Gabbard-Clinton cold war starts to get hot
Tulsi Gabbard appears not to have liked Hillary Clinton’s suggestion that the Hawaii congresswoman might be “the favorite of the Russians.”
Clinton said in a recent interview that she believes the Russians have “got their eye on somebody who’s currently in the Democratic primary and are grooming her to be the third-party candidate.”
The former senator and U.S. secretary of state did not name Gabbard directly.
It’s a sensitive subject because many Democrats blame the Green Party candidacy of Jill Stein in the 2016 presidential race for siphoning votes from Clinton.
The Russians know they can’t win without a third-party candidate, Clinton said in the interview.
In a series of tweets Friday, Gabbard called Clinton the “personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long.” Gabbard also alleged there has been a “concerted campaign” to destroy her reputation since she announced her presidential run in January.
❚ Who’s on first? Joe Biden was happy to yield the hot seat to Sen. Elizabeth Warren in Tuesday’s debate. But he questioned Warren’s standing as a front-runner in comments to reporters in Ohio on Wednesday.
“Well, it’s kind of about time other people get questioned,” the former vice president said. “You know, I haven’t seen any polling showing that nationally, on average, that anybody else is a front-runner. You guys keep talking about that.”
Another beneficiary of the new focus on Warren was Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who said she raised $1.1 million in the 24 hours after she aggressively challenged Warren at the debate. The Minnesota senator had raised just under $5 million between July and September.
At the debate, Warren refused to say whether she would raise taxes on the middle class to pay for a Medicare for All universal health insurance plan – a stance increasingly difficult to maintain given her more prominent status.
“I appreciate Elizabeth’s work but, again, the difference between a plan and a pipe dream is something you can actually get done,” Klobuchar said.
❚ The bucks don’t stop here: One presidential candidate would have been happy with Klobuchar’s tepid summer fundraising. The quarterly total for Wayne Messam, the mayor of Miramar, Florida: $5.
Messam’s campaign blamed a computer glitch but did not say how much he actually raised.
❚ Making the best of it: On Thursday, chief of staff Mick Mulvaney undermined the White House argument that there had been no “quid pro quo” on Ukraine, saying U.S. aid was withheld from Kyiv to push for an investigation of the Democratic National Committee and the 2016 election.
“It happens all the time,” Mulvaney told reporters. “I have news for everybody: Get over it. There is going to be political influence in foreign policy.”
Mulvaney backtracked later, but President Donald Trump’s campaign did not. By Friday it was selling T-shirts emblazoned with the slogan “GET OVER IT” on the campaign website. The T-shirt sports Trump’s signature hairdo sitting upon the “o” in “over.” It sells for $30.
❚ Giving back: Pete Buttigieg is returning campaign contributions from a former Chicago city attorney who led a vigorous effort to block the release of a video depicting the shooting of Laquan McDonald. The black teenager’s death at the hands of police stirred months of protest and resulted in an officer’s
From Wire Reports
conviction.
The Democratic presidential candidate also removed Steve Patton as a sponsor of a Chicago fundraiser after the Associated Press reported Friday on the event and Buttigieg faced fierce online backlash.
❚ Now it’s a party: Trump is scheduled to appear on Oct. 25 at a South Carolina forum sponsored by the 20/20 Bipartisan Justice Center, the self-proclaimed “only nationwide coalition of Black Republicans, Democrats and Independents focused on criminal justice reform.”
The event at Columbia’s Benedict College will mark Trump’s first visit to a historically black college or university. Biden, Warren and Sen. Bernie Sanders are among those who will also be there.