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Donald Trump Tag

Here's one I missed last week: Several days ago, Donald Trump visited Detroit. Campaign surrogate, Detroit native, and former presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson joined The Donald. Filming a live interview with CNN outside of his childhood home, Carson had other things on his mind. "What do you think he [Trump] took away from today?" asked the CNN interview. "OH! My luggage!" exclaimed Carson, before walking away.

As Hillary's numbers drop and Democrats scratch their heads as they try to figure out why she's not miles ahead of Trump, Hillary demonstrates one of the many qualities that make her unpalatable to American voters:  her contempt for them. Like Kerry and Obama before her, Hillary just cannot contain her distaste for a large number of Americans.  At a fundraiser, she declared that half of Trump's supporters belong in a "basket of deplorables." NBC News reports:
Hillary Clinton urged supporters late Friday not to be complacent about Donald Trump's chances of winning the election, saying half of his backers were "desperate for change" but the other half belonged in a "basket of deplorables." Appearing at an LGBT gala fundraiser where Barbra Streisand performed, she said many of the GOP candidate's voters were "racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic, you name it."
Watch:

President Obama is a weak leader, but then most textbook narcissists are. I get that. But Putin? A strong leader? At Wednesdays's Commander-in-Chief forum, Donald Trump cited Putin's approval ratings (because I'm sure Russian polls aren't cooked) as evidence of Putin's "strong" leadership; leadership that Trump suggested is stronger than President Obama's. While that might be true technically, are we really looking to compare the once free-world with a communist dictatorial foe? Apparently so.

The opening segment of today's Morning Joe was a Niagara of negativity deluging Donald Trump, focused on his comments at the Commander-in-Chief Forum. No discussion of Hillary Clinton's newest lies about her email, and the fact that, in order to create a veil of secrecy for her Foundation malfeasance, she subverted our national security. Two examples of the extreme hostility toward Trump, coupled with a dose of Hillary-worship. Ad man Donny Deutsch detected "envy" of Putin by Trump, saying "I think he wants to be a dictator." A bit later, Mika Brzezinski sympathized with poor Hillary: she's so "incredibly prepared" to be president that she has to "dumb herself down to deal with this idiot on the other side."

Wow! Veteran political strategist Mary Matalin is not just "confident" that Donald Trump is going to win, she thinks he has an 85-90% chance of winning. And even that is conservative compared to the 100% chance she originally claimed during her appearance on today's With All Due Respect. Note that Matalin is not a rabid Trump partisan. To the contrary, she quit the Republican party in May, and says that rather than having a dog in the race, she has, in Trump, merely a "mini-puppy." Matalin took an amusing shot at her husband, Dem strategist James Carville. When John Heilemann said he could only imagine the fights she was having with him, Mary mockingly answered "who? Who? Is he my . . . go-to guy in politics? I don't think so."

It's election year which means progressive celebrities are making promises they have zero intention of keeping. Namely promises to leave the country if the Republican presidential candidate, Donald Trump, wins the November election. We've compiled a list of celebrities and public officials who've declared plans to peace out of the U.S. of A. if Trump beats Hillary.

On today's Morning Joe, Mika Brzezinski teased an upcoming segment with James Carville and Steve Schmidt by saying it would be a "debate." But the only contest between the two was to see who could be more critical of Donald Trump. And Schmidt, senior adviser to John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign, won that contest hands down. Schmidt actually said that the "peaceful transition of power" would be "in doubt" if Donald Trump loses, suggesting he might refuse to concede and rouse his supporters by claiming the election was rigged.

For a long time I've conceptualized Trump voters as falling into two camps: the enthusiastic and the reluctant. No doubt there are some who fall in between, too, but I think that mainly there are those two categories. The first group consists of people who supported Trump in the primaries, either as first or second choice. They believe he would be a good president, or at least that he was the very best or one of the very best of the lot of GOP candidates who originally threw their hats into the ring. The second group is composed of people who support Trump now only because he's running against a person they consider worse, Hillary Clinton. They don't always agree on why he would be better than she, but they agree that he probably would. Some of them even detest him otherwise and think that he would make a bad president, but are still willing to vote for him as the alternative to Hillary. Members of the first group sometimes appeal to members of the second group, urging them to make sure they vote for Trump. Their arguments can vary widely. Sometimes the argument is that Trump will be a good president and will do a number of good things for the country. Sometimes it's that Trump will do one or two good things, usually involving SCOTUS justice choices and/or immigration policy. And sometimes it's that even though we don't know what Trump might do, we know that Hillary would be awful and there's at least a chance that Trump would be better.

A taco truck on every corner? So, heaven? Marco Gutierrez, founder of Latinos for Trump, made a nasty threat on MSNBC Thursday night. "My culture is a very dominant culture and it's causing problems. If you don't do something about it you'll have taco trucks on every corner," said Gutierrez.

Everyone can calm down now because the Commission on Presidential Debates have announced the moderators for the president and vice president debates. The commission chose NBC Nightly News host Lester Holt, CNN's Anderson Cooper, Fox News's Chris Wallace, and ABC's Martha Raddatz for the presidential debates. CBS News correspondent Elaine Quijano will moderate the vice president debate on October 4.

I lived and worked in Mexico at the beginning of my career. Loved the country, the people, the culture. Was offered a permanent position. Tempting, but couldn't do it for one key reason: the absolutely endemic corruption. From the "policeman" on the corner shaking you down for an illusory infraction right up to the president, corruption and deceit were ingrained. A person would have to be dangerously naive to take as gospel the word of the Mexican president. Enter Hillary Clinton. Morning Joe today aired her latest ad in which she claims that Donald Trump was caught "lying" when he said he didn't discuss payment for the wall during his meeting with Mexican President Peña Nieto. Hillary's proof? A subsequent statement by the Mex prez that he was "clear and emphatic" that Mexico won't pay for the wall. What other statements by what other Third World leaders will Hillary—naively and uncritically—take at face value?

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has a reputation of leveraging legal force against anyone who speaks detrimentally of himself or his family. The Daily Mail posted an article about Melania Trump's racy photoshoots, visa issues, and posited her scantily clad photo spreads might have a bearing on the upcoming November election. In response, Melania Trump filed a hefty $150 million defamation suit against The Daily Mail and threatened suit against Maryland-based blog, Tarply for allegedly suggesting she was once employed by an escort service.

UPDATE: Looks like Scarborough was parroting a Clinton campaign talking point. John Podesta, chair of the Hillary for America PAC, had put out a press release entitled "Trump Choked," and repeating that c-word a couple of times in the release. Maybe Morning Joe can cut out the middleman, dispense with hosts, and just run a looping feed of Clinton campaign press releases. Like Bulgarian and Ukrainian Olympic judges back in Soviet Union days who gave American ice skaters a crummy score after a strong performance, on today's Morning Joe Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough totally trashed Donald Trump on his visit with the Mexican president. For not raising the issue of who would pay for the wall, Scarborough screamed "he choked! I can't stand people that choke under pressure!" Brzezinski was reluctant to discuss the trip at all, dismissing Trump as a "fringe, alt-right Republican candidate . . . let's not pretend this is some sort of foreign policy discussion."