Senator Tim Scott said tonight that if people are honestly offended by him or anyone else saying “all lives matter,” that’s their problem.
On CNN tonight, Scott told Brianna Keilar, “If it causes offense to say that all lives matter, black lives, white lives, police officers… if that is somehow offensive to someone, that’s their issue, not mine.”
He lamented the “regression in race relations” over the past few years and said people offended by messages of unity need to “look into their own hearts and figure out why that is.”
A federal judge in Kentucky has ordered Rowan County clerk Kim Davis to jail for refusing to issue marriage licenses, including to same-sex couples.
Davis, who was found in contempt of court by U.S. District Judge David Bunning, has been the center of controversy recently for citing her religious beliefs in refusing issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples — or any couples, for that matter — after the Supreme Court ruled that same-sex marriage is legal in all 50 states.
David Moore and David Ermold, two Kentuckians who went viral in July for posting a video of Davis refusing to issue them a marriage license, have been denied a license four times. The Supreme Court on Monday denied Davis’ injunction request for an exemption to the Obergefell v. Hodges ruling. Davis, an elected official, was summoned to court on Tuesday.
Speaking to the governor from a state that shares a northern border with Canada, Chuck Todd wanted to know this morning on Meet the Press what Scott Walker thinks about the possibility of building a fence to keep people from coming into the country that way. “Why are we always talking about the southern border and building a fence there?” he asked. “We don’t talk about a northern border.”
“If this is about securing the border from potentially terrorists coming over, do you want to build a wall north of the border, too?” Todd asked Walker.
“Some people have asked us about that in New Hampshire,” Walker replied. “They raised some very legitimate concerns, including some law enforcement folks that brought that up to me at one of our town hall meetings about a week and a half ago. So that is a legitimate issue for us to look at.”
To combat terrorism on U.S. soil, Walker said, “It starts with securing the homeland. It wasn’t just about building a wall and securing our borders. It was also about making sure our intelligence community has the ability for counterterrorism and the ability to go after the infrastructure they need to protect us.”
So while a Donald Trump administration will come complete with the “biggest, best wall ever” along the U.S.-Mexico border, a Walker presidency could well see a fence in the north.
“I think it’s just wrong,” Walker said. “…Even though I don’t know Senator Cruz as well as I know some of the governors, I’ve grown to like him and admire him quite a bit out on the campaign trail.”
“Does this rhetoric help at all in the party, when people are slamming each other left and right like this?” host Hugh Hewitt asked.
“No, it doesn’t at all,” Walker said. “Particularly at a time when so many Americans, rightfully so, are frustrated that we can’t get things done in Washington. I’m frustrated.”
A new Quinnipiac poll has more bad news for theHillary Clinton campaign, with poll results showing voters think of Clinton as “dishonest” and a “liar.”
“What is the first word that comes to mind when you think of Hillary Clinton?” Quinnipiac asked. All three of the most popular answers were along the same lines: “liar,” “dishonest,” and “untrustworthy.” After those responses, Clinton nets a few positive responses, such as “experience” and “strong.” But then the negative qualifiers begin again, with responses like “crook,” “untruthful,” “criminal,” and “deceitful.”
The same question was asked of Donald Trump and Jeb Bush. The top three responses for Trump were “arrogant,” “blowhard,” and “idiot,” while the top responses for Bush were “Bush,” “family,” and “honest.”
The same poll found Clinton with low favorables. A majority of voters, 51%, say that they have an unfavorable opinion of Clinton while only 39% says they have a favorable opinion.
The panel of MSNBC’s Morning Joe tore into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton after she turned her private email sever over the government after two top secret emails were found to have been stored on her email.
“Politically, it’s a no-win situation for her,” Bloomberg Politics’ Mark Halperin said. “If they recover the information from the emails, the 30,000 personal ones, I think it’s almost certainly the case that someone will find something that should have been turned over, and that would be a problem for her.”
“If it’s been fully deleted and permanently erased… I think people will say, ‘Wow, why did Hillary Clinton go to such length to permanently delete the e-mails?’” he continued. “And the question will linger forever, what was on there?”
Republican strategist Nicole Wallace agreed, and slammed Clinton’s “cumulative string of dishonesty” and desperate excuses. “I just think they’re down the rabbit hole of now squandering of whatever is left of the general public’s trust.”
Contributor Mike Barncile said the emails were indeed a problem, but the larger problem was the scandal “regurgitates” all the public’s worries about the Clintons. “Hillary Clinton, it’s quite obvious thus far her candidacy, too much of it has been about the past.”
The panel also ripped Clinton for framing the inquiry into her emails as a partisan issue, even though she was being investigated by Obama appointees.“I have to say, that feels condescending” host Mika Brzezinski said.
Donald Trump said during an interview with MSNBC’s Morning Joe that he believed a low minimum wage was a good thing for America, because it helped the country compete with foreigners.
“Your slogan is ‘Make America Great Again,'” host Mika Brzezinski noted. “I’m curious on the issue of wages ,which have been flat for years now… do you think the minimum wage should be raised across the board?”
“Mika, it’s such a nasty question because the answer has to be nasty,” Trump said. “We’re in a global economy now. It used to be companies would leave New York State or leave another state and go to Florida, go to Texas, go to wherever they go because or lower wages…”
But now, Trump noted, the United States is competing with much lower wages in other countries. “We can’t have a situation where our labor is so much more expensive than other countries that we can no longer compete. One of the things I’ll do if I win, I’ll make us competitive as a country.”
“I want to create jobs so you don’t have to worry about the minimum wage, they’re making much more than the minimum wage,” he said. “But I think having a low minimum wage is not a bad thing for this country, Mika.”
HOW CAN YOU TAKE SOMEONE SERIOUS THAT GOES ON THE NIGHTLY SHOW?
Larry Wilmore invited two of the #BlackLivesMatter activists who confronted Hillary Clinton during a private meeting last week to appear on The Nightly Show last night, and his first question for them was, “Why do you think it’s so important to make white people feel uncomfortable?”
“When we’re talking about race in this country, that’s often what happens, people get uncomfortable,” Daunasia Yancey answered.
As he did on his show last week, Wilmore pressed the activists to explain what the movement’s beef is with progressives in general and Bernie Sanders in particular, arguing that the two groups would seem like “natural allies.”
Julius Jones, who repeated his claim that “all lives matter” is a “violent” statement, told Wilmore that sometimes you have to be “honest” with your friends and in the case of the Democratic candidates, they are not doing enough to align themselves with the movement. “Bernie Sanders, for as much as he was walking with MLK, he ain’t walking that walk now,” he said.
Later, Wilmore asked the activists if they have any plans — “and please say yes” — to interruptDonald Trump on the campaign trail. The answer? “Yes.”
A #BlackLivesMatter activist appearing on CNN told host Wolf Blitzer that saying “all lives matter” is actually a “violent statement.”
Activist Julius Jones was invited on to discuss the protest movement’s contentious meeting withHillary Clinton. “Black lives are actively under attack, and we are in a terrible war with our own country. African-Americans are Americans and we’re not treated like that, we’re not treated as if black lives matter.”
“And when people say ‘all lives matter,’ it’s a violent statement, because the only time that people say ‘all lives matter’ is in opposition to ‘black lives matter,’ and it’s the most violent statement of love that you can do,” he said. “It’s like, ‘all lives matter!’ Yes, we understand that, it’s true, but in this country for the longest time, the United States acts like black lives don’t matter.”
Bloomberg Politics’ Mark Halperin took aim at Hillary Clinton Monday morning, saying on MSNBC’s Morning Joe that hers was the most unresponsive presidential campaign he ever had to deal with.
Halperin said that Clinton underestimates how much voters are concerned about her private email scandal. “When she told the joke [about her disappearing emails], there were people around me who gasped, because it’s not a joking matter for a lot of people.”
“She said here at the fair when she had a press availability, real voters don’t talk to her about this, they never bring it up to her. Well you know what, Joe? Real people never bring up to me I need to lose weight. They never tell me that. They might talk about it to other people, but they never say it to me,” he continued.
“I will tell you, here in Iowa, talking to people at the fair, talking to elite Democrats, they bring her emails up to me. Extraordinarily high degree, high frequency of people saying, ‘What’s the deal?’”
“I have never in my career dealt with a presidential campaign who is as unresponsive to basic questions,” Halperin said. “[Former Democratic Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell] said turn over the server, that’s not the only issue. There’s lots of facts they won’t respond to on a daily basis.”
MSNBC contributor Donny Deutsch said on Morning Joe that the greatest problem with Hillary Clinton’s Democratic presidential campaign is that the American people are simply tired of her.
“The emails are actually just a symptom of the problem of Hillary,” Deutsch said. “Americans are just tired of Hillary Clinton. There comes a point in time where she comes on the TV — Hillary Clinton is very competent and very bright, just Americans have fallen out of like with her. It’s that simple.”
“Are you tired of her?” host Joe Scarborough asked.
“Yes,” he replied. “I think Hillary at this point, regardless of her skill set, would not be an effective leader because her fault or not, the country is polarized. She cannot lead effectively, because she’ll not be able to bring this country together.”
Deutsch, who identifies as a liberal, said he was basing his observation in part on his conversations with powerful New York City establishment Democrats. “That’s Democrats,” Scarborough pointed out. “That’s not Republicans. These are around the dinner table, around the lunch table powerful Democrats saying ‘We just can’t do this.’
Most Americans tend to agree that Abraham Lincoln was one of this country’s better presidents, having saved the nation from imploding on itself with the Civil War. Former IRS chief Lois Lerner, however, does not apparently have the same thoughts about keeping the South in the union.
“Look my view is that Lincoln was our worst president not our best,” Lerner wrote in 2014. “He should (have) let the south go. We really do seem to have 2 totally different mindsets.”
The Senate Finance Committee released a report yesterday that examined 1.5 million pages of IRS emails. A significant focus has gone to the fact that Lerner had a pattern of deriding conservatives as “crazies” and “assholes,” as well as the allegations that her leadership mismanaged the applications of Tea Party groups seeking tax-exempt status
“The report clearly shows that conservative groups were singled out because of their political beliefs, and gross mismanagement at the IRS allowed this practice to continue for years,” said Sen. Orrin Hatch.
Lerner is still reeling from renewed backlash after yesterday’s reports suggested that she once targeted an organization that once paid a fee to Bristol Palin.
Fox News’ Megyn Kelly opened up for the first time this morning about all the criticism she and Fox have gotten about last week’s Republican debate, talking with MediaBuzz host Howard Kurtz.
And, basically, she took the high road, not necessarily singling out Trump but instead defending her tough questions and saying, “If you can’t get past me, how are you gonna handle Vladimir Putin.”
She explained that the goal was, for every candidate, to “drill down to their most vulnerable areas and then give them a chance to explain them” because these same things will most definitely resurface in the general election.
Kelly anticipated a few boos (which they got), but said of all the criticism, “It’s okay, I’m a big girl. I can take it.” Furthermore, she made it clear she didn’t want her male co-moderators being her white knights in case she came under attack.
As for supposed “gotcha” questions, Kelly said, “I don’t think that my history as a journalist supports bias on my part towards either party… When Im ticking off both sides, I’m in my sweet spot.”
Kurtz noted at the top he conducted his interview with Kelly before Trump’s ridiculous “blood” remark. And in case you needed a reminder of what Trump said of her before that:
Chris Matthews said tonight that Donald Trump comes across as a “leader” more so than President Obama did when he got his start in the presidential race.
He talked about how he’s been growing “Team Trump” or a “Trump party” with his popularity and support among people like Sarah Palin.
And then Matthews even called Trump a “leader.” He said you can tell leaders by whether they have lots of people following them and said, “That was a problem with Obama for a long time. Nobody back there, just him.”
The legal team representing the six Baltimore police officers charged in the death of Freddie Gray have accused State Attorney Marilyn Mosby of withholding evidence they believe can aid their case.
In particular, they allege that Mosby has evidence that Gray tried to injure himself during a previous arrest. “Based upon information and belief, the State’s Attorney’s Office was informed of this fact, yet failed to disclose to the Defendants any statements, reports, or other communications relating to this information,” they write.
They also accuse Mosby of withholding “multiple witness statements from individuals who stated that Mr. Gray was banging and shaking the van at various points” and “police reports, court records, and witness statements indicating that on prior occasions, Mr. Gray had fled from police and attempted to discard drugs.”
Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards appeared on This Week Sunday morning and defended the women’s health organization against undercover videos released in the past two weeks purporting to show officials attempting to sell fetal organs for profit, something group strongly denies.
“This has been a three-year, well-funded effort by the most militant wing of the anti-abortion movement of this country to entrap doctors,” Richards said. “They were completely unsuccessful [at entrapping doctors], so now they’re using very highly edited videos, sensationalized videos, to try to impugn and smear the name of Planned Parenthood. They have zero credibility.”
Planned Parenthood in rare cases arranges the transfer of fetal tissue for medical research purposes, but denied it sold body parts for profit or altered its procedures in any way to make the sales more viable.
“If there’s no financial benefit to the clinics, why are they haggling over the cost?” Stephanopoulos asked.
“They’re not,” Richards said. “The only people that are haggling in these videos are the undercover folks…It’s completely taken out of context.”
Richards repeatedly maintained that the clinics did not benefit financially from the sale of fetal tissue, stressing that Planned Parenthood was 100% non-profit and that any money that changed hands was merely to cover transport costs. “This entire effort is a complete political smear campaign to cut off funding for basic health care for women in America,” she said.
She also defended the decision of woman to allow fetal tissue to be sold, which she said was a rare transaction anyway. “This isn’t something that should be criticized, this is laudable, that woman and their families choose to make fetal tissue donations in order to potentially save lives of other folks,” Richards said.
According to reporting from TheNew York Times, some of the Marines killed in the Chattanooga shooting were killed trying to draw the gunman’s fire away from another, larger group of innocent bystanders.
“This could have been a lot worse,” they quote the anonymous official as saying. “It could have been a horrible, horrible massacre — so much worse.” Officials are expected to give a fuller account of the shooting, perpetrated by Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez, in a Wednesday press conference.
Donald J. Trump
