The week in politics: #ReadyForKanye, pledge for Trump
Happy Labor Day weekend and welcome to this week's OnPolitics roundup.
#ReadyForKanye
Politics chatter reached peak pop culture relevance Sunday when Kanye West announced during MTV's Video Music Awards that he planned to run for president in 2020. That quickly led to the creation of a political action committee in support of his candidacy, "Ready for Kanye," for those inclined to donate money to the cause. And by Friday, it even hit home for us at OP: the New Yorker's new cover featured West brandishing a copy of Paste BN with a "Dewey Defeats Truman"-esque headline.
Emails and tea time for Clinton
Monday marked another release of thousands of pages of emails from Democratic contender Hillary Clinton's private email server. The emails revealed a number of things, from the State Department's response to Wikileaks to Clinton's goodwill her now rival Martin O'Malley. It also made public her penchant for tea with skim milk and the show Parks and Recreation, and made famous the phrase, "Gefilte fish: Where are we on this?"
FedEx for immigrants
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said this week that he wants to implement a FedEx-like system to track immigrants. If elected, he'd bring in the founder of FedEx to work with the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. "We need to have a system that tracks you from the moment you come in," Christie said. "And then when your time is up … however long your visa is, th en we go get you and tap you on the shoulder and say 'Excuse me, thanks for coming, time to go.'"
Biden bides his time
Vice President Joe Biden on Thursday publicly addressed whether he would join the 2016 race by saying that he doesn't know just yet. He noted that people are talking about the other candidates and whether he'll be able to organize the effort. But that's not what matters, he says: "The factor is, can I do it? Can my family undertake an arduous commitment that I would be proud to undertake under ordinary circumstances?"
This week in Trump
Another week of the Donald leading the GOP race means another week of headlines. He's leading the polls, he doesn't like to shake hands, he's going to talk to Jimmy Fallon next week, he wants a tax cut on his $50 million golf club and he accused a radio host of asking him gotcha questions about foreign policy. But the most interesting bit might be that Trump also signed a pledge stating he'd support the eventual Republican nominee, presumably ruling out his own third-party bid in case he doesn't win the nomination.
This week's best politics photo
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., may not be leading the polls, but that doesn't mean he lacks enthusiastic supporters, such as those at his rally in Orem, Utah.
There's likely to be a sharp difference between those campaign rallies and the halls of the U.S. Capitol, which Paul will return to next week when Congress is back in session.