* In one fell swoop, Donald Trump’s top advisor let us know that – if elected – he isn’t really interested in doing the job, and that, when it comes to a vice-presidential nominee, women and minorities need not apply.
“He needs an experienced person to do the part of the job he doesn’t want to do. He sees himself more as the chairman of the board, than even the CEO, let alone the COO.”…
The campaign probably won’t choose a woman or a member of a minority group, he said. “In fact, that would be viewed as pandering, I think.”
Oh…and listen up all you non-wealthy people: greatness is not an option for you.
Trump: “You have to be wealthy in order to be great, I’m sorry to say.”
— Jesse Lehrich (@JesseLehrich) May 26, 2016
* Peter Beinart provides some excellent analysis on the Battle of the Surrogates.
Clinton has better surrogates. To help disseminate her message, her campaign can call on virtually every elected official in the Democratic Party. On Tuesday, for example, it chose politicians from swing states hit particularly hard by the housing collapse: A representative from Nevada, a representative from Ohio, and a mayor from Florida. At key moments, Clinton can also call on surrogates so high-profile that they garner almost as much media attention as she does. On Tuesday, she used Warren. As the campaign goes on, she’ll likely use her husband and Barack Obama.
Trump, by contrast, is relying mostly on little-known conservative media figures and employees from his business. While most Republican politicians are endorsing him, few will parrot his talking points on TV, especially since those talking points so often involve Bill Clinton’s sexual behavior and thus invite reporters to ask surrogates about Trump’s own.
* Sheila Foster Anthony (Vince Foster’s sister) took to the pages of the Washington Post today to say that Donald Trump should be ashamed.
It is beyond contempt that a politician would use a family tragedy to further his candidacy, but such is the character of Donald Trump displayed in his recent comments to The Washington Post. In this interview, Trump cynically, crassly and recklessly insinuated that my brother, Vincent W. Foster Jr., may have been murdered because “he had intimate knowledge of what was going on” and that Hillary Clinton may have somehow played a role in Vince’s death.
How wrong. How irresponsible. How cruel.
* For a while, it looked like we might actually see a debate between Sanders and Trump. But then this morning, Trump said he was just joking about that on Jimmy Kimmel Live last night. Apparently, the whole thing was a set-up from the Sanders campaign.
But the whole proposal appears to have been orchestrated by the Sanders campaign.
Michael Briggs, a Sanders spokesman, said that Kimmel allowed the Sanders campaign to submit a question to Trump to be asked during the taping — so they asked about a potential debate.
* If they gave out awards for “Best Trolling,” Phillip Bump would be a hands-down winner for his column today in response to the Daily Caller’s nonsense about how the Obama’s prospective new home is “located 1,000 feet from the Islamic Center of Washington.”
This gave us pause, understandably. Using the standards of proof by which conspiracy theories are validated, this is basically like Obama making a pilgrimage to Mecca on Air Force One.
But then it occurred to us: What might we learn about the secret leanings of the Daily Caller by evaluating the organizations and businesses that it purposely sought out to be within walking distance of its office?
Using Fancy Internet Tools, we drew a 1,000-foot radius around the Caller’s offices. And what we found will shock you. The Daily Caller is secretly a union-loving, Democrat-boosting, Hispanic-vote-seeking bunch of environmentalists that read Vox.
I know. I was stunned, too.
That is the best example of a “point and laugh” take-down that I’ve seen since President Obama took the stage at the White House Press Correspondents Dinner. More of that, please.
* Finally, here is one of those helpful stereotype busters.
