| | | | All eyes on North Carolina with Clinton, Trump set to speak | | The 2016 campaign has descended on North Carolina. Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump brushed past each other on the tarmac this evening, and it's no wonder why the two are holding dueling rallies: It could be the state on which the 2016 race turns.
Clinton cast Trump as racist earlier today. "He has spent this entire campaign offering dog whistle to his most hateful supporters. He retweets white supremacists and spreads racially tinged conspiracy theories. And you better believe he is being heard loudly and clearly," she said.
Trump is set to deliver a foreign policy speech tonight. An aide says it "will be one of the most serious foreign policy and defense speeches he's given -- a powerful message in a state that has such a strong military presence."
Early voting is wrapping up -- which means the emphasis will soon shift to battlegrounds where all the action comes on Tuesday. The big ones: Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Michigan and Virginia.
Other campaign news today:
-- Mike Pence declined three times to say whether he'd vote for Paul Ryan to remain House speaker, in an excellent profile from The National Review's Tim Alberta.
-- President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama have cut a series of radio ads targeting black voters, hoping to turn out the crucial bloc as their numbers have lagged in early voting. The ads are specifically aimed at seven congressional districts with major African-American populations -- two in Florida, two in Nevada, one in California, one in Kansas and another in Nebraska.
-- Evan McMullin sits a full 13 points behind Donald Trump in the surprising 2016 battleground of Utah, according to a new poll from Monmouth University.
-- Clinton and Trump are tied at 42% apiece in New Hampshire, Suffolk University finds. | | "The guy does deserve a bullet. I mean, these aren't good people." | | | | Donald Trump aide David Bossie and CNN's Jake Tapper clashed today over Bossie's claim that "there's not one shred of evidence" to support the allegations of sexual assault against the Republican nominee. Check out the video. | | Melania Trump's irony-free social media cleanup pitch | | Melania Trump says she'd work to improve a social media culture that has gotten "too mean and too tough" -- riddled with insults based on "looks and intelligence" -- if she becomes first lady. It was her first speech since the Republican National Committee and it came in the Philadelphia suburbs.
The key section: "It is never OK when a 12-year-old girl or boy is mocked, bullied or attacked. It is terrible when it happens on the playground and it is absolutely unacceptable when it is done by someone with no name hiding on the internet. We have to find a better way to talk to each other. ... We must find better ways to honor and support the basic goodness of our children, especially in social media. It will be one of the main focuses of my work, if I am privileged enough to become your first lady."
What was missing: She didn't make any mention of the Twitter activities of her husband, Donald Trump, who has relentlessly attacked his political foes, journalists, critics and other entertainers for years with demeaning comments based on their appearances and presumed intelligence.
The New York Times has rounded up 282 examples of Trump's cyberbullying. Here's just a small sample of him doing exactly what his wife is warning against: | | | So what gives? Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway said Melania Trump's speech would not serve to highlight her husband's most controversial and inflammatory tweets. "It won't for responsible journalists who wish to cover her entire speech/life journey," Conway said. "And under that premise, would President Hillary Clinton never be able to talk law enforcement or corruption investigations again? Would she just abolish the DOJ and FBI?" | | | Macomb County is Donald Trump's Michigan moonshot, per CNN's Eli Watkins and Joyce Tseng. Check out their breakdown -- the latest in a great series on critical counties. | | How baseball bridged the political divide | | When the Chicago Cubs won the World Series in 1908, Teddy Roosevelt was president, women couldn't vote and Civil War veterans were still alive. The end of that 108-year drought came last night -- and with it came a shared moment for a nation divided by this campaign season.
Here's CNN's Stephen Collinson: "For 10 heart-stopping innings, Americans finally had something to draw them together rather than drive them apart. A World Series Game 7 for the ages offered some rare relief from the most bitter presidential election in recent memory."
The political connections: The owner of the Cubs is Tom Ricketts, part of a family of major Republican contributors. And Park Slope native Hillary Clinton is a Cubs fan (though she's adopted the Yankees along the way, too).
The traveling press corps was glued to the game last night, too. CNN's Jeff Zeleny sends this note and picture: "A campaign press bus is seldom silent, but the Clinton one was eerily quiet late last night in Phoenix. Wireless was spotty, but this computer was our window to Cleveland. Everyone seemed to be a Cubs fan for one night at least." | | | Sure as God made green apples ... it happened, and lots of CNNers are celebrating today, too. On our politics team, Manu Raju and Jeff Zeleny, plus digital wizards Dianna Heitz, Sophie Tatum and Caroline Kenny, are all flying the W, singing "Go Cubs Go" and cranking up Eddie Vedder's "All the Way." I'm with 'em -- and am a mess every time I watch this and this. | | | Hillary Clinton and her backers are outspending Donald Trump by $20 million on TV ads in the campaign's final week. ... Tim Kaine made the case for the Democratic ticket in Spanish at a Phoenix rally today. | | | We'd love to share our other newsletters with you. Click above to subscribe to CNNMoney's Reliable Sources, an insider's look into the media, brought to you by Brian Stelter. | | | Get the Nightcap, a comprehensive summary of the most important political news, delivered to your inbox daily. | | | | | |
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