Your politics briefing: Clinton’s Trump impression, Megyn Kelly
It's imitation, not flattery
When Trump denied last week — against powerful evidence, including his own testimony — that he used to pose as his own publicist, he pointed out, correctly, that “I have many, many people that are trying to imitate my voice.”
Add Hillary Clinton to that list.
The Democratic candidate rolled out her Trump impression during an appearance in Kentucky on Monday as she imagined what he would say when they met in a debate.
“So let’s suppose, here is the question: ‘So what is your plan to create jobs?’ His answer is” — and here Clinton tries to channel Trump’s braggadocio — “ ‘I am going to create them, they are going to be great, I am going to do it. But I am not telling you what it is that I am going to do.’ ” (Video here.)
While not up to “Saturday Night Live” standards, it was a signal that Clinton won’t shy away from employing mockery and ridicule against Trump. Earlier, he told The New York Times that in debates he is going to pick apart her character because, “Just getting nasty with Hillary won’t work.”
Back to Trump and his alter egos: Longtime Trump ally and sometime adviser Roger Stone acknowledged the businessman has posed as his own publicist, but likened the practice to that of the nation’s founding fathers.
“James Madison, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton — they all wrote under pseudonyms,” Stone said.
Kentucky, Oregon on deck
Clinton is fighting to prevent another primary loss to rival Bernie Sanders. She has a better chance Tuesday in Kentucky than in Oregon, but it’s no cinch.
Clinton won in Kentucky against Barack Obama in 2008, but faces criticism from the coal industry and miners over her renewable energy plan. Sanders is favored in Oregon, and Clinton has spent little time there.
Trump is expected to easily collect the 28 delegates up for grabs in Oregon. Newsday’s Laura Figueroa previews the contests.
Megyn Kelly’s Trump sit-down
For months, Trump savaged Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly for a debate question challenging harsh remarks he had made about women. But in retrospect, Trump told her, “In a certain way, what you did might have been a favor.”
“I said, ‘If I could get through this debate, with those questions, you can get through anything,’ ” Trump said in the interview, to be shown on the Fox network Tuesday night.
The take-away: Weiner redux
The opening soon of the documentary “Weiner” — on the sextacular flameout of Anthony Weiner’s 2013 mayoral campaign — will shine an unwelcome spotlight on his wife, top Clinton aide Huma Abedin, and give old scandals new life, writes Newsday’s Dan Janison.
Trump’s snit with Brits
Trump went on British TV to hit back at the prime minister of Great Britain and the mayor of London for criticizing his proposed Muslim ban — and went on to question the future of the alliance between the United States and the United Kingdom.
That could be a shortsighted posture, given the close working relationship between London and Washington in fighting terrorism. See the story by Newsday’s William Goldschlag.
The deaths at Benghazi
Trump and other Republicans have cast Clinton as bearing blame for the deaths of four Americans in the 2012 terror attack on a U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya.
The chief counsel of the Republican-led House Benghazi Committee found “nothing” could have been done in response to the attacks to save those lives. The comments by former Lt. General Dana Chipman were made public by Democrats on the committee.
What else is happening:
- Tensions are surfacing in Democratic circles between environmental activists, including big donor Tom Steyer, and blue-collar labor leaders, such as AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka, the NY Times reports (pay wall).
- The Koch brothers and Trump have clashing agendas, so the right-leaning industrialists are putting their money on saving the Senate for the GOP, Politico reports.
- Clinton’s supporters acknowledge she has weaknesses as a candidate, and likability is a key one, according to The Washington Post ...
- Saying he does it all without polls, the factually flexible Trump appears to be hiring a pollster tied to the GOP "establishment" ...
- Sanders, in Puerto Rico, warned of a humanitarian crisis in the territory and called on the U.S. government to support a debt restructure there.
- With his boss, Michael Bloomberg, not running, Howard Wolfson is hosting a fundraiser for Clinton. Wolfson was a senior aide in her 2008 campaign ...
- Ted Cruz is still at it, in the sense that he's peddling "what we accomplished" in a schmaltzy post-defeat video that cites Ronald Reagan's 1976 defeat..
- A former Trump girlfriend, Rowanne Brewer Lane, said a Times story about Trump and women wrongly portrayed her experience with him as negative ...
- Hillary Clinton said Bill Clinton, while taking a key role in economic revitalization, would not have a cabinet position ...
- Trump is meeting with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger Wednesday...
- Tom Anderson, who took bribes while a lawmaker from a private prison firm, is part of Trump's campaign team in Alaska.
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