As much as she’d like the label, Hillary Clinton is NOT the presumptive nominee. That designate applies when it is apparent and impossible for any other candidate to win, but before the votes have been cast to make it official.
It is a done deal on the Republican side, where the AP called it for Trump officially today. And Hillary Clinton is claiming she won the Democratic nomination, but she hasn’t, and can’t until she gets 2383 PLEDGED delegates which has not happened and won’t until after the superdelegates vote at the convention, IF EVER.
That doesn’t stop her from claiming it, though…
That would make her not the “presumptive” nominee, but the “presumptuous” non-nominee!
To make things worse, Clinton yesterday reneged on her promise to debate Bernie Sanders in California, prompting Bernie to challenge Trump to debate him instead. Trump agreed if proceeds went to charity, when Jimmy Kimmel posed the question last night.
To which Bernie immediately responded via Twitter:
Game on. I look forward to debating Donald Trump in California before the June 7 primary.
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) May 26, 2016
But I guess D’ump’s handlers weren’t too happy about that.
Just hours after seemingly accepting Sen. Bernie Sanders’ challenge for a debate, Donald Trump has already backed out, CBS News reports. On Thursday morning, Trump reportedly said he was just kidding when he agreed on Wednesday night’s Jimmy Kimmel Live to face off against Sanders.
Poor Donny is scared of Bernie Sanders… and the San Francisco Examiner called out Hillary for breaking that promise!
But Hillary has even bigger problems as the State Department’s Inspector General report on the Clinton email server was released yesterday. This time, the Washington Post, a reliable Clinton ally over recent months, let her have it in an editorial headlined, “Clinton’s inexcusable, willful disregard for the rules“!
To make a long story short, the biggest takeaway from the report was that she failed to seek legal approval for her use of a private email server and that dept staff wouldn’t have given its blessing because of the “security risks in doing so.” That’s bad enough, but coming in the wake of months of her assertions that she had permission makes this report devastating!
Today was Driftglass Thursday.
And Howie Klein was back with me in hour two, talking about last night’s vote on Sean Patrick Maloney’s LGBT equality amendment that failed last week actually quietly passed last night. Bernie Sanders is now actively and aggressively promoting and endorsing in down-ticket races (he endorsed Russ Feingold shortly after today’s show concluded!). And we talked about his piece on the House passing a medical marijuana bill too! Maybe things are getting better?
By the way, you can find the Blue America list of “Bernie Congress” candidates and support any of them through this link… and be sure to listen for Alex Law tomorrow morning at 10:30 ET. Plus Jason Leopold will join in to tell us how he took us down this Hillary Clinton email road … and why…radio or not!