April 23, 2016 - Pensito

After railing against Washington lobbyists for months, Donald Trump recently hired one of the worst of the breed to run his campaign. Paul Manafort, a former partner in the D.C. powerhouse lobbying firm, Black, Manafort, Stone and Kelly and now a principal at Davis, Manafort, has a client list that, according to right-leaning Politico, has been described as “the torturers’ lobby.” Manafort’s clients have included Philippines dictator Ferdinand Marcos; Mobutu Sese Seko, the longtime military dictator of Zaire; Angolan guerrilla Jonas Savimbi; the I.S.I., an alleged front group for Pakistani intelligence; and Ukrainian strongman and Putin ally Viktor Yanukovych.

But in his first major outing representing the Donald, uber-lobbyist Manafort committed the ultimate D.C. insider gaffe — he got caught on tape revealing that his client’s Dirtbag Don persona is all an act intended to fool rubes in the GOP base into supporting him.

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Day: April 23, 2016

Trump needs a nickname

Two Models Predict Trump Will Reach 1,237

1,285

Cruz: Trump Is Mounting a ‘Washington’ Campaign

His campaign manager is now a big-time Washington lobbyist. They’ve brought in tons of Washington lobbyists. This has become the Washington campaign.

— Ted Cruz, intensifying “his rhetorical attacks on Donald Trump, attempting to tie the Republican front-runner’s recent campaign shake-up and hires to the Washington establishment that conservative voters oppose,” Politico reports.

The Donald’s Top Lobbyist Assures the RNC That Trump’s ‘Dirtbag Don’ Persona Is All an Act

Poetic Justice

Verbatim

— Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), quoted by CBS News.

“Here’s the problem with the red meat: It becomes an addiction. Once you go there and you put that out there, then you’re forced to defend it. So what do they do? They double down. They triple down again.”

— Sen.-elect Abdul El-Sayed (D), quoted by the Washington Post, on Republicans relying on anti-Muslim attacks in the Michigan U.S. Senate race.

— Stephen Miller, quoted by The Guardian, pledging “total devotion” to President Trump.

Numerati

3,824

$1.4 billion

-35 points

31%

63% to 38%

KFF Poll: “With the 2026 midterm campaigns in full swing and early voting about to begin, there is a wide enthusiasm gap between partisan voters, with Democratic voters 25 percentage points more likely than Republican voters to say they are ‘more motivated’ than usual to vote (63% vs. 38%).”