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Donald Trump Tag

This Friday, I had planned to take my teen son to the Donald Trump rally at our Convention Center. I am now mulling over a change of plans, due to the level of organized leftist violence that has targeted the presumptive Republican presidential candidate and his campaign. The anger, derision, and chaos directed at Trump supporters and the security teams at the event in Albuquerque was absolutely astounding. Four arrests have been made (with more likely to occur soon), and the city cleaning crews are still mopping destruction left in the wake of Wednesday night’s protests.

If you've been following this election cycle, you're well aware that our current presidential primary/caucus setup is bunk. It's weird. It's complicated. It's arbitrary. And it's far more confusing than it ought to be. HBO's John Oliver also noticed the "erratic clusterf*ck" that makes up our modern presidential primaries. No, it's not suitable for work, but it is pretty darn funny:

Donald Trump may have won the Republican nomination in every way except the official coronation in Cleveland in July, but some prominent Republican voices refuse to cheer for him. One of these voices belongs to the communications chair for the Young Republican National Federation (YRNF), the nationwide organization that oversees all Young Republican (YR) clubs around the country. Monday afternoon, Katrina Jørgensen posted a resignation letter on her Facebook page, stating that she was "regretfully" resigning her position because her "principles will no longer allow" her to carry out her duties. The conflict, explains Jørgensen, is that she believes it will be impossible to promote pro-Republican messages along with promoting Trump (emphasis in original):

https://www.facebook.com/notes/katrina-elaine-j%C3%B8rgensen/resigning-as-communications-chair-from-yrnf/10155923659836515

As the head of our national communications my voice is part of our message, and I am intrinsically tied to it. Therefore I must step down. I cannot live with being seen as supporting a candidate I truly feels tramples on all of our values. Even if we, as an organization, focused exclusively on congressional candidates, we would still be seen as complicit. It would be impossible to resist the pressure to push for a straight-R ticket when we campaign.

Today at its Annual Meeting the NRA formally endorsed Donald Trump for President of the United States.  Immediately following Trump gave a nearly 30 minute speech to a packed room and was met with frequent applause and several standing ovations. The following reflects my rapidly-typed contemporaneous notes as Trump spoke.  I've phrased them as if I were quoting Trump, and mostly that's the case, but there is also some necessary paraphrasing here and there when he spoke too quickly for me to keep up.  The paraphrases accurately reflect the gist of Trump's comments.  There are also some passages of Trump's talk that I didn't capture in my notes.  Finally, I came into the speech after it had begun, but believe I only missed a couple of minutes.

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump, released a short-list of potential SCOTUS nominees Wednesday. Senate Republicans have thus far, made good on their promise to block President Obama's nomination of Judge Merrick Garland. Should that hold, the task of replacing the late Justice Scalia will fall to the next Oval Office occupant. According to ABC News, Trump's SCOTUS list includes:

After watching the segment below, all I can say is that if you want to see an interview that's heavy on policy, look elsewhere. This was more Barbara Walters than FOX News Sunday. That's not to say it isn't interesting or worth watching, because it is. "Megyn Kelly Presents" airs on the FOX Broadcast Network and not the FOX News Channel and this makes sense for reasons which are apparent. Kelly is obviously trying to expand her reach and kicking off this effort by interviewing Trump is brilliant from a ratings perspective. The first six minutes of the segment recalls the rocky relationship between Kelly and Trump starting with the first GOP debate on FOX News in August of last year using clips from FNC and other news outlets.

It has been a roller-coaster few weeks for famed Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio.  On May 2, the 9th Circuit vacated an injunction prohibiting Arpaio and fellow Maricopa County, Arizona police officers from raiding workplaces to enforce anti-identity theft laws.  Then on Friday, Arizona District Court Judge G. Murray Snow held Arpaio and three deputies in civil contempt in connection for racially profiling in traffic stops, contrary to a prior order.

Workplace Raids

The May 2 decision revolves around Arizona laws H.B. 2779 (2007) and H.B. 2715 (2008), which prohibit the use of a stolen or fake identity to obtain or in connection with employment.   According to the 9th Circuit's decision in Puente Arizona v. Arpaio:
These bills were passed, at least in part, in an effort to solve some of Arizona’s problems stemming from illegal immigration.  The titles of the legislation and the legislative history show an intent on the part of Arizona legislators to prevent unauthorized aliens from coming to and remaining in the state. But these bills were also aimed at curbing the growing and well-documented problem of identity theft in Arizona. Between 2006 and 2008, Arizona had the highest per-capita identity theft rates in the nation, and one third of all identity theft complaints in the state involved employment-related fraud.

Disgraced communist and former Obama "Green Jobs Czar," Van "Cash for Clunkers" Jones, hasn't been resting on his laurels since his abrupt 2009 middle-of-the-night departure from the Obama administration. He was busy serving at the front of the progressive campaign to diminish and demonize the Tea Party into obscurity, and he has now, apparently, turned his attention to Donald Trump's candidacy and is warning progressives not to underestimate The Donald. In a video posted at the MoveOn FaceBook page, Van Jones lists three specific "dumb ideas progressives have about Donald Trump." Via Mediaite: 1. Trump will self-destruct 2. He’s bad on policy, so he will lose 3. Demographics will save us

Mexico's former president had some words for The Donald. And not very nice words either. Fox claims Trump owes American workers an apology for, "all the imports from China and Mexico." "Please apologize to them," Fox implored.

With one man standing on the Republican side, the election battle is heating up. Wednesday, Donald Trump released a video on his Instagram account, reminding viewers of the Benghazi debacle. Then Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton suggested the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the American embassy in Benghazi were the outcropping of a YouTube video. Extensive investigations have proven otherwise. Clips of family member testimony show Clinton claimed the video was responsible for the loss of Americans and the video concludes with Hillary laughing, flames, and giant letters that say "NEVER FORGET!"

If you're a single American looking for love who vowed to leave the U S of A should Donald Trump take the White House, today is your lucky day. Maple Match promises to help Americans find Canadian love. "Maple Match makes it easy for Americans to find the ideal Canadian partner to save them from the unfathomable horror of a Trump presidency," they claim.

As we at LI, like everyone else on both sides of the aisle, absorb the likelihood of a Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton face-off in November, the Military Times conducted its own survey of active-duty military personnel and learned that those in the military, if faced with the choice between Trump and Hillary, choose Trump by a wide margin. Disturbing to the Trump camp, however, is the fact that "more than one in five" of those military members surveyed may not cast a vote for president at all in November if Trump and Hillary are the only two choices and that Trump's troubles with women voters extends to females in the military. The Military Times reports:
In a new survey of American military personnel, Donald Trump emerged as active-duty service members' preference to become the next U.S. president, topping Hillary Clinton by more than a 2-to-1 margin. However, in the latest Military Times election survey, more than one in five troops said they’d rather not vote in November if they have to choose between just those two candidates. But given only those choices, 21 percent of the service members surveyed said they would abstain from voting.More than 54 percent of the 951 troops Military Times surveyed said they would vote for Trump, the presumed Republican presidential nominee, over Clinton, the Democratic front-runner. Only about 25 percent said they would vote for Clinton in that matchup.
Here's the Military Times graphic (via the above link):

House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that he would leave his GOP convention chair if presumptive GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump asks him.
"He's the nominee. I'll do whatever he wants with respect to the convention," he said.
Speaker Ryan responded to Trump's interview on NBC's Meet the Press from Sunday. Trump told host Chuck Todd that Ryan's comments "blindsided" him.

Just prior to the Indiana primary and Ted Cruz's and John Kasich's suspension of their campaigns, I was contemplating Trump's "play fair" and "don't rig the process to deny me" assertions about the process of choosing convention delegates. It became apparent that this was a case of Trump following Alinsky Rule 4 of Rules for Radicals: "Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules." The "enemy," of course, being the conventional (in several senses of the word) Republican Party, the party whose standard bearer Trump is now poised to become. And then it occurred to me that there are a lot of Alinsky's rules that Trump follows, and has followed right along. In fact, when you refresh your memory on those rules, it's hard to escape the conviction that Trump is an advanced practitioner of the Alinskyite approach.

I still assert that Donald Trump will vanquish Hillary Clinton in the fall, especially when his likely opposition begins working for him! Via Fox News contributor and talk show host Tammy Bruce comes an ad being put out by the Clinton campaign. The video backfires, because it provides example after example of strong positions Trump offers that appeal to his record-number of primary voters.

Elizabeth Warren's claim to be Native American is an issue that just won't go away. It dogged her during the 2012 Senate run, but she was able to deflect the issue through the help of supportive media and reliance on supposed "family lore," Some of that "lore" was downright laughable, like the "high cheekbones" story which itself was questionable. Much of the "lore," or as much as was capable of being fact checked considering it was based on several decades-old stories, also was questionable. Warren turns questioning of her story into an attack on her family, as a way of shutting down inquiry.

Friday afternoon, former Florida Governor and Republican presidential candidate, Jeb Bush congratulated Donald Trump on becoming the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. Bush went on to explain that while he believes Trump successfully tapped into an undercurrent of anger and dissatisfaction, he will not vote for either Trump or Clinton in the upcoming election. Like many on the #NeverTrump bus, Bush committed to supporting Republican candidates down ballot. Bush's entire statement:
I congratulate Donald Trump on securing his place as the Republican Party’s presumptive nominee. There is no doubt that he successfully tapped into the deep sense of anger and frustration so many Americans around the country rightfully feel today. The tremendous anger of the current U.S. electorate – whether Republican, Democrat or independent – is a result of people fearful about the future, concerned with the direction of our country and tremendously frustrated by the abject failure and inability of leaders in Washington, D.C. to make anything better.

House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) announced he will meet with presumptive Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump next week. https://twitter.com/bennyjohnson/status/728651496116633600 https://twitter.com/PRyan/status/728651792918155268