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Donald Trump Tag

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on February 13, 2016 7 Comments
In this edition of Today in Political Attack Ads, "Hillary Clinton" goes gangster on a printer, the PAC wars heat up to melt a life-sized Donald Trump, and the Club for Growth doesn't mess around.

It feels good to be a Clinton

Attackee: Hillary Clinton Attacker: Ted Cruz A spoof from a relatively famous scene in the movie Office Space, Hillary and gang whoop up on a server. Pls print.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on February 12, 2016 166 Comments
It's Friday afternoon. This should get the holiday weekend off to a nice, quiet start. Donald Trump, angry that negative ads are being run against him, is threatening to sue to keep Ted Cruz out of the race based on the claim that Cruz is not a "natural born Citizen" and not eligible. (h/t Hot Air) My view is here. I *thank* the people who have emailed me to call me a traitor and fraud and hack because of my view on the subject. Here is Trump's Friday Twitter Trumpertantrum: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/698231571594276866?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw Trump also is retweeting some some hoorahs for his threat:

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on February 11, 2016 12 Comments
We're pleased to present what will be a reoccurring election feature here at Legal Insurrection -- Today in Political Attack Ads. As long as the mud is flying, you'll find it here. Political attack ads are as old and colorful as America. To our cultural credit, negative ads are far less personal these days. "John Adams is a hideous hermaphroditicly character with neither the force or firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman," claimed Thomas Jefferson (one of my personal favorites). "Do you want to see your dwelling in flames?! Female chastity violated?! Children writhing on a pike!! Well that's what will happen if you vote for Thomas Jefferson!" warned John Adams. Back in 2010, Reason put together a video chronicling some of the best campaign rhetoric from the election of 1800.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on February 10, 2016 148 Comments
An ad put out by the Ted Cruz campaign attacking Donald Trump is brilliant. The production quality is high, it's funny, and it goes to a core public perception of Trump as a candidate -- that he is not to be treated as a serious person. Trump has the highest national negatives of all candidates of either party, and does poorly in head-to-head matches not only with Ted Cruz but also with Hillary and Bernie. The ad plays on this perception by having children with a Trump Action Figure doll laugh as they recite Trumps policy positions and friendliness with people like Nancy Pelosi. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvPh9I_jwBo The end, in which the children smash a house while shouting 'eminent domain' is quite effective. Core Trump supporters are not the target of the ad. They will not be shaken.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on February 10, 2016 69 Comments
I had forgotten Obama's 2011 speech at the White House Correspondent's dinner, in which he used the platform to "roast" Donald Trump, until I saw a video retweeted today. Trump, you will recall, had been demanding release of Obama's birth certificate. If Trump were to become president, I wonder how the transition would go. Probably not well.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on February 05, 2016 95 Comments
Did you hear the latest? Yesterday in Trumpernoia: Fox News is out to get Donald Trump, after giving him so much airtime people previously had accused Fox News of being in the tank for Trump. Now, the fix it in for Marco Rubio. It's an Open Borders billionaire conspiracy. Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes' strings are being pulled by a Saudi Prince who was photographed with Megyn Kelly. The daughter of Fox News Executive VIP Bill Sammon works for Rubio. But it goes even deeper, really deep. Someone who used to work for Dana Perino now is Rubio's press secretary. It's just rumor for now, but Jasper may be in on the conspiracy, but he's not talking. And don't trust the vote count, it's being done by a Rubio donor. Today in Trumpernoia: Frank Luntz did consulting for Marco Rubio almost a decade ago to help shape Rubio's political image. But Luntz doesn't disclose that decade-old consulting when he talks about Rubio, so all the Luntz panels on Fox News are biased against Trump and favoring Rubio. The spark for this bias claim was this Luntz focus group after the last GOP debate, and Rubio's recent rise in the polls:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on February 03, 2016 56 Comments
Jimmy Carter has joined with much of the Republican establishment in expressing preference for Donald Trump over Ted Cruz because Trump will make deals. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports:
Turning to the “almost completely unpredictable” race for the Republican nomination, Carter said he had a “feeling” that Trump’s chances ultimately would “fade away. “When people actually get ready to put on a ballot, ‘This is the person I want to lead me for the next four or eight years, I think they’ll have a little different opinion,’” Carter said. Still, better him than Ted Cruz. If he had to choose between Cruz and Trump for the Republican nomination, Carter chuckled, “I think I would choose Trump, which may surprise some of you.”

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on February 03, 2016 171 Comments
Watching the votes trickle in from Iowa's Caucus Monday night, I suggested a second-place finish for Trump would be an unenjoyable experience for us all:

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on February 02, 2016 13 Comments
He's appeared at campaign events with Sen. Rubio in South Carolina, but today Sen. Tim Scott made his endorsement official. Rumors of the endorsement began last night amid the Iowa excitement. This morning, Sen. Rubio's presidential campaign released the following video:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on February 01, 2016 63 Comments
Logically, Donald Trump should be the worst candidate against the Hillary machine. He has a colorful history that would be an oppo-researcher's dream.  Like taking candy from a baby. And his negatives are in the stratosphere. Gallup just released a survey showing that Trump's negatives not only are high, they are of a historic nature:
At this point (two-week average through Jan. 27), 33% of Americans view Trump favorably and 60% unfavorably. It's that 60% unfavorable figure that I can focus on here. Hillary Clinton currently has a 52% unfavorable rating among all Americans, while Jeb Bush is at 45%, Chris Christie 38%, Ted Cruz 37%, Marco Rubio 33%, Bernie Sanders 31% and Ben Carson 30%. Trump's 60% is clearly well above all of these. Putting his favorable and unfavorable ratings together yields a net favorable of -27 for Trump, far above the -10 for Clinton and for Bush, the next lowest among the major candidates.... Looking across all of these candidates' unfavorable ratings outside of election years yields this conclusion: Only one of them, George W. Bush, ever had an unfavorable rating of 60% or higher. For Bush, his unpopularity crested in his final lame-duck year in office, with an unfavorable rating that hit 66% in April 2008.
In the RCP average Trump trails Hillary by 2.7% in a head-to-head match up, while Rubio is up 2.5% and Cruz is up 1.3%. Yet, it seems that notwithstanding the Dem spin that they fear Rubio the most, the Clinton War Room is preparing for Trump, and is confounded. Politico reports, How Clinton is plotting to go after Trump:

Posted by New Neo on January 31, 2016 216 Comments
As a large-scale real estate developer, Trump has sometimes sued in his efforts to use government to condemn houses belonging to people of modest means whose homes---which Trump considers insufficiently attractive---have stood near his big developments and have chosen to exercise their liberty by refusing to sell to him. That's one of the reasons Trump agrees 100% with the SCOTUS decision in Kelo (decided in 2005): he sees it making it easier for him to use government to compel the sale of a person's house even against that person's will. It's Trump's prerogative to approve of Kelo, and it's certainly understandable that someone in his line of work might have that point of view. He has every right to build his projects, and to try to buy the land of those with adjacent property.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on January 31, 2016 21 Comments
Many conservatives opine that what we need after Obama's disastrous presidency is the same cure we had after Jimmy Carter's disastrous presidency: a Ronald Reagan. This desire isn't lost on the Republican candidates for president.  Many are comparing themselves to President Reagan in the hopes of stoking, even fulfilling, that hope.  One such comparison to President Reagan was recently made by Donald Trump who compared his very recent Democrat background to that of President Reagan. The Hill reported at the time:
In response to questions about the business mogul’s previous status as a card-carrying Democrat, Trump said that he was in good company. “If you look at Ronald Reagan, and he was a Democrat, he was actually, Don, he was a Democrat with a very liberal, or at least a pretty liberal bent, and he became a Republican with a somewhat conservative — I wouldn’t say very, but he was a conservative Republican,” Trump said.
Watch:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 27, 2016 112 Comments
Enough has been written about how Donald Trump is breaking or rewriting or ignoring all the rules. Or operating in 3 dimensions while everyone else is operating in 2 dimensions. I see something in Trump, though, that is very familiar to me. It's the concept of creating chaos in your opponent's house as a revolutionary tactic.  Or to put it another way, being a disrupter. The now deceased Abbie Hoffman and Trump seemingly have little in common. While Hoffman rejected capitalism Trump embraces it. Yet they both employed the same tactic. Hoffman tried to create chaos in the economic system, but never really succeeded. Trump has succeeded in creating utter chaos in everyone else's house (Republican Party, Fox News, other candidates, basically anyone who crosses his path).   That's only half the equation, though. It's not just enough to create chaos in others. The second part is to create community within your own house. Hoffman never was good at that; in business Trump has been good at building his own house. I first wrote about this just after Obama took office, using a passage from Hoffman's book, Steal This Book. (Text here) Here's my post, from February 9, 2009, “Steal This Country”:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 26, 2016 166 Comments
The dispute between Donald Trump and Fox News has escalated rapidly today. It went from Trump was thinking about refusing to appear, to Trump likely not appearing, to the campaign saying Trump "definitely" would not appear. Megyn Kelly, the focus of Trump's ire, just announced on her show that Trump is out based on conversations Carl Cameron had with the Trump campaign. The Trump campaign apparently has released a statement to that effect. Trump Statement Fox News Debate (added) Fox News issued the following statement:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 26, 2016 58 Comments
UPDATE - Everything changed in the three hours since this post. Trump campaign says he’s out of Fox News Debate (Reader Poll) Fox News just announced its stage line up for the debate Thursday night. Donald Trump is center stage. Fox News Debate 1-28-2016 Line Up Donald Trump is upset that Megyn Kelly is one of the moderators of Thursday's Fox News debate. Trump has been complaining for days, demanding she be removed. Fox News just said No. Now Trump is upping the ante, posting this Instagram video complaining of Kelly's bias:

Posted by New Neo on January 25, 2016 211 Comments
By now, word has gotten around that Donald Trump has said quite a few things---either in the past or quite recently---indicating support for many liberal positions and politicians. As a result, the arguments have gone back and forth between his supporters and his opponents as to what Trump's actual belief system might be, and what he might be willing and/or able to do if he were to hold the most powerful office in the land. But however one wishes to label him on the political spectrum, it is instructive to watch the following video. It features a sampling of clips of Trump making some of these controversial statements. As you might imagine, the video was compiled by a new super PAC founded by Katie Packer, described here as "a veteran Republican strategist." Please watch the montage and see what you think:
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