| | | | Where is the $100 million Trump says he's spending? | | Donald Trump told CNN's Dana Bash on Wednesday that he'll have spent $100 million of his own money by Election Day -- and is prepared to open his wallet and donate much more. "I will have over $100 million in the campaign, and I'm prepared to go much more than that," Trump said outside of his new hotel in Washington, declining to offer an exact figure. "In the old days, you'd get credit: If you would spend less money and have victory, that would be a good thing. Today, they want you to spend money."
But here's the reality: Trump has given less than $60 million since the beginning of the race, records show, and his contributions have slowed considerably since he won the GOP nomination. He would have to have given more than $40 million over the final five weeks of the campaign to meet that number. Trump's personal giving will become clearer Thursday, when his contributions from October 1-19 will be revealed. Donations after that date will not become public until December.
Pressure to spend more: Earlier this month, Republican National Committee chair Reince Priebus asked Trump to put more of his own money into his campaign to better compete with Hillary Clinton in TV advertising dollars. A source familiar with the conversation said Trump did not do as Priebus asked.
More Trump campaign news today...
"I think it's a very rude question, to be honest with you." That's how Trump answered Bash's question about why -- 13 days before the election -- he was in Washington for a hotel ribbon-cutting, rather than campaigning in battleground states. "For you to ask me that question is actually very insulting, because Hillary Clinton does one stop and then goes home and sleeps. Yet you'll ask me that question," Trump said.
A new Republican war on women? The Washington Post's Jenna Johnson and Karen Tumulty dive into concerns that Trump is irreparably damaging the party's brand with female voters. | | "I get asked on a regular basis, 'Boy, why aren't you running this year?' I ask myself that a lot, too." | | | Donald Trump's Hollywood Walk of Fame star was obliterated overnight. The guy who did it -- who identified himself as James Otis -- says he plans to auction off the star to help women who say Trump sexually assaulted them. "I had four or five family members sexually assaulted, and I'm terribly upset that we have a presidential nominee who's become sort of a poster child of sexual violence," Otis told CNN.
Los Angeles police say they're investigating: | | Trump's path to 270 runs through ... Maine? | | Donald Trump's campaign raised eyebrows with its announcement of a Friday rally in Lisbon, Maine -- his fourth trip to the state since June. But there's a method to the Republican nominee's supposed madness: He absolutely can't afford to lose the single electoral vote he could win there.
Here's Trump's most realistic path to 270 electoral votes -- and exactly 270, without a single one to spare -- based on recent polls and early voting data: Compared to the 2012 map, he needs to keep North Carolina, Arizona, Georgia and Utah in the GOP column. Then he needs to win Iowa and Ohio -- two states where he appears to be in good shape -- as well as Florida, Nevada and New Hampshire.
This is a triple bank shot that looks quite unlikely. However, since Trump's monthslong effort to break Clinton's Rust Belt wall of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin doesn't appear to have succeeded (Politico's Katie Glueck has a good look at why), and Colorado and Virginia appear out of reach, it's his only real option.
Check out CNN's current battleground map -- click it and see if you can come up with a better path for Trump: | | Here's why I think this is the path he's chosen: It's not just Maine: Running mate Mike Pence will spend tomorrow morning in Omaha, attempting to hold onto an electoral vote in the only other state that divvies its up by congressional district. This much emphasis on individual electoral votes shows that Trump's campaign believes it doesn't have even one to spare.
The road less traveled: New Hampshire -- where Trump will be Thursday -- looks like the heaviest lift. So don't be shocked if he makes a late push in Wisconsin -- which is ever-so-slowly trending Republican, and could make up for those electoral votes.
Spoiler alert: Two things not named Hillary Clinton that could blow all this up for Trump: Independent conservative candidate (and Mormon) Evan McMullin winning Utah, or a single faithless elector refusing to back him. | | Donald Trump surrogate Newt Gingrich told Fox News' Megyn Kelly last night: "You are fascinated with sex and you don't care about public policy." It got weirder from there.
What's most remarkable is how this moment reflects the two different political universes we live in. There's the Trump world: | | | ... And outside the Trump world: | | Dems sue GOP over Trump's 'rigged' complaints | | | The Democratic National Committee is suing the Republican National Committee for aiding GOP nominee Donald Trump as he argues that the presidential election is "rigged," claiming that Trump's argument is designed to suppress the vote in minority communities. The suit, filed Wednesday in US District Court in New Jersey, argues that the RNC has not sufficiently rebuked Trump for the line of attack, which he has used as a rallying cry and is assumed to be a way to explain away a potential loss on Election Day. CNN's Theodore Schleifer has more. | | Did White House see Obamacare premium hike coming? | | | CNN's Michelle Kosinski has a look at when President Barack Obama's administration learned it'd have an Obamacare mess on its hands right before the election. She writes: "According to a senior official, the administration started getting a sense of how much insurance companies were going to hike prices last spring. Also, it had the projections from the Congressional Budget Office, which, overall, were mostly accurate about where the premiums are now. The surprise? That some states are seeing much higher hikes. The administration attributes that to several factors, including that too few young, healthy people are signing up to offset the expenses of the needier patients. But one official said insurance companies also initially priced their offerings too low. 'An honest miscalculation,' the official believes, of who they'd be insuring and how sick they were." | | | Early-voting numbers show hints of good news for Hillary Clinton in Arizona and Nevada, and for Donald Trump in Iowa. ... Clinton's camp is signaling to donors that she wants them to pump money into competitive Senate races. ... Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul is alleging polls that show Trump trailing are "designed to suppress turnout." | | | Get the Nightcap, a comprehensive summary of the most important political news, delivered to your inbox daily. | | | | | |
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