Pro-Biden Super PACs Raised $15 Million in June: Campaign Update

(Bloomberg) -- Two super PACs backing Democratic nominee Joe Biden brought in more than $15 million in June. Biden says he is considerng four Black women to be his running mate. The Trump campaign says 2020 polls that show President Donald Trump losing to Biden are skewed.

Other Developments:

• 2020 Election Will Be the Most Litigated in U.S. History
• Trump’s Wrong-Track Economy Means Voters Shrug at Stocks Rebound
• Trump Facing Last Chance Before Election to Right Economy
• Time Grows Tight for Trump, Biden With First Votes in Six Weeks
• NSA Chief Vows to Hit Back at Nations Interfering in U.S. Vote

There are 106 days until the election.

Pro-Biden Super-PACs Raised $15 Million in June

Two super political action committees backing Biden combined to bring to raise more than $15 million in June, according to their latest filings with the Federal Election Commission.

Priorities USA Action raised $9.7 million, spent $8.9 million and ended the month with $17.7 million cash on hand. Big donors include tech billionaire Jeffrey Skoll, who gave $2 million, real estate developer George Marcus and Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, a billionaire, both of whom contributed $1 million. The Sixteen Thirty Fund, a progressive nonprofit group that doesn’t disclose its donors, gave $3.5 million in so-called dark money.

Priorities Action USA, which has already spent $34 million to influence the presidential election, said Friday that it plans to spend $200 million by the end of the year, and its total donations plus pledged contributions already total $185 million.

Another super PAC, Unite the Country, which was set up by Biden supporters during the primaries to promote his candidacy, raised $5.6 million, spent $2.5 million and ended June with $9 million in the bank. Karla Jurvetson, who supported Senator Elizabeth Warren in the primaries, gave $1 million while the Sixteen Thirty Fund gave $3.5 million.

Presidential campaigns, party committees and most super PACs are due to file monthly reports including detailed information on their donations and spending to the FEC Monday. -- Bill Allison

Biden Is Considering 4 Black Women for Running Mate (8:10 p.m.)

Joe Biden is still considering four Black women to be his running mate but would not pledge to select one of them over other women on his list.

“I am not committed to committing any but the people I’ve named and among them are four Black women,” the Democratic nominee said Monday on MSNBC.

Biden resisted efforts to name the Black women, though Senator Kamala Harris, former National Security Adviser Susan Rice, Representative Val Demings and Representative Karen Bass are most likely to be on the list. Others still in consideration include Senator Elizabeth Warren, Senator Tammy Duckworth and Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham.

The former vice president also said that he and his team have begun working through the findings of their extensive vetting process, which he described as the equivalent of “having a public physical examination.” So far, they’ve discussed four of the candidates on his list. Interviews will follow after he works through that list, he added. -- Jennifer Epstein

Campaign Says Trump ‘Winning in Other Ways’ Than Polls (3:25 p.m.)

A Trump campaign said Monday that even though polls show Trump losing to Biden, the president is winning “in other ways.”

“I don’t think we’re looking at that and thinking anything close to ‘we’re losing,’” Hogan Gidley, Trump campaign spokesman, told Fox News Monday. “In fact, we’re winning in so many other ways.”

The RealClearPolitics average of polls shows Biden ahead by 8.6 percentage points nationally, and leading in the swing states of Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Gidley called all polls “skewed” and pointed to pollsters who predicted a Hillary Clinton win in 2016 as an example.

That echoed Trump’s own take in a Fox News interview Sunday. “First of all, I’m not losing because those are fake polls,” he said. “They were fake in 2016 and now they’re even more fake.” -- Misyrlena Egkolfopoulou

Trump’s New Campaign Manager Brings on Staff (9:27 a.m.)

Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign announced more staffing changes as the president seeks to reverse his falling trajectory in the polls.

Justin Clark, who until recently served as senior counsel for Trump’s 2020 campaign, was appointed deputy campaign manager.

Attorney Matt Morgan, who has worked in Vice President Mike Pence’s office since 2017, joined as the campaign’s counsel.

Nick Trainer, who until recently served as director of delegates and party organization for the campaign, will now serve as the director of battleground strategy.

In a tweet Monday, newly appointed campaign manager Bill Stepien described the staffers as “longtime #MAGA” and said they would strengthen the president’s team.

An experienced Republican operative, Stepien was promoted from deputy campaign manager last week, replacing Brad Parscale in a staff shakeup following Trump’s sparsely attended rally in Tulsa last month and consistently low poll numbers. -- Misyrlena Egkolfopoulou

Poll Shows Opinion Has Flipped on Athletes Kneeling (8:37 a.m.)

In June, Trump took to Twitter to criticize professional athletes who kneel in protest during the national anthem, implying that he would not watch NFL games or the U.S. national soccer team if they allow it.

But a new poll shows public opinion has flipped since Trump first took on the issue in 2017.

A Fox News poll released Sunday showed that 48% of respondents think that athletes kneeling during the anthem is an appropriate form of protest, while only 44% thought it was inappropriate.

That’s a reversal from a similarly worded question in September of 2016, which found 61% thought it was inappropriate.

Other polls show some of Trump’s 2016 campaign themes, particularly on racial issues, are falling out of favor. In reversals from four years ago, surveys show a majority of Americans now support removing Confederate statues from public places, believe police use more force against Black suspects and support the Black Lives Matter movement.

The Fox poll of 1,105 registered voters nationwide was taken July 12-15. It has a margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points.

Trump’s ‘Kitchen Sink’ Campaign Continues (6:30 a.m.)

Trump’s campaign against Hillary Clinton in 2016 was relentlessly single-minded: She was “crooked,” he argued, plagued by scandals and part of a corrupt system that neglected the little guy.

But in a Fox News interview Sunday, Trump threw multiple lines of argument against Biden that didn’t add up to a broad theme.

Biden “can’t put two sentences together,” he claimed, although he stopped short when host Chris Wallace asked if he was alleging the former vice president is senile. As president, “he won’t call the shots,” letting “the radical left” take over, Trump argued. At one point, he claimed that Biden would “defund the police,” which Wallace fact-checked as untrue in real-time.“Let Biden sit through an interview like this,” he said, “he’ll be on the ground crying for mommy. He’ll say mommy, mommy, please take me home.”

Biden Is Winning the Suburban Vote (6:30 a.m.)

Democrats blazed a path through formerly Republican suburbs to recapture the House majority in 2018. Now Biden is following in their footsteps.

A new ABC/Washington Post poll released over the weekend showed Biden leading Trump 60% to 36% among suburban women, and a virtual dead heat with Trump ahead 49-45 among suburban men.

Trump can’t afford to lose those voters if he wants to win re-election. He kept the suburbs in the Republican column in 2016 while improving on his predecessors’ numbers in rural areas, offsetting Democratic strength in urban cores.

But a collapse in the ‘burbs would make it hard for him to recapture states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and even North Carolina.

The survey of 1,006 adults nationwide was conducted July 12-15 and has a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points.

Trump Tweet Taken Down After Linkin Park Complains (6:30 a.m.)

Trump’s latest campaign video hit a snag when the band Linkin Park complained that it used one of their songs without permission.

Late Saturday, the president retweeted a video from social media director Dan Scavino which featured the band’s 2000 hit, “In the End.”

Within a few hours, Linkin Park filed a Digital Millennium Copyright Act complaint, and Twitter disabled the video in the tweet. The band then tweeted that it “did not and does not endorse Trump” and had sent a cease-and-desist letter over the use of its music.

The song was an odd pick for campaign music to begin with, with a chorus that says “I tried so hard/ and got so far / but in the end / it doesn’t even matter.”

Coming Up

Biden will deliver remarks at Emgage Action’s virtual Million Muslim Votes Summit on Monday afternoon. On Tuesday, he will give a speech in New Castle, Delaware, outlining the third part of his economic recovery proposal.

Trump will participate in a closed-door roundtable with supporters of a joint fundraising committee at the Trump International Hotel in Washington Monday evening.

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