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Nicola
Sturgeon to Americans: Don’t vote for Donald Trump
‘I
expect the people of the United States will have the good sense not
to elect him,’ she said.
By ALEX SPENCE
10/16/16, 12:30 PM CET
LONDON — Scottish
leader Nicola Sturgeon urged Americans to vote for Hillary Clinton,
saying she had been “horrified” by Donald Trump’s remarks
throughout the presidential campaign.
Trump, whose mother
was Scottish and who owns golf courses in Scotland, has talked
proudly of his links to the country — yet the feeling is not
reciprocated by Scotland’s political leadership.
“Would I be proud
if Donald Trump became president? No. No,” Sturgeon told ITV’s
Peston on Sunday.
“I hope Donald
Trump doesn’t become president of the United States and I expect
the people of the United States will have the good sense not to elect
him,” Scotland’s first minister said.
It is unusual for a
British political leader to express a preference for a candidate in
the U.S. presidential election, but, Sturgeon said, “I’m not sure
this is normal circumstances.”
SNP leader Nicola
Sturgeon addresses the Scottish National Party Conference 2016 on
October 15, 2016 in Glasgow, Scotland
“This is America’s
election, it’s up to the people of America to choose, but it has
implications for the rest of the world,” Sturgeon said.
She added it would
“make me proud” for the U.S. to elect Clinton as its first woman
president.
“I’ve been
horrified, as many people have been horrified at many of the things
Donald Trump is saying in this campaign, many of the things that has
been revealed he’s said previously,” she added.
Authors:
Alex Spence
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Donald
Trump faces his fate
With
three weeks to go, the Republican nominee stokes anger, conspiracy
theories and chaos.
By ELI STOKOLS
10/17/16, 2:33 PM CET Updated 10/17/16, 7:11 PM CET
Donald Trump just
had his worst week of his presidential campaign. Again.
With only 22 days
until Election Day and early voting already underway in many places,
Hillary Clinton has one last major hurdle to clear — the third
debate on Wednesday in Las Vegas. Given Trump’s stunning and
unmitigated three-week freefall since the first debate last month, it
would likely take an almost unimaginable mistake by the over-prepared
and risk-averse Clinton to give her opponent an opening to get back
into contention.
“The race for the
White House is over,” said Sarah Isgur-Flores, the deputy campaign
manager for former GOP candidate Carly Fiorina. “Now, it’s just a
question of the collateral damage.”
Factoring in new
surveys released on Sunday, Clinton’s national lead over Trump now
sits at 5.5 percentage points. And Trump’s already significant
problems with female voters have only deepened after a week that saw
nearly 10 women come forward with strikingly similar stories of Trump
making unwanted sexual advances without consent—the very behavior
he was recorded bragging about in a 2005 videotape that emerged 10
days ago and led many endangered Republicans to disavow their
nominee. This, following a week in which Trump, taking Clinton’s
bait from the first debate, attacked a former Miss Universe for
gaining weight.
Now Trump enters the
final three weeks down with more than 60 percent of voters viewing
him unfavorably. Clinton, whose team is trying hard to just run out
the clock, has a 20-point edge with women and has coalesced her party
behind her while Trump’s percentage of support from Republicans
dipped below the 80 percent mark. His disastrous October is giving
Democrats late hopes of an electoral wave that could return their
bygone majorities and even turn red states like Arizona, Georgia and
Utah blue.
Indeed, the bigger
question at this point is not whether Trump will lose but whether
down-ballot Republicans can escape the blast radius come November. In
the midst of Trump’s tailspin, Democrats are shifting resources and
surrogates to swing states where they hope to pick up congressional
seats. Michelle Obama admonished Trump for his alleged shameful
behavior last week in New Hampshire, where Democrats are optimistic
about ousting GOP Sen. Kelly Ayotte. Next week, President Obama will
rally supporters in Nevada, where Democrats are desperate to keep the
Senate seat held by outgoing Minority Leader Harry Reid.
Even more
consequential, however, is the open question facing the country
itself that centers not on which party wins the White House and
control of Congress but on the damage Trump appears intent on doing
to the democratic process.
On Saturday, Trump
escalated his months-long effort to undermine the legitimacy of the
election itself—to plant the seeds of a narrative that would
explain how a self-declared winner might lose big in the most public
and consequential venture of his entire career.
Campaigning
throughout New Hampshire and Maine, he spouted the same
unsubstantiated claim that the election is “rigged” against him.
“The election is being rigged by corrupt media pushing completely
false allegations and outright lies in an effort to elect her
president,” Trump said, referencing the numerous women who have
come forward in recent days to say that Trump had groped or sexually
assaulted them.
Trump, whose denial
of such behavior in the second debate likely prompted his alleged
victims to come forward, has continued to deny the claims on the
stump, calling the women liars and even insinuating that their
insufficient level of attractiveness by his measure should be taken
as an air-tight alibi.
On Sunday, after
lashing out at Saturday Night Live and Alec Baldwin’s over-the-top
lampooning of the GOP nominee, Trump blamed the media for his drop in
the polls: “Polls close, but can you believe I lost large numbers
of women voters based on made up events THAT NEVER HAPPENED. Media
rigging election!” he tweeted at 7:36 a.m. Sunday morning.
“If he never calls
to concede, he’ll go down as one of the sorest of sore losers,”
Ari Fleischer said of Donald Trump
Nearly an hour
later, he followed with this: “Election is being rigged by the
media, in a coordinated effort with the Clinton campaign, by putting
stories that never happened into news!”
This vitriol toward
the media has sparked new levels of hostility and invective from his
supporters. While crowds engaged in roaring chants of “CNN sucks!”
at events last week, others cursed and spat at reporters traveling
with the candidate, even forcing police to escort the traveling press
corps as it exited a rally in Cincinnati
“There’s no
historical precedent for where we’re actually going here,” said
Charlie Sykes, the long-time conservative radio host in Milwaukee who
has been vociferously anti-Trump from the start. “The peaceful
transfer of power in this country has always been taken for granted:
look at Richard Nixon in 1960 or Al Gore in 2000. Donald Trump
doesn’t care what he damages and I don’t know if we fully grasp
how much long-term damage does he may do if the end goal is to
alienate his core supporters from the American democratic process.”
Trump’s running
mate, relegated again to clean-up duty, insisted Sunday that the GOP
ticket would not challenge the legitimacy of the electoral result.
“We’ll respect
the outcome of this election,” Mike Pence told CBS News’ John
Dickerson on Face The Nation. “Let me be very clear. Donald Trump
said in the first debate that we’ll respect the will of the
American people in this election. The peaceful transfer of power is a
hallmark of—of American history.”
Trump responded with
another tweet attempting to concur with Pence’s explanation that
the “rigging” claims stem from frustration with what they believe
to be a biased news media, but his refusal to ditch the claim of
fraud undercut Pence’s reassurance that the 2016 Republican ticket
would not be the first since the Civil War to deny the electoral
vote.
“This election is
absolutely being rigged by the dishonest and distorted media pushing
Crooked Hillary – but also at many polling places – SAD,” Trump
tweeted.
Trump’s manic turn
shows no sign of abating over the final three weeks of the campaign,
which will allow Clinton to continue running out the clock with a
“four corners” offense and likely force already beleaguered
Republicans to take shelter from his stream-of-consciousness rants
and speeches guided by Breitbat publisher and current campaign CEO
Steve Bannon.
After asserting in a
speech Saturday that Clinton should be in jail and suggesting with no
evidence that his 68-year-old opponent took performance-enhancing
drugs ahead of the second debate, Trump heads Monday to Wisconsin,
the home state of Speaker Paul Ryan, who has drawn the nominee’s
ire for his partial disavowal; and he is likely to leave only more
scorched earth in his wake.
“Many people
predicted this, that he represented a systemic threat to the party
and there’s no longer any denying that that’s exactly what has
played out,” said Kevin Madden, a GOP communications guru who
advised Mitt Romney’s campaign four years ago. “He has already
had an impact on the profile of the Republican Party with voters. We
just have to get through the next few weeks and then assess the
damage. It’s going to be pretty severe.”
Authors:
Eli Stokols
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