2016 Election

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Limbaugh Suspects If GOP Denies Trump or Cruz, Jeb Will Be Handed the Nomination

by Josh Feldman | 5:36 pm, March 15th, 2016
audio



Rush Limbaugh predicted today that if the Republican party successfully robs either Donald Trump or Ted Cruz of the nomination, Jeb Bush will end up being the GOP nominee.

No, seriously.

“If they succeed,” he argued, “I’m here to tell you Jeb Bush is gonna be the nominee. That’s what they’re gonna do. That’s what they’ve always wanted.”

He pointed out Bush’s past comments about losing the primary to win the general, which Limbaugh took to mean “Jeb’s gonna win the nomination without having to kowtow to Republican Tea Party base voters.”



There’s a whole list of Republican establishment types Bush would have to get in line behind first, including Marco Rubio and Paul Ryan and hey is Mitt Romney still interested someone double-check please…

Listen above, via The Rush Limbaugh Show.

[h/t Daily Rushbo]
[image via screengrab]


WATCH: GOP Establishment Elites Discuss How to Stop Trump — ‘All He Has Going for Him Is a Lot of Votes’

by Rebecca Mansour13 Mar 2016



At a private luncheon in Washington, DC, a group of GOP establishment figures gathered to lament the rise of Donald Trump and discuss what can be done to defeat him.

The luncheon was filmed as part of an episode titled “The Reckoning” in the Showtime documentary series The Circus, which chronicles the 2016 race for the White House.

Executive producers Mark Halperin and Mark McKinnon sat down with these establishment figures before Super Tuesday.

Below is a full transcript of their conversation:

RICK HOHLT [Major GOP Fundraiser]: Everybody around this table that I know, we’ve been in every Presidential campaign probably since 1980, in various degrees. And in Trump’s problem, he doesn’t have a compass. You don’t know what his compass is.

MARK McKINNON [GOP Strategist and Executive Producer of The Circus]: And how problematic is that for the future of the party?

HOHLT: I think before it’s all over, it’s gonna be hugely problematic.

VIN WEBER [Former Congressman]: I talk to people all of the time, as I’m sure everybody around the table does, and they say, “Why don’t you Republicans do something about this guy?” I’m sorry. This is not the Soviet Union. We can’t call a meeting and decide Trump is out.

RON KAUFMAN [White House Advisor Bush 41]: And we hate that.

[Laughter]

KAUFMAN: Deny dictatorship — Who’s for it? Trump is doing well for one reason. He understands the climate and the culture of America today better than anybody at this table.

MARK HALPERIN [Political Journalist and Executive Producer of The Circus]: How do you feel about the fact that the Republican nominee may be someone that none of you know?

ED ROGERS [White House Advisor Reagan, Bush 41]: Shell-shocked. Bewildered. Republicans are hierarchical, respectful of authority, and we fall in line, and Trump has interrupted that cycle.

WEBER: Donald Trump, nobody thought of him as any kind of political leader until six months ago.

ROGERS: He’s not articulate. He’s not poised. He’s not informed. All he has going for him is a lot of votes. Why hasn’t any of that hit home? Here we are. Here we are.

ED GOEAS [Pollster, Anti-Trump Super PAC, McCain Campaign]: I think everyone’s kind of buying into this “he’s inevitable” and that he can’t be stopped. I believe he can be stopped.

HALPERIN: What are you doing or plan to do to stop him?

[Crosstalk]: He’s working with cable. -Yeah. Exactly.

HALPERIN: What are you doing?

GOEAS: We’re working on it. We were effective in Iowa, and that was enough to knock him into second.

McKINNON: None of us know who you’re talking about.

GOEAS: Our Principles PAC.

[Crosstalk]: -Katie Packer.

HALPERIN: What’s your role in that PAC?

GOEAS: Polling which is non-public record.

HALPERIN: But which concerns you more — that he’d lose the general if he were the nominee or how he’d do as President?

MIKE DUNCAN [Former GOP National Chairman]: Losing the election. What we’re facing is a choice between Hillary and Trump.

GOEAS: So what you’re saying is a vote for the least of two evils.

HALPERIN: Do you know for sure Trump would be a better President than Hillary Clinton?

DUNCAN: No, but it’s a risk that I’m willing to take. If we get off into splitting our party, we can’t put it back together. Humpty Dumpty won’t come back together.

WEBER: That’s the great dividing line, that question right there.

HALPERIN: ‘Cause you care more about him being President.

WEBER: I’m scared of him as President. I think he’s an authoritarian figure. To deport 12 million people, build a wall on the Mexican border, and impose a religious test on people coming into this country is so violative of everything I believe about America and the Republican Party.

ROGERS: I travel around the world a lot, and Trump is a laughingstock. The world, whatever that is, is at peace with Hillary Clinton.

KAUFMAN: The next President’s gonna decide the direction of the Supreme Court for four years at minimum. Do you really want to give it to her? Mrs. Warren will be beating the crap out of her to make sure it’s some lefty pinko. So you know that’s a fact.

WEBER: Lefty pinko?

HOHLT: I mean, what does that mean? But you’re right.

KAUFMAN: In the end, that’s the question.

WEBER: I’ve never voted for a Democrat. I’ve never voted for anyone other than the Republican for the President of the United States. This would not be an easy thing for me.

McKINNON: More Martinis?

Watch the video above.

[Ryan Ruck]

Voting at a Crossroads

March 15, 2016
By Thomas Sowell

It is seldom that the fate of a nation can be traced to what happened on one particular day. But that may be what happens in the United States of America on Tuesday, March 15, 2016.

That is because the front-runners in both political parties are not merely inadequate but appalling -- and the vote in this Tuesday's primaries may be the last chance for the voters to unite behind someone else.

The trends that brought us to this crucial day go back for years. But whatever the paths that led to this crossroads, we are in fact at a crossroads and our future, and our children's futures, depend on whether we can come up with some presidential candidate better than either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump.

In other times and in other conditions, one bad president could not ruin a great nation. We survived Jimmy Carter and we may survive Barack Obama, but there is no guarantee that we can survive an unlimited amount of reckless decisions in a dangerous world.

The dangers are both internal and external. Two of our bitterest enemies -- Iran and North Korea -- are openly declaring their desire to destroy us. And both are developing intercontinental missiles that can carry nuclear warheads.

These and other mortal dangers are a product of the feckless foreign policies carried out by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, as the Obama administration weakened our military forces while our adversaries around the world have been rapidly strengthening theirs.

We will be lucky to survive the damage that has been done already. A third consecutive term of such policies, with Hillary Clinton in the White House, can be suicidal.

Internally, Hillary Clinton's whole political career has been based on polarizing the American population by race, sex, class and any other way that will serve her political interests. This kind of cynical political exploitation can take the "United" out of the United States, and Balkanize us into an internal war of each against all. That is a war in which we can all lose.

As for the Republicans' front-runner, what is there left to say about Donald Trump? Almost daily he demonstrates that he lacks the maturity, the depth and the character required to lead a nation facing a complex range of dangers.

It is not a question of his having flaws, which we all have. But what kind of warped character does someone have at his core who can mock a prisoner of war who was tortured for years by our enemies, mock someone else with a physical defect, reply to questions with gutter-level insults, and offer childish boasts about what he is going to do, instead of specifics about how?

These are not subtle nuances. They are blatant revelations about something fundamentally wrong. Too many people missed similar revelations about Barack Obama. For that we have already paid a price, and we will continue to pay a price, even after he is gone. So will generations yet unborn.

There is a reason why polls repeatedly show Donald Trump producing the highest negative reactions of any candidate of either party. Yet the small hard core of Trump supporters seem oblivious to his antics, his recklessness and his all-consuming ego.

Some of these supporters may simply not be paying careful attention. But there have also been some very knowledgeable and intellectually talented people who have backed Trump. Sometimes it takes a high IQ to evade the obvious.

What does Trump offer his supporters that makes them so willing to overlook so much? He boldly articulates the resentment and anger they feel at having been betrayed by smug elites in general and the Republican establishment in particular.

Charismatic leaders who articulated the just grievances of the people have often risen to power on the basis of that talent alone. And those who put them in power have often paid a catastrophic price afterwards. That story was repeated in countries around the world in the 20th century.

Will that story be repeated in America in the 21st century? The vote on March 15, 2016 may give us a clue.

The only candidate who has any real chance to stop Donald Trump at the ballot box is Ted Cruz. But the Republican elite, who have never liked Senator Cruz, may prefer to stop Trump with chicanery at the convention. That can cost Republicans the votes of Trump's followers, putting Hillary Clinton in the White House -- and the country on the ruinous road to a point of no return.

[Ryan Ruck]

Trump: I Consult Myself On Foreign Policy

March 16, 2016

Donald Trump finally shared the name of someone he consults on foreign policy: himself.

Asked on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” who he talks with consistently about foreign policy, Trump responded, “I’m speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain and I’ve said a lot of things."

"I know what I’m doing and I listen to a lot of people, I talk to a lot of people and at the appropriate time I’ll tell you who the people are," Trump said. “But my primary consultant is myself and I have a good instinct for this stuff."

The New York real estate mogul has kept mum on his foreign policy team, despite promising in early February to release a list of his advisers in “about two weeks."

Trump was also asked on Wednesday morning if his foreign policy was “neoisolationist,” to which he responded “I wouldn’t say that at all.”

I thought to myself, "Look, I hate Trump for a lot of things but there is just no way he actually said that. Politico has to be full of shit."

Then I watched the video...



Jesus. Fucking. Christ.

This guy is going to be a dumpster fire in the general election.

And remember, Morning Joe was the show that agreed to go easy on the questions with him!

The only thing worse than listening to him say these things is listening to his sycophants lap it up.

[vector7]

Gingrich: Establishment Scared of Trump Because He "Didn't Belong to the Secret Society"

Published on Mar 4, 2016
Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich told Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly last night that the establishment is scared of Donald Trump because he “didn’t belong to the secret society” and wasn’t involved in any of the rituals associated with such groups.




G. Edward Griffin - The Grand Design: The Hidden Plan That Shapes US Foreign Policy

Published on Aug 3, 2013
This lecture by G. Edward Griffin, given in the late '60s, exposes the hidden plan that shapes U.S. foreign policy and that the ultimate objective of that policy is the same then as it is now — disarmament and world government.

Council On Foreign Relations: Influencing American Government
Despite promises of "change," as uttered by Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and now Barack Obama, successive presidential administrations have in common the fact that important posts are staffed by individuals from the same small organizations— who direct our nation's policies.
http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/...

[Malsua]

Here is the guy who predicted candidate Smith. Today it's Donald Trump. It could have been anyone.




He hits on pretty much every point. The government in Washington exists to serve them and it does not govern by the consent of the people.

This is EXACTLY why Trump is going to win the election by a LANDSLIDE. If Hillary even makes it to election day, she's going to go down in flames worse than Carter.

This does not mean to me that Trump will be a good president. He is simply the only outsider and the people want an outsider who will break the system.

This is why he can say stupid stuff. He's the ONLY choice that isn't in bed with Washington politics. He's in bed with a bunch of other cronies, but as far as Washington goes, he's not in bed with that and the people are voicing that they want the system changed and today, he's the only alternative.

[Ryan Ruck]

We'll see, but when you see a steady stream of data like this, it doesn't paint a very rosy picture for Trump.

Half Of U.S. Women Have 'Very Unfavorable' View Of Trump: Poll

March 17, 2016

Real estate billionaire Donald Trump's coarse rhetoric has won him some fans, but there's at least one large group in America that is increasingly unimpressed: women.

Half of U.S. women say they have a "very unfavorable" view of the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, according to Reuters/Ipsos polling, up from the 40 percent who felt that way in October. The survey was taken from March 1-15, and included 5,400 respondents.

The rise in anti-Trump sentiment among women could pose a problem for the New York billionaire in his quest for the White House. Women form just over half of the U.S. population, and they have turned out at higher rates than men in every election since 1996, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

"If the presidential election were tomorrow, women would be a big problem for Trump," Republican strategist David Carney said. "But he has time to fix it."

A Trump campaign official did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but Trump has said that he has had good relationships with women in his business career and is well-liked by women voters.

Several women who oppose Trump, interviewed by Reuters this week, said their disapproval was based on a range of factors from his disparaging comments about women he dislikes - such as Fox News host Megyn Kelly - to his hard-line views on immigration and his ribald exchanges with rivals.

"I think Trump is very scary," said Mariah Dobias, a 25-year-old cook who was voting in Ohio's primary on Tuesday. "He says he is going to make America great, but he doesn't say how he is going to do it besides alienating whole groups of people."

Carolyn Hostetler, a conservative from Tennessee, told Reuters she disliked "the way he has belittled women."

Some of Trump's female supporters, meanwhile, said they liked his straight talk, and believe he could strengthen America's position on the world stage.

"He's a little unpredictable, as we've seen," said Kathleen Douglas, a 65-year-old college professor from Winter Park, Florida who supports Trump. "He's going to put other world leaders on edge."

Trump does not have a similar image problem with men. The Reuters/Ipsos polling results showed that just 36 percent of men said they have a "very unfavorable" opinion of Trump, a level that has held steady in recent months.

Republican women are also much more likely to approve of Trump, according to Reuters/Ipsos polling. Among women who identify as Republican, he has been holding around 60 percent favorability since the start of the year.

Trump's relative appeal among men versus women was evident in the most recent round of nominating contests on Tuesday, when Trump extended a broad lead over rivals.

In Florida, exit polls conducted by Edison Research showed that Trump's support among Republican women voters was 40 percent, versus 52 percent among males. In Ohio, where Trump came in second to the state's governor, John Kasich, 33 percent of women voters backed Trump, compared with 40 percent of men.

If the GOP frontrunner were to run against Democratic hopeful Hillary Clinton in the general election, likely women voters would support Clinton over Trump by nearly 14 percentage points, according to the March polling data. Among men, Clinton would win by about 5 percentage points.

At a precinct in Florida's Winter Park, Darlene Monzadeh, a 52-year-old stay-at-home mom who had been a supporter of Jeb Bush, said Trump lost her vote during a debate when he exchanged potshots with his rivals.

"It changed my opinion. When they catfight all the time and act like little boys, pointing fingers, raising voices," she said, adding she now supports Kasich.

Trump has been accused by critics of misogyny since he launched his campaign. He complained last year that Fox News host Megyn Kelly had asked him tough questions in a debate and referred to "blood coming out of her wherever." He more recently sent a Twitter post suggesting she was a "bimbo."

He has called television personality Rosie O'Donnell a "fat pig" and made fun of former presidential rival and ex-HP chief executive Carly Fiorina's face, saying, "Would anyone vote for that?"

An anti-Trump attack ad launched by the Our Principles Super PAC this week featured women repeating words that Trump has used to describe women, including "fat pig" and "dog."

Several of his female supporters defended Trump against the ad on social media.

[Ryan Ruck]

What I Will Probably Never Understand About The Undying Affection For Donald Trump

March 12, 2016

It’s easy for me to understand why people were so favorably disposed toward Trump at first because initially, I liked him, too. I’d read and liked Trump’s books, I found him to be gracious in person and I had friends who went to work for him. I also loved his charisma, his stance on the wall, his refreshing lack of political correctness, his scrappiness and his ability to just shrug off what would be career-ending mistakes for other Republican politicians.

Unfortunately today, Trump looks to be completely unelectable. There are massive numbers of Republicans pledging not to vote for him in the general election; sitting members of congress are saying they won’t support him in the general; Mitch McConnell is openly telling Republican senators they can distance themselves from him. Trump’s been publicly condemned by the last GOP nominee (Romney); his unfavorability numbers are equaling those of Bill “the face of date rape” Cosby (Cosby, July of last year, 62% unfavorability while Trump’s rating is 62% now). He’ll be dramatically outspent in a general election and contrary to what he’s promised, he’s not going to finance his own campaign. He will have to deal with a massive Trump University fraud case during the general election; he’s the most gaffe-prone candidate in history and the mainstream media that has been carrying him on its shoulders will turn on him once he’s the nominee.

Despite all of this, there are many smart people who think Trump will do wonderfully in an election. Some of them note that Trump has driven record turn-out in the states he’s won without noting that record numbers of people turned out to vote against him in the states he lost. Others point out that nobody thought Trump would be doing as well in the primary, but of course, it’s a split field. Had this been a one on one race, Ted Cruz would be ahead of Trump in delegates right now. Then there are people who point to the outlier poll here and there that shows Trump winning the general, but he consistently loses to Hillary head-to-head.

Yet, there are many smart people who know something about campaigns that think Trump can win the general election. Not a one of them has ever made a rational, logical case for it, but “they have a feeling.” Barring a miracle, the second Trump is the nominee, almost no matter what he does, Hillary wins; we lose the Senate big and bleed House seats; the SCOTUS swings wildly to the left; Obamacare and Obama’s executive orders stay, but this doesn’t bother people because “Trump changes all the rules”….or something.

Setting that aside, as I have already noted, I can understand people liking Trump early on. I have friends and family members who still like him, which is why I don’t criticize anyone for backing Trump, have nothing negative to say about the people endorsing him and won’t actively encourage people not to vote for him. I believe intelligent, well-meaning people can have differences of opinion.

However, I genuinely don’t understand why so many people think a man who is unpredictable, thin-skinned, mean spirted, vindictive and who often blurts out stupid things is the sort of person who is suited to be President of the United States. The same traits that have made Trump a success on reality TV would make him a horrible POTUS. Even if you ignore the fact that Trump is temperamentally unsuited to be President of the United States, he’s also saying creepy, fascistic things that should alarm people.

In the debate before last, the discussion was Donald Trump’s policy of “taking out” the families of terrorists. So, let’s define the ugly reality of what Trump’s glib remarks would look like in the real world. We’re talking about sending American soldiers to peaceful areas to shoot women and babies in the head because they’re related to someone who committed a terrorist attack. When the moderator noted that a former CIA director had said troops wouldn’t obey that order because it was inarguably a war crime, Trump replied, "They won’t refuse. They’re not gonna refuse me. Believe me." That’s a dangerous statement, the sort of statement you’d expect to hear from a fascist or a dictator. It becomes even more troubling when you consider it in concert with Trump’s comments about China violently suppressing a pro-democracy demonstration.

When the students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it. Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength. Our country is right now perceived as weak... as being spit on by the rest of the world.

I’m of the opinion that it would be dangerous to our republic to allow someone with those kind of openly fascistic leanings to ever have control of the IRS, the CIA, the FBI, the DOJ, our military or nuclear weapons. While we’re at it, saying “Islam hates us” may impress people on some Internet comment boards, but that’s not an appropriate thing to say for someone who wants to be President. Additionally, when asked about the violence that occurs at his rallies, Trump essentially said he condemns the violence unless it’s deserved. Of course, we have no word on whether Trump thinks the female reporter who was assaulted by his campaign manager deserved it because Trump’s dishonorable way of dealing with it is just lying and claiming it didn’t happen. When you think a man should be allowed to assault a woman as long as he's affiliated with Donald Trump, your moral compass is broken and there’s something wrong with your soul.

What I don’t get is why there are so many people who insist that every criticism of the world’s least stable politician must be off base or worse yet, why they acknowledge that these criticisms are accurate and continue to support him anyway. It’s so strange to talk to strong conservative Christian patriots who support Trump DESPITE THE FACT that they agree with most of the criticisms leveled at him. I guarantee you that 95% of Trump’s current supporters would have considered it an insult if you told them a year ago that they’d back a celebrity birther for President who’d talk about his penis on stage at a debate, encourage violence at his rallies and mock POWs. Yet, here we are.

I don’t understand how so many good Christians can support an adulterer who claims to also be a Christian, but also says he’s never had a reason to ask God for forgiveness.

I don’t understand how so many rock-ribbed conservatives can support an obvious flimflam man whose positions seem to change almost day-by-day and will undeniably change even more if he’s nominated.

I don’t understand how so many parents can support a man who’s a horrible example for their children. Yes, Trump’s had a great business career, but his character is at the bottom of the barrel. He’s crude and arrogant and he treats other people like garbage.


I don’t understand how so many people who say they only care about illegal immigration can support a guy who was pushing amnesty three years ago and is in favor of citizenship for illegal aliens now when a stronger candidate on illegal immigration, Ted Cruz, is in the race.

I don’t understand how so many people who care about the Constitution can support a man who’s probably never even read it and wouldn’t care about anything in it if he did.

I don’t understand how so many fundamentally decent people who were furious at Bill Clinton for degrading the presidency can back a man who mocks the disabled, lies as often as both of the Clintons put together, brags about sleeping with married women and who said, “it really doesn’t matter what they write as long as you’ve got a young and beautiful piece of ass.”

I don’t understand how so many smart people can back a guy who’s too lazy to study anything beyond the basics of any policy issue. Donald Trump doesn’t seem to know any more about the policies of the country he’d be running today than he did the day he got into the race. Trump knows the results of every poll in America that are favorable to him; so why can’t he take the time to learn something about the government policies of the nation he wants to lead?

Most of all, I don’t understand how so many good people can support a hateful, fundamentally dishonest, divisive man who’s turned friends and allies in the conservative movement against each other and who has shown over and over that he doesn’t care about anything but himself.

If all these people were phony, insincere, dumb or corrupt, that would be an easy explanation, but I know that doesn’t describe the vast majority of people who back Trump. Most of them are intelligent, well-meaning people. If the only choice were between Trump and some horrible establishment candidate no one wanted, I might understand at least a little bit, but it’s not. If Donald Trump were a close relative or had saved your baby from being eaten by alligators, I could understand the blind loyalty that forgives him for anything, but that’s not what’s happening.

The good news for people who support Trump and the bad news for those of us who find him to be a repulsive, narcissistic con man is that by staying in the race this long, John Kasich and Marco Rubio have nearly guaranteed Trump the nomination. If Trump does lock it down, my guess is that it will start off with cheers and joyful proclamations that the hated establishment has been defeated and it will likely end with cries of “betrayal,” years of grudges and a lopsided defeat while Trump happily pitches his latest products from Mexico and China to the fans he picked up during his run at the presidency. The one thing we may never truly understand is why so many good and decent people were blindly loyal to someone like Trump when they had every opportunity to see what kind of man he really was beforehand.

[Ryan Ruck]

[indent]
Reporter Who Says She Was Manhandled By Trump Campaign Manager Resigns From Breitbart

March 14, 2016

Breitbart News reporter Michelle Fields and editor-at-large Ben Shapiro have resigned from the conservative site over its handling of an alleged assault on Fields by Donald Trump’s campaign manager Corey Lewandowski.

“I don’t think they took my side,” Fields told The Washington Post early Monday. “They were protecting Trump more than me.”

Last week, Fields recounted in a post for Breitbart how Lewandowski allegedly grabbed her by the arm and yanked her away as she attempted to ask Trump a question after a news conference in Florida. The encounter left finger-shaped bruises on the 28-year-old reporter’s arm.

The Post’s Ben Terris, who witnessed the incident, has reported that Lewandowski was the one who grabbed Fields.

Trump and Lewandowski vehemently denied the accusation, and on Friday Breitbart — which has been sympathetic to Trump throughout the campaign — published a long post by senior editor at large Joel Pollak that painstakingly pieced together the event in question before concluding that the altercation couldn’t have happened the way Fields described it. Ultimately, Pollak suggested that perhaps Terris mistook Lewandowski for a security official or that her injuries were an accident incurred in the press scrum.

Different angle of Michelle Fields, Ben Terris and Corey Lewandowski. pic.twitter.com/bw3uYfHbKY

— Jeremy Art (@cspanJeremy) March 11, 2016

That same day, though, the site put out a brief statement saying that it stood behind Fields, but it did not demand an apology from the Trump campaign or assert that Fields was correct in identifying Lewandowski.

Pollak also reportedly instructed Breitbart staffers not to publicly defend their colleague. In internal messages originally obtained by BuzzFeed, a staffer, Brandon Darby, wrote that Lewandowski’s behavior was “a declaration of war” and that “silence is abandoning our team member.” Pollak responded, “In war, we wait for orders that are based on a careful plan. So wait.” (Speaking to The Post, Shapiro confirmed that the chat’s transcripts were accurate.)

“Breitbart has unfortunately become Trump’s Pravda,” Shapiro said, explaining his own resignation and referring to the Soviet Communist Party publication. “No media outlet worth its salt would throw over their own reporter and bad-mouth her on their front page in order to protect the candidate.”

Fields has stood by her account of the incident, as has Terris, even after Pollak published his piece challenging them both.

“I would have liked for them to believe me, believe the eyewitness,” Fields said of Breitbart. “I think they were more concerned about preserving their access to Trump than they were about finding out the truth.”

Michelle Fields, Ben Shapiro have resigned from Breitbart News https://t.co/WPGQAW4C8G pic.twitter.com/3teIjOKxXW

— CNNMoney (@CNNMoney) March 14, 2016

In an email to Politico, Breitbart editor in chief Alex Marlow denied Fields’s claim that the company didn’t plan to defend Fields or demand an apology.


“By 2:10am Wednesday, we had released a statement calling any physical contact ‘unacceptable’ and demanding an apology,” he wrote. “We have clearly expressed that the Trump campaign’s claims against the Breitbart News reporter contradict the evidence and that we stand with Michelle.”

Fields filed a report with the Jupiter, Fla., police department Friday, according to the Associated Press. That same day, she did an interview with Fox News’s Megyn Kelly explaining her decision. She said that she’d contacted her editor, Matthew Boyle, and told him what happened and said that Boyle contacted Lewandowski, who allegedly admitted to grabbing Fields.

“He did not deny it,” Fields said. “He said that he didn’t realize that I was a Breitbart reporter.”

Fields said she was told she would receive an apology, but one never came. Instead, on Thursday the campaign released a statement denying her allegations.

“They have basically done a character assassination on me,” she told Kelly.

I guess these just magically appeared on me @CLewandowski_ @realDonaldTrump. So weird. pic.twitter.com/oD8c4D7tw3

— Michelle Fields (@MichelleFields) March 10, 2016

In denying Fields’s allegations, Trump and Lewandowski have suggested that Fields was lying about the assault.


“Perhaps she made the story up; I think that’s what happened,” Trump told reporters at the CNN debate Thursday.


Lewandowski was less diplomatic.

@MichelleFields you are totally delusional. I never touched you. As a matter of fact, I have never even met you.

— Corey Lewandowski (@CLewandowski_) March 11, 2016

In a statement released Thursday afternoon, Trump campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks said: “The accusation, which has only been made in the media and never addressed directly with the campaign, is entirely false. As one of the dozens of individuals present as Mr. Trump exited the press conference I did not witness any encounter. In addition to our staff, which had no knowledge of said situation, not a single camera or reporter of more than 100 in attendance captured the alleged incident.”

Shapiro said that Breitbart is no longer the website he signed on to work for right after founder Andrew Breitbart’s death in 2012.

“The central mission was fighting bullies,” he said. But current Chairman Stephen Bannon “has perverted the mission into one of personal ego-driven politics.”

The exits of Shapiro and Fields follow that of Breitbart spokesman Kurt Bardella, who said Friday he would no longer work for the company because of its treatment of Fields.

“When you get to a point where you can’t 100 percent support the person you’re representing, the right thing to do is to step aside,” he told CNN.

“They’ve been looking for a reason to disprove something when all the evidence from a Washington Post reporter’s firsthand account, to the bruises on Michelle’s arm, to all the photos and video clips that we’ve seen strongly suggest that Corey Lewandowski, Donald Trump’s campaign manager, was the one who did this. And there’s no reason to never support your own reporter.”

“Are you saying they’re lying?” anchor Don Lemon interjected.

“Yes, I am,” Bardella responded.

Remarkable. @donlemon asks former @BreitbartNews consultant @kurtbardella "are you saying they're lying?" "Yes". https://t.co/wBUKGNEamL

— Jonathan Wald (@jonathanwald) March 12, 2016

Shapiro and Fields handed in their resignations late Sunday night. Shapiro said that he doesn’t expect theirs to be the last.

But more than anything else, she told The Post, Fields is worried by the Trump campaign’s continued denials of her account.

“What hurts me the most is the lying and smearing that the Trump campaign is doing,” she said. “… If they can do it to me, if they can lie about a conservative reporter, who knows what they’ll be able to do when they have power of the executive branch?”

Here’s the full text of Shapiro’s and Fields’s resignation statements.

From Shapiro:

As a close personal friend and mentee of Andrew Breitbart’s, it saddens me tremendously to announce that as of 9:00 p.m. Pacific Time, I have resigned from Breitbart News as editor-at-large. I met Andrew Breitbart when I was seventeen years old and remained his friend until his tragic death; I signed on with Breitbart News two weeks before Andrew’s death because I believed in his mission.

I am proud of what we accomplished in the years following his death, fighting back against the leftist media and debunking the left’s key narratives. I have many good friends at Breitbart News, including editor-in-chief Alex Marlow and editor-at-large John Nolte, and I admire CEO Larry Solov for his dedication to ensuring a financial future for Andrew’s widow, Susie, and his four children.

Andrew built his life and his career on one mission: fight the bullies. But Andrew’s life mission has been betrayed. Indeed, Breitbart News, under the chairmanship of Steve Bannon, has put a stake through the heart of Andrew’s legacy. In my opinion, Steve Bannon is a bully, and has sold out Andrew’s mission in order to back another bully, Donald Trump; he has shaped the company into Trump’s personal Pravda, to the extent that he abandoned and undercut his own reporter, Breitbart News’ Michelle Fields, in order to protect Trump’s bully campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, who allegedly assaulted Michelle. I spoke with Michelle the night after the incident. She told me her story. That story was backed by audiotape, eyewitness testimony from The Washington Post’s Ben Terris, physical bruises, and video tape.

Both Lewandowski and Trump maligned Michelle in the most repulsive fashion. Meanwhile, Breitbart News not only stood by and did nothing outside of tepidly asking for an apology, they then attempted to abandon Michelle by silencing staff from tweeting or talking about the issue. Finally, in the ultimate indignity, they undermined Michelle completely by running a poorly-evidenced conspiracy theory as their lead story in which Michelle and Terris had somehow misidentified Lewandowski.

This is disgusting. Andrew never would have stood for it. No news outlet would stand for it.

Nobody should.

This truly breaks my heart. But, as I am fond of saying, facts don’t care about your feelings, and the facts are undeniable: Breitbart News has become precisely the reverse of what Andrew would have wanted. Steve Bannon and those who follow his lead should be ashamed of themselves.

From Fields:

Today I informed the management at Breitbart News of my immediate resignation. I do not believe Breitbart News has adequately stood by me during the events of the past week and because of that I believe it is now best for us to part ways.

Too bad about Shapiro leaving Breitbart. He was with him at the beginning.

Considering what Breitbart thought of Trump, it is disgusting to see what his site has turned into. I'm sure he's spinning in his grave...

[Ryan Ruck]

Donald Trump Is the Political Equivalent of the Financial Crisis

He's the culmination of multiple problems and factors, all exploding at once.

March 16, 2016

How to explain Donald Trump? He certainly can’t explain himself (not surprising, given his, ah, modest explanatory abilities).

Many have argued, from various vantage points, that he is the fault of Republicans, who allowed nativism to fester within their party, who amped up their anti-Obama rhetoric and oversold their ability to oppose his agenda, who failed to grapple with the economic struggles of downscale Americans and prioritized the concerns of the wealthy donor class. Other have argued that President Obama himself bears some responsibility, or that was a factor, at least inadvertently, a celebrity president who rallied his base in ways that stoked political division, an imperial president who circumvented the political process when it did not suit his ends.

There are other explanations as well: Trump’s campaign was powered by his celebrity status and a massive gift of free media, by his own exquisitely developed instincts for generating conflict and controversy, by a certain amount of good luck and the unusual dynamics of the very large GOP field.

Writing in Commentary, John Podhoretz works another angle, proposing a thought experiment in which the financial crisis occurs not in September 2008, just weeks before the election, but in 2006, with two years left before the next president would be selected.

Now imagine that the meltdown had taken place not in September 2008 but rather in September 2006. Imagine that housing prices and stock prices had fallen in the same way—such that the wealth invested in the 63 percent of home-owned American households and in the stocks owned by 62 percent of all Americans had declined by 40 percent.

Further, imagine that serious proposals arose that the 8 percent of homeowners who had defaulted on their home loans be forgiven their debts—the very proposal in 2009 that led investor Rick Santelli to call for a new “tea party” uprising on the part of the 92 percent who paid their bills on time. Only this time Santelli’s comments had been spoken in 2007. Imagine all these things. And then imagine the presidential race that would have followed. Does the rise of Trump and Bernie Sanders suddenly make all the sense in the world? Of course.

Instead, of course, the meltdown happened just before the election, and the ensuing years were taken up with Obama’s tentpole policies—the stimulus and Obamacare and Dodd-Frank.

Podhoretz does not mention the George W. Bush administration by name in the column, but it is, of course, a thought experiment in what would have happened if the reaction to the financial crisis had happened under Bush’s watch. And so it pairs well with Ross Douthat’s column today on the decline of Bushism.

Douthat’s piece is hooked to the failure of Marco Rubio’s presidential campaign, but it too is an attempt to make sense of a primary race that is now thoroughly dominated by Donald Trump and, to a lesser extent, Ted Cruz. Douthat writes that “in purely ideological terms, what primary voters were rejecting when they rejected [Rubio] was the political synthesis of George W. Bush.”

This is essentially correct: Rubio was, more than anything, a vessel for the GOP establishment’s hopes, slightly modified to account for the emergence of reform conservatism—a tax-cutting, immigration-friendly, foreign-policy hawk energized by the American ideal and its place atop the global order. His political career was designed to emphasize the elements of Bushism, and he was arguably a better and truer for heir to the Bush legacy than the candidate in the race whose name was Bush, at least in theory, because he carried none of the baggage. He was Bush rebranded.

But it turned out that the rebranded version had plenty of baggage as well. The failure of Republican elites to grapple with the failures of the Bush administration and the dissatisfaction that his presidency created amongst ideological conservatives, who formed the basis for the Tea Party, and amongst less ideological working class voters, is part of what explains Trump’s rise.

The truth about Trump, I think, is that there are many relevant factors and many plausible explanations, though I would emphasize that Trump is first and foremost a Republican problem created by Republican failures, built up over time. But there is no single, unifying factor that fully explains his rise.

In a sense, then, Trump is himself the political equivalent of the financial crisis, the result of a rare confluence of long-simmering factors—some bad actors, some mistaken assumptions, some failures of responsibility, some misaligned institutional incentives, some poor decisions on the part of the public, some avarice and ignorance on the part of elites—all culminating in a kind of full-scale meltdown. And just as in 2008, Trump is proving many experts wrong along the way, and causing them to rethink reexamine just what it is they really know about how the system works, and threatening to destroy the system in the process.

As with the financial crisis, most of the damage done by Trump will (probably) not be truly permanent. But it is severe, and it is likely to remain with us, causing eruptions and anxieties and unexpected aftershocks, for a very long time.

[Ryan Ruck]

Seriously, how is this not pathological behavior? Simply bizarre.

There's video at the link.

NBC: Trump Contradicts Himself In 2 Interviews Minutes Apart

March 16, 2016

The "Today" show on Wednesday called out Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump for "apparently contradicting himself" during back-to-back interviews this week.

The NBC show played a clip of Trump's phone interview on ABC's "Good Morning America" the previous day, during which the businessman responded to a critical ad of women reading his insulting remarks on women.

"Well, you know, I have seen it," Trump told ABC host George Stephanopoulos, before going on to dismiss the ad, from an anti-Trump super-PAC founded by a former Mitt Romney aide, as "sour grapes" from his detractors.

"Just a couple of minutes later, he appeared live on this show," NBC host Matt Lauer remarked Wednesday, playing a clip from Trump's appearance on the "Today" show from Tuesday.

"I have not seen the ad, so I would have to see it. I've heard about the ad, but I have not seen the ad," Trump said during the NBC appearance.

Trump has caught flak recently for other off-the-cuff remarks or contradictions, including claiming Tuesday that he "never said" he was going to pay for the legal fees of a supporter who sucker-punched a protester at a recent rally.

Pathological liar. He literally said "I'll pay for the legal fees". https://t.co/Bao8ewdkEy

— Brian Phillips (@RealBPhil) March 15, 2016

[Ryan Ruck]

Donald Trump Appears to Have Heavily Plagiarized Ben Carson Op-Ed

March 16, 2016

A Donald Trump op-ed touting his plan for American territories and commonwealths appears to have heavily plagiarized from a Ben Carson op-ed on the same topic, lifting entire paragraphs and making only cosmetic changes to others.

The Daily Caller’s Alex Pappas first noticed the similarities between the two op-eds, one written by Carson for The Marianas Variety in February, and the other “written” by Trump for The Pacific Daily News in March. Here, for example, is the opening paragraph of Carson’s piece:

Many Americans do not appreciate the patriotism exhibited by our brothers and sisters in the Territories of American Samoa, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands.

And here’s Trump’s opening paragraph:

Throughout the history of our nation, the patriotism exhibited by our brothers and sisters in the Territories of American Samoa, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, the Commonwealths of Puerto Rico and the Northern Mariana Islands has often gone unacknowledged.

Many of the policy positions first forwarded by Carson appear word-for-word in Trump’s piece: “Once sworn into office, I will appoint a special assistant to the president responsible for day-to-day interaction with the territories and commonwealths. This position would be the direct connection for the Office of Insular Affairs and the citizens of the territories and commonwealths,” both candidates promise.

Another section that appears completely unaltered in both pieces: “Medical care in the American territories and commonwealths has historically lagged far behind the continental states, and Obamacare has only made the situation worse. Good health is an essential part of a thriving society and economy, and citizens of the territories and commonwealths deserve policies that work.”

Pappas created a helpful image showing just how extensive the similarities are between the two. [h/t The Daily Caller]

Also, this was not a matter of Carson or a Carson staffer writing it for Trump. This happened days before Carson came out to support Trump.

At my private, college prep high school. Plagiarism was grounds for expulsion and, in fact, I knew someone that it happened to.

[Ryan Ruck]

Cruz's Constitutionalism Trumps Trump's Trumpism

Why the Texas senator is the least scary of the remaining major-party candidates

March 16, 2016

"If you want someone to grab a beer with," Ted Cruz said during the third Republican presidential debate last October, "I may not be that guy. But if you want someone to drive you home, I will get the job done."

The president as Uber driver is a refreshingly modest view of the job, especially compared to the grandiose dreams of Donald Trump. The boastful billionaire probably would not drive you home, and he definitely would not have a beer with you. Although he once had a vodka named after him, Trump does not drink, which may be just as well, given the appalling things he says when he's sober.

Trump's impromptu approach to public policy suggests that if he were in the driver's seat, he would be guided by nothing but his own whims. Cruz, by contrast, assures us that his map would be the Constitution, and that difference alone makes him clearly preferable to the Republican front-runner.

"I've been passionate my whole life about the Constitution," the Texas senator says, and he seems to mean it. Cruz's campaign website mentions the Constitution more than 1,300 times, compared to the Trump site's paltry 35.

The difference is qualitative as well as quantitative. Given the blatantly unconstitutional policies Trump has endorsed, such as censoring the Internet, closing down mosques, and barring Muslims from entering the country, I doubt he has read the Constitution. If he did, it did not make much of an impression.

Cruz, by contrast, is a Harvard Law School graduate who clerked for Chief Justice William Rehnquist and argued nine cases before the Supreme Court as the solicitor general of Texas. "We will defend the Constitution, every single word of it," he said during the September 16 GOP debate, and he has shown a broader interest in that task than most politicians.

In addition to defending the Second Amendment, as every Republican candidate is expected to do, Cruz has opposed the federal government's mass collection of our phone records, the indefinite detention of Americans deemed threats to national security, and a presidential license to kill suspected terrorists on U.S. soil. He has castigated Democrats for trying to suppress political speech in the name of fighting corruption and criticized Republicans as well as Democrats for abusing executive power (although with considerably less specificity).

Cruz, who promises to "carpet bomb ISIS into oblivion," concedes that he would need congressional authorization for such a war. "It should absolutely take congressional approval," he told ABC News in 2014.

Cruz understands that what the Constitution omits is at least as important as what it says. Declaring that he wants to "protect the people by rolling back the federal government to the functions the Constitution sets out," he lists four federal departments, one agency, and 25 programs that he would eliminate. Consistent with Cruz's admirable opposition to crony capitalism, the programs include sugar subsidies and the federal ethanol mandate.

I doubt Cruz would get far with his list, which in any case would hardly restore the federal government to its constitutional limits. But at least he aspires to that goal, even if he does forget his fiscal conservatism and his determination to shrink government when he talks about the military.

Cruz's dedication to the Constitution is by no means completely consistent. Among other things, he supports the constitutionally unauthorized war on drugs (although he says states should be free to legalize marijuana); touts his defense of the federal Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act, which is grounded in an absurdly broad reading of the federal power to regulate interstate commerce; and brags about sponsoring the Expatriate Terrorist Act, which would strip Americans of their citizenship without due process.

Despite such exceptions, Cruz is clearly more inclined to recognize and respect limits on the federal government's power than Trump or either of the two remaining Democrats. For libertarians and constitutionalists, he is the least scary of the bunch.

[Ryan Ruck]

Inside Cruz’s State-By-State Plan To Defeat Trump

Rubio and Kasich might be sweating Tuesday but Cruz is looking down the road to a #NeverTrump sweep

March 14, 2016

It sounds like a nightmare for Donald Trump’s opponents: The billionaire sweeps Ohio and Florida on Tuesday and storms ahead with more than half the 1,237 delegates needed to secure the Republican nomination.

But for Ted Cruz, it would be a dream — if it forces Marco Rubio and John Kasich to quit — that delivers the two-man contest he’s been wanting for months.

“If we are able to get him head-to-head in a two-person race,” said Jeff Roe, Cruz’s campaign manager, “then we will win this race.”

The math is not in Cruz’s favor: He’ll likely be at least 250 delegates behind Trump and essentially need to sweep the remaining contests. But his team is projecting confidence, trying to persuade rivals’ supporters to unite behind the candidate who so far has the most victories against the front-runner.

Indeed, amid escalating violence at Trump’s events and a hardening of “#NeverTrump” opposition within the GOP, Cruz’s team says the New York businessman has a firm ceiling that’s below 50 percent support and that a cleared field still leaves Cruz a shot.

“All we have to do in a two-person is, we need to win 55-45,” said Chris Wilson, Cruz’s research director and pollster. “We do that the rest of the way, we’re the nominee.”

It’s part bullish bravado — and part studied analytics.

“I don’t want to put any clippings on our opponents’ locker room but I’ll say this: In surveys that we’ve taken in a two-man race versus a four-man race, in the states after March 12, we see, of the 70 percent that’s available [among current non-Trump voters], we literally see 90 percent of that vote to come to us,” Roe said.

But that consolidation has to happen fast. Cruz’s top strategists say they believe Cruz must win decisively in Arizona and Utah, the next states to vote on March 22.

That was the thinking behind Cruz’s more inclusive tone at last Thursday’s debate, when he explicitly reached out to Rubio and Kasich’s supporters. “There are only two of us that have a path to winning the nomination, Donald and myself,” Cruz said at one point. “I want to invite you, if you've supported other candidates, come and join us.”

Afterward, in the spin room, Roe called it “a permission slip to join our campaign.”

“The first ones are critical,” Roe said of Arizona and Utah. “It is critical to win some of those states to reset the race.”

Cruz quietly began buying ad time in Arizona over the weekend, reserving $200,000 over 10 days, making him the first to buy ads in any state that votes after March 15. Cruz hired a top Arizona strategist six months ago, zeroing in on its potential significance as an inflection point on the calendar as early as last September.

Immigration, Trump’s signature issue, is likely to be a driver of the Arizona primary, and Trump has won the backing of former Gov. Jan Brewer and anti-immigration leader Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

Utah, meanwhile, holds a caucus limited to Republican voters the same day — the type of election in which Cruz has performed best (Arizona is a closed primary) — and Cruz also just scored the endorsement of influential Utah Sen. Mike Lee. The Beehive State awards its 40 delegates proportionally but has a backdoor winner-take-all provision if any candidate gets at least 50 percent, which is almost guaranteed to happen in a two-man race.

After those two elections, the calendar slows to a crawl. Just one state, Wisconsin, will vote in the following four weeks, and Roe said he began dispatching staff there three weeks ago.

The belief in Cruz world is that the full weight of the Republican apparatus — both movement conservatives and elites disgusted with Trump — will unite during that lull to propel him in Wisconsin and the half-dozen other states that will vote in late April.

The path is actually far narrower than the Cruz team lets on.

Cruz, for instance, is likelier to pass Trump in delegates than he is to reach 1,237 delegates himself. POLITICO’s calculations show that he would need to win as many as 800 of the 910 remaining delegates to be bound after March 15 to clinch — a near impossibility. He would instead need to rely on the more than 100 unbound delegates who will arrive in Cleveland, or, more likely, the chaos of a second ballot.

Another key is the other states that vote on Tuesday — Illinois, Missouri and North Carolina — that offer a combined 193 delegates, more than Florida and Ohio. Cruz must rack up delegates there to keep Trump within reach. Cruz is hunting for delegates especially in Missouri, where the winner in each congressional district receives an unusually high five delegates. He held four events across the state on Saturday, after campaigning in Illinois on Friday night and in North Carolina on Sunday.

Another problem for Cruz is the nomination map itself. As Rubio has repeatedly pointed out, the states after March 15 are less favorable to Cruz’s religious brand of conservatism. Many of the most evangelical states have already voted. And Cruz has mostly struggled in the Northeast (where Trump has mostly romped). Connecticut and Rhode Island are still to come, as are nearby Mid-Atlantic states, including delegate-rich Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, plus New York and New Jersey.

On its working map, the Cruz campaign cedes New Jersey and its 51 winner-take-all delegates to Trump and assumes the tycoon will carry his home state of New York. The latter state offers a massive 95 delegates, but because it awards many of them by congressional district, Cruz’s team believes he has a shot to keep the margin at least somewhat close, especially since the primary is limited to registered Republican voters. Heavily Democratic districts in New York City make some seats especially unpredictable.

“Arizona looks good, Utah looks good, Wisconsin looks good,” Wilson, Cruz’s pollster, said of the next three states that vote. “I mean, you can look at the models right down to the congressional district level in California and see very clearly how this works itself out. And that’s even if you give New Jersey to Trump and you give Trump a majority in New York. Even allowing for those two potentially unlikely scenarios, if we gather a lot of momentum, we still pass 1,237.”

“Not until June [7],” Wilson said. “But we still do.”

[Ryan Ruck]

Poll: Utah Would Vote For A Democrat For President Over Trump

March 20, 2016

If Donald Trump becomes the Republican Party's nominee, Utahns would vote for a Democrat for president in November for the first time in more than 50 years, according to a new Deseret News/KSL poll.

"I believe Donald Trump could lose Utah. If you lose Utah as a Republican, there is no hope," said former Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt, a top campaign adviser to the GOP's 2012 nominee, Mitt Romney.

The poll found that may well be true. Utah voters said they would reject Trump, the GOP frontrunner, whether former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton or Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders is the Democratic candidate on the general election ballot.

While Clinton was only slightly ahead of Trump — 38 percent to 36 percent — Sanders, a self-declared Democratic socialist, holds a substantial lead — 48 percent to 37 percent over the billionaire businessman and reality TV star among likely Utah voters.

"Wow. Wow. That's surprising," said Chris Karpowitz, co-director of Brigham Young University's Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy. "Any matchup in which Democrats are competitive in the state of Utah is shocking."

Also surprising is the number of Utahns who said they wouldn't vote if Trump were on the ballot. Sixteen percent said they'd skip the election if Trump and Clinton were their ballot choices, while 9 percent said they wouldn't vote if it was a Trump-Sanders matchup.

Both Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich would beat either Democratic candidate in Utah, the poll found. Sanders came closest against Cruz, with 39 percent of Utahns backing Sanders to 53 percent for Cruz.

The Democratic candidates fare even better against Trump among Utah's many unaffiliated voters. Clinton would win Utah by 17 points, the poll found, while Sanders would see a 36-point victory if the election were held today. The margin of error for unaffiliated voters is nearly 7 percent.

The poll was conducted for the Deseret News and KSL on March 8-15 by Dan Jones & Associates of 500 registered voters statewide. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.38 percent, so the Clinton-Trump results fall within that margin.

Utah hasn't voted for a Democratic candidate for president in a general election since then-President Lyndon Johnson was running against Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater in 1964.

But Karpowitz said Republicans better be paying attention to Trump's lack of support in a state long considered a GOP stronghold if they expect to reclaim the White House this year.

"I know it is early and these things can change," Karpowitz said. "But the fact that a Donald Trump matchup with either Clinton or Sanders is a competitive race is a canary in a coal mine for Republicans."

The BYU political science professor said the poll makes it clear that if the GOP nominates Trump, "they may have trouble, serious trouble, in reliably Republican states like Utah" let alone the rest of the country.

Utah's role

Chuck Todd, NBC News political director and moderator of "Meet the Press," said Republicans see Utah as a state that can help stop Trump from securing the party's nomination at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland in July.

"That's what the game is now," Todd said. "Both Cruz and Kasich need to pick up as many delegates as they can, but more importantly, it's about denying Trump delegates."

Kasich told the Deseret News/KSL Editorial Board in an hour-long meeting Saturday before a campaign stop in St. George that he expects the nomination to be decided at the convention, where delegates will be looking for the most electable candidate.

"By the way, the two people I'm running against cannot get elected in a general election," Kasich said. Delegates "are actually going to think about who might be a good president. That actually could happen."

He made it clear he's not staying in the race to block Trump's nomination.

"That's not my deal. If I were in this to stop somebody I'd get out because it wouldn't be worth my time. I'm in because I think that I have the skills, the record and the vision to be able to get elected," Kasich said.

Cruz told the editorial board in a conference call before an appearance in Provo that he and Trump are the only candidates "who have any path to winning the nomination."

The Texas senator said Kasich has no chance of beating Trump and the "only role Kasich is playing right now is as a spoiler because every vote for John Kasich is effectively a vote for Donald Trump."

While Cruz said he believes he can win the nomination outright, even though he'd need 78 percent of the remaining delegates, he also called a contested convention "entirely possible." But Cruz said he'd be able to win that, too

He said Kasich, who would need to win more than 100 percent of the remaining delegates to secure the nomination, couldn't even be considered at a contested convention without winning at least seven more states under current party rules.

Contested convention

Leavitt and Romney are playing big roles in the effort to keep Trump off the ticket.

In Tuesday's Republican presidential caucus in Utah, Leavitt is backing Kasich. Romney, who made a major speech condemning Trump at the University of Utah earlier this month, announced on Facebook Friday he'll vote for Cruz.

"The GOP convention is going to be contested," Leavitt said, because he believes no candidate — not even Trump — can win the 1,237 delegates needed to lock up the nomination.

He said he doesn't think any candidate is strong enough in Utah to meet the 50 percent threshold needed to win all 40 of the state's Republican delegates, so Utahns should vote for whomever they believe will be the best president.

"I believe it's best to leave strategy to the campaigns," Leavitt said.

Romney sees it differently. He said in his Facebook post that while he has campaigned for Kasich and would have voted for him in Ohio, "a vote for Gov. Kasich in future contests makes it extremely likely that 'Trumpism' would prevail."

Cruz said Romney "made clear that our campaign is the only campaign that has a path to beating Donald Trump" and that is the choice voters in Utah and the rest of the country now face.

Kasich, who said voters are just now getting to know him after his Ohio win, said Romney's statement means, "Mitt's nervous."

"Am I disappointed? Not really. Nothing surprises me in terms of what's happening in the election," he said.

Trump and Romney

Trump reacted to Romney at a campaign rally in Salt Lake City Friday by asking a crowd of supporters whether they were sure Romney is a Mormon.

The candidate's son, Donald Trump Jr., said in an interview that his father's comment was not intended to question Romney's faith but whether he is living up to the values of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

"It doesn't seem like what Mitt's been doing is very much in line with those characteristics and those traits that I know of Utahns, of the LDS community," Trump Jr. said, calling Romney "incredibly disingenuous."

Trump Jr. acknowledged Utah will be a tough state for his father to win.

"I'm hoping for a good showing. I don't think it's certainly one of our stronger states," he said, citing his father's coming across "as very brash, and in a place like this, I can understand that doesn't go over as well."

Trump himself has warned last week in a CNN interview there would be "riots" if his Republican opponents are able to force a floor fight at the convention to determine the nomination.

His son said that would reinforce his father's message to voters, that the system is rigged against them, and "would destroy, certainly the RNC (Republican National Committee) if not U.S. politics as we know it."

I'm telling you, Trump's negatives are going to be his downfall and the downfall of the Republicans this election if he's the nominee.

Trump may appeal to a plurality of Republicans but not the majority of the party let alone the majority of the electorate.

Steven Crowder hits the nail on the head in a recent video:

[Brian Baldwin]

Right now I'd rather see Trump win IF and only IF he appoints Cruz to the supreme court. Cruz would actually be more helpful there than as president at this point in time. I'm pretty sure Trump will likely place Christie as AG and Palin as SoS and a good chance he gives Surgeon General to Carson. Cruz would be wasted as a VP IMO, but if he can't get the main nomination then I'd love to see him on the bench. I have a feeling they'll hijack the convention though and place Romney on the ticket. Barring that, I don't doubt they'd get someone to run third party to take votes from Trump in order to give Hillary the win. (lesser of two evils in the GOPe minds.)

In my thinking, Trump is a one term pres at best. So 4 years of a loudmouth, and a net gain of a Constitutional Conservative on the supreme court doesn't sound too bad right now. I doubt it would matter if Cruz did win the nomination either. This war has only begun. The chasm between left and right is widening at an astounding rate now, and I doubt even Ronald Reagan himself could salvage it. I'm pretty sure the only reason Nancy Reagan died when she did is so she could go tell Reagan what we did to his legacy and now there's gonna be hell to pay. In all seriousness though the very telling thing for me isn't that Donald Trump is a serious contender for President but that Bernie Sanders is. That should scare the pajeebies out of everyone.

[Ryan Ruck]

There's something funny going on with Trump and Russia that is largely getting overshadowed by all the other dumb shit Trump does/says.

Trump, in the past, has voiced support for Putin and been in denial about Putin having members of the Russian press killed off but now stuff like this is coming out...

'Putin's Rasputin' Endorses Trump

March 1, 2016

Aleksandr Dugin, otherwise known as “Putin's Rasputin," has endorsed Donald Trump for president of the United States.

Aleksandr Dugin is a key theorist of the ideological underpinnings of Putinism. His "Eurasianism" seeks to provide a basis for uniting not only Russia, but all the world's anti freedom forces, under Moscow's banner against the West.

What Russia needs, says Dugin, is a "genuine, true, radically revolutionary and consistent, fascist fascism." On the other hand, "Liberalism, is an absolute evil. . . .Only a global crusade against the U.S., the West, globalization, and their political-ideological expression, liberalism, is capable of becoming an adequate response. . . . The American empire should be destroyed."

Now, in an article entitled "Trump is the Real America" published on the website of the Kremlin-backed Katehon think tank, Dugin says "Trump...is a sensation. … The Republicans, as well as the Democrats, are the representatives of the US ruling elites. It is a special part of society, being quite far from the ordinary Americans. …The American elite is not even American. Thus, there is Donald Trump, who is tough, rough, says what he thinks, rude, emotional and, apparently, candid. The fact that he is a billionaire doesn't matter. He is different. He is an extremely successful ordinary American. …

"Maybe, that redhead rude Yankee from the saloon will get back to the problems inside the country and will leave humanity alone, which is tired of American hegemony and its destructive policy of chaos, bloody rivers and color revolutions? Trump is a leader…

"Vote for Trump, and see what will happen."

Dugin's endorsement of Trump is noteworthy, particularly in view of the fact that he has been given the role or organizing Eurasianist fifth columns supporting the Putin regime in western countries. In May 2014, as Putin was ramping up his war against Ukraine, Dugin held a secret meeting in Vienna with leaders of most of the ultranationalist parties of continental Europe, ranging from small fringe groups to the powerful French National Front, to organize support for the invasion. This subversive effort has been bearing fruit, as evidenced by the fact, reported by the February 19 Moscow Times that French National Front leader Marine Le Pen, who received $13 million from the Kremlin in 2014, is currently negotiating with Putin for another $30 million (equivalent in France to about $200 million in U.S. political terms) to finance future support.

Trump and Marine Le Pen offer similar political profiles, combining xenophobic demagoguery, anti-Atlanticism, socialistic and protectionist policies, and open admiration and apologetics for Vladimir Putin. The founder of the French National Front, Jean-Marie Le Pen, recently endorsed Trump. Marine Le Pen supported the Russian takeover of Crimea, and is being openly bankrolled out of Moscow. Trump supports Russia's actions in Syria, and has reportedly had many questionable business dealings with elements of Russian organized crime.

Trump has been praised by Putin, and rather than reject such praise, has returned it, calling the Russian dictator "a real leader" and dismissing his many murders of political opponents at home and abroad as "unproven." Last month, a British court found that Putin had ordered the murder by Polonium poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko, a former FSB agent who revealed that the 1999 apartment buildings bombings in Moscow that Putin used to seize dictatorial power were the work of Putin's FSB itself. Apparently the billionaire is fine with that too.

Now Trump has been warmly endorsed by the Kremlin's foremost ideological champion against America.

And I just saw this, at a time when we should be bolstering and building NATO (as opposed to the UN!) in the face of growing Russian belligerence...

Trump Questions Need For NATO, Outlines Noninterventionist Foreign Policy

March 21, 2016

Donald Trump outlined an unabashadly noninterventionist approach to world affairs Monday, telling The Washington Post's editorial board that he questions the need for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which has formed the backbone of Western security policies since the Cold War.

The meeting at The Post covered a range of issues, including media libel laws, violence at his rallies, climate change, the NATO and the U.S. presence in Asia.

Speaking ahead of a major address on foreign policy later Monday in front of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Trump said he advocates an aggressive U.S. posture in the world with a light footprint. In spite of unrest abroad, especially in the Middle East, Trump said the United States must look inward and steer its resources toward rebuilding domestic infrastructure.

"I do think it’s a different world today, and I don’t think we should be nation-building anymore," Trump said. "I think it’s proven not to work, and we have a different country than we did then. We have $19 trillion in debt. We’re sitting, probably, on a bubble. And it’s a bubble that if it breaks, it’s going to be very nasty. I just think we have to rebuild our country."

He added: "I watched as we built schools in Iraq and they’re blown up. We build another one, we get blown up. We rebuild it three times and yet we can’t build a school in Brooklyn. We have no money for education because we can’t build in our own country. At what point do you say, 'Hey, we have to take care of ourselves?' So, I know the outer world exists and I’ll be very cognizant of that. But at the same time, our country is disintegrating, large sections of it, especially the inner cities."

For the first time, Trump also listed members of a team chaired by Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) that is counseling him on foreign affairs and helping to shape his policies: Keith Kellogg, Carter Page, George Papadopoulos, Walid Phares and Joseph E. Schmitz.

Trump praised George P. Shultz, who served as President Ronald Reagan's top diplomat, and was harshly critical of current secretary of state John F. Kerry. He questioned the United States’ continued involvement in NATO and, on the subject of Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, said America’s allies are "not doing anything."

"Ukraine is a country that affects us far less than it affects other countries in NATO, and yet we’re doing all of the lifting," Trump said. "They’re not doing anything. And I say: 'Why is it that Germany’s not dealing with NATO on Ukraine? Why is it that other countries that are in the vicinity of Ukraine, why aren’t they dealing? Why are we always the one that’s leading, potentially the third world war with Russia.' "

Trump said that U.S. involvement in NATO may need to be significantly diminished in the coming years, breaking with nearly seven decades of consensus in Washington. "We certainly can’t afford to do this anymore," Trump said, adding later, "NATO is costing us a fortune, and yes, we’re protecting Europe with NATO, but we’re spending a lot of money."

Trump sounded a similar note in discussing the U.S. presence in the Pacific. He questioned the value of massive military investments in Asia and wondered aloud whether the United States still was capable of being an effective peacekeeping force there.

“South Korea is very rich, great industrial country, and yet we’re not reimbursed fairly for what we do," Trump said. "We’re constantly sending our ships, sending our planes, doing our war games — we’re reimbursed a fraction of what this is all costing."

Asked whether the United States benefits from its involvement in the region, Trump replied, "Personally, I don’t think so." He added, "I think we were a very powerful, very wealthy country, and we are a poor country now. We’re a debtor nation."

Trump cast China as a leading economic and geopolitical rival and said the United States should toughen its trade alliances to better compete.

"China has got unbelievable ambitions," Trump said. "China feels very invincible. We have rebuilt China. They have drained so much money out of our country that they’ve rebuilt China. Without us, you wouldn’t see the airports and the roadways and the bridges. The George Washington Bridge [in New York], that’s like a trinket compared to the bridges that they build in China. We don’t build anymore. We had our day."

Trump began the hour-long meeting by pulling out a list of some of his foreign policy advisers.

"Walid Phares, who you probably know. PhD, adviser to the House of Representatives. He’s a counterterrorism expert," Trump said. "Carter Page, PhD. George Papadopoulos. He’s an oil and energy consultant. Excellent guy. The honorable Joe Schmitz, [was] inspector general at the Department of Defense. General Keith Kellogg. And I have quite a few more. But that’s a group of some of the people that we are dealing with. We have many other people in different aspects of what we do. But that’s a pretty representative group."

Trump said he plans to share more names in the coming days.

Kellogg, a former Army lieutenant general, is an executive vice president at CACI International, a Virginia-based intelligence and information technology consulting firm with clients around the world. He has experience in national defense and homeland security issues and worked as chief operating officer for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad following the invasion of Iraq.

Schmitz served as inspector general at the Defense Department during the early years of President George W. Bush’s administration and has worked for Blackwater Worldwide. In a brief phone call Monday, Schmitz confirmed that he is working for the Trump campaign and said that he has been involved for the past month. He said he frequently confers with Sam Clovis, one of Trump's top policy advisers, and that there has been a series of conference calls and briefings in recent weeks.

Papadopoulos directs an international energy center at the London Center of International Law Practice. He previously advised the presidential campaign of Ben Carson and worked as a research fellow at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington.

Phares has an academic background, teaching at the National Defense University and Daniel Morgan Academy in Washington, and has advised members of Congress and appeared as a television analyst discussing terrorism and the Middle East.

Page, a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and now the managing partner of Global Energy Capital, is a longtime energy industry executive who rose through the ranks at Merrill Lynch around the world before founding his current firm. He previously was a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, where he focused on the Caspian Sea region and the economic development in former Soviet states, according to his company biography and documents from his appearances at panels over the past decade.

Trump’s meeting with The Post was on the record. An audio recording was shared by the editorial board, and a full transcript will be posted later Monday. Trump was accompanied to the meeting, which took place at The Post's new headquarters, by his campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, and spokeswoman, Hope Hicks.

As I've said before, I've got a lot of reasons to not like or vote for Trump but there's something about this that makes me especially uneasy.

With this and his pro-Putin stances, it certainly makes one wonder if he's going to be more flexible with Putin than Obama?

[vector7]

Traitor Lindsey Graham says it’s better to make Hillary president over Trump

March 21, 2016 | John Binder

The GOP establishment is losing their cool pondering a Donald Trump presidency.

In an interview on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” establishment-type Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., admitted that he would prefer to lose the election to Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton than to have Trump as president.

“We can lose an election, but I don’t want us to lose our heart and soul,” said Graham. “If we nominate Donald Trump, and he carries the banner of the Republican Party, given who he is and what he said about immigrants, about Muslims and young women, we will not just lose the election. We have lost the heart and soul of the conservative movement. That’s what is at stake.”

Graham claimed that it would take “generations to overcome a Trump candidacy.”

The remarks come after BizPac Review reported last week that top conservatives are working with the establishment wing of the Republican Party to prop up a potential third party candidate to take down Trump.

Watch Graham’s entire interview here:



http://www.bizpacreview.com/2016/03/...r-trump-319420

[Ryan Ruck]

Lindsey Graham is a fucking toolbag.

If they (he and the rest of the establishment) really wanted to stop Captain Clownshoes they would have rallied behind Cruz far earlier in the game, instead of talking about how he should be murdered, once they saw where this all was headed.

[Brian Baldwin]

Idiots like Graham never think that they are vulnerable to outsiders. It's supposed to be their club after all. After Iowa, Cruz should have been their pick. Instead they line up behind Jeb. So basically we've had, McCain, Romney, and Jeb Bush as the establishment's choices. I picture them right now holding their breath until they can get their way. They deserve Donald Trump. Hell they've earned him.

[Ryan Ruck]

Well, even though he's out of the race, Rubio is still helping throw the election to Trump thanks to early voting in Arizona. As of right now he's got 16%.

And Kasich siphoning off another 10%.