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Donald Trump Tag

I watched Saturday Night Live last night for the first time in years and so did a lot of other people. Entertainment Weekly reports that it was a ratings bonanza:
Donald Trump gives SNL its biggest ratings in years Trump is still bringing the bump. With Donald Trump hosting, Saturday Night Live jumped to its biggest overnight rating since 2012. According to NBC, SNL had a whopping 6.6 household rating on Saturday night, easily beating the season’s previous high: the 41st season premiere last month, hosted by Miley Cyrus and with a guest appearance by none other than … Hillary Clinton. In fact, Trump’s overnight rating was 47 percent higher than the Miley/Hillary episode.

"For the children" unless using children as profane props helps your cause, in which case, eff it. Or at least that seems to be the case with a presumably anti-Trump PAC, Deport Racism. Promoting their contest which offers a cash prize to any audience member who successfully disrupts Trump's upcoming Saturday Night Live appearance by shouting "deport racism" or calling Trump a racist, Deport Racism used children to share, a "few words of their own" with The Donald. Mainly, "f*ck you, racist F*ck!" WARNING: Language, obvs.

October's CNBC-hosted Republican debate threw into full relief the bias inherent in the mainstream media's handling of electoral politics. In the wake of the broadcast, both the MSM and RNC leadership fielded comments and accusations from candidates (and conservative bloggers...) rendered beyond frustrated at the CNBC moderators' questions, tone, and approach to a slate of candidates they treated like a lineup of hostile witnesses. Donald Trump has spent a great deal of time since that debate lashing out at the media over its treatment of conservatives, and his latest move is one that his supporters hope will set him further apart from the pack. Republican campaign reps gathered together this weekend in a meeting organized by GOP attorney Ben Ginsberg to craft a list of demands the entire slate of GOP candidates could present to network executives before the next debate. Representatives from Trump's campaign attended this meeting---then promptly announced their intention to independently negotiate with the networks apart from Ginsberg's efforts.

While it seems clear that the loser of this week's CNBC debate debacle was CNBC (and in many ways, the mainstream media as a whole), I was and am really curious to see post-debate polling.  Watching the debate, I couldn't help but think that those ill-prepared, condescending, and generally unpleasant moderators were doing the GOP—and conservatives more generally—a gigantic favor.  We've long said that the media is biased against, unfair toward, and disingenuous about Republicans, and we couldn't have written a script ourselves to better prove our point. The first post-debate poll released, an online NBC poll, shows Trump and Carson leading the race with 26% each and Ted Cruz in third with 10%.  Mike Flynn reports:
No other candidates earn double-digit support in the poll, from NBC News/Survey Monkey. Among those Republicans who watched the debate, Trump edges Carson, 25-24, while Cruz’s support jumps to 17 percent. Nearly a quarter of Republicans said Cruz did the best in the debate. He was followed closely by Florida Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), with one-in-five Republicans saying he did best. Trump and then Carson round out the top 4 performances in the debate, according to Republican voters.

I think it's safe to say we've reached peak primary with this one. Tuesday, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump accused fellow candidate Ben Carson of changing his position on abortion.

It's fairly clear that there's no love lost between Donald Trump and Jeb Bush. Trump's recent criticism of George W. Bush in relation to 9/11 has been largely seen as a way to needle Jeb and keep the friction going between them. And it's certainly accomplished just that. Although that's undoubtedly part of Trump's motivation for his recent remarks, it doesn't even begin to explain Trump's long history of extremely critical and incendiary comments about GWB, which date back to many years before Trump or Jeb ever ran for president and most definitely were not sparked by their rivalry for the presidency in 2016. On Wednesday I wrote about the subject in this article for the Weekly Standard. Here's an excerpt:

The latest from Quinnipiac has Ben Carson leading Donald Trump in Iowa by eight points. Trump's average Iowa lead has shrunk to a meager .7. Rubio and Cruz are the only other candidates in the double digits. According to the release:
This compares to the results of a September 11 survey by the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University showing Trump at 27 percent with Carson at 21 percent. Today, Sen. Rand Paul is at 6 percent, with Carly Fiorina and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush at 5 percent each. No other candidate tops 3 percent, with 3 percent undecided.
Even more interesting how poorly Trump polls among women and that he's earned 30% of the "no way" vote.

Through the spring and summer, many pundits and politicians dismissed Donald Trump's campaign for president as a flash in the pan. Large crowds at his events were explained away by dissatisfaction with the establishment. Now that his lead in the polls has held for so long, people are singing a different tune. Howard Kurtz of FOX News:
The media establishment finally admits Trump could win this thing I remember shaking my head, on the day that Donald Trump announced, when NPR’s Mara Liasson declared that this would be the best day of his campaign and it was downhill from there. Liasson cheerfully admitted she was wrong on my show, but she had plenty of company. Most of the media establishment seemed to fall into two camps: those who were skeptical that Trump was anything more than a sideshow, and those who attacked him as a clown and a charlatan. Fast-forward to this past weekend when Chris Wallace, having just interviewed Trump for “Fox News Sunday,” said: “I know all of us dismissed Trump, early on, all of the so-called experts.” But after their sitdown, Wallace said, “I am beginning to believe he could be elected president of the United States.”

This election season has had so many surprises, I'm staying away from making predictions. But one thing is clear -- Donald Trump has done Republicans a favor by exposing weaknesses in other candidates, in many cases such fatal flaws that they could never survive a Clinton-Media onslaught. That weeding out process is not over, but already it has dispatched Rick Perry and Scott Walker. I wasn't surprised with Perry, but the Trump phenomenon exposed weaknesses in Walker as a national candidate. While it ain't over until it is over, Jeb Bush has been damaged more than anyone by Trump. From day one, Trump has been humiliating and emasculating Jeb with taunts. That would not have had much effect unless those taunts exposed Jeb's inherent weaknesses as a candidate. When Trump taunted Jeb as being low energy, it rang true and Jeb didn't know how to react. When Trump raised the issue of Jeb being soft on immigration because his wife is an immigrant, Jeb on stage at a debate demanded an apology to Jeb's wife, who was in the audience. Trump refused, and Jeb had nowhere to go with it -- Jeb looked weak. Now Trump is zeroing in on Jeb's biggest problem -- George W. Bush.

Threats to Republican front runners Dr. Ben Carson and Donald Trump have been so significant that the two candidates will now get protection from the Secret Service. Todd Beamon of Newsmax reports, hat tip to The Gateway Pundit:
Secret Service to Protect Trump, Carson as Threats Grow The Secret Service will give agent protection to Ben Carson and Donald Trump while heavily upgrading Hillary Clinton's existing detail, a Washington source close to the agency’s plans confirmed to Newsmax. The deployment of agents around Republican candidates Trump and Carson is set to begin as early as next week. Approximately two dozen agents will be assigned to each candidate. Clinton, the Democratic front-runner, has had Secret Service protection since leaving the White House as first lady in 2001, but her detail will be heavily upgraded by the agency’s move.

When Donald Trump first launched his presidential campaign, he looked like a man who was on a mission to become King of the Media Circus. He was boisterous, bold, and didn't hesitate to take his opponents and detractors to the cleaners on a daily basis. Surely, this was some sort of stunt or vanity campaign, right? Then, of course, the poll numbers started hitting the airwaves, proving that what he was saying and doing was resonating with voters and the American people at large. Now, a new report from NBC News shows that the Trump campaign has decided to put its money where its candidate's mouth is, and launch a "formidable" ground game in the cycle's most crucial primary state. Other candidates shied away from Iowa, not wanting to peak too early; Trump, on the other hand, made multiple, high-profile and highly-attended appearances in the state, and has now embedded 12 paid staffers---more than any other candidate currently campaigning in Iowa---to put boots on the ground and start doing the grunt work that actually wins elections.

Legal Insurrection will be covering tonight's Democratic debate...but I'm willing to bet we won't have nearly as much fun as this guy: Achievement unlocked: Master Troll.

During an interview with Special Report's Brett Baier Tuesday night, Republican presidential contender Donald Trump said eminent domain is a "wonderful thing."
"I think eminent domain is wonderful if you're building a highway and you need to build, as an example, a highway, and you're going to be blocked by a hold-out or, in some cases, it's a hold-out. Just so you understand, nobody knows this better than I do, because I built a lot of buildings in Manhattan and you'll have 12 sites and you'll get 11 and you'll have the one hold-out and you end up building around them and everything else, OK. So I know it better than anybody."

Rand Paul is in trouble. The Real Clear Politics average has him at just 2.3% in the polls, putting him well behind outliers like John Kasich (3.2%), Mike Huckabee (2.9%), and Chris Christie (2.6%). Substantive comments in last month's CNN debate didn't help him much---but Carly Fiorina's popularity spiked. Enter a golden opportunity for Paul to hitch a ride on Fiorina's media wave. During an interview yesterday with Wolf Blitzer, he lashed out against Fiorina's hardline stance against dealing with Putin and tolerating Assad's regime in Syria:

For all his faults, Vladimir Putin has managed to do the impossible: by ordering rogue airstrikes on non-ISIS strongholds in Syria, he has united the various rebel factions vying for power in the region, and forced Barack Obama and Donald Trump to agree on something. During a press conference last Friday, President Obama told the pool that he was willing to work with Putin in Syria, but only if the resulting plan includes removing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from power. He went on to say that Putin's strategy of attempting to unite forces in support of Assad's regime---which directly contradicts US strategy in the region---will result in Russia being stuck in a "quagmire" with no easy exit strategy. This isn't just an easy talking point. Administration officials close to the situation see nothing but disaster:

A poll released by Investor's Business Daily Friday shows Dr. Ben Carson sailing past Donald Trump. While Trump's numbers are steadily declining, he remains one of three contenders pulling in doubly digits in IBD's poll, the third being Senator Rubio. WEBprez100515_345.gif.cms IBD writes:
The nationwide survey found that 24% of Republicans back Carson, compared with 17% who say they support Trump. Marco Rubio came in third with 11% and Carly Fiorina fourth at 9%. Jeb Bush, once considered a prohibitive favorite, ranked fifth with just 8% support, which was a point lower than those who say they are still undecided. The IBD/TIPP Poll has a proven track record for accuracy, based on its performance in the past three presidential elections. In a comparison of the final results of various pollsters for the 2004 and 2008 elections, IBD/TIPP was the most accurate. And the New York Times concluded that IBD/TIPP was the most accurate among 23 polls over the three weeks leading up to the 2012 election.

Based on the media chatter, Marco Rubio is being set up as the alternative to Jeb in taking on The Donald. Jeb wasn't up to the job of taking on The Donald. Jeb's counterpunches reminded me of George Castanza on Seinfeld. His comebacks to Trump just never seem to work: The Donald has moved beyond Jeb, and now is attacking Marco:

Speaking from Trump Tower Monday, Republican Presidential contender Donald Trump announced his "tax reform that will make America great again." The announcement brings Donald Trump's policy paper count up to a grand total of three.