The Clinton campaign unveiled its transition team, which is to say, it announced the people who will field calls from Terry McAuliffe about the AG slot. Roger Ailes is reportedly advising Donald Trump on the debates, though we would have expected Trump to only heed advice from John Miller. And Kelly Ayotte says she is *voting* for Donald Trump, but not *endorsing* the Republican nominee, the difference being, we suppose, that the real estate mogul now isn’t invited to the quarterly viewing of “Hunt for Red October” she, Lindsey Graham and John McCain put on.
100 GOP OFFICIALS CALL FOR PARTY TO DISSOCIATE FROM TRUMP - Or consciously uncouple, if you will. The party and Trump will still get together for the kids’ birthdays and what not. Igor Bobic: “More than 100 GOP officials, delegates and staffers have signed an open letter calling on the Republican National Committee to cut ties with Donald Trump and shift precious resources away from his struggling presidential campaign to focus on retaining the House and Senate. ‘We believe that Donald Trump’s divisiveness, recklessness, incompetence, and record-breaking unpopularity risk turning this election into a Democratic landslide, and only the immediate shift of all available RNC resources to vulnerable Senate and House races will prevent the GOP from drowning with a Trump-emblazoned anchor around its neck,’ the letter states. Reps. Scott Rigell (R-Va.) and Reid Ribble (R-Wis.), who have both said they won’t vote for Trump in November, are among those who have signed the letter that began circulating last week. So are 27 former RNC staffers from several departments of the organization, including communications, political coalitions, digital strategy, press and political information.” [HuffPost]
FBI SUBMITS CLINTON DOCUMENTS TO OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE - Karoum Demirjian: “The FBI has handed over a ‘number of documents’ to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, a spokesman said Tuesday afternoon. The documents are expected to contain information about the FBI’s investigation into Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s email server as secretary of state. The committee is currently reviewing the information in them, which was classified as ‘secret.’ “The FBI has turned over a ‘number of documents’ related to their investigation of former Secretary Clinton’s use of a personal email server. Committee staff is currently reviewing the information that is classified SECRET. There are no further details at this time,’ said a committee spokesman. Republican and Democratic spokesmen for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence confirmed that that committee had also received the Clinton files. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) office said that the House Judiciary Committee had also received copies of the FBI information on Tuesday...The GOP-led committees have not provided details about the full contents of the FBI’s submission to Congress. But the House Intelligence Committee’s ranking member Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said in a statement that the committee had received ‘the FBI witness interview reports, including that of Secretary Clinton’s interview, along with other materials from the FBI’s now closed investigative file.’” [WaPo]
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AILES ADVISING TRUMP ON DEBATES, PER MULTIPLE REPORTS - Sam Levine: “Roger Ailes, the influential former Fox News chairman who resigned from the network less than a month ago amid widespread accusations of sexual harassment, is helping Donald Trump prepare for the presidential debates, according to The New York Times. Ailes will be in the awkward position of helping to prepare Trump, who has made misogynistic remarks throughout his career, to debate the first woman to earn the presidential nomination of a major party. The Trump campaign denied the Times report in a statement.”This is not accurate. He is not advising Mr. Trump or helping with debate prep. They are longtime friends, but he has no formal or informal role in the campaign,” spokeswoman Hope Hicks told The Huffington Post. But sources told Gabriel Sherman, the New York magazine reporter and Ailes biographer who has broken most of the news about the scandal, that Ailes has been advising Trump for months.” [HuffPost]
TRUMP CAMPAIGN’S INCOMPETENCE GETTING TISK TISKED BY THE FBI - It’s going to be *so* strange when these same investigators have to brief President Trump. Jonathan Swan: “Donald Trump’s presidential campaign appears to be soliciting foreign donations despite multiple warnings and a criminal complaint filed with the Department of Justice. On Sunday, an Australian member of parliament, Terri Butler, emailed The Hill the latest fundraising solicitation she’d received from the Trump campaign. The email, received on Aug. 14 just after midnight Australian time, went to Butler’s government email account. It asked her to make a campaign contribution to Trump so she could ‘join the highest ranks of our campaign as an Executive Member.’ Butler told The Hill she has received several fundraising solicitations from the Trump campaign at her government email account. Butler is hardly the first foreign official to receive solicitations from the Trump campaign. Members of the United Kingdom Parliament, Peter Bottomley and Bob Blackman, have told The Hill that they’ve received numerous fundraising appeals on the Republican nominee’s behalf.” [The Hill]
AYOTTE BRAVELY TAKES ON OWN PARTY WITH MUDDLED STATEMENT - John McCain and Lindsey Graham may have to find a new amiga. Manu Raju: “Ayotte says there’s a difference between voting for someone and endorsing them. ‘There’s actually a big distinction: Everyone gets a vote, I do too,’ Ayotte said. ‘And an endorsement is when you are campaigning with someone.’ Ayotte said the situation differs from 2012 when she was barnstorming the state with Mitt Romney ― something she won’t do for Trump when he comes to the Granite State. ‘While he has my vote he doesn’t have my endorsement,’ Ayotte said of Trump. ‘I’m going to continue to focus on my race and getting out to people what I have done and getting results for people in New Hampshire.’ [CNN]
CLINTON ANNOUNCES TRANSITION TEAM - “U.S. Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign on Tuesday named a leadership line-up for her transition team, which will prepare the way should she win the November election. Ken Salazar, previously both a secretary of the interior and a Colorado senator, will chair the team, known formally as the Clinton-Kaine Transition Project, for Clinton and her running mate, Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia. The announcement comes as Clinton has gained momentum in the polls against Republican rival Donald Trump, whose campaign has struggled after a string of controversial remarks.The team will include four co-chairs, according to a statement: former National Security Adviser Tom Donilon, former Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm, president of the Center for American Progress Neera Tanden, and Maggie Williams, director of Harvard’s Institute of Politics. Two policy advisers on the campaign, Ed Meier and Ann O’Leary, will also move full time to the transition team.” [Reuters]
TRUMP’S EARLY VOTING OPERATION IS THE CLASSIEST EARLY VOTER OPERATION YOU’VE EVER SEEN - Now what is early voting. Patrick Healy: “Voting actually starts in less than six weeks, on Sept. 23 in Minnesota and South Dakota, the first of some 35 states and the District of Columbia that allow people to cast ballots at polling sites or by email before Nov. 8. Iowa is expected to have ballots ready by the end of September, as are Illinois and two other states. The electoral battlegrounds of Arizona and Ohio are to begin voting on Oct. 12, nearly four weeks before Election Day. And North Carolina and Florida will be underway before Halloween. Early voting has become a critical, even decisive factor in presidential elections: President Obama was sufficiently ahead in the early vote in Iowa and Nevada in 2012 that his campaign shifted resources from those states to others, according to former advisers, who also credited enthusiastic early voting in 2008 for his victory in North Carolina and elsewhere. Nearly 32 percent of voters cast their ballots before Election Day in 2012, according to census data, compared with 29.7 percent in 2008 and 20 percent in 2004.” [NYT]
REPUBLICANS REVULSED BY CONSTITUTIONAL DUTY - It’s going to be weird when Ronald Reagan gets 140 electoral votes. Kyle Cheney: “Peter Greathouse, a Republican from Utah, says he’s not “comfortable” with Donald Trump as his party’s nominee. Jane Lynch, a GOP veteran from Arizona, says she’ll likely cast her personal vote for libertarian Gary Johnson or a write-in candidate. Loren Byers, a Texas Republican, calls Trump ‘a loose cannon.’ … Interviews with Republican members of the Electoral College – all from the red states Trump has his best chance of winning – reveal that the divisions that have wracked the GOP for months have also reached this oft-overlooked body with the ultimate authority to decide the election. All of the members contacted by POLITICO – including Greathouse, Lynch and Byers – insisted they would cast their electoral vote for Trump if he prevailed in their state. (They’d disenfranchise millions of voters and risk a Constitutional crisis if they didn’t.) But most indicated they would do so through gritted teeth – if only to reject Hillary Clinton or to uphold oaths they took to their party.” [Politico]
VOTERS APPEAR ABLE TO SEE AND HEAR PERFECTLY WELL - A swiftly growing share of Americans think Trump is going to lose bigly. Samantha Neal: “Clinton is outperforming Trump drastically on the expectations question. The University of Michigan’s monthly survey of consumers shows that the net share of households that expect Clinton to beat Trump in the general election rose to 39 percentage points in August. That’s up from 27 points in July and 14 points in June. This means that in a three-month span, UMich has measured a 25-point rise in the percentage of people who think Clinton will win in November ― a substantial shift in public opinion over a relatively short time.” [HuffPost]
BECAUSE YOU’VE READ THIS FAR - Here’s the scariest thing we’ve seen all week.
REALLY GREAT BENCH YOU GOT THERE, PENNSYLVANIA DEMOCRATS - Truly, America needs a McGinty/Strickland presidential ticket more than ever to show Democrats what real political talent looks like. “Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane announced her resignation on Tuesday, one day after a jury convicted her of perjury and other crimes for leaking sealed grand jury material to a reporter. ‘I have been honored to serve the people of Pennsylvania and I wish them health and safety in all their days,’ Kane, whose resignation is effective Wednesday, said in a statement. Her deputy, Bruce Castor, is scheduled to address the media later on Tuesday. Kane faces up to seven years in prison on the most serious charge when she is sentenced on Oct. 24....The resignation capped a dramatic fall for Kane, who was once seen as a rising star in the Democratic Party and became the first woman elected Pennsylvania attorney general in 2012. A jury in Norristown found her guilty on Monday of leaking information to a reporter in an effort to embarrass a rival prosecutor.” [Reuters]
COMFORT FOOD
- What Elon Musk means when he says life is a simulation.
- Science proves that today’s men are weaklings.
- Hilarity ensues when a parental advisory organization tries to describe “Sausage Party.”
TWITTERAMA
WALKER: welcome to Wisconsin
TRUMP: thank you I’m very rich
WALKER: ham?
TRUMP: no
WALKER: it’s nice and hot
TRUMP: no
WALKER: so very hot
@elisefoley: Twitter never fails to remind me how little empathy people have.
StupidMillenial: buhh i’m tired after making Lattes at STARBUCKS
Wisebabyboomer: i’ve worked 420,069 consecutive hours atthe racism factory
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