Hillary Clinton Endorses Biden During Women’s Virtual Town Hall
Mike Memoli and Monica Alba
WASHINGTON Hillary Clinton, the first woman to win a major partys presidential nomination, first teased her endorsement of Joe Biden for president Tuesday in a where she revealed herself as the apparent Democratic nominees special guest at a virtual town hall on the impact of the coronavirus on women.
Then she made it official during the event Tuesday afternoon, saying she was “thrilled” to be a part of Biden’s campaign.
“I am thrilled to be part of your campaign. To not only endorse you but to help highlight a lot of the issues that are at stake during in this presidential election,” Clinton said.
A little hint about who the surprise guest will be for ‘s 3pm ET town hall today:
Hillary Clinton
The endorsement comes as Bidens campaign has worked over the past month to project the party as fully and to many, surprisingly unified heading into the general election fight against President Donald Trump. Former vice president and 2000 Democratic nominee Al Gore endorsed Biden last week at an Earth Day event President Barack Obama and former 2020 rivals Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren backed Biden the week before.
Biden retweeted Clinton’s announcement and commented, “I’m with her.”
In 2001, Clinton joined Biden in the Senate, where they remained through 2008 as they faced off in that years Democratic presidential primary before both joining Barack Obamas administration in 2009, him as vice president and her as secretary of State.
Outside Groups Spending Big For Greenfield In Iowa With Primary A Day Away
Ben Kamisar
WASHINGTON With Iowa’s congressional primary elections one day away, Democratic groups are spending big money to help Democrat Theresa Greenfield over the finish line.
Greenfield has some big names in her corner the DSCC, NARAL, EMILY’s List, the Brady PAC, BOLD PAC and former Iowa first lady Christie Vilsack are among her backers. And some of her key allies are flooding the airwaves ahead of Tuesday’s Senate primary, where Democrats look to find their nominee to face off against Republican Sen. Joni Ernst.
In the past seven days, Women Vote! , Senate Majority PAC and Greenfields campaign have spent almost $1.8 million on TV, Advertising Analytics shows. Greenfield’s top opponents, Michael Franken and Eddie Mauro, have spent just $165,000 combined.
In the two Women Vote! ads captured by Advertising Analytics, the PAC takes aim at both Franken and Mauro, framing Franken as a carpetbagger and Mauro as not adequately supportive of abortion rights.
Mauro’s recent ads have taken aim at Greenfield’s business record, but his spending has been just a drop in the bucket when compared to the pro-Greenfield spending.
Franken’s ad messaging has centered on his Des Moines Register endorsement and his biography, and don’t take jabs at his opponents.
So Greenfield and her allies are trying to flood the zone in the races final days in the hopes of wrapping things up for good on Tuesday.
With Biden Or Sanders At The Top Of The Ticket Democrats Look Down
Liz Brown-Kaiser
WASHINGTON With the party’s presidential race having been whittled down from a historically diverse field to two white men, Democrats are pointing to at least one bright spot when it comes to diversity among their candidates in 2020: state legislative elections.
According to the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee , which aims to elect Democratic state legislators nationwide, there are over twice as many Democratic women serving as state delegates or senators compared to their Republican counterparts 1,455 versus 670 respectively. And in some key battleground states, the party has recruited more diverse candidates considering race and sexual identity than the GOP.
DLCC president, Jessica Post, told NBC News in a recent phone interview that diversity matters because it energizes the Democratic base and leads to victories.
Diversity is our winning strategy, she said. Weve recruited great communities thinking about the voices that need to be represented.
The Republican State Leadership Committee the DLCCs counterpart did not respond to NBC News request to confirm these numbers but answered several other questions last week, saying they are supporting candidates of various backgrounds in pivotal states.
The DLCC’s Post argues that the GOP views legislative diversity as a mere add-on to their agenda, saying that the party has fallen down on the job.
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Progressive Super Pac Targets Sanders Supporters Urges Support Of Biden In New Memo
Gary Grumbach and Shaquille Brewster
Former senior advisors to Sen. Bernie Sanders are sounding the alarm about a significant portion of Sanders’ supporters who remain unsupportive of the apparent Democratic nominee Joe Biden, calling it a “clear and dangerous trend” in a memo obtained by NBC News.
Despite best intentions, the Biden campaign and the DNC are far behind on digital organizing, Latino outreach and progressive coalition building,” former senior advisor Jeff Weaver wrote in the four-page document from his newly formed “America’s Promise” PAC.
In an interview with NBC News, Weaver said that it is with these three priorities in mind that his Super PAC will spend the next six months persuading Sanders supporters to vote for former Vice President Joe Biden in November.
We have an opportunity in this election to elect somebody who certainly is not anywhere near as progressive as Bernie Sanders, Weaver told NBC News, but who will allow us to lock-in legislatively and institutionally, some of the gains that the progressive movement has earned through it’s hard work of these last five or six years.
While he said he is aware that not everyone who supported Bernie Sanders would be supporting Joe Biden, he pointed to issues including Bidens support of a $15 minimum wage, making colleges and universities tuition free for families making less than $125,000 and expanding health care access as progress in the policy arena as common ground.
Tweet The Press: Nbc’s Carol Lee Discusses The Administration’s Coronavirus Response
WASHINGTON On this week’s Tweet the Press, we spoke with NBC News correspondent Carol Lee about the latest developments on the administration’s coronavirus response plan.
Hours before President Trump says he will be announcing new guidelines on “opening up America again,” Carol ran down what that might look like, what questions still haven’t been addressed and what business leaders want to see from the president.
Click here to read the full conversation.
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Rnc Says Full Steam Ahead With Convention Plans Biden Remains Unsure For Dnc
Monica Alba, Marianna Sotomayor and Melissa Holzberg
WASHINGTON The Democratic and Republican parties are on different tracks when it comes to planning their nominating conventions during the coronavirus pandemic.
On Monday, the apparent Democratic nominee former Vice President Joe Biden said he wasn’t sure if a traditional convention could happen at all, while Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel said the party is moving “full steam ahead” in planning an in-person convention for late August in Charlotte, N.C.
“We don’t build out our convention until July. So I think we have at least until the end of June or early July to make a decision if we have to switch from a traditional convention to something scaled back. But we will have to have an in-person convention. Those are the bylaws of the RNC and so currently, going forward, we’re planning on a full-scale convention,” McDaniel said on Monday.
The Democratic National Committee has already postponed their convention to Aug. 17 from their original week in July due to the pandemic. However, the apparent nominee said that unless science makes that possible, it still might not happen.
When asked about the likelihood of any traditional, in-person convention for his apparent nomination, Biden said, “I, honest to God, don’t know.”
“We will get back to those rallies. Never fear, the president is certain that we’re going to be back out there speaking directly to the American people,” Murtaugh said.
State Ethics Board Votes To Hold Hickenlooper In Contempt After Refusing To Testify At Hearing
Ben Kamisar
Colorado’s state ethics commission voted to hold former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper in contempt for refusing to testify at an ethics hearing Thursday despite a subpoena, even after the former governor’s lawyer ultimately announced Hickenlooper would relent and testify later this month.
The governor did not attend Thursday’s hearing, an almost six-hour proceeding held online because of the coronavirus. He had argued for an in-person hearing, warning that a virtual one into whether he violated the state’s gift ban while in office would violate his right to due process.
A local district court judge declined to quash the subpoena on Wednesday.
As Thursday’s meeting crept toward a close, Hickenlooper’s lawyer, Mark Grueskin, announced that Hickenlooper would relent and appear, although not on Thursday. He offered June 16 as a possible date on which the governor would appear.
“The governor hears the gravity of the concerns and is very much committed to the commission process. And it is not his first choice, as you know, but he has indicated to me he will comply with the subpoena,” Grueskin said.
But that reversal did not quell a frustrated commission. Elizabeth Espinosa Krupa, the group’s chair, told Grueskin that she wasn’t “willing to wait until the 16th.”
It’s unclear whether Hickenlooper will appear Friday, although Melissa Miller, a Hickenlooper spokesperson, said in a statement “he remains ready to appear.”
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Trump Campaign Committee Facebook Ad Draws Mask On Biden
Ben Kamisar
WASHINGTON President Trump’s re-election committee ran a Facebook ad on Thursday featuring former Vice President Joe Biden in a drawn-on mask as the president continues to poke at his Democratic rival’s decision to wear a mask in public, a decision based on public health guidance.
While Biden is depicted in front of a Chinese flag wearing the mask, which says “Sleepy Joe” on it, Trump is maskless and in front of the American flag.
Trump’s campaign ran the ad from his verified account and was paid for by the “Trump Make America Great Again Committee,” a joint fundraising committee affiliated with both the campaign and the Republican National Committee. Facebook data shows that the campaign spent less than $100 promoting the ad.
The president has not donned a mask during any public events, but did during a private portion of his recent trip to a Ford plant in Michigan. This week, he retweeted a photo mocking Biden wearing a mask during a Memorial Day ceremony. And he tweeted an article by The Federalist warning that masks are about “social control,” adding the commentary “So many different viewpoints.”
So many different viewpoints!
Donald J. Trump May 28, 2020
Three Americans Recognized For Heroism In Train Attack By French President
He later played himself in the Clint Eastwood movie “The 15:17 to Paris,” which portrayed the train episode, appeared on ABC’s “Dancing with the Stars” and lost a close commissioner race in Douglas County, Ore. in 2018 before launching his congressional bid.
If his lead holds, Skarlatos will face off against Rep. Pete DeFazio, the longtime Democratic congressman who chairs the House Transportation Committee.
DeFazio has regularly cruised to victory over the years, but in 2016, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton beat President Donald Trump in the district by just 0.1 percentage points, according to the Cook Political Report’s analysis.
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Biden Condemns Death Of George Floyd Says Black Lives Are ‘under Threat’
WASHINGTON Former Vice President Joe Biden publicly condemned the horrific killing of George Floyd, which he says serves as a reminder to all Americans that racism still courses deeply through the countrys bloodstream.
George Floyds life matters. It mattered as much as mine. It matters as much as anyone’s in this country. At least it should have, Biden said during a Wednesday livestream, expanding on his initial statement made in a Tuesday evening .
He acknowledged that watching the video of 46-year-old Floyd being pinned down to the ground by a police officers knee triggered the memory of Eric Garner who also died at the hands of police. Though both black men died almost six years apart, Garner and Floyd each repeatedly told police that they could not breathe while being pinned to the ground, ultimately playing a role in their deaths that reignited public outcries of racist-motivated police attacks.
Biden said Floyds passing is the latest tragic reminder that this was not an isolated incident, but a part of an ingrained systemic cycle of injustice that still exists in this country.
It cuts at the very heart of our sacred belief that all Americans are equal in rights and in dignity, and it sends a very clear message to the black community and to black lives that are under threat every single day, he added.
President Trump To Resume In
Monica Alba
WASHINGTON After foregoing in-person fundraisers due to the coronavirus pandemic in March, President Trump is expected to resume the campaign staple in mid-June, according to a Republican National Committee official.
The president will participate in two high-dollar fundraisers next month: one on June 11 at a private home in Dallas there will be approximately 25 guests and it will cost about $580,600 per couple to attend. The second will take place at Trump’s Bedminster, N.J. golf club on June 13. There will also be about 25 attendees and each person will pay $250,000 to attend. POLITICO first reported the campaign’s decision.
Trump Victorys top priority is ensuring the safety of President Trump and our attendees, and that includes testing all attendees as well as several other safety measures that align with CDCs guidance, the RNC official explained.
The White House Medical Unit and U.S. Secret Service will also evaluate all attendees in order for them to be admitted to the event. All attendees will have to test negative for coronavirus on the day of the fundraiser, complete a wellness questionnaire and pass a temperature screening.
The costs of the tests will be covered by Trump Victory, the joint fundraising committee that includes the Trump campaign, RNC and 22 state parties. Each event site will be professionally cleaned and sanitized prior to the fundraisers, according to the RNC official.
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As Kansas Republicans Squabble In Senate Primary Democrat Pitches Herself A ‘sensible Centrist’
Ben Kamisar
WASHINGTON While the Kansas Republican primary has been dominated by attack ads, calls for candidates to drop out and other partisan tensions, Democrat Barbara Bollier is going up on the air seeking to present herself as above the partisan fray.
In a new ad released this week, the state senator’s campaign pitches herself as “a sensible centrist a leading moderate voice independent.”
“At a time like this, we need a reasonable voice like hers in the U. S. Senate,” the narrator says, adding she’ll “work with both parties” on issues like health care and jobs.
Bollier, a former Republican, has raised the most money of any candidate on either side of the race so far almost $3.5 million through March. And she is the far-and-away favorite to win the August Democratic Senate primary and face off against whoever wins the heated Republican primary.
That GOP primary has gotten chippy.
Some Republicans believe that former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach would cost their party the race if he wins the primary, pointing to his 2018 gubernatorial loss. And they’re running ads to that effect.
But opponents of Rep. Roger Marshall are piling onto him too, as the state party chairman has so that voters can have a more clear choice. That’s rubbed some people the wrong way.
The whole back and forth prompted state Sen. President Susan Wagle, one of those candidates asked by the chairman to drop out, to release an ad of her own framing her as above the “food fight” herself.
