My friends are worried about me. They insist something is not right and suggest prayer, counseling, even rehab. “Take a break,” they urge. “Get away for a few days and clear your head.”
They are wise and kind, and it would be foolish to dismiss their concerns. Truth be told, there are moments when I doubt myself. Am I making a huge mistake? Am I losing my mind?
Perhaps I am. My friends say that’s the only possible explanation for the fact that I might support Donald Trump for president.
The insanity defense is all that’s left now that the smart set has declared that it’s immoral and indecent to even think about voting for Trump. OK, call me immoral and indecent as well as crazy, because I’m thinking about it.
It’s been a long road to get here. When Trump’s name first popped up, I joked about moving to Canada. When he launched his campaign, I cursed him, certain he was going to create a circus just when Republicans finally had a strong field of candidates.
Political parties, not voters, choose their presidential nominees, a Republican convention rules member told CNBC, a day after GOP front-runner Donald Trump rolled up more big primary victories.
“The media has created the perception that the voters choose the nomination. That’s the conflict here,” Curly Haugland, an unbound GOP delegate from North Dakota, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Wednesday. He even questioned why primaries and caucuses are held.
Haugland is one of 112 Republican delegates who are not required to cast their support for any one candidate because their states and territories don’t hold primaries or caucuses.
Even with Trump’s huge projected delegate haul in four state primaries Tuesday, the odds are increasing the billionaire businessman may not ultimately get the 1,237 delegates needed to claim the GOP nomination before the convention.
The billionaire has already spent or pledged $13 million to help Hillary Clinton and other Democrats this year.
The liberal New York financier George Soros, whose effort to unseat President George W. Bush in 2004 shattered political spending records, is returning to big-ticket giving after an 11-year hiatus.
Soros has spent or committed more than $13 million to support Hillary Clinton and other Democrats this election cycle, already more than his total disclosed spending in the last two presidential elections combined.
Soros has expressed alarm over the past few months at the candidacies of Republicans Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. In a statement last week about a new group he’s funding to increase voting by Latinos and immigrants in the election, he again mentioned the two candidates by name.
“The intense anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim rhetoric that has been fueled by the Republican primary is deeply offensive,” Soros said in the statement. “There should be consequences for the outrageous statements and proposals that we’ve regularly heard from candidates Trump and Cruz.
This is no ordinary Presidential election. We are experiencing something as close to a revolution as might be possible in America. The outrageous things some of the Presidential candidates are saying have captured the public’s rage, anger, and hate combined with an overwhelming outcry to dismantle the status quo in Washington D.C. At the same time, we are witnessing the evolution of political parties and a redefinition of terms like “liberal” and “conservative.” Donald Scarinci, PolitickerNJRead more
Clinton backers who tout their “realism” need to get real about how she’ll handle the shitstorm coming from Trump
STEVE ALMOND
There are many nauseating aspects of the new reality TV series, “America Picks a Prez,” which airs around the clock on every single channel on earth: the cynical, open-air conspiracy between our Fourth Estate and Donald “Ratings Viagra” Trump. Ted Cruz uttering the word “prayerfully“ while not exploding into a cloud of synthetic piety. Caucasian patriots heroically exercising their right to punch people of color.
Among these, let me nominate one more: listening to Hillary partisans explain to those of us who support Bernie Sanders just how naive we are. Only Hillary, we are told, has a real shot at winning in November. She’s the only one with a realistic grasp of how Washington works, whose moderate (and modest) policy aims might,realistically, be enacted. It often sounds as if Clinton’s central pitch to voters isn’t that she has a moral vision for the country, but that she owns the franchise on realism.
Bernie, meanwhile, is just a sweet-shouting rube whose quarter-century as a congressman and senator has somehow failed to instill in him an appreciation for the twin plagues of grift and gridlock.
For us benighted hippies, the standard counter-argument at this point is that our man understands all too well the magnitude of Washington’s dysfunction, which is why he’s calling for a political revolution: to obliterate the most heinous aspects of the status quo, starting with corporate-sponsored elections.
“That’s not going to happen,” Hillary Clinton said in Wednesday night’s debate, brushing off a question about what she’ll do if she is charged with federal crimes. “Goodness!” she exclaimed, treating the subject as unworthy of discussion, “I’m not even answering that question.”
This was the Democratic presidential front-runner’s effort to evade a very pointed and relevant question from debate moderator Jorge Ramos: “Would you drop out of the race if you get indicted?”
He had to ask it twice even to get the courtesy of an evasion.
Clinton’s choice of tactic on this issue, to slough it off rather than treat it seriously, is perhaps to be expected, but it plays voters for suckers. Even if an indictment is not imminent or doesn’t seem probable, the fact that she disobeyed the laws and regulations that applied to her during her time in the Obama administration is not even up for debate.
STATEMENT REGARDING TRUMP CAMPAIGN CHICAGO RALLY POSTPONEMENT
Mr. Trump just arrived in Chicago and after meeting with law enforcement has determined that for the safety of all of the tens of thousands of people that have gathered in and around the arena, tonight’s rally will be postponed to another date.
Thank you very much for your attendance and please go in peace
Pictured: The moment a protester tries to rush Trump on stage in Ohio – leaving him visibly shaken – just minutes after he brushed off last night’s Chicago violence as a ‘planned attack by thugs’
Trump took to the stand in Dayton, Ohio, the day after Chicago rally meltdown where bloody brawls broke out inside the University of Illinois at Chicago Pavilion
He addressed yesterday’s violence as a ‘planned attack’ caused by ‘professional people’ and blamed Obama for dividing America
Crowd member tried to rush the stage as four Secret Service agents rushed to Trump’s aid
Man has been named as Thomas Dimassimo – he’s now in custody and will be facing assault charges
At the Chicago rally two police officers were injured and five people were arrested – more than 10,000 people had officially RSVP’d to protest there
Trump says protesters were ‘Bernie’s people’ but Sanders denounced the Donald as a ‘pathological liar’
By ALEXANDRA GENOVA FOR DAILYMAIL.COM and DAVID MARTOSKO, U.S POLITICAL EDITOR IN CHICAGO
PUBLISHED: 17:23 EST, 12 March 2016 | UPDATED: 21:00 EST, 12 March 2016
Donald Trump addressed crowds in Ohio Saturday to condemn last night’s bloody scenes as ‘disgusting’, saying it would have been a ‘tremendous rally’ but descended into violence because of what he called a ‘planned attack’ by ‘professional wiseguys’.
But his speech was disturbed after one crowd member tried to rush the stage and threw an object -it is unclear what – causing four Secret Service personnel to quickly leap to the stage in his aid.
The Republican candidate looked visibly rattled as the offending person was escorted out.
Trump did not explain what had happened, but said: ‘Thank you for the warning. I was ready for ’em, but it’s much better if the cops do it, don’t we agree?’
The entertainment industry’s rare conservatives (and independents) are lining up behind Trump, the real estate mogul considered one of their own as a former TV star and producer.
At an undisclosed location somewhere in the Los Angeles area, about 200 members of Hollywood’s private group of conservative Republicans — known as “Friends of Abe” — gathered to watch Thursday’s GOP debatebetween Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and John Kasich. It was an invite-only list that included everyone from recognized actors to rank-and-file studio workers.
They watched the candidates spar over radical Islamic terrorists, Social Security’s future and illegal immigration. But, it was a moment early in the debate that turned heads: Trump blasted the entertainment industry over Disney employees who allegedly lost their jobs due to abuse of the guest-worker program.
One industry worker clapped and looked around to see if others were equally enthusiastic. Some were, including one invitee sporting a hat emblazoned with “TRUMP.”
It was a snapshot of what could be the entertainment industry’s rare conservatives (and independents) lining up behind Trump, the real estate mogul considered one of their own as a former TV star and producer.
From the moment he entered national politics, Rubio was feted as the GOP’s next big thing. So much for that!
GARY LEGUM
Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears. I come not to praise Marco Rubio – dear God, never, ever that – but to bury him. And then to salt the earth in the hope that he will never come back.
The Rubio campaign is on its last legs, stumbling dehydrated and desperate through the Florida Everglades like the heroine in the second act of a Carl Hiaasen novel, trying to stay one step ahead of the bloodhounds who want nothing more than to drag the Florida senator into the swamp and tear his throat out, or at least convince him to join with Ted Cruz on some sort of unity ticket to stop Donald Trump, which might be an even worse fate.
The establishment is telling Rubio his dropping out would be for the good of the Republican Party. Which is why he’ll probably at least consider it. He is a party man through and through, and since he gave up his Senate seat to run for president, he’s going to want to come out of this cluster-screw of a campaign with something to show for it besides the humiliation of a crushing defeat in his home state’s primary on Tuesday. Run for vice-president on a ticket with Cruz, the party will whisper in his ear, and when he gets destroyed in the general election in the fall and the country suffers through four years of socialism under a Democrat, you’ll be perfectly positioned to be the 2020 nominee. What’s not to like about that scenario? And why wouldn’t you trust a GOP establishment that has displayed such a sharp political acumen this cycle that it just about handed its nomination over to a jar of orange marmalade in a bad wig before it knew what hit it?
Rubio might not be smart, but he’s a politician who can read poll numbers. It must have sunk in by now that his “Baghdad Bob” primary strategy (claim victory even when you came in a distant third/the American military is a block away and roaring towards you unopposed) has been a galactic failure. With even his financial backersand editorial page cheerleaders telling him it’s time, he must feel like Butch Coolidge getting the order to take his ass down in the fifth.
Washington (CNN)Donald Trump said Wednesday that he thinks “Islam hates us,” drawing little distinction between the religion and radical Islamic terrorism.
“I think Islam hates us,” Trump told CNN’s Anderson Cooper, deploring the “tremendous hatred” that he said partly defined the religion. He maintained the war was against radical Islam, but said, “it’s very hard to define. It’s very hard to separate. Because you don’t know who’s who.”
READ: Donald Trump: ‘It’s over’ if I win Ohio and Florida
Asked if the hate was “in Islam itself,” Trump would only say that was for the media to figure out.
“You’re gonna have to figure that out, OK?” he told Cooper. “We have to be very vigilant. We have to be very careful. And we can’t allow people coming into this country who have this hatred of the United States.
“For anyone that deems Trump supporters as racist, nihilists or uneducated hillbillies. This article was written by an attorney living in Washington that served in the US Army for nine years, including two deployments. “Tatianna Saracino
“Consider the following. Our country is going broke, half its working-age population isn’t even looking for work, faces the real threat of massive Islamic terrorist attack and has a government incapable of doing even basic functions. Meanwhile, conservatives act like cutting Planned Parenthood funding or stopping gays from getting marriage licenses are the great issues of the day and then have the gumption to call Donald Trump a clown. It would be downright funny if it wasn’t so sad and the situation so serious.”
By John C. Kluge
March 5, 2016 | 3:56pm
Let me say up front that I am a lifelong Republican and conservative. I have never voted for a Democrat in my life and have voted in every presidential and midterm election since 1988. I have never in my life considered myself anything but a conservative. I am pained to admit that the conservative media and many conservatives’ reaction to Donald Trump has caused me to no longer consider myself part of the movement.
I would suggest to you that if you have lost people like me, and I am not alone, you might want to reconsider your reaction to Donald Trump. Let me explain why.
First, I spent the last 20 years watching the conservative media in Washington endorse and urge me to vote for one candidate after another who made a mockery of conservative principles and values. Everyone talks about how thankful we are for the Citizens United decision but seems to have forgotten how we were urged to vote for the co-author of the law that the decision overturned.
They inch wormed closer as a group, but they still aren’t ready. A month ago, one their number, speaking on condition of anonymity, told PolitickerNJ that he couldn’t back Trump. Max Pizarro, PolitickerNJ Read more
Foreign diplomats voicing alarm to U.S. officials about Trump
WASHINGTON | BY MARK HOSENBALL, ARSHAD MOHAMMED AND MATT SPETALNICK
Foreign diplomats are expressing alarm to U.S. government officials about what they say are inflammatory and insulting public statements by Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump, according to senior U.S. officials.
Officials from Europe, the Middle East, Latin America and Asia have complained in recent private conversations, mostly about the xenophobic nature of Trump’s statements, said three U.S. officials, who all declined to be identified.
“As the (Trump) rhetoric has continued, and in some cases amped up, so, too, have concerns by certain leaders around the world,” said one of the officials.
At the core of Donald Trump’s political success this year are the grievances of a sizable and now vocal block of disaffected voters, many of them white and working-class, and a Republican Party that has sought and benefited from their support while giving them almost nothing tangible in return.
The New York businessman’s position as the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination has plunged the party into a contentious debate and raised some of the most troubling questions about its future since the Watergate scandal in 1974 or Barry Goldwater’s landslide defeat a decade earlier.
Campaigning on Friday, Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.), who is seeking to deny Trump the nomination, put the threat in apocalyptic terms. If Trump becomes the nominee, he said, “He will split the Republican Party and it will be the end of the modern conservative movement.”
Trump and so-called Trumpism represent an amalgam of long-festering economic, cultural and racial dissatisfaction among a swath of left-out Americans who do not fit easily into the ideological pigeonholes of red and blue, right and left.
Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump said Saturday that rival Marco Rubio should drop out of the race.
“I think it’s time for Marco to clean the deck. I really do. And I say that respectfully,” Trump said at a press conference in Florida.
Trump held the press conference after four states held primaries or caucuses earlier in the day. Trump was projected to win Kentucky and Louisiana, while Cruz won Kansas and Maine.
“I think Marco Rubio had a very, very bad night,” Trump said. “And personally I’d call on him to drop out of the race. I think it’s time now that he drop out of the race. I really think so. I think it’s probably time.”
Trump’s call echoes that of another presidential candidate, Ted Cruz, who has urged the non-Trump candidates to drop out so that a coalition can form against the Republican frontrunner. Rubio, a Florida senator, has only won one state — Minnesota — while Cruz has also notched victories in Texas, Oklahoma, Iowa, and Alaska.
“You got to be able to win. He has not been able to win. And I think that it’s time that he drops out,” Trump said.
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