Welcome to The Lid, your afternoon dose of the 2016 ethos…A man has been hospitalized after stripping naked and jumping off a ledge in Times Square while yelling “Donald Trump, where are you?” We can only assume this is part of Trump’s continuing earned media strategy since he has yet to run a TV ad in a battleground state.
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‘16 from 30,000
Let the delegate rules committee debates begin! NBC’s Ari Melber, Marti Hause and Brad Gold got their hands on a draft rule being circulated among delegates to the Republican National Convention that would essentially FREEZE the 2012 nominating rules in place rather than opening them up to changes. The goal of the draft’s authors is to prevent anti-Trump forces from instituting new rules that could allow delegates previously bound to vote for Trump to oppose the nominee and pick an alternative. "This proposal would take politics out of the rule-making process and focus on unity so we could defeat Hillary Clinton in November," said Oregon delegate Solomon Yue, who is submitting the rule. It’s yet another potential obstacle to the #NeverTrump crowd, which is still pining for an alternative to the nominee but running into plenty of roadblocks to getting there. (Chief among them? Not having a specific candidate to rally around -- and missing major filing deadlines to boot.) And it’s just another sign of how divided even the party’s own leaders are about whether to accept the risks of the candidate they have in the name of keeping the party together.
POPPING ON NBC POLITICS
- NBC’s Ari Melber, Marti Hause and Brad Gold report that a draft rule being circulated among GOP convention delegates would effectively lock in Donald Trump as the nominee.
- Indiana Gov. Mike Pence is “in play” as possible Trump VP pick, Vaughn Hillyard and Kelly O’Donnell report.
- Emma Kinery reports on a new national security group being formed by Clinton allies to counter Trump.
- Donald Trump claims he has forgiven his loans to his own campaign, but there’s no evidence yet that he has.
- Trump called Monday’s meeting between Bill Clinton and AG Loretta Lynch “really a sneak.”
- And in First Read: It’s been a brutal month for Donald Trump.
FOR THE RECORD…
“Hillary’s called me a ‘xenophobe’ a few times. How many people even know what the word means? Same with ‘nativist.’”
Donald Trump, according to an account by radio host Howie Carr
TOMORROW’S SKED
Donald Trump speaks at the Western Conservative Summit in Denver.
