to capitalize on any good will the convention might inspire this week.
The campaign likely hopes its newly released mobile app could help with that. Taking a page out of the book of Sanders’ own primary campaign, Clinton’s new app, Hillary2016, aims to make it easier for volunteers to set up their own virtual field offices. On the app, they’re able to check into events, funnel campaign content to Facebook, and compete for various types of rewards, among other campaign-related activities.
In many ways, Hillary2016 resembles the Field the Bern app that Sanders volunteers created earlier this year. Both apps use technology to cut out the middle man in campaigning. The idea is to give volunteers all the tools they need to spread a candidate’s message without ever having to step foot in a field office.
Of course, there’s only so much volunteers can do on their own. The campaign and the Democratic National Committee itself were no doubt hoping to host a convention that looked disciplined and controlled compared to the chaotic Republican convention last week. Instead, they’ll have to contend with newly fired-up Sanders supporters who were already convinced “the system” was rigged anyway. Now many feel like they have the emails to prove it.
Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine wave to the crowd during a campaign event in Annandale, Virginia on July 14, 2016.Alex Wong/Getty Images
Hillary Clinton finally announced her vice-presidential running mate today. Senator Tim Kaine isn’t an exciting pick, but he makes sense. Clinton more or less has liberals safely on her side; Kaine is a moderate white man from Virginia, a swing state, which pretty much checks off all the demographic and electoral boxes where she needs to build up more support.
What’s more interesting is how Clinton told the public she would deliver the news: via a text from Hillary. It was the ultimate Internet age callback to the viral meme of Clinton and her now infamous sunglasses and Blackberry. But it was also a way to drum up anticipation among her supporters for an event that is, admittedly, a snoozefest for anyone but cable news producers.
That Clinton indicated she would reveal her pick first to a relatively narrow audience may seem counterintuitive. Wouldn’t a candidate want to spread the word as widely and quickly as possible? Press conferences have always been a way for candidates to drive the narrative. But in 2016, with so many social media tools at the public’s disposal, that’s no longer possible. By sharing the Clinton can shape her inevitable public address around that all that online buzz.
Since Obama’s 2008 campaign used targeted digital messaging to help put him over the top, the Democratic party has worked aggressively to build a tech infrastructure that relies on focused outreach to solidify support and get voters to the polls. Clinton’s tech team this election cycle represents the culmination of that strategy so far, and digital discipline has characterized her approach since the primaries. In that light, Clinton’s text message veep announcement today makes perfect sense.
Given that the “veepstakes” (gag) is essentially a fun time-filler for pundits, the average citizens who are going to care the most are the ones who are already passionately in Clinton’s camp. If you’ve given Clinton your phone number to get text messages, that includes you. By announcing her pick to those people first, Clinton makes that group feel part of an inner circle—while simultaneously tapping them for a donation. This kind of narrowcasting helped Obama win in 2008 and 2012. Clinton will likely rely on an even more focused version of this approach to chase votes in 2016.
But while Clinton promised the news by text to gin up support with her base first, in the end, the campaign did broadcast the Kaine announcement on Twitter as well. Given Donald Trump’s dominance on the platform, there’s no sense in Clinton taking any chances.
Indiana Governor Mike Pence introduces Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump at the Grand Park Events Center on July 12, 2016 in Westfield, Indiana. Aaron P. Bernstein /Getty Images
Updated on July 15 at 10:55 am after Donald Trump confirmed that Mike Pence will be his running mate.
Donald Trump just announced that Indiana governor Mike Pence is his pick for vice president. And that means the online masses are frantically picking apart Pence’s digital footprint in search of something incriminating—or at least that’s at odds with Trump.
There’s plenty to work with.
Shortly after The New York Times reported that Pence will likely be Trump’s running mate, this Pence tweet surfaced, a clear jibe against Trump’s pledge to ban Muslim people from entering the United States.
Calls to ban Muslims from entering the U.S. are offensive and unconstitutional.
— Governor Mike Pence (@GovPenceIN) December 8, 2015
In another, Pence voices support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, which Trump calls “terrible.”
Trade means jobs, but trade also means security. The time has come for all of us to urge the swift adoption of the Trans Pacific Partnership
— Governor Mike Pence (@GovPenceIN) September 8, 2014
The swiftness with which Pence’s own words are being turned against him shows just how difficult it is to run for office or pick a running mate in 2016. To accuse someone of flip-flopping is an age-old insult in politics. Now that politicians have social media accounts and armies of constituents constantly demanding to know how they feel about the news of the day, hiding those inconsistencies becomes tougher. By sheer force of character, Trump has managed to overcome all the times he’s contradicted himself. Not everyone can.
To be sure, plenty of mainstream Republicans have come out against Trump’s proposed Muslim ban, and even the US Chamber of Commerce has rejected his stance on trade. So the fact that Pence disagrees with Trump on those issues may not carry all that much weight on the right.
What’s more likely to hurt him—and Trump—among moderate Republicans is the Religious Freedom Restoration Act he signed into law in 2015. It would have allowed Indiana businesses to deny service to people on the basis of their sexuality. The bill was widely condemned as discrimination, with the state’s own Chamber of Commerce calling the law a hit to Indiana’s “national identity as a welcoming and hospitable state.”
It also drew the ire of tech industry leaders like Apple CEO Tim Cook and Salesforce founder Marc Benioff. In a Washington Post op-ed, Cook compared the Pence-signed Indiana law to Jim Crow. “The days of segregation and discrimination marked by ‘Whites Only’ signs on shop doors, water fountains and restrooms must remain deep in our past,” he wrote. “We must never return to any semblance of that time.”
Pence amended the bill in an attempt to curb fears of discrimination, but he couldn’t win, as social conservatives lashed out against what they saw as a weakening of the legislation.
In other words, Pence is no stranger to the battles that rage in media, both social and traditional. But now that he’s Trump’s running mate, it’s safe to say he ain’t seen nothing yet.
Peter Thiel.Bloomberg/Getty Images
Silicon Valley promised us flying cars. Instead, we get Peter Thiel speaking at the Republican National Convention.
A newly released list of speakers for next week’s convention in Cleveland includes Thiel, the litigious Silicon Valley billionaire investor, Facebook board member, and Donald Trump delegate, who, most recently, funded a revenge lawsuit against Gawker that forced the media company into bankruptcy.
In a statement to WIRED, Thiel explained why he wants to appear at the convention, an obligation even top Republicans have ducked this year. “Many people are uncertain in this election year,” he wrote, “but most Americans agree that our country is on the wrong track. I don’t think we can fix our problems unless we can talk about them frankly.”
In any other election year, Thiel’s presence at the convention wouldn’t be all that surprising. A known libertarian, he was one of the most prominent backers of Ron Paul’s 2012 Super PAC, and during primary season he was a key donor to Carly Fiorina’s Super PAC.
But the fact that Trump is this year’s presumptive Republican nominee makes Thiel’s support curious. On everything from trade to immigration to government data collection, Trump’s policies stand in direct opposition to the ones laid out by major industry groups like the Internet Association and TechNet.
Today, a large group of tech leaders, including Twitter co-founder Ev Williams, eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, investor Vinod Khosla, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, and more than 100 others published an open letter repudiating Trump, not just for his tech policies, but for his broader campaign.
“He campaigns on anger, bigotry, fear of new ideas and new people, and a fundamental belief that America is weak and in decline,” the letter reads. “We have listened to Donald Trump over the past year and we have concluded: Trump would be a disaster for innovation.”1
Thiel’s decision to back Trump is also unique given the new RNC platform’s stance on LGBT issues. Thiel is openly gay and supports gay marriage, but this year’s RNC platform includes a plank that supports conversion therapy for LGBT people and promotes states’ rights to decide which bathrooms transgender people can use. When this so-called “bathroom bill” was introduced in North Carolina, the CEO of PayPal, the company Thiel co-founded, pulled plans to expand operations in that state.
Suffice it to say, as a member of the tech industry elite, Thiel is breaking ranks—even with himself. Back in 2014, in an interview with the conservative outlet The Daily Caller, Thiel waxed poetic about the future of democracy and said that Donald Trump, who had long toyed with a presidential bid, was “sort of symptomatic of everything that is wrong with New York City.”
Of course, he won’t be the only convention speaker who’s come out against Trump in the past. The list also includes former competitors Ted Cruz and Scott Walker, as well as Republican party leaders Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan.
Oh, and PS: Peter Thiel rocks.
1. Update: 11:06 am ET 07/14/16 This story has been updated to include the open letter from tech industry leaders.
Twitter has been perhaps the most talked about platform this election cycle. (Thanks, Donald Trump.) Now, in hopes of capturing even more of the political conversation, the company is announcing that it will livestream the Republican National Convention when it kicks off next week in Cleveland, followed by the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia the week after that.
The streams will be available on both the mobile and web apps through Twitter’s new Live product. The company recently tested Live during Wimbledon, streaming matches through a broadcasting partnership with the tennis tournament organizers.1 Later this year, the company will also team up with the NFL to stream Thursday night football.
The convention coverage, which will be shot by CBS and its online affiliate CBSN, is part of that push into event-based livestreaming, a fitting move for a company whose core strength has always been real-time events.
Throughout this election cycle, Twitter has vied with other social media sites for a share of the public attention. But it has excelled in moments when people want to huddle together to talk about one thing and one thing only. On debate nights, Twitter is the modern day spin room, and when a crisis hits, it’s typically the first place candidates go to respond. Facebook may have more users, but Twitter tends to have the densest, most instantaneous conversations around a single topic.
“Twitter is the fastest way to find out what’s happening in politics and to have a discussion about it,” Anthony Noto, Twitter’s chief financial officer, said in a statement. The goal of the livestream, he said, is to give “people around the world the best way to experience democracy in action.”
Just how you’ll find the Twitter Live stream of the conventions is unclear, but CBS will likely tweet out a link to the Live page. A link to the page may also appear in the Twitter Moment for the convention. Either way, a spokesman for Twitter says, “It won’t be hard to find.”
The stream will be available to people who don’t have a Twitter account as well, which should help expose the platform to new users and show them why it’s useful. As the video streams on the live page, the company will also surface Tweets from across the platform that are relevant to that moment, using a combination of hashtags and its own algorithm.
For Twitter, this partnership is a smart move. Already, audiences are used to watching a live event on television, then turning to Twitter to comment on it. Now Twitter is placing the entire experience on the second screen. It also gives Twitter a way to compete with Facebook’s live feature, which delegates and other convention attendees will no doubt be using to cover everything that happens on and off the convention floor.
And for American voters, it will make the sometimes opaque and bizarre process of picking a president just a little more transparent.
1. Correction 09:32 am ET 7/11/16 An earlier version of this story mistakenly reported that Twitter partnered with ESPN. It partnered with Wimbledon.
The FBI’s months-long investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private emails has come to an end. Investigators found that Clinton was “extremely careless” in handling classified information, FBI director James Comey said today. But they do not believe her transgressions warrant criminal charges.
Investigators interviewed Clinton for three-and-a-half hours over the Fourth of July weekend about her use of a private email server while Secretary of State, and the threat of a possible indictment has hung over her presidential campaign. The final decision on whether or not to bring charges against Clinton still remains with the Department of Justice.
“In our system the prosecutors make the decisions about whether charges are appropriate,” Comey said. “Our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.”
Comey called the investigation “a painstaking undertaking, requiring thousands of hours of effort.” But while the FBI’s final assessment would seem to absolve Clinton of any criminal wrongdoing, its findings still give her opponents and critics ample fodder for criticizing her judgment.
The FBI searched several servers and email devices Clinton used as Secretary of State and found 110 emails and 52 email chains considered classified at the time they were sent and received, Comey said. Eight of those chains were top secret, the government’s highest security classification.
The investigation also found several thousand work-related emails not among the 30,000 messages Clinton handed over during the probe. The FBI discovered those emails by searching for traces on servers or devices connected to her email domain, as well as by analyzing archived government accounts of other officials who were emailing with Clinton at the time. Of those emails, the FBI found that another three were considered classified.
But Comey cautioned that Clinton’s failure to produce these emails was not likely an intentional attempt to obscure information. Instead, he said Clinton deleted or her email system purged many of those emails over time. Because Clinton wasn’t working with a government server or even a commercial service like Gmail, no archive existed.
The FBI also assessed whether foreign governments had hacked Clinton’s account. Investigators found that Clinton did use her personal account while traveling “in the territory of sophisticated adversaries” but didn’t find any direct evidence of a hack.
At the very least, Comey emphasized that Clinton’s use of a private server was an exercise in sloppiness.
“Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive highly classified information,” he said. “Any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton’s position or in the position of those with whom she was corresponding about those matters should have known that an unclassified system was no place for that conversation.”
Still, the FBI does not believe criminal charges are appropriate, because such a case would require evidence of “intentional misconduct or indication of disloyalty to the United States,” Comey said.
The Politics of Email
In a statement, Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon said the campaign is “glad that this matter is now resolved.”
“We are pleased that the career officials handling this case have determined that no further action by the Department is appropriate,” he said. “As the Secretary has long said, it was a mistake to use her personal email and she would not do it again.”
But while the investigation itself is over, this will not be the last time we hear about the email scandal. On one hand, Clinton no longer has an FBI investigation hanging over her head. On the other, Comey just handed Donald Trump and other conservative leaders ready-made talking points that will feed into concerns over Clinton’s trustworthiness and prudence. And the fact that Clinton likely won’t face charges, despite Comey’s rebuke, will only fuel more campaign rhetoric that the “system is rigged”—a sentiment already being fed by recent news that Bill Clinton met privately with Attorney General Loretta Lynch last month while the FBI investigation was still in progress.
Already, the presumptive Republican nominee has taken to Twitter to express those thoughts.
FBI director said Crooked Hillary compromised our national security. No charges. Wow! #RiggedSystem
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 5, 2016
In his remarks, Comey acknowledged that the FBI’s assessment will likely stir up more controversy about the politics of the investigation, but he rejected any claims of undue influence.
“Opinions are irrelevant,” he said. “Only facts matter, and the FBI found them here in an entirely apolitical and professional way.”
Hillary Clinton testifies in front of the Benghazi Committee on October 22, 2015.Samuel Corum/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
If you were to read the way the left wing and right wing media were covering the newly released report on the attacks in Benghazi today, you could be forgiven for thinking they were referring to two entirely different documents.
“House panel investigating deadly Benghazi terrorist attack faults Obama administration response — finds Clinton knowingly misled public,” read the Fox News homepage banner.
“Benghazi Committee Releases Final Report, Slams Clinton,” the unabashedly conservative Breitbart News reported.
But over on the left, it was a different story. A very different story.
“House Republicans release anticlimactic Benghazi report,” Daily Kos wrote.
“$7 MILLION MOCKERY: GOP WITCH HUNT CLEARS CLINTON — AGAIN,” read the leading headline on the Huffington Post.
Even relatively mainstream outlets like The New York Times had a wildly different take from the right wing press: “House Benghazi Report Finds No New Evidence of Wrongdoing by Hillary Clinton.”
If you’re an American voter, trying to decide whether or not Clinton was responsible for the deaths of four Americans in Libya in 2012—which was, after all, one of the chief missions of the House Select Committee on Benghazi—which story do you believe? The answer: Whichever one you want.
The Beauty and the Tragedy
It is the beauty and the tragedy of the Internet age. As it becomes easier for anyone to build their own audience, it becomes harder for those audience members to separate fact from fiction from the gray area in between. As media consumers, we now have the freedom to self-select the truth that most closely resembles our existing beliefs, which makes our media habits fairly good indicators of our political beliefs. If your top news source is CNN, for instance, studies show you’re more likely to be liberal. If local radio and TV figure prominently in your news habits, you’re more likely to be conservative.
Meanwhile, since the early 2000s, the American National Election Studies show that partisanship in the US has spiked drastically, with Americans on either side of the aisle harboring ever colder feelings about their political opponents. It’s hard to prove the country’s increasingly polarized media habits had anything to do with that, but it’s also hard to believe the two trends are unrelated. The country is being fed wildly different stories, all from media outlets claiming the other side is biased. So who’s right? Is there even such a thing?
The Bias Card
Jon Favreau, a former speechwriter for President Obama, summed it up well in response to Mother Jones’s Washington bureau chief David Corn’s comment on Twitter:
@DavidCornDC no you wouldn’t, because all your news sources would still say that a) she’s to blame, and b) all other news is biased
— Jon Favreau (@jonfavs) June 28, 2016
Of course, the report itself is public, and interested audiences could theoretically “read this report for themselves,” as House Select Committee chairman Trey Gowdy suggested in a statement released with the report. And if they did, readers would see that the Committee both eviscerates the Obama administration for failing to adequately respond to threats in Libya and utterly fails to convincingly pin the blame on Clinton. Both, not either.
But at 800-pages, reading the report is a tall order for voters who now take their political lessons in caption-sized doses. Most readers probably didn’t even make it to the end of Breitbart’s 1,516 words on the subject or The Huffington Post’s 889 words, for that matter. If history serves, most of you probably stopped reading this story several paragraphs ago, and I’m only 517 words in.
That won’t matter, though. Because whatever people on both sides have read, they’ll claim to have heard the full and true story. But as the web widens, providing anyone a platform to tell their side of the story, that’s rarely if ever the case, and it may never be again.
Hillary Clinton meets voters after delivering a speech in Columbus, Ohio on June 21, 2016.Melina Mara/The Washington Post/Getty Images
Hillary Clinton is releasing her technology and innovation agenda today, which includes plans to expand broadband access to all American homes, forgive some student loans for people starting new companies or joining a startup, invest in computer science education in schools, and create a national commission on digital security.
Clinton will address the plan today as she visits a workforce training facility in Denver and later, hosts a townhall with digital content creators in Los Angeles.
The presumptive Democratic nominee has touched on tech issues in an ad hoc way before, urging Silicon Valley to help fight radicalization online and calling for greater protection for on-demand workers. This is the first time, however, that Clinton—or any presidential candidate for that matter—is synthesizing these ideas into a comprehensive platform.
Though many pieces of the agenda are policy prescriptions Clinton has announced in the past, including a plan to bring broadband access to every American home by 2020, the tech platform includes newer proposals as well. Her plan would, for instance, allow would-be entrepreneurs to defer their student loans interest free for up to three years as they launch their businesses. Business owners who locate in “distressed communities” or start a social enterprise also could ask the government to forgive as much as $17,500 in loans after five years in business.
The goal of this part of the plan is to encourage millennials to start businesses. Entrepreneurship among young Americans has fallen drastically, and student debt is often cited as one of the greatest obstacles to starting up.
The tech agenda also affirms Clinton’s commitment to net neutrality; her desire to make the United States Digital Service, a tech team that modernizes government processes, a permanent part of the executive branch; her plan to train 50,000 computer science teachers over the next decade; and her interest in ensuring tech companies can recruit top talent from anywhere in the world. According to the platform, Clinton “would ‘staple’ a green card to STEM masters and PhDs from accredited institutions.”
Silicon Valley will probably be most interested, however, in Clinton’s policies regarding privacy and encryption, both topics that have intersected with the country’s national security interests in the wake of the shooting in San Bernardino, California. But the newly released agenda may not satisfy. Though Clinton’s plan notes the importance of tech companies and law enforcement working together to preserve “individual privacy and security,” it offers little in the way of specifics or new information. Clinton has repeatedly called for collaboration between Silicon Valley and the government to win the war against terrorists both online and off, but it’s never clear just how she’d convince a reluctant tech community to cooperate.
But while her sweeping suggestions may not appease security experts and others seeking specifics, the fact that Clinton has a tech agenda at all puts her ahead of just about everyone else in this presidential election cycle. Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush tried to address such issues, but Donald Trump’s fixation with immigration and national security dominated the conversation. And Trump hasn’t offered much in the way of guidance here, except to say that as president, he would require Apple to manufacture its phones in the US and work with Bill Gates to “close that Internet up.”
It’s little surprise that Clinton would embrace the tech industry and its issues. Silicon Valley is loaded with high-dollar donors, and last week, a slew of technologists including LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, Dropbox founder Drew Houston, Netflix founder Reed Hastings, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, and others openly pledged support for Clinton. Meanwhile, Alphabet Chairman Eric Schmidt, who also announced his support, has backed startups that work with the Clinton campaign and the Democratic party.
Not that Trump lacks any Silicon Valley backing. Noted libertarian and billionaire investor Peter Thiel is Trump delegate. Still, it’s clear that Clinton, like President Obama before her, has the tech industry’s vote. Now, she’s also got their attention.
Update 06/28/16 9:20 am ET: This story has been updated to include Clinton’s full tech agenda.
The one presidential candidate who’s staked his reputation on being “really rich” is actually not all that rich, at least, not as far as his campaign is concerned.
On Monday, the Federal Election Commission’s monthly report revealed a historic gap between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump’s campaign war chests. Where Clinton ended the month with $42 million in cash on hand, Trump rounded out May with just $1.3 million. To put that in context, that’s less than the $1.8 million Ben Carson’s campaign still has left, and Carson dropped out of the race in March.
Word traveled fast, and overnight, the hashtag #TrumpSoPoor began trending on Twitter, spawning endless tweets about his business dealings…
#TrumpSoPoor He’ll have to start paying taxes
— Jocelyn Plums (@FilthyRichmond) June 21, 2016
His looks…
#TrumpSoPoor he uses Tang when he runs out of Foundation.
— Brandon Unger (@ungerbn103) June 21, 2016
And of course, making Mexico pay for his campaign…
#TrumpSoPoor gonna make Mexico pay for his campaign
— David Shorr (@David_Shorr) June 21, 2016
But while Trump’s lack of cash may be shocking compared with Clinton’s abundance of it, it’s not all that surprising in the context of his campaign. Trump essentially self-funded his primary run and regularly spoke on the stump about why he wasn’t seeking money from outside donors. That rhetoric may have worked to sway primary voters, but it’s not a realistic strategy to fund an official presidential campaign in the general election.
The FEC report is an early reflection of Trump’s initial attempts at true campaign fundraising. It’s dismal, but it’s important to bear in mind that it reflects only the month of May. The next report, issued in July, will provide a clearer picture of whether Trump is truly struggling to raise money now that he’s really trying. The true challenge, however, will be matching Clinton’s on-air attacks. Already, reports show Clinton has reserved $117 million in TV ad time. Trump has reserved about zero, which means any ads he does place will come at a premium—a premium it doesn’t look like the Trump campaign can quite afford.
What’s just as telling as how much money the Trump campaign has raised, however, is where exactly that money is going. The answer: back into Trump’s pockets. According to the FEC filing, nearly 20 percent of Trump’s campaign expenditures have been spent on Trump-owned venues and airlines, as well as on members of the Trump family.
Talk about a self-funded campaign. Trump is, quite literally, funneling money back to himself. There are, for instance, a number of payroll disbursements to Donald J. Trump himself. There is a $423,000 payout to his Mar-A-Lago golf club and a $349,000 payment to Tag Air, a Trump-owned airline. And that’s just from May. There’s also a nearly $30,000 rental expense for Trump International Golf Club, and a nearly $36,000 fee for Trump National Golf Club. The list goes on.
The Trump campaign did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment, but a spokesperson told NBC News the campaign has “no concerns” about funding. And why should it? With all that money flowing back into Trump’s empire, perhaps #TrumpIsn’tSoPoor after all.
Donald Trump often gets away with saying things that would be political suicide for anyone else. But this time he’s saying something that most Americans might actually agree with.
In the wake of the deadly shooting in Orlando last weekend, Donald Trump says he plans to meet with the National Rifle Association to talk about limiting gun access to people suspected of ties to terrorism.
I will be meeting with the NRA, who has endorsed me, about not allowing people on the terrorist watch list, or the no fly list, to buy guns.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 15, 2016
The demand for this kind of change has grown deafening in recent days, especially after news emerged that, despite the FBI investigating him twice for his suspected terrorist ties, the Orlando shooter was still able to purchase a gun.
While Democrats have re-upped their calls for curbs on suspected terrorists’ ability to buy guns, Republicans have been entirely unwilling to entertain the idea. That’s largely due to the fact that the NRA wields enormous power over the GOP. But Trump has proven time and again throughout this election that Republican politics and pieties hold little sway over him.
Instead, Trump has staked his reputation to the claim that terrorism is the number-one threat facing the country, and that he will do anything in his power to stop it, including banning Muslim people from entering the United States. Keeping guns out of the hands of suspected terrorists is entirely in keeping with that message, whether or not it aligns with the Republican playbook.
The question now is: how will Republicans in Congress respond to Trump once again going rogue? Trump’s tweet pulls back the curtain on the fact that it’s the NRA, not Congress, that dictates the country’s gun laws. It also puts Republicans in a tricky position politically. Do they take this opportunity to voice their support for a policy that 71 percent of Americans already support? Or do they stick to the script for fear of upsetting the almighty NRA?
None of this is to say that Trump is becoming a gun control advocate. During his national security speech, Trump said Hillary Clinton wants to “take away Americans’ guns, then admit the very people who want to slaughter us.” Though that’s far from factual, it’s Trump’s way of pandering to pro-gun advocates.
This incident may still scare Republicans anyway, if for no other reason than it illustrates how little control the GOP and its longstanding allegiances have over Trump as president. It’s what Trump’s supporters love about him. It’s what keeps his ostensible allies up at night.
Donald Trump has never made a secret of his disdain for what he has called, at turns, the “disgusting” and “dishonest” press. Now, the presumptive Republican nominee is taking that vitriol to the next level, announcing on his Facebook page that he is revoking The Washington Post‘s press credentials.
According to Trump, this decision is a response to a story the Post published earlier this morning that accused Trump of trying to connect President Barack Obama with the Orlando shooting. The story referenced an interview Trump did with Fox News this morning in which he said, “Look, we’re led by a man that either is not tough, not smart, or he’s got something else in mind.” The Post apparently took that to mean Trump was implying that the president may be “identifying with radicalized Muslims.”
On his Facebook page, Trump said that while he is “no fan of President Obama,” the story is “incredibly inaccurate.”
“We are hereby revoking the press credentials of the phony and dishonest Washington Post,” Trump wrote.
Spurious as the Post‘s claims may be, it’s hard not to read Trump’s decision to ban the storied publication from his events as a major attack on the free press. Of course, it wouldn’t be the first time either. The Trump campaign has repeatedly turned down reporters for press credentials without explanation or warning. Meanwhile, the candidate has promised that if he becomes president, he will “open up” the country’s libel laws to make it easier to sue news outlets “and win lots of money.”
The freedom of the press, of course, is guaranteed by the First Amendment of the Constitution, which says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” Given that Trump is already challenging freedom of religion by proposing a ban on Muslim immigrants, it’s little wonder he would play fast and loose with the freedom of the press as well.
In a statement, Post Executive Editor Marty Baron said the Trump campaign’s decision is “nothing less than the repudiation of the role of a free and independent press.” Baron said the Post would continue to cover the Trump campaign “as it has all along — honorably, honestly, accurately, energetically, and unflinchingly.”
Donald Trump today revoked press credentials for @washingtonpost. My statement here. pic.twitter.com/irSKhrpYiK
— Marty Baron (@PostBaron) June 13, 2016
The Post’s publisher, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, has yet to respond, but it’s clear there’s no love lost between the two billionaires either. In response to Trump’s criticisms of the Post last year, Bezos Tweeted that there’s always a seat for Trump on his space company Blue Origin’s rocket with the hashtag #SendDonaldToSpace.
Finally trashed by @realDonaldTrump. Will still reserve him a seat on the Blue Origin rocket. #sendDonaldtospace https://t.co/9OypFoxZk3
— Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) December 7, 2015
President Barack Obama is officially “#WithHer.”
The president announced his long-awaited endorsement of Hillary Clinton in a YouTube video posted to Clinton’s channel today. He congratulates Clinton on becoming the Democratic party’s presumptive nominee, saying, “I don’t think there’s ever been someone so qualified to hold this office.”
Of course, Donald Trump had something to say about this, immediately tweeting:
Obama just endorsed Crooked Hillary. He wants four more years of Obama—but nobody else does!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 9, 2016
And that’s when Clinton’s Twitter team, obviously feeling their damn selves after Obama’s endorsement, took the gloves off.
Delete your account. https://t.co/Oa92sncRQY
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) June 9, 2016
Game on. Already the tweet is the most popular Clinton has ever sent, and that’s saying something, given she had some of the most popular political Tweets of 2015.
It may sound like a small thing, but make no mistake, this tweet represents what could be a kind of turning point for the Clinton campaign. It not only represents a level of attitude her campaign rarely leveled at Democratic rival Bernie Sanders online. It’s also an indication that the campaign may be prepared to be more nimble in responding to what are sure to be Trump’s all too frequent Twitter attacks.
One criticism of Clinton during primary season is that she always appeared a little too rehearsed, a little too cautious, when up against Sanders. In reality, what the social media age now craves is an air of off-the-cuff authenticity. Trump is a master of conveying that quality. Now, we’ll see if Clinton can bring this same online agility to the debate stage and beyond this fall.
As for Obama, who was, of course, the catalyst to this catfight, he said he’s eager to get on the campaign trail with Clinton, and also thanked Bernie Sanders on his hard-fought campaign. Obama noted that embracing Sanders’ message “is going to help us win in November.”
That includes not just the substance of that message, it seems, but the style, too.
Tonight, Hillary Clinton plans to claim victory as the first female candidate to become a major political party’s presumptive nominee for president.
In honor of that moment in history—and before the results of today’s six primaries are announced—the Clinton campaign has released a video that celebrates the former Secretary of State’s accomplishment, positioning it as the climax of decades of work stretching back to the women’s suffrage movement in the 1800s and the women’s liberation movement of the 1960s.
The video features footage and famous quotes of prominent female leaders, including Gloria Steinem and Rosa Parks, and of course, Clinton herself. These include Clinton’s famous declaration at the 1995 UN Conference on Women: “Human rights are women’s rights, and women’s rights are human rights, once and for all.”
The video, which urges supporters to “keep making history,” represents a turning point in Clinton’s campaign. Now, as she readies herself for battle against presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump, whose support among women in the United States is dismal, Clinton is embracing with both arms not only the historical significance of her pending nomination but the obvious electoral advantages is could give her in November.
Buzzfeed CEO Jonah Peretti told employees Monday that the media giant is dropping the Republican National Committee as an advertiser, now that Donald Trump is the party’s presumptive nominee.
In an email to the staff, Peretti explained the decision, likening Trump ads to cigarette ads. “We don’t run cigarette ads because they are hazardous to our health,” Peretti wrote, “and we won’t accept Trump ads for the exact same reason.”
Peretti took particular issue with Trump’s proposed ban on Muslims, his approach to immigration, his comments about women, and his threats to limit the free press. “We certainly don’t like to turn away revenue that funds all the important work we do across the company,” the email reads. “However, in some cases we must make business exceptions.”
Buzzfeed’s decision to withdraw from the advertising deal illustrates just how thorny Trump’s relationship with the media has become. As the candidate consistently bashes the press as “dishonest” and “disgusting,” those same media outlets are struggling to remain unbiased, while also acknowledging that Trump’s campaign—and many of its platforms—are anything but normal. Just as Trump is rewriting the rules around how politicians are supposed to behave, he’s also rewriting the rules around how responsible journalists need to cover what is a historically incendiary and polarizing candidacy.
Peretti insisted that the advertising decision won’t impact Buzzfeed’s coverage of Trump, and yet, it’s tough not to read this as, well, whatever the opposite of an endorsement is. Buzzfeed is not, however, the first media outlet to take such a public stand. The Huffington Post, which Peretti co-founded with Arianna Huffington, famously published all its early Trump coverage this election cycle under its Entertainment section. By December, it reversed that decision, but now ends its Trump coverage with a note that reads, “Note to our readers: Donald Trump is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, birther and bully who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S.”
Trump’s campaign has also put new media sources, like Facebook, in a tricky position, as the company tries to balance its responsibility as a news source without appearing to back Trump’s policies. Earlier this year, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, an immigration activist, appeared to criticize Trump’s plan’s to build a wall on the Mexican border. Weeks later, when Facebook was accused of suppressing conservative content in its Trending Topics feature, that comment was considered by some to be evidence of Facebook’s clear liberal bias.
In a typical election year, it’s unlikely these public figures—particularly those in the journalism business—would feel so justified in speaking out against one candidate over another. But with Trump’s historically low favorability ratings and his widespread rejection within the Republican party, it’s clear that this is no typical election year. To pretend that it is risks normalizing Trump’s most radical ideas.
Hillary Clinton used Donald Trump’s own words as weapons against him during her highly anticipated speech on national security today. She depicted her Republican opponent as “temperamentally unfit” to be President of the United States, and for proof, she pointed to Trump’s Twitter feed.
“Imagine if he had not just his Twitter account at his disposal when he’s angry but America’s entire arsenal,” Clinton said.
Clinton lifted lines from Trump’s own speeches, interviews, and social media accounts and used them to paint a picture of a candidate who does not have a coherent plan for the country, “just a series of bizarre rants.” The audience in San Diego laughed as Clinton paraphrased Trump’s stance on everything from war to North Korea to climate change.
“He says he doesn’t have to listen to our generals or ambassadors, because he has, quote, ‘a very good brain,’” Clinton said. “He believes climate change is a hoax invented by the Chinese.”
#NeverTweet
The former Secretary of State also rightly predicted that Trump might have something to say about these barbs. “We all know the tools Donald Trump brings to the table: bragging, mocking, composing nasty tweets. I’m willing to bet he’s writing a few right now.”
In fact, just moments before, Trump had done just that:
Bad performance by Crooked Hillary Clinton! Reading poorly from the telepromter! She doesn’t even look presidential!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 2, 2016
Afterward, “Imagine Donald Trump” began trending on Twitter, a reference to Clinton asking the audience to “imagine Donald Trump in the Situation Room.”
The speech was a sneak peek of what the general election season is bound to look like—and how it will play out online. Taking a cue from her nemesis, Clinton leaned more heavily on personal attacks, rather than policy talk, managing to steal the news cycle from Trump for the day. In the process, the Clinton campaign seems to be acknowledging that this fall, it’s not just better ideas that will win the election. It’s better memes.
President Barack Obama waits during a break in filming a town hall meeting for PBS Newshour at the Lerner Theater in Elkhart, Indiana on June 1, 2016.BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images
During a speech on his economic record today, President Obama issued a scorching warning to Americans about Donald Trump: “Don’t think this agenda’s going to help you. It’s not designed to help you.”
The president sounded at turns exasperated and confounded as he addressed the people of Elkhart, Indiana, a town he last visited during the throes of the recession in 2009, and which he said he chose today “precisely because this county votes Republican.”
“If the economy is really what’s driving this election, then it’s going to be voters like you who will have to decide between two very different visions of what’s going to help strengthen our middle class,” Obama told the crowd before laying out what he believes the differences between those visions are.
For Obama, the speech was a chance to boast about his administration’s economic achievements—including the country’s consistent job growth and a shrinking deficit—while bashing the presumptive Republican nominee for president, who Obama believes would derail that progress. Without ever mentioning his name, Obama took Trump to task over everything from his tax policies to immigration to trade to his “provocative” tweets.
“I’m not here looking for votes,” Obama said. “I’m here because I care deeply as a citizen about making sure we sustain and build on all the work that communities like yours have done to bring America back over the last seven and a half years.”
Populist POTUS
Not that Obama shied away from sounding the kind of populist note that has characterized the 2016 campaign season. He called Trump’s proposal to deport 11 million undocumented immigrants “a fantasy” and rejected the idea that immigrants are responsible for stagnating wages in this country. Instead, he laid the blame on another popular target—corporate elites.
“Those decisions are made in the board rooms of companies where top CEOs are getting paid more than 300 times the income of the average worker,” he said.
He went on to frame Trump as a candidate who only has the interests of the rich at heart. He attacked Trump’s p