GOP reacts to second Trump assassination attempt

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Bob Casey’s Senate campaign in Pennsylvania says it won’t renew an ad that drew a complaint from the widow of a U.S.-based journalist who was killed inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018.

The campaign said in a statement Friday that it sympathizes with the widow of Jamal Khashoggi, but didn't plan to immediately pull the ad, which uses the image of the journalist to criticize opponent Dave McCormick for ties to the Saudi government.

Campaign spokesperson Maddy McDaniel said that the ad, which the widow said was insensitive, would be cycled out next week as planned.

“There is no dispute that David McCormick demanded his hedge fund show support and loyalty to Mr. Khashoggi’s murderers, all to protect his own business interests,” spokesperson McDaniel said. “We have the utmost sympathy for what Mrs. Khashoggi has experienced.”

She said the campaign spoke with the widow, Hanan Elatr Khashoggi, who says the ad is insensitive and incorrectly identifies her late husband as an American.

“The commercial is a very painful reminder of how my husband died, and as you can imagine, I have been traumatized every day for the past 6 years,” Hanan Elatr Khashoggi said in an email to Casey’s Senate office obtained by POLITICO. “I take no position on the politics of your Senate race, but I am dedicated to correcting misconceptions about my late husband.”

Jamal Khashoggi, who had written columns critical of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for The Washington Post, was killed by officials of the government of Saudi Arabia inside the consulate — an incident that caused a serious breach in relations between the U.S. and its longtime ally.

U.S. intelligence officials later determined the killing had been authorized by Prince Mohammed, the de facto ruler of the kingdom.

In the ad, the Casey campaign alleges that McCormick, a wealthy Republican businessman, “demanded his hedge fund stay loyal to the murderers to protect their investments” in Saudi Arabia.

The widow objected to the characterization of her husband as an American, since he was a Saudi citizen who lived in the U.S., or any mention of him at all and discussed the issue with the campaign along with her lawyer, Randa Fahmy — a donor and self-described “good friend” of McCormick.

© Matt Rourke/AP

Every week political cartoonists throughout the country and across the political spectrum apply their ink-stained skills to capture the foibles, memes, hypocrisies and other head-slapping events in the world of politics. The fruits of these labors are hundreds of cartoons that entertain and enrage readers of all political stripes. Here's an offering of the best of this week's crop, picked fresh off the Toonosphere. Edited by Matt Wuerker.

Kamala Harris’ campaign left Philadelphia on Tuesday night eager for another showdown against Donald Trump. The former president, once eager to schedule a second debate, seemed not so sure.

Trump, whose debate performance was widely panned as chaotic and peppered with falsehoods, insisted Wednesday morning that he’d been the victor against Harris. Another debate, Trump suggested, would hand the vice president another bite at the apple.

“The first thing they did is ask for a debate because when a fighter loses, he says ‘I want a rematch,’” Trump said Wednesday morning on “Fox & Friends.” Pushed on whether he would agree to another debate, the former president said: “I’d be less inclined to because we had a great night, we won the debate, we had a terrible network.”

Trump bashed ABC News, which hosted the debate, as “the most dishonest news organization” and called Tuesday’s debate — during which moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis repeatedly fact-checked Trump — “three to one” and “a rigged deal.” Still, he characterized his performance as “one of my better debates, maybe my best debate.”

That Harris and Trump would appear on stage at all was for a time an open question amid squabbling over when, where and how they would meet — for the first time — on the debate stage. The former president had called for multiple debates, including one on Fox News on Sept. 4 — an offer Harris rebuffed. Trump then threatened to drop out of the ABC News debate, then the campaigns squabbled over the rules, the main snag being whether each candidate’s microphone would be muted while the other spoke.

Harris, whose team had fought for unmuted mics but ultimately relented, still appeared to try to interrupt Trump even with her volume turned down. At one point, Trump shut her down, saying “I’m talking now … does that sound familiar?" — a reference to Harris’ 2020 debate with Mike Pence when she cut off a Pence interruption by saying “Mr. Vice President, I’m speaking.”

“She wanted a moment like she did with Mike Pence,” Trump said Wednesday, “but I actually got that moment too, I won that too because she was talking while I was speaking quite a bit actually.”

Late Tuesday, Harris’ campaign released a statement calling for a second debate and Fox News offered to host one moderated by Martha MacCallum and Bret Baier “while early in-person voting gets underway in multiple battleground states,” on Oct. 9 in Arizona, Oct. 15 in Georgia or Oct. 16 in North Carolina.

“Seems like the American people would love another opportunity to see these candidates. It’s been such a short window and they deserve as many opportunities as possible,” MacCallum said during the network’s post-debate coverage. “We certainly hope they will take us up on that.”

But Trump on Wednesday appeared to reject the network’s offer, saying “I wouldn’t want to have Martha and Bret.” Although he said he “probably” wouldn’t agree to any more debates, he said he would consider right-wing pundits Sean Hannity, Jesse Watters and Laura Ingraham — Fox News opinion hosts who are sympathetic to the former president.

“I didn’t think Martha and Bret were good last night,” he added, as the “Fox & Friends” hosts scrambled to steer the conversation elsewhere. "Fox & Friends" co-host Brian Kilmeade defended the anchors, saying they would "do a phenomenal job" and telling Trump "you would find them extremely fair."

Harris campaign spokesperson Quentin Fulks affirmed Wednesday on CNN that Harris “is open to a debate in October.”

“But if I were Donald Trump,” he said, “I would not want to debate Kamala Harris.”

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this report misspelled Fox News anchor Bret Baier's first name.

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Former President Donald Trump’s plan to have Elon Musk lead a government efficiency commission would vault the world’s richest man to an unprecedented role: American oligarch.

The details of the commission and Musk’s involvement are still vague, but any formal role in government would give greater influence to the billionaire owner of Tesla, Space X, satellite company Starlink and the social media platform X — signature ventures that have benefited from federal contracts, tax credits and government incentives.

“This is like red lights blaring, all kinds of conflicts of interest,” said Danielle Brian, president of the Project on Government Oversight.

Beyond the possible competing interests, Musk’s potential foray into government would represent a striking development for the tech titan, who would essentially have a role at the highest levels of business, manufacturing, media and Washington.

At the same time, handing Musk a position in his potential administration would fit neatly into Trump’s approach to government. The former president tapped billionaires Wilbur Ross and Steven Mnuchin to serve in his Cabinet, though they had far lower public personas as Musk — and less to gain directly from their involvement.

“Musk is the latest example of a totally gearheaded, engineering-brained, Silicon Valley guy who looks at government and says ‘How hard can it be? Let me at it and I can solve it for you,’” said Peter Leyden, founder of the strategic foresight firm Reinvent Futures and a former managing editor at Wired. “There’s been many of these characters before and he’s just the latest.”

Musk firmly planting himself into politics is not surprising to those who have watched him move from electric car innovator to space entrepreneur to owner of X (and online troll of liberals). But tech experts say Washington may be tricky terrain for a Silicon Valley businessperson unaccustomed to the complexities of federal bureaucracy.

“He’s always been a contrarian,” said Will Rinehart, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. “He’s worked on electric cars when no one cares about electric cars. He’s worked on space when no one cared about space.”

“That has pushed him into this space where being a contrarian has this value for me.”

Musk has described himself in the past as a moderate but shifted his allegiance to Trump, formally endorsing him after the attempted assassination in July.

“I look forward to serving America if the opportunity arises,” Musk wrote on X, “No pay, no title, no recognition is needed.”

Like Trump, Musk has expressed hostility toward government oversight — particularly in California.

The billionaire had long-running feuds with the state’s deep-blue government and has often tussled with the state’s powerful labor interests. Early in the pandemic, he defied local public health orders and continued manufacturing cars at Tesla’s Fremont plant in spite of the threat of Covid-19 — later suing to block what he called “fascist” restrictions and threatening to move the headquarters out of state.

He ended up moving some company’s operations to Texas later that year, but continued to grow Tesla’s footprint in California. He made similar threats of withdrawal earlier this year when, outraged over new protections for LGBTQ+ youth, he vowed to move X and SpaceX to the Lone Star State. Last month, he announced the social media platform would shutter its offices in downtown San Francisco, relocating employees to nearby Palo Alto and San Jose.

Musk has also faced legal scrutiny for his labor practices at both Tesla and X. A California judge found that he and other Tesla executives violated labor laws in 2017 and 2018 by sabotaging attempts to organize workers. Hundreds of former Twitter employees sued him after his $44 billion acquisition of the social media platform in 2022, accusing him of failing to pay severance.

Lorena Gonzalez, head of the California Labor Federation, for years has traded barbs with the billionaire. She noted that state lawmakers often viewed Musk as a positive for the state — giving Tesla millions in subsidies and touting it as a marquee California company.

“His product was often kind of labeled as enviro,” she said. “But there was nothing about him that suggested he was a progressive or liberal.”

Musk did not respond to a request for comment.

Musk’s push into national politics grew with his 2022 purchase of Twitter, which he later renamed X. He immediately oversaw mass layoffs and implemented a new vision promoting free speech — reforms that brought partisan criticism he was enabling misinformation and harassment on the platform. Under Musk’s leadership, X’s valuation has plummeted and investors lost over $24 billion.

At the Reboot conference Thursday, hosted by the right-leaning tech think tank Foundation for American Innovation, attendees were largely indifferent or inattentive to Musk’s audacious pledge to lead Trump’s commission.

Patrick Blumenthal, founder of the Anomaly venture capital fund, suggested that given its apparent lack of relation to any of Musk’s tech projects it reflected a certain level of dilettantism not uncommon in the tech world.

“Tech and politics, to some extent, I think are incompatible,” Blumenthal said. “But you have an industry full of intelligent people, so it’s inevitable that some of them will want to see if that intellect works in another arena.”

© Pool photo by Kirsty Wigglesworth

Every week political cartoonists throughout the country and across the political spectrum apply their ink-stained skills to capture the foibles, memes, hypocrisies and other head-slapping events in the world of politics. The fruits of these labors are hundreds of cartoons that entertain and enrage readers of all political stripes. Here's an offering of the best of this week's crop, picked fresh off the Toonosphere. Edited by Matt Wuerker.

Hackers apparently breached the social media accounts of Lara and Tiffany Trump on Tuesday, distributing what the former president’s son said were two fake posts touting a family cryptocurrency venture.

The posts on the social network X appeared to come from the accounts of Lara Trump, the co-chair of the Republican National Committee, and Tiffany, the younger of the former president’s two daughters.

Eric Trump quickly declared them a hoax in his own X post.

“This is a scam!!!” Eric Trump said. “@LaraLeaTrump and @TiffanyATrump‘s Twitter profiles have been compromised!!” The posts by Lara Trump and Tiffany Trump were then deleted.

Eric Trump then posted “@twitter was amazing” and the accounts of Lara and Tiffany Trump were locked down “within minutes.”

It was an embarrassing breach for the family considering former President Donald Trump’s close relationship with Elon Musk, who acquired the platform previously known as Twitter in 2022 and supports him in the presidential race.

Both phony posts referenced World Liberty Financial, a Trump family cryptocurrency project that has yet to formally launch. The former president, who has called himself the first ‘crypto president’ and whose campaign is receiving substantial contributions from the industry, teased its announcement in a video released last week.

An official account for World Liberty Financial confirmed the hack in a separate post on X. “ALERT: Lara’s and Tiffany Trump's X accounts have been hacked. Do NOT click on any links or purchase any tokens shared from their profiles,” the company said. “We're actively working to fix this, but please stay vigilant and avoid scams!”

World Liberty has itself been the target of scammers ahead of its launch. The Independent, a British newspaper, reported Monday that cyber criminals have drawn tens of thousands of users to a counterfeit version of the site.

The breach comes nearly a month after the Trump campaign confirmed some of its internal communications were compromised. U.S. intelligence officials said that Iran was responsible for the hacks that targeted officials on the Trump campaign and also to hack the Harris campaign as well.

X had no immediate comment.

© Alex Brandon/AP

Political cartoons from the desk of Matt Wuerker.

The controversy around Donald Trump’s visit to a memorial service at Arlington National Cemetery earlier this week has once again thrust the military to the forefront of the 2024 presidential contest.

What was intended to highlight a potential vulnerability on Kamala Harris’ vice presidential record — the U.S. military’s pullout from Afghanistan in 2021, during which 13 American service members were killed and dozens more were injured — backfired on Trump, as his campaign faced allegations of physically pushing a cemetery staff member and breaking federal law in using cemetery grounds for political purposes.

It’s the latest incident in recent weeks of the military being used as a political cudgel on the campaign trail, in a race where neither presidential candidate served in the military but both selected veterans as their running mates.

It’s part of a decadeslong political playbook.

“There's always, I think, a political instinct to lean into respect for the U.S. military, because it's a binding moral foundation,” said Rep. Jake Auchincloss (D-Mass.), who served in the Marines before running for office. “That's why attacks based on disrespect for it are tempting for political operators.”

Sometimes those incidents included real national security and military decisions, especially for incumbent presidents and their cabinets, but not always.

Think back to scandals that still reverberate in the American political imagination: Benghazi, the 2012 attack on U.S. facilities in Libya that became a major political liability for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton; the vote to go to war with Iraq, which followed Clinton and President Joe Biden for decades; and the “Swift Boat campaign” against John Kerry’s military record that’s become political shorthand for an unfair attack.

In 1992, George H.W. Bush slammed his opponent, Bill Clinton, as a draft dodger. In 1988, Michael Dukakis bashed Bush for the Iran–Contra Affair and staged a photo-op in a tank to cast himself as a capable military leader — though the plan went sideways when his huge helmet and grin looked more silly than strong. Bush, a World War II hero, ran an ad of the photo that helped sink the Democrat’s campaign.

“Dukakis, of course, was doing that to show that he was tough and cared about national security, but he looked goofy in the hat, and it just it backfired on him,” said Peter Feaver, a Duke University professor who previously served as an aide for the White House National Security Council. “And I would say Trump has struggled mightily with this as well, in terms of meeting the ceremonial moment with the seriousness, the respect, the circumspection, reflection that the moment requires.”

“Presidents have to pass the commander-in-chief test,” Feaver added. “They have to meet some minimum threshold that yes, they could be trusted to be commander in chief, they could be trusted with the nuclear arsenal, with the lives of our men and women who serve in uniform.”

The Army said in a statement Thursday that while Trump was at a wreath-laying ceremony to honor service members who were killed during the Afghanistan pullout, at the invitation of some of the service members’ families, members of Trump’s campaign team “abruptly pushed aside” and “unfairly attacked” a staff member who had attempted to stop a campaign photographer from taking photos of Trump at the service members’ grave sites. The campaign was “aware of federal laws, Army regulations and DoD policies, which clearly prohibit political activities on cemetery grounds,” the Army said, defending its staffer.

NPR first reported the incident. The staffer is not pressing charges, according to the Army, which considers the matter closed.

Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said in a statement defending the former president’s visit that there “has been no greater advocate for our brave military men and women” than Trump. Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung directed POLITICO to a 2020 Biden campaign ad that shows the president standing at a service member's grave.

Harris campaign spokesperson Michael Tyler called the Arlington incident “pretty sad” but “not surprising” in a CNN interview on Wednesday, and spokesperson James Singer referred POLITICO to the line in the vice president’s Democratic National Convention speech last week promising to “fulfill our sacred obligation to care for our troops and their families, and I will always honor and never disparage their service and their sacrifice.”

When President Joe Biden was still the Democratic nominee, Trump’s campaign aired an ad showing the president checking his watch at a 2021 ceremony honoring the soldiers who died during the Afghanistan withdrawal. And at the Republican National Convention last month, some of the service members’ family members appeared on stage to slam him.

“When you're honoring those who have passed, who’ve died in service of their country, that is the most ceremonial [part of the presidency] to the point it’s often talked about in sacred terms: ‘Hallowed ground,’ ‘It’s holy,’” Feaver said. “The people who want to be president need to show that in that moment, they can rise to the occasion.”

With Harris replacing Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket, her role in the Afghanistan withdrawal is likely to be raised by Republicans through Election Day.

“It’s going to be a very significant liability [for Harris], particularly when she says ‘I was the last person in the room and I absolutely approved of the plan,’” said veteran Republican strategist Charlie Gerow. “That, to me, is game, set and match on that score.”

Trump’s campaign has also sought to undermine the service record of Harris’ running mate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, whom Ohio Sen. JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, has accused of “stolen valor.” Walz, who served for 24 years in the Minnesota National Guard and retired from the military to run for Congress shortly before his troop deployed to Iraq, has brushed aside the criticism.

“My record speaks for itself,” he said Thursday on CNN.

The critiques on Walz’s service record echo back to the 2004 presidential campaign, when then-candidate George W. Bush’s service in the Texas Air National Guard was questioned. That scandal culminated in CBS News publishing a series of documents the network’s source had fabricated — the basis for the 2015 film “Truth.” During the same campaign, John Kerry’s record was also questioned in a “swift boat” attack engineered by Chris LaCivita, who now serves as a senior adviser to Trump’s campaign.

But Trump is also vulnerable when it comes to service members and veterans, with a track record that includes reports that he called them “suckers and losers” — which he denies — and saying Sen. John McCain, who was a prisoner of war, was “not a war hero” because of his capture. Earlier this month, Trump drew criticism from veterans groups for saying the country’s top civilian honor was “much better” than its top military honor because the service members who receive the latter are “in very bad shape” or “dead.”

“Those are things he can’t erase — those are stains, indelible stains, and nothing Vance says or does can overcome that,” Feaver said.

But Gerow said he doesn’t think it will impact Trump’s share of the military vote. “It didn't make any difference in the previous two cycles. He won the lion's share of the veteran vote and the military vote, and I think he'll do it again this time,” he said.

© Alex Brandon/AP

Every week political cartoonists throughout the country and across the political spectrum apply their ink-stained skills to capture the foibles, memes, hypocrisies and other head-slapping events in the world of politics. The fruits of these labors are hundreds of cartoons that entertain and enrage readers of all political stripes. Here's an offering of the best of this week's crop, picked fresh off the Toonosphere. Edited by Matt Wuerker.

AUSTIN, Texas — A Latino voting rights group called Monday for a federal investigation after its volunteers said Texas authorities raided their homes and seized phones and computers as part of an investigation by the state’s Republican attorney general into allegations of voter fraud.

No charges have been filed against any targets of the searches that took place last week in the San Antonio area. Attorney General Ken Paxton previously confirmed his office had conducted searches after a local prosecutor referred to his office “allegations of election fraud and vote harvesting” during the 2022 election.

Some volunteers whose homes were searched, including an 80-year-old woman who told her associates that agents were at her house for two hours and took medicine, along with her smartphone and watch, railed outside an attorney general’s office in San Antonio against the searches.

“We feel like our votes are being suppressed,” Roman Palomares, national president of the League of United Latin American Citizens, said Monday. “We’re going to get to the bottom of it.”

The investigation is part of an Election Integrity Unit that Paxton formed in his office. Paxton’s office did not immediately respond to emails seeking comment. The federal Justice Department declined to comment.

At least six members had their homes searched, Palomares said. They included Manuel Medina, a San Antonio political consultant, who claimed his home was searched for several hours while agents seized documents, computers and cellphones. Medina is the former head of the Bexar County Democratic Party and is working on the campaign of Democratic state House candidate Cecilia Castellano, whose home was also searched.

Nine officers also entered the home of volunteer Lidia Martinez, 80, who said she expressed confusion about why they were there.

“They sat me down and they started searching all my house, my store room, my garage, kitchen, everything,” Martinez said, and interrogated her about other members, including Medina.

The search warrant ordered officials to search any documents related to the election and to confiscate Martinez’s devices.

“I’m not doing anything illegal,” Martinez said she told agents. “All I do is help the seniors.”

Voter fraud is rare, typically occurs in isolated instances and is generally detected. An Associated Press investigation of the 2020 presidential election found fewer than 475 potential cases of voter fraud out of 25.5 million ballots cast in the six states where Trump and his allies disputed his loss to Democratic President Joe Biden.

© AP

With just 15 days left until the scheduled Sept. 10 presidential debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, negotiations between their two campaigns have hit an impasse over whether the candidates’ microphones will be muted when it is not their turn to speak, according to four people familiar with the issue.

In June, President Joe Biden’s campaign came to an agreement with Trump’s: There would be two debates — CNN’s on June 27 and ABC’s on Sept. 10 — conducted by mutually negotiated rules. One of the Biden team’s demands — which the Trump team agreed to — was that microphones “will be muted throughout the debate except for the candidate whose turn it is to speak,” as CNN announced on June 15.

But Biden is no longer running for president. And Harris’ campaign wants the microphones to be hot at all times during the ABC debate — as has historically been the case at presidential debates.

“We have told ABC and other networks seeking to host a possible October debate that we believe both candidates’ mics should be live throughout the full broadcast,” Brian Fallon, the Harris campaign’s senior adviser for communications, tells POLITICO. “Our understanding is that Trump’s handlers prefer the muted microphone because they don’t think their candidate can act presidential for 90 minutes on his own. We suspect Trump’s team has not even told their boss about this dispute because it would be too embarrassing to admit they don’t think he can handle himself against Vice President Harris without the benefit of a mute button.”

Privately, the veep’s team believes that Harris can get Trump to lose his cool and say something impolitic on mic.

“She's more than happy to have exchanges with him if he tries to interrupt her,” one person familiar with the negotiations tells Playbook. “And given how shook he seems by her, he's very prone to having intemperate outbursts and … I think the campaign would want viewers to hear [that].”

For its part, the Trump campaign sees this all as a bait and switch. They want the ABC debate governed by the CNN rules — even though those rules were agreed to by the Biden campaign, not the Harris campaign.

“Enough with the games. We accepted the ABC debate under the exact same terms as the CNN debate. The Harris camp, after having already agreed to the CNN rules, asked for a seated debate, with notes, and opening statements. We said no changes to the agreed upon rules,” Jason Miller, senior adviser for Trump told Playbook last night. “If Kamala Harris isn’t smart enough to repeat the messaging points her handlers want her to memorize, that’s their problem. This seems to be a pattern for the Harris campaign. They won’t allow Harris to do interviews, they won’t allow her to do press conferences, and now they want to give her a cheat-sheet for the debate. My guess is that they’re looking for a way to get out of any debate with President Trump.”

Trump later told reporters Monday that he hoped to move forward with the same rules as the June debate, but “it doesn’t matter to me, I’d rather have it probably on.”

“But the agreement was that it would be the same as it was last time. In that case, it was muted,” Trump told reporters at a stop in Northern Virginia. “I didn’t like it the last time but it worked out fine. I mean, ask Biden how it worked out — it was fine. And I think it should be the same.”

Fallon posted on social media a clip of Trump's brief Monday comments, taking it as an agreement to have the mics on, though the Trump campaign has not made it official.

“Always suspected it was something his staff wanted, not him personally. With this resolved, everything is now set for Sept 10^th,” he wrote on X.

Trump on Sunday night openly questioned whether he'll take part in the ABC-hosted event, suggesting the network might be biased, without mentioning anything about the microphone contretemps.

Trump himself has suggested additional debates with Harris, governed by rules different from the CNN standard — including proposing a Fox News-hosted debate on Sept. 4 with “a full arena audience,” as Trump posted on Truth Social earlier this month. (The CNN debate had no in-person viewers.)

The no-live-mics stance is also at odds with the Trump campaign’s demand in the 2020 campaign, when it wanted microphones to remain on as the then-president faced Joe Biden.

“It is our understanding … that you will soon be holding an internal meeting to discuss other possible rule changes, such as granting an unnamed person the ability to shut off a candidate’s microphone,” Trump’s then-campaign manager, Bill Stepien, wrote to the Commission on Presidential Debates on Oct. 19, 2020. “It is completely unacceptable for anyone to wield such power … This is reminiscent of the first debate in 2016, when the President’s microphone was oscillated, and it is not acceptable.”

As for Miller’s assertion that Harris wanted a seated debate with notes, Fallon pushed back vigorously. “All three parties (Trump, Harris and ABC) have agreed to standing and no notes, and we never sought otherwise,” Fallon said. A separate person familiar with the negotiations laughed when we asked if Harris ever asked to be seated, saying it wasn’t true.

At the time it accepted ABC’s invitation, the Harris campaign did so while making clear to the network that the rules themselves were up for debate. And if this current snag is any indication, that debate is far from settled.

Irie Sentner contributed to this report.

© Julia Nikhinson/AP

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul pushed back Friday against Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s suggestion that the governor’s weakness at the top of the ticket in the Empire State cost Democrats the House.

“I’ll tell you this, no governor in the history of the state of New York has worked harder to elect members of Congress than I have,” Hochul told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “We are going to win this on the ground because I know how to do this. I now have the chance to focus on this.”

In an interview with POLITICO on Thursday, Pelosi blamed Hochul’s closer-than-expected victory in New York’s 2022 gubernatorial race for Democrats inability to maintain their House majority in that year’s elections. New York Republicans flipped four Democratic-held seats in those midterms, races where critics have suggested that Hochul may have been a drag on down-ballot candidates.

Asked about that claim by Pelosi, the governor flatly replied “I don’t agree with that.”

Hochul cited her efforts to begin raising money for New York’s Democratic Party and pour it into local counties, as well as ongoing coordination with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and hundreds of staffers across 35 offices.

Pelosi said Thursday that she hadn’t spoken to Hochul about this year’s races but had consulted with Jeffries as recently as that morning. She emphasized the importance of the “three M’s: mobilization, message, money.”

Hochul acknowledged Friday she can “laser focus” on key purple districts — including Hudson Valley, Syracuse, Central New York and Long Island — now that “I’m not a candidate this year myself.”

“We’re going to win these races and win strong,” she said.

© J. Scott Applewhite/AP

Democratic kingmaker Nancy Pelosi has come to be pegged as the chief force behind President Joe Biden’s decision to step down from his reelection campaign — a claim that she refuses to dignify much.

While Pelosi no longer wields the Speaker’s gavel, its absence hasn’t done much to stifle her power within the party. She’s not only the first female Speaker of the House but also one of the most talented political tacticians of her generation.

POLITICO’s senior political columnist and politics bureau chief Jonathan Martin sat down with the Speaker Emerita at the CNN-POLITICO Grill on the last day of the Democratic National Convention.

JMart and Pelosi covered what state Pelosi believes to be key to retaking the House; how a President Kamala Harris would need to govern; that time when party transcended heritage in her snub of a New York Republican; her relationship with successor Hakeem Jeffries and what she really thinks of that DIY pin of her image that floated around the convention.

© Rod Lamkey Jr. for POLITICO

Every week political cartoonists throughout the country and across the political spectrum apply their ink-stained skills to capture the foibles, memes, hypocrisies and other head-slapping events in the world of politics. The fruits of these labors are hundreds of cartoons that entertain and enrage readers of all political stripes. Here's an offering of the best of this week's crop, picked fresh off the Toonosphere. Edited by Matt Wuerker.

‘Actually pretty good’: Moore eats Chicago-style chardog with Pritzker

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Project 2025 roasts, a Walz pep talk, and Oprah: DNC night 3 highlights

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‘We’re good’: Josh Shapiro dispels talk of rift with Fetterman

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Chicago mayor claps back at Vance over attack on Chicago crime

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Last night at the Democratic National Convention, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders urged Americans to support Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign for the presidency.

Simple enough? Well, maybe not.

Any astute observer knows that Sanders has a notoriously testy relationship with the Democratic establishment. And he’s been sparing in his words of praise for Harris’ campaign so far.

Meanwhile, the constituencies where Sanders has polled strongly for years — young people, minorities, and progressives — were among the weak points in President Joe Biden’s coalition that led many Democrats to scream for his replacement.

Now, with just 75 days until the election, those same Democrats are betting that Kamala Harris and Tim Walz can shore up these key factions. And they’re asking Bernie for help.

With that in mind, Playbook co-author and Deep Dive host Ryan Lizza spoke to Sanders at the CNN-Politico Grill to get a more honest reflection on the Harris campaign than what you’ll hear in a DNC stump speech.

In their conversation, they talked about whether he thinks Joe Biden should have stepped aside in the first place; how Democrats can win back young people, minorities, and progressives; as well as where he agrees with Harris’s policies, and where he thinks she needs to come a little in his direction to win.

© Rod Lamkey Jr. for POLITICO

Harris' Deputy campaign manager: 'Young voters are critical'

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A District of Columbia councilmember known for promoting antisemitic conspiracy theories has been arrested on charges that he accepted over $150,000 in bribes in exchange for using his elected position to help companies with city contracts, according to court records unsealed on Monday.

Trayon White Sr., a Democrat who ran an unsuccessful mayoral campaign in 2022, was arrested on a federal bribery charge by the FBI on Sunday. He is expected to make his initial court appearance on Monday.

White’s chief of staff and spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to emails seeking comment.

An FBI agent’s affidavit says White agreed in June to accept roughly $156,000 in kickbacks and cash payments in exchange for pressuring government agency employees to extend two companies’ contracts for violence intervention services. The contacts were worth over $5 million.

White, 40, also accepted a $20,000 bribe payment to help resolve a contract dispute for one of the companies by pressuring high-level district officials, the affidavit alleges.

An FBI informant who agreed to plead guilty to fraud and bribery charges reported giving White gifts including travel to the Dominican Republic and Las Vegas along with paying him bribes, the FBI said.

White, who has served on the D.C. council since 2017, represents a predominantly Black ward where the poverty rate is nearly twice as high as the overall district. He is running for re-election in November against a Republican challenger.

White was one of two D.C. council members whom Mayor Muriel Bower defeated two years ago in the Democratic primary. White, a former grassroots community activist, was a protégé of former Mayor Marion Barry, who also represented the same ward as White on the council.

In March 2018, White posted a video on his Facebook page claiming that an unexpected snowfall was because of “the Rothschilds controlling the climate to create natural disasters.” The Rothschilds, a Jewish family that was prominent in the banking industry, are a frequent subject of conspiracy theories.

At the time, White said he was unaware that the weather-related conspiracy theory is antisemitic. A video later surfaced of White pushing a similar conspiracy theory during a meeting of top city officials. He posed a question based on the stereotypical premise that the Rothschilds controlled the World Bank and the federal government.

Associated Press writer Ashraf Khalil contributed to this report.

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© Brian Stukes/Getty Images

Kamala Harris’ campaign is bolstering its communications team, bringing on two seasoned operatives from the White House for the final three-month sprint.

Ian Sams, the White House spokesperson for oversight and investigations, will join Harris’ campaign in a senior spokesperson role, according to two sources familiar with the moves granted anonymity to discuss personnel matters.

And principal deputy White House communications director Kristen Orthman is moving to the campaign to serve as senior adviser for strategic planning.

Herbie Ziskend will move into Orthman’s role at the White House for the final months of President Joe Biden’s term, the sources confirmed.

Sams, known as an assertive and punchy flack, worked on Harris’ 2020 presidential campaign. When Biden took office in 2021, he first worked at the Department of Health and Human Services on messaging related to the administration’s pandemic response. He moved to the White House in 2023, after Republicans reclaimed a majority in the House, and was tasked with responding to GOP and Special Counsel investigations.

Orthman’s resume includes stints working for former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s 2020 bid and the Democratic National Committee before she joined the administration in 2023.

The moves reflect the broader shift in focus and diversion of White House resources toward the campaign since Harris replaced Biden atop the ticket last month. Sams and Orthman will join an already deep communications team in Wilmington that has had to mesh in recent weeks with the vice president’s own top press aides, Brian Fallon and Kirsten Allen.

With the departure of senior adviser Anita Dunn earlier this month, White House communications director Ben LaBolt and Ziskend — who both cut their teeth working for Barack Obama — are expected to lead the West Wing’s communications shop through the end of Biden’s term.

© Andrew Harnik/AP

Donald Trump’s presidential campaign announced on Friday his transition team will be co-chaired by two major donors and allies, Linda McMahon, the former head of his Small Business Administration, and Howard Lutnick, the chairman and CEO of financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald.

Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance and Trump’s two adult sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, will serve as honorary chairs, the campaign said in a press release.

The decision to tap McMahon — the former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) and the board chair at America First Policy Institute — signals AFPI, the conservative think tank that was formed by Trump administration officials after he lost the 2020 election could have an influential role in shaping a second term for the former president.

AFPI, often described as a Republican “White House in waiting,” is led by former domestic policy council director Brooke Rollins and is home to several top Trump administration officials. In a statement, Rollins praised McMahon as “a leader who knows how to build and lead large organizations.”

“She knows business. She knows policy. She knows America. She knows what works and how to lay the foundation for a new administration that will put the needs of America First and reclaim our country,” he said.

Lutnick, a billionaire, is a major donor and fundraiser for Trump. The CEO is fresh off of hosting a fundraiser at his Hamptons home for Trump where he raised millions for the GOP presidential nominee.

The Trump Vance 2025 Transition Inc, will be a 501c4 organization separate from the campaign.

“The 2024 GOP Platform to Make America Great Again is a forward-looking agenda that will deliver safety, prosperity and freedom for the American people. My administration will deliver on these bold promises,” Trump said in a statement. “We will restore strength, competence and common sense to the Oval Office. I have absolute confidence the Trump-Vance Administration will be ready to govern effectively on Day One.”

The announcement of Trump’s transition team comes as the Trump campaign has worked to steady itself after President Joe Biden stepped down from the 2024 election. The subsequent creation of a ticket featuring Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz has reenergized the Democratic Party and effectively erased the polling lead Trump had enjoyed over Biden.

Trump’s move to name leaders for his transition team comes relatively late in the presidential campaign. Back in 2016, Trump announced Chris Christie as his transition chair in May, though he wound up removing the then-New Jersey governor from the role within days of winning the election.

McMahon and Lutnick will be tasked with overseeing the vetting and hiring of political appointees and of crafting policy proposals and executive orders Trump could implement starting on day one of his administration.

While Trump’s official transition efforts have just been announced, conservative organizations have worked behind the scenes for months to collect resumes and craft policies should the former president return to the White House. Trump has sought to distance himself from some of those efforts, in particular the work at Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025. The GOP nominee has said he knows “nothing about Project 2025,” and has called some of its policy recommendations “absolutely ridiculous,” even though the efforts involve at least 140 people who worked in the Trump administration according to a review by CNN.

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© AFP via Getty Images

Every week political cartoonists throughout the country and across the political spectrum apply their ink-stained skills to capture the foibles, memes, hypocrisies and other head-slapping events in the world of politics. The fruits of these labors are hundreds of cartoons that entertain and enrage readers of all political stripes. Here's an offering of the best of this week's crop, picked fresh off the Toonosphere. Edited by Matt Wuerker.

Alpha Kappa Alpha, the historically Black sorority that counts Vice President Kamala Harris as one of its most notable alumni, has created a political action committee, an unusual venture by a sorority rallying around the chance to send one of its own to the White House.

AKA is part of a collective of the country’s oldest and most prestigious sororities and fraternities known as the “Divine Nine,” whose network of more than 2 million alumni represents a massive political force among a constituency that both parties are hoping to mobilize ahead of November’s election.

When Harris was announced as Joe Biden’s running mate back in 2020, their campaign was flooded with thousands of donations of $19.08 — a reference to the year of Alpha Kappa Alpha’s founding.

In office, Harris hosted a visit of the Divine Nine leaders at the White House, the first time they had all been invited there to meet with a president or vice president, POLITICO reported in 2021. Leaders of the Divine Nine have visited the White House or met with Biden or Harris routinely since then — including as recently as May, as Biden sought to shore up his support among Black voters.

Last month, after Biden dropped out of the race and endorsed Harris, every Divine Nine president pledged in a statement to “meet this critical moment in history with an unprecedented voter registration, education and mobilization coordinated campaign.” The statement did not mention specific candidates or parties.

The Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority PAC, Inc., or AKA 1908 PAC, will be able to accept donations of up to $5,000 from members of the sorority and their families to support federal campaigns and political parties. Kiahna Davis, a regional director at AKA for the Central region, is listed as the PAC’s treasurer. Neither Davis nor the PAC responded to a request for comment.

Harris has long spoken fondly of AKA — whose members she has likened to “family” — along with the other Divine Nine sororities and fraternities.

The vice president’s first public event after becoming the de facto Democratic nominee was an appearance at a national gathering for another Divine Nine sorority, Zeta Phi Beta, and she addressed Alpha Kappa Alpha’s gathering, or Boulé, earlier this summer. And a rally she held in Atlanta shortly afterward featured just a small sampling of Divine Nine alumni in political power.

AKA isn’t the only Greek organization with a federal fundraising operation. Phi Beta Sigma, a Divine Nine fraternity, operates a PAC, and fraternity and sorority leaders founded the Fraternity & Sorority Political Action Committee in 2005 to support candidates “who defend and enhance the fraternity and sorority experience.”

© LM Otero/AP

The man who almost crashed in a helicopter with Donald Trump told POLITICO Trump confused him with former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown — despite the former president’s repeated insistence it was Brown.

It was Nate Holden, a former city councilmember and state senator from Los Angeles, who said in an exclusive interview late Friday that he remembers the near-death experience well. He and others believe it happened sometime in 1990.

“Willie is the short Black guy living in San Francisco,” Holden said. “I’m a tall Black guy living in Los Angeles.”

“I guess we all look alike,” Holden told POLITICO, letting out a loud laugh.

Holden, who is 95 years old, was in touch with Trump and his team during the 1990s when the flamboyant Manhattan developer was trying to build on the site of the historic Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Holden represented the district at the time and supported the project.

In the interview, Holden said he was watching Trump’s press conference on Thursday when the former president claimed that Brown was aboard during the white-knuckle helicopter ride.

In fact, Holden says he met Trump at Trump Tower, en route to Atlantic City, New Jersey, where they were going to tour the developer’s brand new Taj Mahal casino. In the lobby at Trump Tower, Holden says he was greeted by several people as “senator,” salutations that miffed the host.

“He said, ‘You know I own this building but nobody seems to know who I am,’” Holden remembered the mogul saying.

Holden recalled being a bit worried about the helicopter ride because it came not long after five people, including three high-level executives of Trump's casinos, were killed when their chopper crashed in 1989 over Forked River, New Jersey.

But Holden says Trump told him they were in good hands, noting that he had two capable pilots. “He tells me to ‘look at the sky,’” Holden said. “‘Oh my God, it’s so beautiful.’”

Also aboard was Trump’s late brother, Robert, the attorney Harvey Freedman and Barbara Res, Trump’s former executive vice president of construction and development. Res told POLITICO on Friday that she also remembers the ride well. In fact, she said she wrote about it in her book, “All Alone on the 68th Floor.”

Res remembers Brown, too. He took a liking to her, and she brought him a hat from the superyacht the Trump Princess, which she says he loved. But the man on the helicopter was definitely Nate Holden, she said.

On that ride, she said the pilots started feverishly maneuvering the equipment as the chopper lurched over the water. “From the corner of my eye, I can see in the cockpit and what I see is the co-pilot pumping a device with all his might,” Res wrote in her book. Donald Trump and Robert Trump were reassuring Holden.

“Very shortly thereafter the pilot let us know he had lost some instruments and we would need to make an emergency landing,” she wrote. “By now, the helicopter was shaking like crazy.”

After considerable turbulence, they landed safely in New Jersey at an airport where Trump had his commuter helicopters stored.

Within an hour, they were in Atlantic City. Holden and Res had a nice lunch at the casino courtesy of Trump and went back to New York. “We may not have gotten much business done, but it sure as hell was memorable,” she wrote.

Over the phone Friday, Res said Trump liked to tell a joke about Holden on the helicopter — “you turned white,” he said. But she said it was Trump’s face that was white.

“He was white as snow,” Holden added. “And he was scared shitless.”

When asked for comment, a Trump campaign spokesperson just referred to a paragraph in a New York Times article about the incident.

"[Trump] has also told the helicopter story before, in his 2023 book, 'Letters to Trump,' in which he published letters to him from a number of people, including Mr. Brown. In the book, Mr. Trump wrote, 'We actually had an emergency landing in a helicopter together. It was a little scary for both of us, but thankfully we made it.'"

Res and Holden spoke on the phone Friday night. They sometimes reminisce about the Ambassador project that could have been.

“That’s the story, OK,” Res said. “No Willie Brown.”

Holden also connected with Brown on Thursday. “I said, ‘Willie, were you almost in a helicopter crash with Trump also?’ He said ‘No.’ I said, ‘I was the one, Willie.’”

Before he hung up with POLITICO, Holden assured a reporter that nobody discussed — let alone criticized — Kamala Harris as Trump claimed Brown did.

“He either mixed it up,” Holden said. “Or, he made it up. This was just too big to overlook. This is a big one. Conflating Willie Brown and me? The press is searching for the real story and they didn’t get it. You did.”

© Photo courtesy of Nate Holden

Kamala Harris’ campaign is navigating internal tensions as a team of new senior strategists take hold of an operation largely staffed by people hired when Joe Biden was the Democratic nominee, according to six people, including aides familiar with the dynamics.

Longtime Harris loyalists are also chafing at the continuing presence of some Biden aides known for disparaging the vice president, three of the people said.

The unfolding friction is the result of an unprecedented overhaul of the Democratic ticket less than three months before the election, a daunting task that requires integrating two political worlds while at the same time selecting a vice presidential nominee and battling former President Donald Trump.

And it requires negotiating a new structure at the highest levels of the organization.

Jen O’Malley Dillon, the former Biden White House official and campaign chair, told Harris in a phone call that she needed specific assurances that some of the campaign’s new power players — including David Plouffe, Barack Obama’s former campaign manager — would not dilute her decision-making authority, two of the people told POLITICO. Those people, like the others who detailed the campaign’s internal dynamics, were granted anonymity to convey private conversations.

The call last week came after advisers in the vice president’s inner circle pushed hard to hire Plouffe, whom Harris wanted on the campaign to provide counsel.

POLITICO was first to report the Harris team’s interest in Plouffe, and first to report his hiring more than a week later. After O’Malley Dillon’s call with the vice president, the Harris campaign marked Plouffe’s arrival in a long list of staff additions with titles that one aide and a close ally said don’t convey their significance or necessarily their proximity to Harris.

They described Plouffe’s title — senior adviser for path to 270 and strategy — as severely downplayed given that those duties are typically the purview of a campaign manager.

And they noted with suspicion that Campaign Manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez, a Harris alum from 2020 who went on to hold key positions in the White House and Biden sphere, was assigned the new specific task of focusing on Sun Belt states of the American West as well as Latino voters, considering Harris’ increased competitiveness in those states and her depth of experience. They viewed it as a demotion that further diffuses her overall power.

A senior Harris official pushed back on those characterizations. The official stressed that Chavez Rodriguez’s new duties were being added to her current job and that the incoming senior advisers, including Plouffe, all have a defined portfolio. In his case, it’s to closely collaborate with O’Malley Dillon and others to execute the campaign’s state-by-state strategy — in addition to advising Harris.

Others brought in include the veteran strategist Stephanie Cutter, as senior adviser on message and strategy; Mitch Stewart, senior adviser for battleground states and Jen Palmieri, senior adviser for the second gentleman Doug Emhoff.

“There is no doubt when you have 2,000 people and you are changing who is at the top of the ticket that it’s going to take a minute to make sure that everyone is seated well, and we still have some work to do on that,” O’Malley Dillon said in an interview. “But I think, ultimately, when you look at what this campaign has accomplished in such a short amount of time, and how people went from working with the president on the top of the ticket to flipping immediately to the vice president on the top of the ticket, it does show at its core really strong support for the vice president and strong collaboration.”

O’Malley Dillon maintained her influence over the organizational chart. As did other Biden originals, with all of the department heads keeping their leadership roles. But some Biden staffers who had worked on Harris’ portfolio before have seen their jobs change and standing diminish just as the early warning signs of disunity began to emanate from the Wilmington, Delaware headquarters.

All of this comes as a campaign built to think and speak in the voice of Biden had to sharply adjust to taking its cues from Harris, its new standard-bearer. That’s created staff-level factions of Biden loyalists, including some who spent years privately criticizing Harris’ political skills and instincts, and her own team, whom she’s worked to integrate.

At the same time, Harris’ top advisers have made clear any changes would be “additive,” and those leaving the campaign would be doing so voluntarily. In other words, aides who spent years working for Biden would retain their titles, and, in some cases, their workloads.

Sheila Nix, the senior adviser and chief of staff to Harris, issued a statement in which she contrasted the campaign’s progress with what’s happening with Trump.

“This is a team that within a few short weeks has changed candidates, added a running mate, seen hundreds of millions of dollars pour in fueled by a historic outpouring of support from millions of voters, and crisscrossed the country talking to voters — all while the other guy has grown increasingly unhinged and dangerous from his perch on Mar-a-Lago,” Nix said. “The story here is what we've been able to do in a remarkably short amount of time to build a winning campaign — full stop.”

Anxiety inside the campaign could still dissipate over the three-month sprint to November, but aides also fear they could grow in scope and significance and lead to trouble down the chain of command. Harris built a chaotic operation in her 2020 presidential primary campaign that she allowed to fester, causing bottlenecks and radiating dysfunction across her organization. In the first two years of her vice presidency, she also saw several staff departures and internal fissures that reinforced the idea she couldn’t properly assemble and lead a harmonious team. But Harris and her staff have worked hard to overcome all the old dramas and the curtailed 2024 campaign is the latest test of whether she could keep it up.

A handful of people in Harris’ circle told POLITICO they worry that the unfolding tension among campaign staffers will splash back on the vice president, and argue that it’s unfortunate and unfair given the strides she’s made in recent years to build a cohesive and loyal unit.

But some Harris loyalists have picked up on former Biden aides grumbling under their breath about now having to work for her. And there’s considerable ire directed at top digital strategist Rob Flaherty, whose title includes deputy campaign manager.

Flaherty and collaborators stumbled when making an early take of a launch video for Harris based around the theme of “Freedom,” according to one person involved in the process. The person said the earlier version featured shots with primarily Black women in the background, which threatened to typecast Harris as having a narrower appeal rather than demonstrating her ability to unite voters from across communities.

The original video had to be outsourced via the Democratic National Committee, which leaned on an outside creative team to remake it.

A second person who worked on the video explained Flaherty was one of several editors for the spot that was completed on a compressed timeline and ultimately heralded as a major success. The campaign fielded the request for comment about Flaherty.

Kevin Munoz, a spokesperson for the Harris campaign, disputed the notion that the DNC had to intervene.

“Our team did an initial cut of a launch video, that needed to be updated when we got the rights to use ‘Freedom’ by Beyonce. Any assertion that work ‘had to be outsourced’ because the work wasn't up to snuff is completely divorced from reality, and fails to acknowledge that the same creative team driving the first video is the one that created our very powerful, final launch video."

In a statement, Shelby Cole, the DNC’s mobilization officer and a former digital director for Harris, said staffers at every level “have put everything they can into this campaign,” adding that the resulting public support for the new ticket is “a reflection of the team I’m so proud to be a part of.”

And O’Malley Dillon credited Flaherty with having a crucial role in transitioning the campaign when Harris took control, including overhauling the website and putting out a torrent of new content. She acknowledged the campaign includes former 2020 rivals, but said many of the same people have been working shoulder to shoulder for at least a year now.

Yet the raw emotions from the swift change-over still linger. Another Harris aide pointed to the digital operation’s role in the Biden campaign — in the aftermath of his disastrous debate on June 27 — that included a fundraising pitch that argued switching to another candidate, including Harris, would make Democrats “less likely to win.”

The Harris aide said they had also observed longtime Biden-turned-Harris spokesperson TJ Ducklo bad-mouthing Harris.

Harris Communications Director Michael Tyler, Ducklo’s boss on the campaign, said nobody is speaking ill of their nominee. “Nope,” he said, “not happening.”

© Jamie Kelter Davis for POLITICO

Every week political cartoonists throughout the country and across the political spectrum apply their ink-stained skills to capture the foibles, memes, hypocrisies and other head-slapping events in the world of politics. The fruits of these labors are hundreds of cartoons that entertain and enrage readers of all political stripes. Here's an offering of the best of this week's crop, picked fresh off the Toonosphere. Edited by Matt Wuerker.