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Donald Trump Tag

Posted by William A. Jacobson on August 19, 2016 29 Comments
I didn't watch Donald Trump's speech last night, but I saw Twitter blow up but not in the usual way. The speech was being received by all but the most diehard #NeverTrump-ers as the long-awaited "pivot," a reasonable policy and campaign speech read from a teleprompter. The prepared text of the speech is here. It's quite good. But .... It's not exactly the "Let Trump be Trump" pivot we all were expecting with the naming of Breitbart News Chairman Steve Bannon to lead the Trump campaign. With Paul Manafort resigning from the campaign this morning, one would have expected Trump's pivot to be more aggressive. The speech, however, appeared to be the opposite of letting Trump be Trump, at least if Trump being Trump was what we have seen the past year on the campaign trail. Here's an excerpt from the opening [quotes from speech below from prepared text]:
I’d like to take a moment to talk about the heartbreak and devastation in Louisiana, a state that is very special to me. We are one nation. When one state hurts, we all hurt – and we must all work together to lift each other up. Working, building, restoring together. Our prayers are with the families who have lost loved ones, and we send them our deepest condolences. Though words cannot express the sadness one feels at times like this, I hope everyone in Louisiana knows that our country is praying for them and standing with them to help them in these difficult hours.

Posted by Mary Chastain on August 19, 2016 18 Comments
The 2016 primaries and election so far has rattled the GOP, leaving many to wonder if the political party can hold their majority in the House and Senate. GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump's numbers aren't helping:
But, as Trump's numbers — nationally and in key swing states — continue to tank, a creeping fear has taken root within the Republican establishment that maybe, just maybe, a landslide loss at the top of the ticket could cost the party not only the upper chamber of Congress but the lower one, too.

Posted by New Neo on August 18, 2016 41 Comments
Donald Trump made a speech recently in an appeal to black voters. I've noticed many pundits on both left and right treating this as a very unusual thing for a Republican to do (see this, for example). And here's how one commenter on my blog described it:
Trump makes the best speech of the campaign, and is the one of the first, if not the first, Republican to reach out to the black community in 50 years, a brilliant move both substantively and strategically...
Let's put aside for a moment the question of how much difference a speech can make, and treat the question of whether this sort of outreach in a speech is unusual for a Republican. On what is that assertion based? Memory? But memory can play funny tricks; that's why Google is our friend.

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on August 18, 2016 15 Comments
Tell us, Carol: the leaders of which Black Lives Matter chant would you suggest Donald Trump "reach out" to: "pigs in a blanket, fry 'em like bacon," or "what do we want? Dead cops! When do we want it? Now!" On her CNN show this morning, Carol Costello suggested to Trump supporter Scottie Nell Hughes that Trump should be "reaching out" to Black Lives Matter. When Hughes replied that the Trump campaign has reached out to the black community, Costello interrupted incredulously "to Black Lives Matter?" Perhaps someone can do the research and find the last time Costello suggested to a Hillary supporter that Clinton should be "reaching out" to the KKK or Stormfront.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on August 17, 2016 20 Comments
Every now and then, I like to check on the state of reporting as it relates to the Tea Party...for entertainment purposes. I have decided that if any actual fact is offered in the elite media stories, it is purely coincidental. Today's review shows that after over 7 years of independent conservative activism, our elite media is still making rather ludicrous claims. For example, this chestnut from Bloomberg:
The Tea Party was always tragically miscast. The angry oldsters who formed its white-hot core fancied themselves tax protesters. Their self-image was informed, inflamed and more than occasionally exploited by conservative operations ranging from Fox News to FreedomWorks and a phalanx of right-wing grifters who dealt themselves into the action.

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on August 17, 2016 26 Comments
Tell us what you really think, Bill . . . Weekly Standard editor William Kristol has been one of Donald Trump's harshest conservative critics. He really let it hang out on today's Morning Joe, calling Trumpism "a new low" consisting of "Third-World, authoritarian, populist, demagogic politics." Earlier, Kristol sniffed off the significance of the major shake-up in the Trump campaign, in which Breitbart executive chairman Steve Bannon and consultant Kellyanne Conway have assumed leading roles: "I don't think it matters, because the problem is Donald Trump."

Posted by William A. Jacobson on August 17, 2016 74 Comments
Numerous news outlets are reporting that Donald Trump has shifted leadership of his campaign, and named Breitbart News Chairman Steve Bannon and pollster Kellyanne Conway as de facto leaders of his campaign. The Wall Street Journal first reported the news:
Stephen Bannon, executive chairman of Breitbart News LLC, an outspoken Trump supporter and a former Goldman Sachs banker, will assume the new position of campaign chief executive. At the same time, Mr. Trump also is promoting Kellyanne Conway, a veteran GOP pollster and strategist, to become campaign manager. Ms. Conway has been a campaign adviser for several weeks. Longtime Republican operative Paul Manafort, who joined the campaign late in the primary season, remains campaign chairman. But the reset is designed to bulk up a structure that many Republicans have complained wasn’t adequate for the rigors of the general-election campaign.... “I want to win,” Mr. Trump said in an interview Tuesday night in which he disclosed his hires. “That’s why I’m bringing on fantastic people who know how to win and love to win.”
WaPo added:

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on August 16, 2016 78 Comments
Electoral success is looking bleak for Republican nominee Donald Trump and his supporters. Among the conventional poll-reading wisdom is that trends, not individual polls, provide for a more accurate overview. Despite his headline popularity and ability to pull around 30% in primary elections, Trump has never polled consistently well against Democratic contender Hillary Clinton.

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on August 16, 2016 64 Comments
Question for Cokie Roberts and Joe Scarborough: does the name Hillary Clinton ring a bell? On today's Morning Joe, NPR's Roberts and Scarborough proclaimed  Donald Trump "morally tainted." Roberts took it one step further, also declaring "morally tainted" those who support Trump. Scarborough asked Roberts whether she'd ever seen "a candidate so morally tainted, so challenged that people are calling him a racist and calling him a con man, at the same time saying we support him?" Roberts said no one has ever seen anything like this, and for good measure, citing her roots growing up in the Jim Crow South, suggested Trump's candidacy was a "stain" taking the country back in that direction. But when it came to being morally tainted, Hillary's name never crossed the lips of Roberts or Scarborough.

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on August 15, 2016 51 Comments
Take this with a good grain of salt, since Donny Deutsch is a Hillary-supporting Dem, but Donny does run in the same New York circles as Donald Trump, and has called him a friend. Guest co-hosting on With All Due Respect today, Deutsch said "I can actually see Trump bailing. I can't see us ever getting to the point where election night, Trump becomes George McGovern. He is not going to allow—it's just not in his system . . . I cannot see him the rest of his life with a big 'L' on his face." Mark Halperin called the notion of Trump dropping out of the race a "Manhattan fantasy."

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on August 12, 2016 52 Comments
Some inside baseball from the Trump campaign . . . Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski have known Donald Trump for years, and reportedly are in regular contact with members of his campaign staff.  On today's Morning Joe, Scarborough said that what: "every Donald Trump staffer will tell you is: he never, ever takes any of the blame himself. He always screams at staffers. That's what is starting to happen now that the polls are going low." Meanwhile, Mika Brzezinski reported that Trump is exhausted, sleeping in "two-hour spurts," and that as a result Trump is "losing it." Do Joe and Mika have any sources inside Hillary's campaign? Think Clinton might occasionally raise her voice? And if she isn't sleep-deprived, what's accounting for her physical and verbal stumbles? Short-circuit, anyone?

Posted by Leslie Eastman on August 11, 2016 22 Comments
While the elite media, leftists activists, and Clinton's minions explored new human limits in hyperbole yesterday by connecting Donald Trump's Second Amendment comments to incitement to violence, the GOP presidential candidate's supporters experienced real attacks. Arguably, the most dramatic of these episodes involved a vividly colored sculpture by artist Scott LoBaido, whose work was displayed at the home of his friend, Sam Pirozollo. The artwork was torched over the weekend.

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on August 10, 2016 29 Comments
The opening segment of today's Morning Joe was one long fusillade against Donald Trump in light of his remark yesterday that there is nothing people could do to stop a President Hillary from abolishing the Second Amendment, "although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is. I don't know." The single harshest criticism came from Joe Scarborough, who suggested that Trump had "crossed the Rubicon" into fascism. Scarborough said that in the past he had rejected use of the words "fascist" or "fascism" in reference to Trump because he had never made "a call to violence." Scarborough asserted that Trump's comments yesterday were a suggestion that "Second Amendment people" kill Hillary Clinton or judges. Concluded Scarborough: "he crossed a lot of Rubicons yesterday."

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on August 09, 2016 45 Comments
Late in the 2008 primary season, Hillary Clinton justified her refusal to drop out when it appeared impossible for her to win the nomination by saying "we all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California” during the 1968 primary. On today's With All Due Respect, host Mark Halperin asked Hillary surrogate Neera Tanden whether there was a parallel between Hillary's remark and that of Donald Trump today, who said "Second Amendment people" maybe could do something about a President Hillary trying to abolish the Second Amendment. Predictably, Tanden said there was "absolutely no parallel." Why? Because Hillary was "talking about a person she had deep respect for." Right, but on whose possible assassination she was hanging her nomination hopes.

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on August 09, 2016 51 Comments
Was New York Times columnist Frank Bruni suggesting there could be civil unrest if Donald Trump loses big and bitterly? That seemed a likely implication of his comments on today's Morning Joe. Bruni said his "fear" is: "what if he goes down big and goes down bitterly? I really worry about the aftermath. I worry about November 9th and forward in terms of what's been stirred up." Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson tried to soothe poor Frank's fears: "We survived Bush-Gore 2000, we made it through that just fine and I think we'll make it through post-Trump just fine, too."

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on August 08, 2016 76 Comments
Mike Murphy — who ran Jeb's Super PAC — says that "if it came down to just my vote and I had to decide, I'd probably vote for Hillary and then jump in a lake out of massive depression." Appearing on With All Due Respect, Murphy added that he hopes Trump doesn't win because he's "a demagogue and a neo-racist." Murphy gave Trump a 10% black-swan shot of winning. Murphy says he can't vote for Trump because "I love my country."

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on August 08, 2016 111 Comments
Earlier this morning, Mark blogged about rumors of yet another Republican-backed Trump challenger. Multiple outlets are reporting an obscure former CIA officer will launch an independent run against Republican nominee, Donald Trump.
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