Celebrity gossip: HUFFPOST HILL - America Trembling With Excitement For Mike Pence, Might Barf

Hillary Clinton appears closer to selecting Tim Kaine or Tom Vilsack as her number-two, meaning DNC organizers are going to have to direct the bejesus out of next Wednesday’s programming. Donald Trump refused Melania’s speechwriter’s resignation, an awful punishment as it prevents her from taking a near-assured CNN contributor gig. And Trump said his wife’s plagiarized convention speech “got more publicity than any in the history of politics,” though he forgot about the Slovenian model’s famous remarks that “an iron curtain has descended across the continent.” This is HUFFPOST HILL for Wednesday, July 20th, 2016:

LATEST REMINDER THAT DONALD TRUMP DOESN’T REALLY WANT TO BE PRESIDENT - Robert Draper: “One day this past May, Donald Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., reached out to a senior adviser to Gov. John Kasich of Ohio, who left the presidential race just a few weeks before. As a candidate, Kasich declared in March that Trump was “really not prepared to be president of the United States,” and the following month he took the highly unusual step of coordinating with his rival Senator Ted Cruz in an effort to deny Trump the nomination. But according to the Kasich adviser (who spoke only under the condition that he not be named), Donald Jr. wanted to make him an offer nonetheless: Did he have any interest in being the most powerful vice president in history? When Kasich’s adviser asked how this would be the case, Donald Jr. explained that his father’s vice president would be in charge of domestic and foreign policy. Then what, the adviser asked, would Trump be in charge of? ‘Making America great again’ was the casual reply.” [NYT]

KAINE MAKING LAST-MINUTE PLAY FOR EVAN BAYH DEMOCRATS - So goes a Brookings Institution panel on leveraging markets to promote third world gender equality, so goes the nation. Zach Carter: “Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) is on Hillary Clinton’s short list of potential vice presidential nominees. He’s also actively pushing bank deregulation this week as he campaigns for the job. Kaine signed two letters on Monday urging federal regulators to go easy on banks ― one to help big banks dodge risk management rules, and another to help small banks avoid consumer protection standards...Kaine... is setting himself up as a figure willing to do battle with the progressive wing of the party. He has championed the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal that both Sanders and Warren oppose, and he is now publicly siding with bank deregulation advocates at the height of Clinton’s veepstakes.” [HuffPost]

tfw when you're the coolest gang at the party

DELANEY DOWNER - Everyone in Cleveland is wearing InfoWars shirts that say “Hillary for Prison,” and not just because it’s a snappy slogan. Alysia Tambourides, a 38-year-old stay-at-home mom from Houston, said she wore hers because she had no doubt Clinton belonged behind bars. “She didn’t have intent? What is that?” Tambourides said, referring to Comey’s explanation for not referring Clinton for prosecution. InfoWars.com is a conspiracy theory site managed by 9/11 Truther Alex Jones. Tambourides said she didn’t believe planes knocked down the Twin Towers in 2001. “What Alex is doing is breaking things down ― I think everyone knows in their gut that something’s going on,” Tambourides said, repeating a line that Donald Trump himself has used several times.

DOUBLE DOWNER - Cleveland police have been vigilant against the threat of bad guys infiltrating the city’s homeless population.

Seven or so protesters got arrested just now after blocking an entrance to the convention ― biggest arrest of the RNC so far.

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TRUMP STAFFER TAKES BLAME FOR PLAGIARIZED SPEECH - Which is odd considering the campaign insisted Melania Trump wrote her own address. Daniel Marans: “Meredith McIver, a staff writer for the Trump Organization who worked with Melania Trump on the speech, released a statement explaining how the incident had occurred. During the speechwriting process, McIver said, Trump dictated lines over the phone that she hoped to use as inspiration for her address. ‘A person she has always liked is Michelle Obama,’ McIver said. ‘Over the phone, she read me some passages of Mrs. Obama’s speech as examples. I wrote them down and later included some of the phrasing in the draft that ultimately became the final speech.’ McIver claimed she then failed to double-check the lines they selected against Obama’s speeches. ‘This was my mistake, and I feel terrible for the chaos I have caused Melania and the Trumps, as well as Mrs. Obama,’ McIver said. ‘I meant no harm.’” [HuffPost]

SPEECHWRITERS BEGIN LEAKING THEIR SIDE OF THE STORY - Still, we want an explanation for the rickroll. Maggie Haberman and Michael Barbaro: “It did not go as planned, and it has eclipsed much of the action at the party gathering in Cleveland, where delegates on Tuesday night formally nominated Mr. Trump for president. The speechwriters, Matthew Scully and John McConnell, sent Ms. Trump a draft last month, eager for her approval. Weeks went by. They heard nothing. Inside Trump Tower, it turned out, Ms. Trump had decided she was uncomfortable with the text, and began tearing it apart, leaving a small fraction of the original...The two original speechwriters were not aware of how significantly the speech had been changed until they saw Ms. Trump deliver it on television Monday night, along with the rest of the country.” [NYT]

SCAM SUPER PACS ARE AMERICA’S NEXT BUBBLE - But will Donald Trump suspend his campaign to address the crisis when the economy collapses in a few months? Tarini Parti and Rosie Gray: “Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski has been pitching his own super PAC to donors after trashing other groups working on behalf of the GOP presidential nominee, six sources with knowledge of those conversations told BuzzFeed News. Here for the Republican National Convention as a New Hampshire delegate and CNN commentator, Lewandowski has criticized the groups trying to boost Trump, especially one called Rebuilding America Now, which is run by the allies of Trump’s now campaign manager Paul Manafort. Among the donors he has pitched are operatives close to casino mogul Sheldon Adelson and coal billionaire Joe Craft and his wife Kelly Craft, former backers of Sen. Marco Rubio who are now supporting Trump. Asked for comment, Lewandowski said in an email to BuzzFeed News, ‘I have nothing to do with any Superpacs.’ He also denied talking to donors about a potential group.” [BuzzFeed]

TRUMP DELEGATE WANTS HILLARY SHOT - Remember, as Hillary Clinton demonstrated in 2008, it’s only acceptable to obliquely speculate about someone being shot. Laura Barron-Lopez: “Al Baldasaro, a New Hampshire state representative and delegate for the Republican presidential nominee, made the comments during an interview on “The Kuhner Report” radio show on Tuesday. Host Jeff Kuhner asked if Baldasaro thought Clinton bore responsibility for those who died in the 2012 terrorist attack on a U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya...’[Clinton] is a disgrace for the lies that she told those mothers about their children that got killed over there in Benghazi. She dropped the ball on over 400 emails requesting back up security. Something’s wrong there,’ he continued.’This whole thing disgusts me,’ Baldasaro added. ‘Hillary Clinton should be put in the firing line and shot for treason.’ After an extensive investigation into Clinton’s private email server, the FBI and Justice Department decided no charges were appropriate. And after spending more than two years and $7 million, the House Select Committee on Benghazi found no evidence of wrongdoing by the then-secretary of state.” [HuffPost]

KASICH STILL NOT ENDORSING TRUMP - Ted Cruz, meanwhile, is preparing for his RNC speech by clutching a copy of “Conscious of a Conservative,” rocking back and forth on his hotel bed and crying. Marina Fang: “Privately, Trump World still thinks they can get the recalcitrant governor to make a surprise appearance. ‘They’re working feverishly hard to win him over. Donald’s trying everything he can think of, and the kids, too,’ said one source close to Trump. ‘Their pitch is that he’s the governor, this is his state, and Donald has been nominated and he’s won and it looks stupid when you’ve got [Paul] Ryan and [Mike] Pence and [Chris] Christie, and he’s gonna look like a spoiled child, which takes away [the argument that] he’s standing by his principles.’ … The former GOP presidential contender told MSNBC’s Chris Matthews his reluctance to back Trump is ‘something that’s a matter of conscience for me,’ describing the choice between the businessman and his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton as ‘a vexing situation.’” [HuffPost]

RNC VENDORS ARE AN INTERESTING BUNCH - Eliot spent some time chatting with the vendors around the RNC. Donald Trump would be proud: “Juan Valdez ― yes, like the coffee guy ― is one of the dozens, if not hundreds, of street vendors hawking merchandise on the streets of downtown Cleveland ... ‘I was actually going for Bernie Sanders, but he didn’t make the cut,’ Valdez told The Huffington Post, ‘and I’ve still got bills to pay.’ … One vendor, who was selling Trump whoopee cushions (”Make America TOOT Again”), didn’t think his political leanings needed to be clarified. ‘Can’t you tell?’ he said. ‘I want to sit on his face.’ … Tim Moore, from just outside Cleveland, said that he’s been to “every Trump rally,” and is “a big fan” of the candidate. So does that mean he’s voting for Trump? ‘I don’t like [Trump] at all,’ he quickly clarified. ‘I like his money, though. I’m a big fan of his money.’” [HuffPost]

A lot of their wares are pretty offensive: “It’s no secret that some Trump supporters at the Republican’s boisterous rallies use the word “bitch” as shorthand for the former secretary of state. But a dose of that misogyny has made its way to the party’s official confab here in Cleveland as well. While the convention itself has no control over what’s sold outside the arena, vendors wouldn’t be selling the stuff if a contingent of convention-goers weren’t buying it.” [HuffPost’s Dave Jamieson]

It's an interesting scene here.

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PLAGIARISM SCHMAGIARISM, REPUBLICANS SAY - S.V. Date: Donald Trump’s campaign on Tuesday blamed the plagiarism in his wife’s convention speech on two favorite Republican bogeymen: the media and Hillary Clinton. ‘The fact that the speech itself is being focused on for … 50 words, and that includes ‘and’s’ and ‘the’s’ and things like that, is totally ignoring the facts of the speech itself,’ said campaign chairman Paul Manafort at a morning news conference, accusing the media of ‘distorting’ the would-be first lady’s remarks. ‘It’s just another example, as far as we’re concerned, that when Hillary Clinton is threatened by a female, the first thing she does is try to destroy the person.’ A top Clinton campaign aide responded on Twitter to Manafort’s accusation that the Democratic presumptive nominee was the first to bring up the identical language. “Nice try. Not true,” wrote Jennifer Palmieri.” [HuffPost]

Fact check: LOL, Paul Manafort.

GUY WHO ASSAULTED REPORTER WOULD LIKE HIS JOB BACK PLS - Igor Bobic: “Donald Trump’s former campaign manager on Tuesday suggested the campaign’s current chairman, Paul Manafort, should resign if found responsible for the apparent plagiarism in Melania Trump’s speech at the Republican National Convention. ‘I think Paul needs to take a deep look inside, and understand what the process was, make sure the protocols were in place,’ Corey Lewandowski, who now works as a commentator on CNN, said on the network….’I think if it was Paul Manafort, he’d do the right thing and resign,’ he added. [HuffPost]

TRUMP MISSES MEETING WITH MAJOR DONORS - He’ll regret this come October when his advertising team can only afford to put on puppet shows in the greater Columbus area. Jay Newton Small: “The group of 40 from companies such as Continental Resources, BNSF Railway and C Spire mingled with Republican members of Congress around breakfast tables set up on one of the stadium’s concourses. The Republican representatives addressed the group, ostensibly stalling for Trump. Rep. Tom Price from Georgia mentioned the plagiarism scandal over Trump’s wife Melania’s speech the evening before. Price blamed the liberal media, who he said, had made the whole thing up, according to people present. Eventually, though, the speeches ran out and Trump never showed. He had, they found out later, unexpectedly flown back to New York overnight with no word on when he might return. The group was led out to the football field, where the Cleveland Browns play, to take pictures before they were let go with no information about when and if a third meeting might take place.” [Time]

Chief RNC strategist and comms guru Sean Spicer cited “My Little Pony” during a CNN hit, because sure.

tfw when you’re john kerry and you walk into a door at 10 downing street

CLEVELAND POLICE BREAK CYCLE OF VIOLENCE WITH BICYCLES OF PEACE - The man used a bullhorn to goad the protesters who’d swarmed around him on Monday afternoon. “Homosexuals! Ho-mo-sexuals!” he bellowed from a ledge in a park by the convention center here. “We have homos! Homos leading the Black Lives Matter movement.” Before the situation could get any uglier, a line of police walked their bikes single-file between Bullhorn Guy and his antagonists. The officers then held their $2,000 bikes, effectively creating a fence between the two sides, and waited patiently for the groups to quit shouting at each other. It didn’t take long…. Cleveland Police Chief Calvin Williams said Monday evening that there had been two peaceful anti-Trump protests with roughly 500 people altogether and only one arrest, of a woman on a felony warrant. Williams said there was only a small amount of beef. “There were a couple times where we brought in our bicycle officers to split people from some of that confrontation,” Williams said. “We just wanted to make sure we got in there before anything got out of hand.” [HuffPost]

ESTABLISHMENT REPUBLICANS ARE CONCERNED, PT. 935,126 - Just a whole lotta honkeys in gold buttoned blazers shaking their heads. Shane Goldmacher: “[F]ew were as dark about the Republican Party’s future as former President Bush himself...Bush weighed in with an assessment so foreboding that some who relayed it could not discern if it was gallows humor or blunt realpolitik. ‘I’m worried,’ Bush told them, ‘that I will be the last Republican president.’ . . .In interviews with more than 40 of the Republican Party’s leading strategists, lawmakers, fundraisers and donors, a common thread has emerged heading into the general election: Win or lose in November (and more expect to lose than not), they fear that Trump’s overheated and racialized rhetoric could irreparably poison the GOP brand among the fastest-growing demographic groups in America.” [Politico]

BECAUSE YOU’VE READ THIS FAR - Here’s a very hot lizard.

EXPLOSIVE POOP NEWS - Not surprising that the poop cruise has docked at the RNC. Seema Mehta: “At least one staff member of the California GOP at the Republican National Convention has fallen ill with what appears to be the norovirus, or the cruise ship virus, according to a state party warning emailed to the delegation early Tuesday. Some delegates and other party guests have pinned the number as a handful up to a dozen, according to multiple sources. The stomach bug, which has gained notoriety in recent years for making hundreds of people wrenchingly ill aboard cruise ships, typically occurs in crowded settings such as day cares and nursing homes, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It affects 19 to 21 million people in the United States annually. The symptoms – stomach pain, nausea, vomiting, fever and diarrhea – are generally short-lived but can cause death, according to the CDC. Norovirus, a collection of gastrointestinal viruses, is highly contagious.” [LA Times]

COMFORT FOOD

- In case you’re looking to navigate about our universe, scientists have created a new celestial map containing 1.2 million galaxies.

- A post-mortem for the Concorde jet.

- Stephen Colbert really brought it during his first night of RNC coverage.

TWITTERAMA

@laurenduca: On a lighter note, Trump’s sons look like stars of a B-movie about vampires terrorizing a New England prep school

@KagroX: Melania might have plagiarized her speech, but the root cause of it was economic insecurity.

@davidfrum: “Word his bond.”

“Keep your promises.”

“Treat all with respect.”

Melanie should have known then she’d left the store w someone else’s order.

Got something to add? Send tips/quotes/stories/photos/events/fundraisers/job movement/juicy miscellanea to Eliot Nelson (eliot@huffingtonpost.com) or Arthur Delaney (arthur@huffingtonpost.com).

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Celebrity gossip

Wednesday, July 20, 2016

HUFFPOST HILL - America Trembling With Excitement For Mike Pence, Might Barf

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