CAMPAIGN/GOP/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “President Donald Trump is sticking with his ambitious midterm campaign schedule amid a cascade of scandal — a break from the typical pattern of politicians dropping out of sight in politically damaging moments. The president will visit Ohio on Friday [8-24-18] to speak at the state Republican Party dinner. He also is booked to do more than a half-dozen rallies and 16 fundraisers in as many as 15 states over the next six weeks, according to a person familiar with the plans. Trump’s refusal to hide reflects his unshakeable confidence that he’s the only one who can get them to turn out in November, allies say — and the reality that his base won’t abandon him, no matter what. He infamously boasted as a candidate in early 2016 that he could ‘stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters’ — and since then has earned his ‘Teflon Don’ reputation as his presidency has bounced from crisis to crisis…In the past week, his former campaign manager Paul Manafort was found guilty of tax evasion in Virginia and his longtime lawyer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty in New York to campaign-finance violations associated with payments made shortly before the 2016 election to two women — porn actress Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal — who claimed they’d had affairs with Trump. On Friday, The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg had been granted immunity in connection with the investigation into the payoffs.”
–Christopher Cadelago and Daniel Strauss, “Trump flips the script on Washington scandal response,” Politico, August 24, 2018 12:15 pm