GOP Botches
Donald Trump, it seems, was not internet-prepared for the announcement of Indiana governor Mike Pence as his vice presidential running mate.
On Friday, the Republican presidential candidate announced to the world via his medium of choice, Twitter, that he would be bringing Pence along for the ride.
Politico reporter Shane Goldmacher was quick to point out that almost nothing was ready for Pence's moment of glory.
Not only are there a bunch of squatters sitting on important URLs such as Trumppence.com, even Trump's website hasn't been updated for the important announcement.
Perhaps, the worst fears of Trump's team had come true and the billionaire announced his VP pick on social media without warning, despite saying he would wait to do it "the old fashioned way." Either way, missed opportunities have appeared everywhere.
Goldmacher, Alex Isenstadt and Kenneth P. Vogel report at Politico:
The last-minute plea for $6 million from Las Vegas billionaire Sheldon Adelson to rescue the Republican convention has erupted in controversy, as four of the five signatories to the letter from party organizers never saw it before it was sent and major donors flagged serious errors that forced the convention hosts to apologize to one of the GOP’s most influential financiers.
The episode has opened a window into a host committee that is scrambling and still millions shy of its fundraising target, only days before tens of thousands of Republicans arrive in Cleveland, as it acknowledges for the first time that presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump has put a damper on donations.
The letter, obtained by POLITICO on Thursday, outlined two dozen major corporations — Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Duke Energy and Apple, among them — that it claimed had backed out a combined more than $8.1 million in pledged donations in recent months.
But on Friday, Emily Lauer, a spokeswoman for the Cleveland 2016 Host Committee, acknowledged to POLITICO that the list of lost donors in the letter to Adelson was inaccurate — and that the committee has now reached out to Adelson’s aides to apologize.
