Inside the Failing Mission to Save Donald Trump From Himself
By ALEXANDER BURNS and MAGGIE HABERMAN August 13, 2016
Donald J. Trump was in a state of shock: He had just fired his campaign manager and was watching the man discuss his dismissal at length on CNN. The rattled candidate’s advisers and family seized the moment for an intervention.
Joined by his daughter Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner, a cluster of Mr. Trump’s confidants pleaded with him to make that day — June 20 — a turning point.
He would have to stick to a teleprompter and end his freestyle digressions and insults, like his repeated attacks on a Hispanic federal judge. Paul Manafort, Mr. Trump’s campaign chairman, and Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey argued that Mr. Trump had an effective message, if only he would deliver it. For now, the campaign’s polling showed, too many voters described him in two words: “unqualified” and “racist.”
Mr. Trump bowed to his team’s entreaties, according to four people with detailed knowledge of the meeting, who described it on the condition of anonymity. It was time, he agreed, to get on track.
Nearly two months later, the effort to save Mr. Trump from himself has plainly failed. He has repeatedly signaled to his advisers and allies his willingness to change and adapt, but has grown only more volatile and prone to provocation since then, clashing with a Gold Star family, making comments that have been seen as inciting violence and linking his political opponents to terrorism.
Advisers who once hoped a Pygmalion-like transformation would refashion a crudely effective political showman into a plausible American president now increasingly concede that Mr. Trump may be beyond coaching. He has ignored their pleas and counsel as his poll numbers have dropped, boasting to friends about the size of his crowds and maintaining that he can read surveys better than the professionals.
In private, Mr. Trump’s mood is often sullen and erratic, his associates say. He veers from barking at members of his staff to grumbling about how he was better off following his own instincts during the primaries and suggesting he should not have heeded their calls for change. He broods about his souring relationship with the news media, calling Mr. Manafort several times a day to talk about specific stories. Occasionally, Mr. Trump blows off steam in bursts of boyish exuberance: At the end of a fund-raiser on Long Island last week, he playfully buzzed the crowd twice with his helicopter.
But in interviews with more than 20 Republicans who are close to Mr. Trump or in communication with his campaign, many of whom insisted on anonymity to avoid clashing with him, they described their nominee as exhausted, frustrated and still bewildered by fine points of the political process and why his incendiary approach seems to be sputtering.
He is routinely preoccupied with perceived slights, for example raging to aides after Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, in his re-election announcement, said he would stand up to the next president regardless of party. In a visit to Capitol Hill in early July, Mr. Trump bickered with two Republican senators who had not endorsed him; he needled Representative Peter T. King of New York for having taken donations from him over the years only to criticize him on television now.
And Mr. Trump has begun to acknowledge to associates and even in public that he might lose. In an interview on CNBC on Thursday, he said he was prepared to face defeat.
“I’ll just keep doing the same thing I’m doing right now,” he said. “And at the end, it’s either going to work, or I’m going to, you know, I’m going to have a very, very nice, long vacation.”
Jason Miller, a spokesman for Mr. Trump, said the Republican nominee was still determined to win, and dismissed accounts that he was downcast. Mr. Miller pointed to the crowds Mr. Trump attracts as a sign of strength.
“Behind the scenes we have a very motivated and very focused candidate in Donald Trump, who knows what he needs to do to win this race,” Mr. Miller said.
People around Mr. Trump and his operation say they are not ready to abandon hope of a turnaround. But he is in a dire predicament, Republicans say, because he is profoundly uncomfortable in the role of a typical general election candidate, disoriented by the crosscurrents he must now navigate and still relying impulsively on a pugilistic formula that guided him to the nomination.
His advisers are still convinced of the basic potency of a sales pitch about economic growth and a shake-up in Washington, and they aspire to compete in as many as 21 states, despite Mr. Trump’s perilous standing in the four states — Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and North Carolina — likely to decide the election.
Charles R. Black Jr., an influential Republican lobbyist supporting Mr. Trump, said the campaign was in a continuing struggle to tame him.
“He has three or four good days and then makes another gaffe,” Mr. Black said. “Hopefully, he can have some more good days.” Of Mr. Trump’s advisers, Mr. Black said, “They think he is making progress in terms of being able to make set speeches and not take the bait on every attack somebody makes on him.”
Mr. Trump’s advisers now hope to steady him by pairing him on the trail with familiar, more seasoned figures — people he views as peers and enjoys spending time with, like former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York and former Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas.
Mr. Giuliani, who campaigned with Mr. Trump early in the week, said he did not see the candidate as unmoored or unhappy. If anyone was disconcerted, Mr. Giuliani suggested, it was the people steering his campaign.
“He doesn’t seem to be as unnerved by these things that go wrong as the people around him,” Mr. Giuliani said. Still, he allowed, “I think it is true that maybe it took him a little while to realize that we’re moving from a primary campaign to a presidential campaign.”
Mr. Trump, he said, had become “a little bit more realizing there are certain days left and you’ve got to get messages out on those days.”
Even before Mr. Trump’s most recent spate of incendiary comments, Republicans who dealt with him after the primaries came away alarmed by his obvious unease as the de facto party leader. After a meeting in late May between Mr. Trump and Karl Rove, the architect of George W. Bush’s presidential victories, Mr. Rove told associates he was stunned by Mr. Trump’s poor grasp of campaign basics, including how to map out a schedule and use data to reach voters. Karl Rove, a top adviser to President George W. Bush, at Central Park last month, met with Mr. Trump in May, and told associates he was stunned by Mr. Trump’s poor grasp of campaign basics.
Sitting with Mr. Rove in the Manhattan apartment of a mutual friend, the casino magnate Steve Wynn, Mr. Trump said he would compete in states like Oregon, which has not voted Republican since Ronald Reagan’s 1984 landslide. Mr. Rove later told people he believed Mr. Trump was confused and scared in anticipation of the general election, according to people who have heard Mr. Rove’s account.
A few weeks later, when Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey brokered a meeting at Trump Tower between Mr. Trump and governors from around the country, Mr. Trump offered a desultory performance, bragging about his poll numbers, listening passively as the governors talked about their states and then sending them on their way.
Mr. Trump never asked them for their support, three people briefed on the meeting said.
With donors, Mr. Trump has been an indifferent ambassador for his campaign. He has resisted making fund-raising calls and, during at least two major events in July, in New York and Chicago, burned valuable hours with potential contributors by asking them to go around the room, one by one, giving him their thoughts on whom he should pick as his running mate.
That left little time for the donors to query Mr. Trump about policy or strategy, or for him to reassure them about his campaign. Jay Bergman, an Illinois oil executive who attended the event in Chicago, said he wondered if Mr. Trump had taken that approach “to avoid answering questions.”
On matters of policy, too, Mr. Trump has engaged only fleetingly, and idiosyncratically. Before delivering a policy speech in Detroit on Monday, he delegated the formation of an economic plan to a few conservative economists outside his campaign, who consulted him from time to time and ultimately haggled over the details in his office as he followed their conversation.
Stephen Moore, a Heritage Foundation fellow, said he and Arthur Laffer, the supply-side economist, had tangled over the top tax bracket while Mr. Trump observed from behind his desk, eventually siding with Mr. Moore. Mr. Trump, he said, also expressed strong views about the taxation of interest on business loans, citing his experience as a developer.
“He’s a typical businessman, right?” Mr. Moore said. “He lets people argue it out, and Arthur made his case and others made their case.”
“He’s not the world’s expert on the tax code,” Mr. Moore added, “but he has very good intuition about how these things will affect real people.”
At the last minute, Mr. Trump interjected to direct his advisers to incorporate a tax deduction for the cost of child care in his economic plan. The issue, which Mr. Trump had not discussed on the campaign trail, is a favorite of his daughter Ivanka.
Mr. Trump’s reliance on his family has only grown more pronounced. Mr. Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, who has no background in politics, has expanded his role: He now has broad oversight over areas including the campaign’s budget, messaging and strategy, with the power to approve spending. Mr. Trump has also continued to seek advice from Corey Lewandowski, the campaign manager whom Mr. Trump ousted in June at his children’s urging.
Efforts to bring in high-profile, experienced hands have been fruitless. Mr. Kushner had suggested enlisting Steve Schmidt, Senator John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign manager, but despite having met once with Mr. Trump during the primaries and speaking with him a few times, Mr. Schmidt never signed on.
Mr. Trump’s advisers believe he is nearly out of time to right his campaign. On Tuesday, hours before his explosive comment about “Second Amendment people” taking action if Mrs. Clinton is elected, his brain trust reassembled again at Trump Tower in a reprise of their stern meeting in June.
They again urged Mr. Trump to adjust his tone and comportment. The top pollster, Tony Fabrizio, gave an unvarnished assessment, warning that Mr. Trump’s numbers would only move in one direction, absent a major change.
Mr. Trump, people briefed on the meeting said, digested the advice and responded receptively.
The only reason he ever started that Obama/Hillary daesh stuff is because he was told in no uncertain terms .. to get off of it and to do it QUICK! ..... OR ELSE! .... .. the powers to be were all set to take action against him ... perhaps a hospital .. or if compliant, to go home with the help? required.. The choice was his .. . . .and he loves the attention so he shut that 2nd amendment stuff OFF pronto .... what a perfect way they had planned for him to get out of it .. really perfect.
"oh yeah Obama/Hillary, they be daesh" mmhmmm.. never heard another world about his incitement to kill ... NOT ONE WORD.
Especially by the people who he claims are 'part of the Illuminati'
Prove it's not true.. are you from the US? Our liable laws are sorta lame.. burden of proof is actually on the plaintif.. so it's not enough to say "this guy said i'm illuminati but I say i'm not"
Ranking .. 2. Netherlands .. 16. Germany .. 18. Canada .. 25. Australia .. 38. United Kingdom .. 39. South Africa .. 41. United States .. 45. France .. 54. Argentina .. 69. Hong Kong .. 71. Tanzania .. 72. Japan .. 101. Israel .. 120. Afghanistan .. 123. Angola .. 130. Indonesia .. 132. Palestine .. 148. Russia .. 154. Singapore .. 158. Iraq .. 171. Cuba .. 175. Vietnam .. 176. China 179. North Korea .. 180. Eritrea
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In your first video Jones says huge bargain "Silver Bullet" at 50% off.
The Latest: Trump threatens to pull credentials of NY Times Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at Sacred Heart University, Saturday, Aug. 13, 2016, in Fairfield, Conn. [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/the-latest-trump-seeks-support-in-democratic-friendly-conn/2016/08/13/25d772cc-61b6-11e6-84c1-6d27287896b5_story.html (with comments)] Aug. 13, 2016 Donald Trump is threatening to take away the campaign press credentials of The New York Times. Trump is frequently critical of the Times and upped his attacks on the newspaper during a Saturday night rally in Fairfield, Connecticut [full video last item this post]. Trump denounced the paper's recent coverage of him and said, "Maybe we'll start taking the press credentials away." Sharp criticism of the media is a staple of Trump rallies. He incited the crowd in Connecticut to jeer the reporters more than a half-dozen times in the first minutes of his rally. Trump says he's not running against the Democratic nominee he calls "crooked Hillary" but "the crooked media." [...] http://elections.ap.org/content/latest-trump-threatens-pull-credentials-ny-times
Gay and Lesbian High School Students Report ‘Heartbreaking’ Levels of Violence Members of the Alliance for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender and Questioning Youth marched at the Miami Beach Gay Pride parade in April. AUG. 11, 2016 http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/12/health/gay-lesbian-teenagers-violence.html [with comments]
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Trump touts child care programs, but they're for guests only
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump signs autographs during a campaign rally at the BB&T Center, Wednesday, Aug. 10, 2016, in Sunrise, Fla. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
By JILL COLVIN and CATHERINE LUCEY Aug. 11, 2016 5:07 PM EDT
NEW YORK (AP) — When Donald Trump vowed this week to make child care more accessible and affordable, it was just the second time during his White House campaign that he's talked about an issue that affects millions of working Americans with young children.
The first came months ago in Iowa, when the eventual Republican nominee touted his own record as a business owner during a candidate Q&A, telling voters he provided on-site child-care service for his employees.
There is no evidence, however, that any such programs exist.
The billionaire real estate mogul, who previously voiced his opposition to government-funded universal pre-K programs, said in Newton, Iowa, in November 2015 that he had visited many companies that offered workers on-site child-care centers — and added that he offered such programs himself.
"You know, it's not expensive for a company to do it. You need one person or two people, and you need some blocks, and you need some swings and some toys," Trump said. "It's not an expensive thing, and I do it all over. And I get great people because of it. Because it's a problem with a lot of other companies."
Trump pointed specifically to two programs: "They call 'em Trump Kids. Another one calls it Trumpeteers, if you can believe it. I have 'em. I actually have 'em, because I have a lot of different businesses."
Trump went on to describe "a room that's a quarter of the size of this. And they have all sorts of — you know, it's beautiful — they have a lot of children there, and we take care of them. And the parent when they leave the job — usually in my case it's clubs or hotels — when they leave the job, they pick up their child and their child is totally safe."
"They even come in during the day during lunch to see their child. It really works out well," he said.
But the two programs Trump cited — "Trump Kids" and "Trumpeteers" — are programs catering to patrons of Trump's hotels and golf club. They are not for Trump's employees, according to staff at Trump's hotels and clubs across the country.
"Trump Kids" is described on the Trump Hotel Collection website as "a special travel program designed to help make your next family vacation a big hit." Its offerings include "kid-friendly amenities like kiddie cocktails, coloring books and no-tear bath amenities."
"The Trumpeteer Program" is described on the website of Trump National Golf Club in Charlotte, North Carolina, as "a program created specifically for our youngest members, ages three to twelve, which offers daily and evening child care, monthly newsletters and weekly events!"
When asked about on-site child care, employees at Trump's hotels and clubs across the country expressed confusion and explained the two programs are for guests and members only.
"No, there's no child care," said Maria Jaramillo, 36, a housekeeper at Trump International Hotel Las Vegas, where workers have been pushing Trump to sign a union contract.
Jaramillo is a mother of four children who has worked at the hotel for nearly eight years.
"It would make it much more easy to take our kids to day care at work," she said and laughed when told of Trump's comments from Iowa about child care. "If they have child care, at least they should tell us."
A collection of Trump employee handbooks makes no mention of child care. The online Trump Hotels "employee benefits" section lists health care, tuition reimbursement, paid time off, complimentary golf and an internet café, but no on-site child care services.
In New York, where the Trump Organization is based, the city's health department database of child care centers has no record of any licensed facilities at any of Trump's properties, aside from a private school that leases space at 40 Wall Street.
Asked directly whether Trump's businesses offered child care to employees, his presidential campaign responded with a statement from Jill Martin, vice president and assistant general counsel at the Trump Organization.
"The Trump Organization is very proud of the family-friendly environment it fosters throughout its portfolio," she said. "The policies and practices allowing employees to enjoy a healthy work-life balance vary from property to property. We take an individualized approach to helping employees manage family and work responsibilities."
The campaign did not respond to follow up questions, or agree to make Martin available for an interview.
Trump on Monday proposed new tax exemptions for child care as part of what his aides say will be a larger push to make child care more accessible and affordable to working-class families. Child care is a top expense for many families, surpassing the cost of college and even housing in many states.
"They're suffering, they're suffering," Trump said. "We're going to get them this much-needed relief."
Trump has credited his embrace of the issue to his daughter Ivanka, who vouched for her father's treatment of his employees at the Republican National Convention last month. "When a woman becomes a mother, she is supported, not shut out," she said.
The new policy is a departure from Trump's comments on the issue during the GOP primaries. In an interview with Fox News Business in October 2015, Trump expressed skepticism about paid family leave and said he opposed the idea of free pre-K.
"Well, I don't like it, because eventually you're going to have to raise everybody's taxes," he said. "There is no such thing as free."
Trump demanded Obama’s records. But he’s not releasing his own.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump arrives for a campaign rally at the Erie Insurance Arena in Erie, Pa.
Video [embedded] Donald Trump's evolution on candidate tax returns Donald Trump's stance on presidential candidate tax returns has changed significantly over the years. Here's how.
By Jenna Johnson August 12, 2016
Donald Trump’s unflinching antagonism toward illegal immigration has galvanized activists who have grown to mistrust politicians on the issue, even those who have claimed to be as committed to the cause as they are.
“Let them go wild, let it simmer, and then let’s have a little news conference,” Trump said at a rally this week, describing his strategy for handling those asking about his wife.
Mark Krikorian, a leading activist against illegal immigration, does not want to let it simmer. He wants an answer.
“Immigration is a big issue, and she is going to be first lady,” Krikorian said. “It matters.”
Years before he ran for the White House, Trump built his political brand by accusing President Obama of concealing his past. Trump called on Obama to release his college applications, transcripts and other records, asking how such a “terrible student” got into Ivy League schools. The business executive also demanded that Obama release his passport records and, most famously, his birth certificate, declaring in a video ["From the Desk of Donald Trump: Major Announcement", http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgOq9pBkY0I (next below; comments disabled)]
released before the 2012 election: “We know very little about our president.”
But Trump has ensured that Americans know relatively little about him.
He has refused to release many of the same documents that he demanded from Obama, including college transcripts and passport records. He has shirked the decades-old tradition of major nominees releasing their tax returns [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/07/26/inside-the-5-theories-for-why-donald-trump-isnt-releasing-his-tax-returns/ ] and other documentation to prove their readiness and fitness for office. And he has yet to release records showing why he received a medical deferment during the Vietnam War and whether he has actually donated the millions of dollars he claims to have given to charity.
While Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton has hit Trump on his tax returns, saying this week that he “refuses to do what every other presidential candidate in decades has done,” Trump allies feel that Clinton has her own vulnerabilities when it comes to secrecy. Republicans have alleged that Clinton deleted thousands of emails from her private server to conceal favors done by her State Department for donors to her family’s charitable foundation — a charge Clinton has denied. And conservatives have called on Clinton, 68, to release her full medical records, citing a 2012 fainting episode in which she suffered a concussion. Ben Carson, a neurosurgeon and former GOP candidate, told Fox News this week that the information is “critical” for voters.
But Trump, in building a wall around his records, is setting a new standard for secrecy for modern-day candidates.
Trump’s lack of disclosure has left Americans to take his word for it when he brags about his wealth and charitable donations. In May, Trump filed a lengthy financial disclosure with federal regulators that claimed business had been booming at many of his properties. He issued a news release [ https://www.donaldjtrump.com/press-releases/donald-j.-trump-files-personal-financial-disclosure-form-with-the-federal-e ] claiming to be worth $10 billion. But Trump provided no documentation to back up the claims.
The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for all of the documents mentioned in this story, nor did it respond to questions about why it was not releasing the records.
Trump’s approach reflects a calculation that weathering the criticism for withholding documents is more politically palatable than the scrutiny that would come from giving the information to Trump’s opponents and what his campaign sees as an unfair media.
“You give the New York Times 20,000 pages of tax returns, they will give you 20,000 pages of defamation of character,” said former House speaker Newt Gingrich, who has advised Trump and was on his running mate shortlist.
Trump and his campaign have said there is nothing for voters to learn from these sorts of documents and that calls for their release were manufactured by the media.
“The only people who want the tax returns are the people who want to defeat him,” Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, said in May.
Trump’s tax filings would provide details such as how much money Trump makes, how much he gives to charity and the extent to which he has benefited from special exemptions and credits to minimize his tax rate. The tax returns would also show what Trump declares as business expenses and whether he keeps foreign accounts.
Some details have trickled out, revealing that Trump has a history of shrinking his tax burden. According to filings, legal documents and other public records, he paid no federal income taxes for at least five years — 1978, 1979, 1984, 1991 and 1993. Tax analysts say it is possible that Trump has continued to pay little to no income taxes thanks to generous tax deductions, including real estate depreciation. In May, Trump said he fights “very hard to pay as little tax as possible.”
Before he was a candidate, Trump presented himself as a champion of disclosure, particularly when it came to tax returns.
In 2011, he said he would release his filings if Obama released his long-form birth certificate.
Ahead of the 2012 election, Trump criticized Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney for delaying the release of his tax returns, saying, “It’s a great thing when you can show that you’ve been successful and that you’ve made a lot of money.” Romney ended up releasing two years of tax returns, leading to criticism of his relatively low tax rate — a result that Trump recently cited in explaining his own reasons for not releasing.
Romney has called Trump’s refusal to release his tax returns “disqualifying for a modern-day presidential nominee” and has speculated that Trump must be hiding a “bombshell of unusual size.”
In 2014, Trump said he would “absolutely” release the returns “if I decide to run for office.” In 2015, he said his disclosure was contingent on finding “out the true story on Hillary’s emails.”
In January, Trump said he was almost ready to disclose his “very big ... very beautiful” returns. But a month later, Trump reversed course, citing ongoing Internal Revenue Service audits of several years of his taxes.
An IRS spokesman said that nothing, including an audit, “prevents individuals from sharing their own tax information.” And President Richard Nixon released his tax records while under audit.
Trump’s tax attorneys said in a letter [ https://assets.donaldjtrump.com/Tax_Doc.pdf ] that his tax returns since 2009 are being audited. His attorneys also said that returns from 2002 to 2008 were no longer being audited, yet Trump said he will not release them because “they’re all linked.”
“I would give absolutely nothing until the audit is over,” Trump’s special counsel, Michael Cohen, said on CNN on Thursday. “That’s my advice to Mr. Trump.”
Trump’s running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, has yet to release his tax returns. Trump’s campaign and aides to Pence did not respond to requests for the returns.
Trump has also declined to release his educational records from the University of Pennsylvania, where he graduated in 1968 with a bachelor’s degree and took undergraduate classes at the famed Wharton School, which was then called the Wharton School of Finance and Commerce.
Trump has claimed that he was a top student at the Ivy League institution, although his name does not appear on lists of academic honors from the time.
Trump, 70, has also not released his medical records. Instead, in December, Trump released a four-paragraph letter from his doctor [ https://assets.donaldjtrump.com/Health_Record.pdf ] stating that a recent medical examination “showed only positive results” but not providing documentation such as lab results.
The letter ends with the guarantee: “If elected, Mr. Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.”
In July 2015, Clinton released a two-page letter from her doctor listing the results of several lab tests, including an electrocardiogram, cholesterol levels and cancer screening results.
In the past, a number of nominees have released their medical health records to prove that they are healthy and fit for the job. Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), who was 72 when he was the GOP’s 2008 nominee and had suffered years of health problems since his time as a Vietnam War prisoner of war, released more than a thousand pages of medical records.
The questions about Melania Trump’s immigration status have emerged in the wake of newly published nude photographs of the former model.
Melania Trump has said she came to the country in 1996 on a visa that allowed her to work, but the photos were taken in New York in 1995. She met Donald Trump in 1998, and they were married in 2005. She has said she got a green card in 2001 and became a citizen in 2006.
“I follow a law the way it’s supposed to be,” she told MSNBC earlier this year. “I never thought to stay here without papers. I had visa.”
Paolo Zampolli, an Italian-born business executive based in New York who once owned modeling agencies, told The Washington Post last week that his agency, Metropolitan Models, sponsored Melania Trump, then Melania Knauss, for an H-1B work visa in 1996 after he spotted her while scouting models in Milan and Paris. Working models are eligible for an H-1B if they can show “distinguished merit or ability” in their field. Zampolli said Knauss qualified based on her past work as a model in Europe.
The campaign has not responded to requests for documentation to back up the account, or to explain the process through which Trump received her green card. And it is not clear when, or if, the campaign will schedule the news conference that Donald Trump mentioned this week.
“Let me set the record straight,” Melania Trump tweeted last week. “I have at all times been in full compliance with the immigration laws of this country. Period.”
Drew Harwell, Mary Jordan, Abby Phillip and Karen Tumulty contributed to this report.
Ms. Clinton has done so, releasing the names of some 500 bundlers. Mr. Trump, Politico’s Shane Goldmacher recently noted [ http://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/donald-trump-fundraising-bundlers-226803 ], has not. Nor would the campaign discuss with Politico, or with us, its intentions with regard to this rudiment of transparency.
Why the secrecy? With respect to bundlers, Mr. Trump might not want to draw attention to the special interests now backing him, and some of his bundlers might (understandably) be embarrassed to be outed. With respect to his tax returns, the candidate may not want to reveal that his business is not as successful as he claims, that he is stingy with charity or that he has compromising business relationships in Russia or elsewhere overseas.
No matter the reasons, Mr. Trump’s refusal to meet essential standards of transparency expresses contempt for the democratic process and erodes crucial norms. If voters reject him in November — and his secrecy provides yet another reason they should — we hope future presidential candidates will conclude that these traditions are not so easily discarded.
Queens imam, assistant fatally shot after leaving mosque Mosque leader Maulama Akonjee, a respected Queens imam, and Thara Uddin died after being shot from behind. Mosque leader Maulama Akonjee and Thara Uddin (pictured) were dressed in Muslim garb when the shooter approached from behind and shot from point-blank range.
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