| | | | FBI's Comey on Clinton emails: Never mind | | FBI Director James Comey dropped one bombshell 11 days before the election. Now, with two days to go, he's dropped another, telling lawmakers the FBI had not changed its July conclusion that Hillary Clinton shouldn't face charges over her handling of classified information on her private server, after all.
Forget the legalese -- this is all about the political fallout. Clinton herself didn't mention Comey's decision at all during her rally after the announcement, but her campaign claims vindication. A senior Democrat close to Clinton's campaign told CNN that "it's impossible to fully undo the damage of the last nine days." Internal campaign polling, the source said, found that some independents and Republican women fled Clinton after the original Comey announcement, robbing the Democratic nominee of a constituency that she'd hoped would turn her contest with Donald Trump into a blowout. "It opened a wound that cannot be quickly healed," the Democrat said.
This wasn't just about Clinton vs. Trump. Down-ballot Republicans -- particularly Senate candidates who had been forced to answer for Trump's statements for months -- used the moment to change the topic, shifting to the more comfortable ground of attacking Clinton. | | Trump's path lined with false, misleading statements | | Even as Donald Trump hews closely to the script his aides have urged him to follow, CNN's Jeremy Diamond reports, the Republican nominee isn't abandoning the lies, misrepresentations and hyperbole he has turned to time and again to bolster the arguments driving his presidential campaign. And this time, many of them are built into the teleprompter.
Clinton and Trump are in a mad dash across the country right now -- with Clinton trying to solidify blue states like Michigan and Trump trying to flip at least one or two of those states.
Here's a look at today's action on the campaign trail:
Clinton today: She's visiting Pennsylvania, Ohio with LeBron James, and New Hampshire.
Trump today: He's trying to break into Clinton's Rust Belt "blue wall," visiting Iowa, Minnesota, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Virginia.
Why was Trump in reliably blue Minnesota? Trump deputy campaign manager David Bossie said on a conference call this morning that Trump is "internally within the margin of error" there. One thing's clear: Democrats aren't sweating Minnesota. "If I don't win Minnesota, I'm going to look real bad to those pundits," Trump said at his rally in Minneapolis.
About last night: Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway deflected questions about the campaign's claims of an assassination attempt on the Twitter accounts of Eric Trump and aide Dan Scavino in an interview with CNN's Jake Tapper on "State of the Union." (Those claims were inaccurate; while a Trump supporter shouted "gun" at an event in Reno, the protester was unarmed.)
The new trend: Trump is attacking celebrities -- without a hint of irony. Last night in Denver, he attacked Clinton for campaigning with Jay Z, Beyonce and other stars, calling it "demeaning to the political process. It really is, think of it. It's demeaning to the political process." Some celebrities -- like Lady Gaga -- are attacking back, and it's getting personal: | | Today's must-read: Inside Trump's final days on the trail | | The New York Times is out with a blockbuster look inside the final days of Donald Trump's campaign, with a monster byline of Maggie Haberman, Ashley Parker, Jeremy W. Peters and Michael Barbaro.
Here are six things we learned from their account:
1. Trump's staff has taken away his Twitter account -- key to keeping him on message in the campaign's final weeks.
2. Daughter Ivanka Trump asked the campaign not to promote a commercial she'd sat for, aimed at suburban women, out of concerns it would damage her business interests. (Trump's campaign denied this.)
3. Trump's aides begged him not to use his Gettysburg speech in October to threaten to sue women accusing him of sexual assault, telling him he'd seem small and undermine the message of a key speech -- but Trump insisted.
4. Trump has mused about funding a super PAC with the sole purpose of seeking vengeance against his political enemies.
5. One you've got to read: "Mr. Trump, who does not use a computer, rails against the campaign's expenditure of tens of millions on digital ads, skeptical that spots he never sees could have any effect."
6. Trump aides used 270towin.com to plot out possible electoral paths. (Our take: This helps explain his curious excursions to Minnesota and New Mexico.) | | "At least we now know why Cheryl didn't want her to run." -- John Podesta, Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman, in a hacked email published by WikiLeaks, on long-time aide Cheryl Mills' knowledge of Clinton's private server. | | | | Even "Saturday Night Live" is sick and tired of this election. Alec Baldwin's Donald Trump and Kate McKinnon's Hillary Clinton broke character in their final pre-election take on the 2016 race last night. | | 'A crook or a racist': What Wednesday morning brings | | Voters aren't just choosing the next president on Tuesday. They're mercifully putting the most emotionally draining and overwrought campaign in decades out of its misery, writes CNN's Stephen Collinson.
But does it really end? After a negative campaign between two historically unpopular nominees, as Chuck Todd put it on NBC's "Meet the Press" this morning: "Half the country is going to think we've elected a crook or a racist."
Clinton's take on the gridlock to come, in a shot at Hill Republicans in Cleveland today: "If they want to keep helping the wealthy, the powerful and the well-connected -- yeah, then we're going to have gridlock. Because I want jobs with rising incomes. I want people having a better shot at the future."
President Barack Obama is weighing in -- cutting an ad for the DCCC hitting Republicans in Florida and Virginia for talking about impeaching a potential President Hillary Clinton. | | | Hillary Clinton's dual Cubs and Yankees fandom is part of this week's "State of the Cartoonion" by Jake Tapper. | | Trump campaign wins in Ohio voter intimidation case | | | From CNN's Dan Berman and Ariane de Vogue: In a win for Donald Trump's campaign, a federal appeals court on Sunday blocked a broad district court order concerning allegations of voter intimidation against the campaign and Ohio Republicans. A three-judge panel of the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals held that the Ohio Democratic Party had not "demonstrated a likelihood of success on the merits" in its attempt to show that the Trump campaign and the Ohio Republican Party had engaged in efforts to prevent minority voters from voting during the election. The court's order provided no reasoning for its decision and was issued by three judges who were nominated by Republican presidents. | | How Obama is affecting down-ballot races | | From John King's "Inside Politics" forecast: President Barack Obama speaking Spanish on the radio? Jonathan Martin of The New York Times heard it with his own ears in the Miami area Saturday as the President tried to help Democrat Patrick Murphy in his race against incumbent Republican Sen. Marco Rubio.
Proof, Martin reports, that the unprecedented Obama effort in campaign 2016 is aimed at trying to do something he was unable to do in 2010 and 2014. "He's finally an asset after being a liability for much of the last eight years for his own party. I was with him in Chapel Hill last week. He was as impassioned going after Richard Burr, the senator there, as he was Donald Trump. Almost ridiculing Burr for supporting Trump," explains Martin. "Given his popularity, he might pull some Democrats over the lines." | | Minnesota Democratic Sen. Al Franken says FBI Director James Comey should face Senate hearings. ... Mike Pence says New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's role as head of the Donald Trump campaign's transition team won't change despite the swirling Bridgegate drama. ... Hillary Clinton is leading Trump by 4 points in the final NBC/Wall Street Journal poll of the election.
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