“They don’t trust Hillary Clinton”, said Republican pollster Neil Newhouse, part of the bipartisan team that conducted the focus groups. Here to talk about this past week in politics is NPR’s national political correspondent Mara Liasson.
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MARA LIASSON, BYLINE: Happy to be here. “And what bothers me, he doesn’t seem to want to learn”. Did anything in particular stand out? The Clintons, who now live in Chappaqua, New York, paid an average effective federal tax rate of about 32 percent from 2007 to 2014 and an effective combined tax rate of approximately 40.5 percent.
In a touch of irony-outside of book deals and government pension payments-an enormous amount of income that both Hillary and Bill Clinton received in the years following public office came through speaking fees to large corporations and other institutions. Overall they paid 43.2 percent of their income in federal, state and local taxes. Over the past 10 years, the couple have donated 7.5 percent of their adjusted gross income to charity, according to the campaign’s news release. To the race for the white house now and Donald Trump’s new attack, on a familiar target, the media. Maybe loans to Russian oligarchs, no charitable contributions, maybe he’s not a billionaire, maybe he paid zero taxes in 2015.
A spokeswoman for Lt. Gov. Brian Calley, another potential gubernatorial candidate who has endorsed Trump, said he would not comment on Trump’s “day-to-day activities”.
Mitt Romney should not have released his tax returns.
“Donald Trump is authentic”.
“The map favors us and, in a way, the dynamics right now favor us”, said Joel Benenson, Clinton’s senior strategist. Still, he said, Trump “has got to find his groove and stay on his message”.
“His inability to put anything real on the ground in battleground states is campaign malpractice”, Bird said. In the latest ABC poll, Clinton has nearly 50 percent support from independents. They’re still awful. So the changes in the polls are because Donald Trump has had a bad week. Like Clinton, Obama made it a campaign issue.
AUBREY: This did not go over so well.
Democrats, for instance, already have called on retired Marine Lt. Gen. Jack Bergman, the surprise victor of the open 1st Congressional District Republican primary in northern MI, to repudiate Trump for tangling with the Gold Star family. In contrast, the 27 percent who say they would vote for Trump is his lowest ever percentage.
There is a pattern here.
Throughout his presidential bid, Trump has used controversy to draw attention back to his campaign.
According to the May disclosure, Hillary Clinton delivered 51 speeches in 2014 and the first three months of 2015, earning more than $11 million.
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Other significant sources of income included $3 million in book proceeds for Hillary, and $1.6 million for Bill’s consulting with GEMS Education, an global education company, and Laureate Education, Inc., a for-profit education chain. She was ahead of Trump by five points in Florida and nine in North Carolina. And the brief letter he has released as proof of good health, reads more like the handiwork of a comedian than of a doctor. The wealthy southern coast of CT, made up of tony New York City suburbs, has always been fertile fundraising ground and Trump held an event nearby before the rally. Can you imagine how badly I’ll feel if I spent all of that money, all of this energy, all of this time and lost.
