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Donald Trump Tag

Posted by Amy Miller on September 01, 2015 61 Comments
During the first Republican presidential debate earlier this month, all hell broke loose after an exchange on the "war on women" between debate moderator Megyn Kelly and contender Donald Trump. The furor over Kelly's snark, and Trump's audacity, boiled over into a weeks-long debate between those convinced that Kelly had wrongfully attacked Trump, and those who felt like Kelly's question about Trump's tone toward women was fair. So, who won? I'm not ready to call this for either side yet (there's still plenty of time for either party to reload) but polling data suggests that as of right now, Donald Trump has come out on top over Fox News. From Public Policy Polling [emphasis mine]:
Trump is winning his fight with Megyn Kelly. When we last polled her in December of 2013 her favorability with Republicans nationally was 44/9. Her favorability is in a similar place now at 42% but her negatives have shot up to 20%, largely because she's at 20/43 with Trump's supporters.
Trumps supporters are angry about the way the debate exchange went down, and it shows.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on August 31, 2015 59 Comments
Donald Trump has surged to the top of the Republican field based not only on outsider status, but immigration. Specifically, frustration and anger regarding illegal alien criminals. Early in his surge I wrote:
But something happened on the way to the denunciations and purges [of Trump]. Kate Steinle was murdered in San Francisco, a sanctuary city. Steinle was killed in broad daylight on a popular pedestrian pier in a business and tourist district, by an illegal immigrant with a long criminal record who had been deported five times and recently was released from custody…. In the wake of the murder of Kate Steinle, many Republican candidates have denounced the sanctuary-cities agenda. There is talk of withholding funding from cities that refuse to cooperate with federal immigration authorities. But who among the Republican candidates has stood side by side with the families who have lost loved ones to illegal-immigrant criminals? Trump did….”
Now Trump is thumping his favorite target, Jeb Bush, with the issue in a brutal new Instagram Ad:

Posted by Amy Miller on August 30, 2015 36 Comments
Donald Trump may be at war with the mainstream media, but he seems to have found safe harbor with a smaller, conservative base-oriented network. The One America News Network has about a tenth of the viewership of major mainstream outlets like Fox or CNN, but leading presidential contender Donald Trump made a point to stop by their "On Point" program, guest hosted by Sarah Palin, for ten minutes of conversation on everything from taxes to caring for veterans, and his troubles with the mainstream media. Watch: Seems a little...toned down, no?

Posted by William A. Jacobson on August 29, 2015 11 Comments
We know from recent polling that Hillary Clinton is in trouble in New Hamspshire. Now she has problems in Iowa, according to a Des Moines Register poll released Saturday night:
Liberal revolutionary Bernie Sanders, riding an updraft of insurgent passion in Iowa, has closed to within 7 points of Hillary Clinton in the Democratic presidential race. She's the first choice of 37 percent of likely Democratic caucusgoers; he's the pick for 30 percent, according to a new Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics Iowa Poll. But Clinton has lost a third of her supporters since May, a trajectory that if sustained puts her at risk of losing again in Iowa, the initial crucible in the presidential nominating contest.... "This feels like 2008 all over again," said J. Ann Selzer, pollster for the Iowa Poll.
The trendline is horrible for Hillary:

Posted by Mike LaChance on August 29, 2015 121 Comments
While speaking at a campaign event in the Boston area Friday night, Donald Trump was jabbing Hillary Clinton and slipped into a seemingly improvised monologue about embattled Clinton aide Huma Abedin and her husband Anthony Weiner. Josh Feldman of Mediaite:
‘Bing Bing Bing': Trump Lets Loose on ‘Perv,’ ‘Sleazebag’ Anthony Weiner Trump was talking about Hillary Clinton‘s emails and then roped her aide Huma Abedin into it due to her involvement. But then Trump also brought in her husband, “one of the great sleazebags of our time.” Yes, Trump went on a whole riff about Weiner, who infamously engaged in sexting multiple times, calling him a “perv” and saying Abedin must be “desperately in love with him” if she’s staying with him. He riled up the crowd as he talked about Weiner and Abedin, and said that it’s pretty clear she’s telling her husband about some of the email stuff.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on August 27, 2015 21 Comments
"Ricardo Sanchez known as "El Mandril" on his Spanish drive-time radio show in Los Angeles has taken to calling Donald J. Trump, "el hombre del peluquin." In other words, "The Man of the Toupee," read Trump to an audience in South Carolina. "This is on the front page of the New York Times." Entitled, Donald Trump Gets Earful in Spanish as Latino Outlets Air Disdain, the NTYs article Trump read explored how Spanish media was handling his remarks about the Latino community.
Ricardo Sánchez, known as “El Mandril” on his Spanish drive-time radio show in Los Angeles, has taken to calling Donald J. Trump “El hombre del peluquín” — the man of the toupee. Some of Mr. Sánchez’s listeners are less kind, referring to Mr. Trump, who has dismissed some Mexican immigrants as “rapists” and criminals, simply as “Hitler.” Mr. Sánchez says that he tries to focus on the positive in presidential politics, but he, too, at times has used harsh language to describe Mr. Trump, according to translations of his show provided by his executive producer. “A president like Trump would be like giving a loaded gun to a monkey,” Mr. Sanchez said in one broadcast. “But a gun that fires atomic bullets.”

Posted by William A. Jacobson on August 27, 2015 14 Comments
On July 17, 2015, two senior political reporters at Huffington Post announced that all future coverage of Donald Trump's campaign would take place in the Entertainment section of HuffPo, not the Politics section. HuffPo played it up on its Homepage, with a graphic meant to get attention: HuffPo Donald Trump Politics Entertainment Homepage We reported about the decision at the time:
Ryan Grim (Washington bureau chief for The Huffington Post) and Danny Shea (Editorial Director, The Huffington Post), have announced that because Donald Trump in their eyes is a sideshow, any news about Trump will be banished from the “Politics” section of HuffPo News to the Entertainment section, A Note About Our Coverage Of Donald Trump’s ‘Campaign’:

Posted by Mike LaChance on August 26, 2015 54 Comments
Marco Rubio made a campaign stop in New Hampshire today and dismissed Donald Trump's current front-runner status, saying that Trump will not be the Republican nominee for 2016. Sahil Kapur of Bloomberg reported:
Rubio Dismisses Trump in N.H.: He Won't Be 'Our Nominee' "Ultimately the Republican Party will reach out to all voters based on who our nominee is. And I don't believe Donald Trump will be our nominee," the Florida senator said after speaking to a small crowd outside a car service center in this town of Orford. "I think our nominee is going to be someone that embraces the future, that understands the opportunities before us, that's optimistic but realistic about the challenges before us." He acknowledged that "people are angry" and "they have a right to be," but insisted that "we should allow that anger to motivate us, but we shouldn't allow that anger to define us. We're not an angry nation. We are an optimistic nation who has every reason to be optimistic about the future."...

Posted by Amy Miller on August 25, 2015 88 Comments
Today, Donald Trump renewed his public feud with Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly over comments made during the first GOP primary debate:
Trump repeated a claim on Twitter Monday night that Kelly is a 'bimbo,' and Fox chief Roger Ailes demanded an apology on Tuesday after the billionaire leveled a new series of attacks on Kelly during her first show following a lengthy break. 'I liked The Kelly File much better without @megynkelly,' Trump tweeted while she as on the air. 'Perhaps she could take another eleven day unscheduled vacation!'
Fox News big wig Roger Ailes came out today with a statement demanding Trump apologize to Kelly:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on August 24, 2015 42 Comments
All the way back on July 13, 2015, when Donald Trump's initial rise in the polls caused early onset apoplexia among Republicans, I wrote a column at National Review, Trump’s Lesson: Voters Are Furious about Illegal Immigration:
One section in Trump’s Phoenix speech jumped out at me as capturing especially well what is happening on the ground:
When I started . . . I didn’t think the immigration thing would take on a life like it has. I made some very tough statements about people flowing through, because that’s one of the things, to make our country great again, we have to create borders, otherwise we don’t have a country [italics added].
Any Republican who doesn’t understand what Trump was getting at is hopelessly out of touch with the most motivated portion of the electorate, Republican and otherwise.... The sense that we are losing control of our own country, by the design of politicians, is creating a fury — and an opening for a politician willing to recognize that the problem poses an existential threat to our own freedoms....
That's it. It's the sovereignty. Out of the general illegal immigration theme, Trump is focusing increasingly on the sub-theme of sovereignty:

Posted by New Neo on August 24, 2015 16 Comments
Those who were around during the Vietnam War protest days remember all those marches on Washington. I attended one, and it was absolutely huge and very impressive. And who can forget the photos of Martin Luther King standing in front of the Washington monument on the Mall? It's not clear how effective or important those marches were, even though they were actually dealing with administrations that appeared to care what the public thought, unlike the present administration. But visuals are powerful and they can affect some lawmakers and some of the public that hasn't made up its mind yet. They also help to rally energy on the part of those who are already aligned with the viewpoint of the demonstrators. And yes, the MSM would spin such demonstrations as it did the Tea Party demonstrations. But the MSM is not the only source of attention these days, and propaganda needs to be countered with better propaganda as well as facts. Facts all by themselves don't quite cut it, unfortunately.

Posted by Amy Miller on August 24, 2015 22 Comments
This month, we've seen Donald Trump levy a successful assault against Jeb Bush's presidential campaign. Trump forced Bush into a messaging pivot on immigration, revealed some ruffled feathers in the Bush camp, and successfully dangled reports that several of Bush's donors have approached a Kasich-friendly PAC in Ohio. When it comes to optics, Trump's winning. Trump's latest social media offering, however, may just fall flat on its face. Team Trump put together a short Instagram video featuring family matriarch Barbara Bush uttering the words no Bush in politics ever wants to hear: no more Bushes. Watch:

Even Barbara Bush agrees with me.

A video posted by Donald J. Trump (@realdonaldtrump) on

Posted by Amy Miller on August 20, 2015 26 Comments
Unless you've been living under a rock, you know that the Republican primary candidate causing the most excitement---at least when it comes to media coverage and outspoken grassroots support---is Donald Trump. Love him or hate him, Trump has found his niche in the voter base, and he's playing out his position by going consistently on the offensive against candidates who would prefer to turn focus on their budding policy initiatives for health care or education. While campaigning in New Hampshire this week, Trump took full aim at fellow contender Jeb Bush, who constitutes the prime example of a candidate we'd expect to pivot away from rhetorical attacks. Trump played off of this significant difference in tactics and personality, and the results were devastating.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on August 18, 2015 13 Comments
Josh Groban joined Jimmy Kimmel Live Tuesday night. As part of a sketch, a piano-playing Groban sang tweets written by Donald Trump. The tweets are in fact, real. "Josh Groban's The Best Tweets of Kanye West was the number one album of 2011. And now, his highly anticipated follow up, The Best Tweets of Donald Trump. "Donald Trump's tweets will make you laugh, will make you cry, but mostly will make you cry," said Groban.

Posted by New Neo on August 16, 2015 87 Comments
Donald Trump's immigration plan is certainly guaranteed to get him even more attention than before. It's a wish list for the most anti-illegal-immigrant wing of the electorate, although it also features some workable and laudable proposals that are not unique to Trump. Reading the text of Trump's document reminds me somewhat of Barack Obama in campaign mode. Not the content, of course---that is very different from Obama's---but the process: I will do this, I will do that, while ignoring whether what he suggests is workable, how much it would cost, and how Trump would probably have to don the mantle of dictator to accomplish some of it:
The problem with Trump’s wall is that it is infeasible; the geography of the border simply does not allow for one unbroken wall. Nor would it be effective. Even if you could erect this barrier around, say, Florida, walls can be surmounted, tunneled under, and circumvented in other ways. Policing the border requires police; human capital that comes at taxpayer expense. Mexico will not be paying their salaries, but Trump has a plan for that, too: confiscate all remittances from illegal immigrants working in America and hike the fees on all Mexican tourism and work visas. Erecting the structures necessary to identify much less confiscate illegal wages would prove daunting. Even if it was legal and could survive court challenges, a dubious prospect, this is a policy that would require a dramatic expansion of government’s ability to intrude on the lives of American citizens – a principle to which conservatives were once constitutionally opposed...

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on August 16, 2015 134 Comments
George Will has written a thought-provoking piece over at WaPo in which he argues that the GOP should purge itself of Trump and Trump's supporters. Will explains:
When, however, Trump decided that his next acquisition would be not another casino but the Republican presidential nomination, he tactically and quickly underwent many conversions of convenience (concerning abortion, health care, funding Democrats, etc.). His makeover demonstrates that he is a counterfeit Republican and no conservative.

He is an affront to anyone devoted to the project William F. Buckley began six decades ago with the founding in 1955 of the National Review — making conservatism intellectually respectable and politically palatable. Buckley’s legacy is being betrayed by invertebrate conservatives now saying that although Trump “goes too far,” he has “tapped into something,” and therefore . . . .

Therefore what? This stance — if a semi-grovel can be dignified as a stance — is a recipe for deserved disaster. Remember, Henry Wallace and Strom Thurmond “tapped into” things.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on August 14, 2015 96 Comments
Thursday night, National Review's Charles Cooke joined author of Adios America!, Ann Coulter, on Sean Hannity's Fox News show. The exchange is particularly interesting because it perfectly illustrates the deep divide in the conservative ranks over Trump's candidacy. The segment begins with Coulter and Hannity exchanging their favorite Trump insults of the day. "He's a funny insulter, but he's more than that," Coulter said. "I mean, he's clearly right about the Mexican wall thing. This is part of what's appealing about him. Not only is he the only one seriously talking about immigration and the only one I think saying, he'll believably build a wall while the rest of them are coming up with nonsense excuses."
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