MONDAY, AUGUST 1, 2016
Today’s Good News And Bad News
From Our Local Political Junkie We’ll Call “Cincy Dave”

TRUMP CAN’T REMEMBER IF HE MET PUTIN
On ABC’s This Week, Trump was asked what his relationship with Putin is.  He said he has no relationship with Putin.   When confronted with his three earlier statements that he had a great relationship with Putin, he went in to a dissembling mode arguing about what constitutes a relationship and eventually stating that he can’t remember if he ever met Putin.   There’s a good one for you. We just love it when politicians are caught in blatant lies and try to get out of it with more lies. Most adults who don’t know whether or not they ever met Putin are probably in a nursing home.  They sure ain’t running for president.  Of course, Bill Clinton couldn’t remember how to pronounce Putin’s name – For some reason, he kept referring to him as “President Poontang.” But that’s another matter.

Bad News for Trump and Hillary
In the weekend meeting of Republican Billionaires, as expected, the Koch brothers decided not to spend any money on Trump’s campaign but they also decided not to spend any on Hillary’s either.  This is probably worse for Trump as he needs money more than Hillary does.   However they will still spend a lot on Senate and House races, which will let the other billionaires concentrate more of their money on Trump, so it is not all bad for him.

Will There be any Debates?
Trump is working on scuttling the debates, just like he did with his proposed debate with Bernie. First, he offered to debate Bernie, but then demanded 10 to 15 million dollars to participate.  No one was willing to pay that much so it never happened.  The same sort of thing is likely to happen this time. The debates have been scheduled for over a year, but now Trump is complaining that the schedule is being “fixed” by Hillary to conflict with football games. He also said that the NFL had sent him a letter complaining about the scheduling conflict but some nasty reporters checked with the NFL and they said they never sent such a letter. So the Trump campaign “clarified” that by saying that someone “associated” with the NFL called the campaign about it. They didn’t say whether it was a player, coach, equipment manager, or groundskeeper.  Why would the NFL care anyway?  They always have 5 or 10-year contracts with the networks and get paid no matter how many people watch.

What is expected to happen is that Trump will keep complaining and making demands about the debate schedule, and also about who will be invited to participate, or the format or some other aspect of the debates to give himself enough excuses to withdraw without looking like a coward.  One possible tactic is to demand that the minor party candidates be included, which would take a lot of the pressure from a head-to-head debate with Hillary, where he would be at a huge disadvantage in knowledge.  Not that he is the least bit concerned with being fair to Gary Johnson (Libertarian Party) or Jill Stein (Green Party) but it will be a way to confuse things enough to allow him to exit, as he did with one of the Republican primary debates.   Some people think there is about a 50-50 chance that the debates between The Donald and Hillary will actually happen.   If they do, expect a lot of domestic fights over the remote.  If they don’t, we told you so.

Polls
One of today’s meaningless polls is from PPP.  It shows that Hillary got a convention bounce and now leads 46 to 41. This cancels out Trump’s convention bounce so they are right back where they started before the conventions. The same poll shows that 74% of Trump voters think Hillary should be in jail and 66% think she is a bigger threat to the United States than Russia. Maybe Trump’s bromance with Putin is having some effect, at least on his supporters.

The other meaningless Poll is a Morning Consult Poll which shows Hillary ahead by 3 points.   Last week they had her behind so it too shows a convention bounce.

More Good News And Bad News Tomorrow