Gen. Michael Hayden on the Iran nuke deal debate in Congress, Hardball with Chris Matthews with the latest on the 2016 trail, and Campbell Brownon the GOP education summit! And, Hilary (Clinton) gets testy in a press conference yesterday while fielding questions about the email servers.
This press conference is or was cringe worthy. Did she really answer the question about wiping her servers clean by asking another question, "do you mean with a cloth?" Oh Man. Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton endured an at-times combative press conference Tuesday, during which she could not answer whether her email server, which was turned over to the FBI last week, had been "wiped" clean of data.
Again, Clinton sparred with Fox News reporter Ed Henry, who at one point asked her whether she "wiped" her server.
"What, like with a cloth or something?" Clinton joked, before saying she didn't "know how it works digitally at all."
Clinton ended the press conference after the line of questioning from Henry. She showed some frustration over coverage of the issue when a reporter shouted a question as she turned to leave about whether the story would stop getting traction.
"Nobody talks to me about it other than you guys," she said with a shrug.
The private email server Clinton used during her time as secretary of state was turned over to the FBI last week, amid revelations that investigators had flagged another 305 emails that may contain classified information for intelligence agencies to further review. The intelligence community's inspector general last week identified two emails that contained top-secret material in a sample of 40.
The server had been overseen since 2013 by the small Denver IT firm Platte River Networks. Officials have said the FBI investigation is preliminary and have stressed that Clinton is not a target of the investigation.
During her press conference, Clinton offered a thorough but familiar defense of her decision to use a private email server and to delete more than 30,000 emails from her time as secretary of state that she says were "personal." She stressed Tuesday that she did not send classified material or receive anything "marked classified" at the time.
"I've been thinking about the fact that I get a lot of attention because I had a personal email account, as did other high-ranking officials in the State Department and elsewhere in the government," she said. "And I had not sent classified material, nor received anything marked classified.
"It has nothing to do with me. And it has nothing to do with the fact that my account was personal," she said. "It's the process by which the government — and sometimes in disagreements between various agencies of the government, make decisions about what can and can't be disclosed. So I'm very comfortable that this will eventually get resolved, and the American people will have plenty of time to figure it out."
Two sources close to the FBI investigation told NBC that an "attempt" was made to wipe Clinton's server sometime before it was handed over to the FBI. (It is unclear, however, when that attempt was made.) But federal agents are reportedly confident they can recover at least some of the deleted files.
The FBI "will try to figure what's there, how it got there and who put it there," one of the sources said.
Republicans were quick to condemn Clinton's press conference, with a spokeswoman from the Republican National Committee openly wondering, "How long until Joe Biden announces?"
BTW, I will post the new polls but look at these that came in last night: Donald Trumps numbers regarding immigration are through the roof. 44%. Which is a huge distance between him and Jeb (Bush) whom is second at 12%. Astonishing stats or poll number and then it is 45% for Trump on who will help the economy with Jeb (Bush) in second at 8%. Then, on handling ISIS, Trump is at 32% with Jeb second at 16%. And, then on Social Issues, Trump is at 15% with Jeb Bush at 14%.
Donald Trump has won his party's trust on top issues more than any other Republican presidential candidate, and now stands as the clear leader in the race for the GOP nomination, according to a new CNN/ORC poll.
The survey finds Trump with the support of 24% of Republican registered voters. His nearest competitor, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, stands 11 points behind at 13%. Just behind Bush, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson has 9%, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker 8%, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul 6%, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, former tech CEO Carly Fiorina and Ohio Gov. John Kasich all land at 5%, with former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee rounding out the top 10 at 4%.
Trump is the biggest gainer in the poll, up 6 points since July according to the first nationwide CNN/ORC poll since the top candidates debated in Cleveland on Aug. 6. Carson gained 5 points and Fiorina 4 points. Trump has also boosted his favorability numbers among Republicans and Republican-leaning voters, 58% have a favorable view of Trump now, that figure stood at 50% in the July survey.
These nationwide findings follow recent polling in Iowa and New Hampshire showing Trump also leads the Republican field in those two key early states. Bush, who held the top spot in the field in most CNN/ORC polls on the race between last fall and Trump's entry into the race in June, has seen his favorability ratings drop alongside his standing in the contest. Overall, 56% hold an unfavorable view of the former Florida governor and 42% of Republican voters have a negative impression. That's an increase in negative views among all adults (up from 43% since July) and among Republican voters (up from 34% unfavorable).
While Kasich and Fiorina remain largely unknown nationally, those Republicans who do have an opinion of these two -- both widely seen as debate standouts -- tend to tilt positive. Fiorina has a 45% favorable to 11% unfavorable rating among Republican voters, with 43% unable to rate her, while Kasich's is 32% favorable to 20% unfavorable, with 49% unable to rate him.
The poll suggests those behind Trump love him: He holds a 98% favorability rating among his supporters. But those Republican voters who aren't supporting Trump are skeptical that he would help the party. Most Republicans (58%) say the party would have a better chance to win in 2016 with someone else at the top of the ticket, including 72% of those who don't currently back the businessman.
Still, Trump has quickly won the trust of Republican voters on several top issues. According to the poll, 45% say they trust Trump more than any other Republican candidate on the economy -- up 25 points since June, 44% say they trust Trump over the others on illegal immigration -- up 30 points since June -- and 32% trust him most to handle ISIS, no other candidate comes close on any of these issues. On the economy and illegal immigration, Trump is far and away the top choice even among those Republicans who support someone else for the nomination (33% who say they will most likely vote for someone else say Trump is their most trusted on the economy, 29% say so on illegal immigration). Trump is also most trusted on social issues, 19% say he's their top choice to handle that. Bush follows at 15%.
On two of these issues, Trump is more trusted among conservative Republicans than among moderate Republicans: When it comes to both the economy and illegal immigration, 50% of conservatives say they trust Trump, compared with 35% among moderates on each of those issues.
The poll finds evidence of a slight gender gap in support for Trump, who has faced public questions recently about his treatment of women, though he does lead the field among both men and women. Trump stands at 27% among Republican men and at 20% among Republican women, a gap just outside the margin of error for each group.
Can Trump change the Constitution?
Bush is second among both men and women, standing just a hair behind Trump at 17% among women but well behind among men (10% of GOP men back Bush, no other candidate reaches double digits).
Trump is less trusted by women to handle the economy (50% of male GOP voters say they trust Trump most, 40% of women voters do) and slightly less so on social issues (21% among men, 15% among women).
But there is no gender gap among Republicans on favorable views of Trump: 60% of Republican women voters have a positive impression as do 57% of GOP men. Outside the Republican Party, women are less apt to hold a favorable view of Trump, just 17% of women voters who are independents or Democratic leaners see him favorably, compared with 29% of non-Republican male voters.
New poll: Trump takes lead in Iowa, Walker drops 02:00
There is also an education divide in Trump's support, with those Republican voters who lack college degrees more apt to back Trump than college graduates: 28% among the non-college graduate group vs. 16% among those who have graduated from college.
Few other demographic divides emerge in Republican preferences, according to the poll. Rand Paul fares best among voters under age 50, 10% among the younger group vs. 1% among the older one, and supporters of the Tea Party movement are more likely to favor Ted Cruz, 10% vs. 2% among those Republicans who do not support the tea party.
Trump outlines immigration specifics
Among the most enthusiastic Republican voters, the mix of candidates at the top of the field changes. While Trump holds the top slot across the board with the support of roughly a quarter of Republican voters regardless of their level of enthusiasm, the group of candidates following Trump shifts among those who say they are "extremely enthusiastic" about the election. In that group, Carson has 13%, Rubio 11%, boosting both ahead of Bush, who holds 9% and ties with Cruz for 4th, Kasich holds 8% support and Fiorina and Walker tie at 7%.
Bush has his best showing among those who are least enthusiastic. Among the group that says they are somewhat enthusiastic or less, 23% back Trump, 16% Bush, 10% Walker, with all others at 6% or less.
The CNN/ORC Poll was conducted by telephone Aug. 13-16 among a random national sample of 1,001 adults. The sample included 466 registered voters who are Republicans or independents who lean toward the Republican Party. For results among those Republican voters, the margin of sampling error is plus or minus 4.5 percentage points. For results among the full sample, it is 3 points.
The panel is now talking about how the Huffington Post refuses to cover the Trump campaign.
Dem Sen. Bob Menendez rips the Iran deal: “Hope” is not a national security strategy. Via the Free Beacon, enjoy five minutes of the most hawkish Democrat in Congress living up to his billing. Unlike Chuck Schumer, Menendez doesn’t need to play nice in voicing his criticism of the deal. He’s not the incoming minority leader with a caucus to manage, for one thing, and thanks to the federal corruption charges filed against him this spring, he doesn’t have any relationship with Obama that he fears jeopardizing. The guy came to state his piece, and he didn’t hold back. This line is particularly cutting, as it goes right to the heart of the legacy Obama’s trying to build for himself:
"It would be far easier to support [#IranDeal], as it would have been to vote for the war in #Iraq at the time," Menendez says to applause.
The unstated narrative of the Iran deal is that President Obama is making good on the vision of candidate Obama, who saw early that the Iraq war was a bad idea while the rest of the country was rushing towards it. Getting Iran to denuclearize (for 10 years or so) and hopefully reach detente with the west will show the hawks out there that diplomacy can achieve more than eight years of war could. It’s essentially a bet right next door to Iraq made by doves that they, not hawks, know the true path to national security. Menendez’s line about doing the easy thing tears at the guts of that theory by equating Obama with the Iraq hawks he disdains. They took the politically easy route in 2003, says Menendez, and now the White House is doing the same thing by misleading a war-weary country into believing that this deal will stop Iran’s drive to a bomb when, in reality, it enables it. Quote: “The agreement that has been reached failed to achieve the one thing it set out to achieve—it failed to stop Iran from becoming a nuclear weapons state at a time of its choosing. In fact, it authorizes and supports the very road map Iran will need to arrive at its target.” Just so. The entire strategy, as Menendez says, boils down to hope, specifically the hope that Iran will reform politically before the deal lapses in 10 years and they resume uranium enrichment with much more advanced centrifuges, putting them on the doorstep of having a bomb. Hope, he notes drily, isn’t a national security strategy. I wonder if Captain Hopenchange felt an extra sting from that line.
Menendez isn’t the only senator announcing his opposition to the Iran deal today. Let’s see if you can guess who wrote this:
We have more leverage than we will ever have, but under this deal that leverage will flip in approximately nine months, when most major sanctions are relieved. Iran will further deepen its regional strength.
Unfortunately, the agreement ties our hands in countering Iran’s efforts. If we try to push back, Iran will threaten to speed up its nuclear development since it already will have a windfall of money, a rapidly growing economy and alliances built with our partners, who will feast on the mercantile benefits of doing business with Iran.
The idea that a future president will somehow have the same options available as today, when Iran is poor and isolated, is fanciful…
This deal … leaves the United States vulnerable to a resurgent Iran wealthier and more able to work its will in the Middle East.
Yes, as hard as it is to believe, that’s none other than Bob Corker in an op-ed for the Washington Post. There’s no one in Congress more responsible for destroying the GOP’s leverage over this deal than he is, negotiating an atrocious deal with the White House that effectively allows Obama to implement the agreement if just 34 senators approve. And he made that deal, believe it or not, before the terms of the final agreement between the U.S. and Iran had been reached, which reassured Obama that even a bad bargain with lots of concessions had little chance of being blocked by Congress. This guy deserves to be primaried for what he did, but good luck knocking off Republican senators in a primary anymore. Especially over a matter of foreign policy.
Fractured American Jewish Community Is First Victim of Iran Nuclear Deal. Netanyahu and AIPAC have sparked a battle royal of Jew vs. Jew, with the most riveting skirmishes playing out in the local Jewish Federations. In the campaign to convince American Jewish groups to come out against the Iran nuclear deal, Israeli opposition leader Isaac Herzog has emerged as a strategic asset.
In some of the heated deliberations taking place in national Jewish organizations and local Jewish Federations across America, opponents of the deal with Tehran are using Herzog as a trump card to challenge the motives and loyalties of its supporters: How can a good Jew defend Obama’s deal, they ask, when Herzog and the rest of Israel oppose it?
Herzog may have subsequently dissociated himself from the all-out war that Benjamin Netanyahu and AIPAC are waging against the Obama administration in Congress, but the nuance is lost in the fierce firefights that have broken out among American Jews since the July 14 Vienna signing of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) between the P5+1 countries and Iran. It is a battle royal that is taking place in the boardrooms of Jewish organizations from coast to coast, in synagogues, community centers and social gatherings, behind closed doors or out in the open, in polite debate or, increasingly, in heated emotional dispute. It pits Jews against Jews, conservatives vs. liberals, hawks and doves, Republicans and Democrats, donors against professionals, rabbis against their flock and, in recent days, against one another.
For every statement for or against there is an immediate rebuttal, for every argument a counterargument, for each manifesto a harsh rebuke. Both sides swear allegiance to the greater good of both Israel and America, but as time goes by, the acrimony grows acute, resentment festers, the bitterness strikes roots. Whether the deal is as good as the Obama administration claims or as bad as Netanyahu says, it has already claimed its first victim: a fractured American Jewish community.
Obama speaks about the nuclear deal with Iran at the American University in Washington, August 5, 2015.AP
Already divided in recent years against the backdrop of unprecedented tensions between Obama and Netanyahu and growing disenchantment with many Israeli policies, the community is polarizing, perhaps, as some claim, even splitting at the seams. And it is doing so out in the open, for the world to see.
Along with its internal convulsions, American Jews are also the subject of intense external scrutiny, justifiable and malicious. A few minutes after New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez predictably announced on Tuesday that he would be joining his Jewish colleague from New York Chuck Schumer in opposing the Iran deal, he was subjected to a harsh torrent of insults and diatribes on social media that were mostly anti-Jewish in nature. These manifestations of anti-Semitism are then cultivated and inflated by cynical Iran deal critics and artificially linked to legitimate if sometimes injudicious remarks made by Obama and other administration officials.
While the pro-Israel lobby ducks under cover of this alleged incitement, the community reels from the reemergence of long dormant insinuations and accusations of dual loyalties and undue influence. GOP activists, meanwhile, stoke these flames in the hope that next time around, Jews will finally see the error of their ways and vote Republican.
On the national level, AIPAC has set the tone, with mainstream organizations such as the American Jewish Committee and the Anti Defamation League following suit; J-Street and smaller organizations stand mostly alone in support of the deal. Many Jewish professionals and executives concur with criticism of the Iran deal, but even those who don’t are wary of their conservative donors, whose voices are often louder and financial pressures more direct than those of their liberal counterparts. Some activists feel compelled to speak out, fearing that silence will render them irrelevant on the most dramatic Jewish issue of the day; others are wary of accusations that they were ignoring the collective opinion of Herzog and other Israelis or repeating the sins of their forefathers who stood by as the Holocaust engulfed the Jews of Europe.
The most riveting showdowns by far are taking place in the 151 Jewish Federations that have traditionally steered clear of divisive political issues, preferring to stick with fundraising for Israel and Jewish education while providing social services to their community. The Federations’ foray into disputed territory has sparked dissent and outrage among Obama supporters and among some of his opponents as well: a few have threatened to reassess their contributions. Many Federation bigwigs are concurrently active in AIPAC: in recent weeks, the powerful Washington-based lobby has made a point of beginning conference calls with activists with a tally of the Federations that have joined the fight and those that are still sitting on the fence. Some Federation officials have complained of direct pressures being exerted by the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem or in its name.
To date, 18 Federations have come out against the Iran deal, with most urging their members to lobby members of Congress to vote it down. The list of fighting Federations is slightly more than 10% of the total number, but it includes most of the big hitters, including Chicago, where a fierce battle was waged between opposing sides; Los Angeles, which was forced to issue an acknowledgement of the “complexity” of the issue and the “diversity” of opinions after its original statement of opposition sparked a fierce backlash, along with Boston, Miami, Philadelphia and other major Metropolitan areas. The biggest of them all, however, the New York UJA-Federation, has decided to maintain neutrality and steer clear of the divisive battle.
It’s hard to tell with which side enjoys more support in the community. The very definition of the target audience is in dispute: does it include all self-professed Jews or only those who participate in communal life or take an interest in Israel. The only reliable poll, at least in this writer’s view, was conducted by Professor Steve Cohen and published in the Jewish Journal a few days after the JCPOA was signed. It showed solid support for the nuclear deal, but that was before Netanyahu, the Republicans and right wing pundits sank their teeth into it, and before AIPAC and other groups began spending tens of millions of dollars advertising its dangers and pitfalls. Among American Jews, like their Israeli brethren, fear and suspicion have a home turf advantage over optimism and hope.
Jewish officials I have spoken to in recent days are worried, perhaps even scared: they feel helpless despite the earthquake beneath their feet and the irreparable damage that it may cause. Many are frustrated that Netanyahu has chosen to lead the charge without devoting a second thought to how it might weaken the Jewish community. In a few months Netanyahu will try to enlist American Jews to do battle against the boycott movement, one senior Jewish figure told me, but he could be facing a demoralized and disoriented community that has alienated and distanced many of its members while wasting precious resources and limited goodwill on a campaign that was doomed from the outset.
WaPost's David Ignatius is on and evidently, he wrote a story about how Trump Resembles 'American Putin' (although the Donald does keep his shirt on his body). Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump looks a lot Russian President Vladimir Putin in the way he promises to restore the country to its past glory while offering few specifics, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius says.
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"Donald Trump is in some respects an American version of Putin," Ignatius writes.
"Brash self-confidence" propels such politicians, he says. "They don't explain the mundane details of national revival; they just assert it."
Putin put forth his vision for Russian revival in a December 1999 speech.
"Russia has [just] experienced one of the most difficult periods in its many centuries of history," Putin said. "She faces the real danger of becoming not just a second- but even a third-tier country."
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Trump, Ignatius said, is more "nakedly self-promoting" than Putin, who appears to enjoy being seen by the media as "an uncouth lout and rabble-rouser.... "His blunt comments speak to a nation that’s sick of political double-talk."
Ignatius said that, ultimately, the Putin routine won't last long.
"[T]he bullying authoritarian personality — the Putin style — usually doesn’t work here," he said. "This summer has been an exception, but history suggests that it won’t last.
Regardless of it all happening today, please stay in touch.
