Battleground ’16: FP’s New Presidential Campaign Newsletter

With a preview of this week’s GOP convention in Cleveland, FP is launching Battleground ’16, a new weekly edition of our Editor’s Picks newsletter — chock full of the latest insanity (and trenchant analysis of geopolitics) from the race for the White House. Sign up here.

Convention kickoff

Reflecting the unpredictable candidate who will be nominated for president at the Republican national convention in Cleveland this week, organizers released the official program Sunday evening, just hours before the four-day show begins on Monday. And Donald Trump, the big-haired New York businessman who attributes his unexpected success in the 2016 election to his anti-establishment, unconventional campaign, did not disappoint. At least one member of the Trump family will serve as a headliner each day, with the speeches on day one set to the theme “Make America Safe Again.”

Accordingly, the national security-focused lineup Monday features ret. Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn, the former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, a Navy SEAL, and several senators — along with a former actor on “General Hospital,” the guy who played Chachi, and Melania Trump, whose bio for the program highlights her jet-setting modeling career. It’s just a preview of the colorful cast — including some 200 foreign leaders — converging on Cleveland for what could be the most chaotic political convention in decades. — Molly O’Toole

Trump Hates Free Trade, but His VP Pick Backed NAFTA

Indiana Gov. Mike Pence is a committed fan of free trade who derided Trump’s call to ban Muslims. Why is the mogul choosing him?

Ex-General to Top Brass: Stay Out of the ‘Cesspool of Domestic Politics’

With Trump and Clinton having considered generals for VP, retired Marine Gen. John Kelly warns about the dangers of a political Pentagon.

“Donald Trump will be Donald Trump — scripted is probably the wrong word to ask me on how he’ll be.”
—Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort on Sunday in the first press briefing of the GOP convention in Cleveland

47-43
On the eve of the kickoff to the U.S. presidential conventions, presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton leads GOP nominee Donald Trump by 47 percent to 43 percent, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll released Sunday. But the New York businessman has narrowed the former secretary of state’s lead from 12 points last month.

Meet the Odd Array of Foreign Politicians Headed to Cleveland for the GOP Convention

Brexit leader Nigel Farage and far-right Dutch nationalist Geert Wilders are among the hundreds of foreign leaders taking part in a little-known tradition: attending the U.S. Republican and Democratic presidential conventions.

When Republican insiders, anti- and pro-Trump protesters, and a-few-letters-removed-from-A-list celebrities come together in Cleveland for the GOP convention, they’ll be joined by some 200 foreign ambassadors, members of parliament, and political strategists from roughly 100 nations, including Russia, China, South Korea, and Lebanon. It’s long-running but largely unnoticed tradition — every four years, a sizable foreign contingent flocks to the U.S. for the two premier events in American politics.

How Donald Trump and the GOP Dropped the Two-State Solution for Mideast Peace

Days before the Cleveland convention, Republicans have just abandoned Washington’s decades-long call for an independent Palestine.

Just in time before the conventions, GOP powerbrokers and presumptive nominee Donald Trump have finally come together — to ditch decades of bipartisan U.S. foreign policy calling for peace in the Middle East. The Republican Party platform removed the two-state solution to the long-running Israel-Palestine conflict — and here’s how two of Trump’s closest aides made it happen.

Sign up for our Battleground ’16 newsletter here.

Photo credit: JOHN MOORE/Getty Images