The weekend after the conventions is usually quiet, as journalists catch up on their sleep and candidates eagerly await their “post convention bounce,” the traditional four-to-five point boost in the polls that follows a successful nomination speech.
But 2016 is the exception to a lot of electoral rules, and as the country settled into the official campaign, the candidates seemed eager to take on the latter half of their run to the White House—for better or worse.
Here are a few things you might have missed this weekend.
Trump Takes on a Gold Star Family: Khizr Khan’s speech at the DNC, as the father of a Muslim man who died in service to his country in Iraq, clearly stung the Republican Presidential nominee.
Trump fired back in an interview with ABC News, criticizing Khan’s wife, who stood next to her husband while her husband told the audience about their hero son, who joined the military after 9/11 and died saving colleagues and civilians from a roadside bomb.
Trump’s attack was widely rebuked on social media, and among his Republican peers. Ghazala Khan responded in an op-ed in the Washington Post. Trump doubled down on Twitter.
The Kochs Take the Year Off: After rejecting a meeting with Donald Trump, the Koch Brothers officially ended their involvement in the 2016 Presidential race. They won’t run pro-Trump ads, but they also won’t pay for an anti-Hillary Clinton campaign. They’ll focus on down-ticket and Congressional races, sitting out 2016’s top-ticket race “entirely,” they told CNN.
The Debates Stay Put: Over the weekend, the Trump campaign threatened to pull out of two of the three Presidential debates because the debates were scheduled opposite NFL football games, forcing Reince Priebus, head of the RNC, to complain about a debate schedule he helped settle back in September of 2015. The Commission on Presidential Debates refused to budge, and Trump will have to perform during Monday Night Football, whether he likes it or not.
Clinton Asked to Pay Up for ClintonKaine.com: One enterprising Bernie Sanders fan told the New York Daily News that he’s been sitting on the domain, “ClintonKaine.com,” since 2011. The campaign has reportedly offered him $30,000 but he’s holding out for $90K. Until then, he says, he’ll post amateur cartoons of the Democratic Presidential nominee.
Hillary Clinton Versus the Truth: The Clinton campaign can’t escape their own poor judgment, even in the midst of what should have been a banner weekend, with an almost double-digit post-convention poll bump. Faced with questions about her email, Clinton’s campaign once again cherry-picked a response, claiming that the FBI considered her responses on the subject “truthful.” The Washington Post heartily disagreed.
Now, both nominees enter the first full week of an official Presidential campaign. Heaven help us.