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A top Republican National Committee (RNC) official sought to soothe business leaders worried about Donald Trump's influence on the party, saying at a private meeting on Tuesday that its presumptive presidential nominee would not dictate the party's platform. Ben Key, the RNC platform committee"s executive director, offered the assurance during a meeting at the organization's headquarters on Capitol Hill, according to two sources in the room.... The source said several of those attending the meeting offered knowing smiles in response to the comment. "And then he added... that the platform would not include some of the more controversial positions that...

Obama: World leaders 'rattled' by Trump By Euan McKirdy, CNN Updated 10:21 AM ET, Thu May 26, 2016 (CNN)President Barack Obama touched on the rancorous U.S. presidential race at a press conference Thursday from the G-7 summit in Japan, saying that presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump's statements had his fellow world leaders concerned. "They're rattled by him and for good reason,"

Donald Trump would do himself and this country a huge favor if he would do to Hillary what the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth did to John Kerry in the 2004 election: bring together the people from her past who know the off-stage, off-camera, hard-focus Hillary, and let them share with America their experiences with this woman who would be queen. Those people are the state troopers in Arkansas and the U.S. Secret Service agents who once served on her protective details. Like those brave sailors who served with John Kerry when his true lack of character was on full...

The talks in Germany to flesh out December’s historic global climate deal are probably not at the top of Donald Trump’s agenda this week. But the diplomats from 196 nations huddled in Bonn are keenly aware of the fact that the “The Donald” is now within spitting distance of the White House — and it is making a lot of them nervous. It is not hard to see why. The last Republican standing in the U.S. presidential race has described climate change as a hoax perpetrated by China to gain competitive advantage in manufacturing over the US, an eccentric theory...

But part of the campaign’s upcoming strategy includes fine-tuning previously made platforms and statements, Manafort said, And on one of his most controversial, the temporary ban on Muslims, Manafort hinted at a Trump softening. “He’s already started moderating on that,” Manafort told the Huffington Post. “He operates by starting the conversation at the outer edges and then brings it back towards the middle. Within his comfort zone, he’ll soften it some more. He’ll still end up outside of the norm, but in line with what the American people are thinking.”

Donald Trump wants to attack Hillary Clinton over the over the decades-old shady Whitewater real estate deal — a strategy inadvertently revealed when one of his top aides spilled the beans in an email sent to the wrong person. Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks disclosed the plan when she sent an email detailing Team Trump’s intentions to Marc Caputo, a reporter for Politico, when she meant to send it to Trump campaign adviser Michael Caputo.

In an email obtained by POLITICO, the Trump campaign asks the RNC to research the scandal. Donald Trump, who in recent days has accused Bill Clinton of rape and suggested he and Hillary Clinton may have had a role in the death of one of their close friends, plans to focus next on the Whitewater real estate scandal, POLITICO has learned. Trump campaign adviser Michael Caputo on Wednesday morning emailed a researcher at the Republican National Committee asking him to “work up information on HRC/Whitewater as soon as possible. This is for immediate use and for the afternoon talking points...

Michael Cohen, special counsel to Donald Trump, says there is “so much” more dirt to dig up on Hillary Clinton he should start a business “buying gates.” Appearing on CNN’s “New Day” on Tuesday, Chris Cuomo asked, “How much dirt can you go with?” to which Cohen replied, “So much.” (VIDEO: Trump’s Lawyer: Hillary Is The ‘The Enabler In Chief’) Defending the Clintons, Cuomo, whose brother is the governor of New York who has endorsed Clinton for president replied, “Why do you want the election to be about that? Isn’t this about making America great or is it making it...

The Department of Health and Human Services insists that the Affordable Care Act not only expanded health insurance to many more Americans, but it also "made everyone's insurance better." But some Republicans are asking, what good is the health insurance if sky-high deductibles mean you never get to use it? The Democrats' Affordable Care Act is a mandate -- "not to get care, but to get coverage," Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) said on Tuesday. "And many people are finding the coverage is not at all of value to them because they can't get care. Either...their doctors don't take Obamacare or...

On Tuesday Hillary Clinton accused Donald Trump of “cheering” the housing crisis that saw millions of Americans lose their homes. Hillary Clinton was probably hoping her comments during the crisis would not surface.

Donald Trump has fired his first shots of the general election campaign. Predictably, they have nothing to do with anything that matters. In a new video released on Instagram, Trump features audio interviews with women who’ve accused Bill Clinton of sexual assault. Against the backdrop of shadowy audio clips, the accompanying text asks if Hillary Clinton is “really protecting women.” We hear the voices of Monica Lewinsky, Kathleen Wiley, and a clip from a 1999 Dateline interview with Juanita Broaddrick. Near the end, as the sound of Hillary Clinton’s cackle fades, the words “Here we go again” flash on the...

Who knew that the Trump campaign would be getting involved in higher education policy this year? Sam Clovis, a tenured economics professor and Trump campaign co-chair, recently noted that their objectives include getting the government out of student lending, requiring colleges to share in student loan risk, and discouraging borrowing by liberal arts majors. Clovis told Inside Ed that the mere mention of these policy proposals has sent some Washington graybeards into a swivet, and "he expects some higher education leaders to react the same way when Trump outlines these ideas during the fall campaign." Some of the ideas under...

Gary Johnson, the likely Libertarian candidate for president, is blasting Donald Trump's policy on immigration as "insanity," and positioned himself as a helping hand to those who came here illegally. Johnson, a former two-term Republican governor of New Mexico, is expected to emerge this weekend as the Libertarian standard-bearer. "Is my door going to be knocked down because I'm going to get checked for papers?" Johnson said while praising undocumented immigrants who are leaders in their communities. "We're going to now come in and knock down doors and they're going to be deported? It'd be like putting them on the...

When Bill Clinton was president he allowed Hillary to assume authority over a health care reform. Yet even after applying threats and intimidation, she couldn’t get a vote in a Democrat controlled congress. This fiasco cost the American taxpayers about $13 million in cost for studies, promotion and other efforts. Then President Clinton gave Hillary authority over selecting a female attorney general. Her first two selections were Zoe Baird and Kimba Wood – both were forced to withdraw their names from consideration. Next she chose Janet Reno – husband Bill described her selection as “my worst mistake.” Some may not...

What if you threw a gender party and no one came? A nice catch from the Daily Caller’s Chuck Ross allows us to add this to the Buried Lede Department. The Associated Press reported a couple of days ago on Team Hillary’s delight over Donald Trump’s personal attacks on Hillary and Bill Clinton, but only offered this nugget at the very end of the report. It turns out that claiming her physiology as a unique qualifier turned more voters off than on: Trump’s eagerness to make gender a major issue has complicated the delicate balancing act she already faces as...

White people are being asked—or pushed—to take stock of their whiteness and identify with it more. This is a remarkably bad idea. I opened Twitter recently and saw 20+ notifications. Most of the time that means the new generation of white nationalist Twitter trolls are filling my feed with racist and anti-Semitic cartoons. It was the trolls, but this was different. They were celebrating my use of the word “anti-white” in a tweet. They saw it as a victory that a “mainstream conservative” was using this term that for so long has been their calling card. They had a point....

"Yesterday, once again, this time horrifically on live television," says Hillary Clinton in a video on her presidential campaign website, "we saw the terrible consequences of gun violence." As it turns out, she's not talking about civilian deaths from drone strikes or bombing raids on hospitals by the U.S. government, but instead about a criminal shooting spree in the United States. Sure enough, the Washington Post pointed out last week that one of Clinton's signature issues heading into the general election is tightening restrictions on the ownership and use of guns by Americans. That's a tall order in a country...

The neofascist reaction, the force behind Trump, has come about because of the extreme disembeddedness of the economy from social relations. The neoliberal economy has become pure abstraction; as has the market, as has the state, there is no reality to any of these things the way we have classically understood them. Americans, like people everywhere rising up against neoliberal globalization (in Britain, for example, this takes the form of Brexit, or exit from the European Union), want a return of social relations, or embeddedness, to the economy.

In "An Inconvenient Truth,'' Gore used charts and graphs to make the connection between increasing carbon emissions and the changing climate. Trump has called climate change a hoax created by China. "President [Jimmy] Carter said that he hopes [Trump] will be malleable, so I don't know,'' Gore said before laughing.

Donald Trump has highlighted his credentials as an outsider throughout his 2016 campaign, but six-in-ten American voters say they're unsure about his lack of military or government experience, a new NBC News/ Wall Street Journal poll shows. And more than 40 percent say they're very uncomfortable about the holes in his resume, which would make him the first president without a record of military or elected public service.