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Donald Trump Tag

Green Party candidate Jill Stein is no fan of Donald Trump, but she's apparently more concerned about the prospect of a Hillary Clinton presidency. During a recent appearance on C-Span, Stein suggested that Hillary would use nuclear weapons in a war with Russia. Transcript via Real Clear Politics:
Jill Stein: Trump Is Less Dangerous Than Clinton; She Will Start Nuclear War With Russia It is important to not just look at the rhetoric but also look at the track record and the reality is the lesser people and greater people is a race to the bottom, and even Donald Trump in the right wing extremism grows out of the policies of the Clintons, in particular Nafta, which sent our jobs overseas and Wall Street deregulation, which blew 9 million jobs up into smoke.

If it's up to the liberal media, Blessed Teresa of Calcutta is just going to have to take a back seat: there's a budding new saint in town, and her name is Michelle Obama. Morning Joe began the canonization process today, beatifying the First Lady for her speech trashing Donald Trump over the stories about his personal behavior that have recently emerged. All the ongoing glorification of Mrs. Obama on the Morning Joe set was leavened with some unintentional humor from Joe Scarborough, who said of the First Lady's speech that "there was nothing calculated about it. This wasn't to help Hillary Clinton." Right. A speech delivered three weeks before the election. At a Hillary Clinton campaign event. At a podium festooned with a 'Clinton-Kaine' banner. But it was strictly "about daughters and mothers and women all across America." Hand another hanky over, will ya?

Was it a mistake for Donald Trump's opponents in the Republican primary not to have done oppo research on Trump and uncovered the stories about his personal behavior that have recently emerged? On today's With All Due Respect, Mark Halperin posed the question to GOP consultant Susan Del Percio [who had earlier indicated she wasn't voting for Trump or Hillary]. Del Percio said that, indeed, it was "political malpractice" for Trump's primary opponents not to have done such digging on him. She surmised that the candidates didn't want to spend the money, and were worried that in retaliation Trump would have "chop[ped] them off at the knees." Del Percio suggested that the smarter way to go would have been for an anti-Trump super PAC to have done the research.

At the presidential debate on Sunday night, Anderson Cooper pressed Donald Trump into committing as to whether Trump had done any of the things (groping, etc.) Trump bragged about on the now infamous Access Hollywood tape. Trump said he never did those things, it was just locker room talk. Ben Shapiro saw what was about to happen -- that the following week Trump's statement would be put to the test: https://twitter.com/benshapiro/status/785324451592142848 Well, on Wednesday night, within an hour or so of each other, multiple media outlets published separate stories of women accusing Trump of doing the things he bragged about on the tape.

Clinton campaign Chairman John Podesta has told the media he blames Russia for the hack into his emails, which Wikileaks has been releasing in troves for the last few days. He even said that GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump knew about the hack and the leaks:
“I’ve been involved in politics for nearly five decades,” Mr. Podesta told reporters aboard the Clinton campaign plane. “This definitely is the first campaign that I’ve been involved with in which I’ve had to tangle with Russian intelligence agencies,” he added, “who seem to be doing everything that they can on behalf of our opponent.”
The FBI confirmed its agents have started an investigation into the hack.

Amidst the multitudes of reports on the scores of Republicans abandoning Trump, there doesn't seem to be much coverage of those who have decided to stick with Trump.  Ben Carson, of course, is also still supporting Trump, and  Mike Pence has been quite strong in support of his running mate.  Quite a few other prominent Republicans are also not jumping off the Trump train. Ted Cruz has stated that he is sticking with his recent decision to support Trump and that he's doing so for the same reasons he made the decision in the first place. Politico reports:
The Texas senator told a local TV station in Muleshoe, Texas, on Monday that despite lewd video showing Trump joking of unwanted sexual advances on women he would still back Trump over Hillary Clinton. "I am supporting the Republican nominee because I think Hillary Clinton is an absolute disaster. Now my differences with Donald, I have articulated at great length during the campaign. And I tried all my might," Cruz told Maggan Rennels of Channel 6. "It was an amazing journey."

Hillary Clinton plays the part of the tough fighter, but in fact her campaign and supporters have a history accusing male candidate opponents of menacing her on the debate stage. Most famously, that card was played against Rick Lazio from the 2000 New York Senate debate between Hillary Clinton and Rick Lazio? Lazio’s campaign all but collapsed after he approached Clinton at the podium with a copy of a “soft money” pledge and demanded she sign it. Of course, Lazio paid the price. Watch: The 2000 Clinton Senate campaign—and the media—acted apalled:
Stung by apparent charges that he was too aggressive during last week’s New York Senate debate against Hillary Rodham Clinton, Rep. Rick Lazio said Tuesday such criticism of his behavior was “sexist.”

The headline's not a typo: avowed Hillary supporter Mika Brzezinski has torn into Republicans who withdrew their support for Donald Trump over his hot mic comments, calling them "pathetic, weak and spineless." On today's Morning Joe, Mika's point was that for anyone who had bothered to look, there was, long before Friday, tons of negative material out there about Trump. So anyone pretending to be shocked by the most recent disclosure must have been willfully blind. And based on his strong debate performance last night, Mika predicted that they might now "have to come back." Joe Scarborough graphically made the same point, saying that "halfway through the debate, they [the dump-Trumpers] were looking at their TV saying oh . . . shoot."

This is my quick reaction to tonight's debate. I think it went as well as could have been expected by Trump. He dealt with the 2005 tape by apologizing, and it came across well. And he didn't immediately counterattack on Bill Clinton's sexual abuse and harassment and Hillary's complicity. He waited, whether deliberately or not, until Hillary repeatedly attacked him on the tape and the moderators seemed to have to pull it out of him.

This debate ought to be juicy due to the leaked Donald Trump recordings. Will he become humble? How will Hillary Clinton attack? Will it even come up at all? Watch with us here at Legal Insurrection! ABC's Martha Raddatz and CNN's Anderson Cooper will moderate the debate at Washington University in St. Louis, MO. It begins live at 9PM EST.

I mentioned last night that Trump appeared to be approaching "ramming speed" in going after Bill and Hillary Clinton. It looks like that is on track. The Hill reports:
Donald Trump has brought to Sunday's presidential debate in St. Louis three women who have accused former President Bill Clinton of sexual assault or rape and a fourth who said Hillary Clinton defended the man who raped her as a child.

Trump's now infamous "hot mic" comments while aboard an Access Hollywood tour bus have caused not only a flurry of GOP endorsement withdrawals and calls for his withdrawing from the race, but according to one poll released today, they've also prompted GOP voters to demand that the Republican party continue to support Trump. From a former RNC chair saying Trump's campaign "can't be salvaged" and Condoleezza Rice saying "Enough" and calling on Trump to resign to such disparate members of Congress as Jason Chaffetz, John Thune, Mike Lee, and John McCain withdrawing their endorsements, the political class on the Republican side has made its feelings about Trump in light of the most recent revelations quite clear. Equally clear, at this point, is that some Trump mega-donors and the majority of Trump voters want the GOP to stand by their man.

Quick: name the woman who was the object of Donald Trump's crude remarks on the hot mic. Bet most of us can't. Because her identity, while not a secret, has not been featured in the coverage. For example, this Insurrectionist sampled most of the Sunday talks shows this morning and didn't hear the woman's name, or race, mentioned once, nor was her photo displayed. But that won't stop someone determined to drag race and racism into the matter from doing so. Enter Tara Dowdell. The former Apprentice participant, appearing on Al Sharpton's MSNBC show this morning, claimed that there is "more concern and outrage" about Trump's hot mic comments because they were "focused on a white woman." Dowdell's statement amounted to an accusation of racism against Americans at large—you deplorables!

By any conventional wisdom, Donald Trump's polling numbers should crater as a result of the release of a 2005 video in which he disparages women and boasts of hitting on married and other women in a manner that suggests non-consensual sexual contact. But so much of what seems logical to me has been wrong when it comes to Trump's ability to weather political storms. Put aside the rank hypocrisy of the politicians and media who to this day defend Bill Clinton, who is alleged by numerous women to have done far worse. Precisely because the media would want any Republican to lose, no moral equivalence will be drawn much yet used as an excuse. After all, the media painted Mitt Romney as a virtual sexual deviant because of the "binders of women" comment during a debate, so yes, the mainstream media is disgusting and dishonest.