Tag: Donald Trump

Reporters Actually Like Covering Trump

Buck Banks

It is fun to be here. Even the reporters, to whose perfidy Trump devotes a substantial chunk of his speech, are having fun — you never know what Trump is going to say, and you get a lot of airtime … Despite all the negativity and fear, the energy in this room does not feel dark and aggressive and threatening. It doesn’t feel like a powder keg about to blow, a lynch mob about to rampage. It feels joyous.

— Molly Ball in the Atlantic

Lies, Damned Lies and Trump/Carson Lies

Buck Banks

When Hillary Clinton lies, she generally does so with legalistic care. You get the sense that she knows what the exact truth is. But you also get the sense that she knows she’ll suffer if she provides the whole truth, so she shades the facts with interpretations and embellishments that flatter or favor her. … Trump’s and Carson’s lies, on the other hand, come from the land of bullshit, that wonderful place where loose facts and wishful thinking mate to produce a quotable soundbite. They’re not trying to deceive you in a Clintonian fashion. They’re indifferent to the truth, content to say the first things that pop into their brains.

— Politico

Trump’s Actual Support Overall Is About 8%

Jon Ponder

8%

Actual percentage of voters in the U.S. electorate who support Donald Trump, according to Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight.com. “Right now, [Trump] has 25 to 30% of the vote in polls among the roughly 25% of Americans who identify as Republican,” Silver writes. “That’s something like 6 to 8 percent of the electorate overall, or about the same share of people who think the Apollo moon landings were faked.”

The GOP Created the Monster that Is Trump

Buck Banks

Republican elites are panicky about the durable dominance of Trump (and to a lesser extent Ben Carson) in the presidential race. They are right to worry, but I don’t feel much sympathy. Trump is a problem of their own creation. … Trump gets ever more base in his bigotry — and yet, with few and intermittent exceptions, rival candidates, party leaders and GOP lawmakers decline to call him out. So he continues to rise, benefiting from tacit acceptance of his intolerance. … For months — years, really — Republicans have averted their gaze from Trump’s attacks on women, Hispanics and immigrants. Now the racism becomes more overt — and still, he goes unchallenged.

— Dana Millbank, writing in the Washington Post.

Americans Trust Clinton More than Trump to Deal Effectively with Terrorism

Buck Banks

50% to 42%

Margin by which more Americans say they trust Hillary Clinton to handle the threat of terrorism than Donald Trump, who leads the Republican field and responded to the Paris terrorist attacks by calling for heightened surveillance of mosques and redoubling his opposition to allowing Syrian refugees to settle in the U.S., a new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds.

Trump Tops GOP Field Nationally Four Months in a Row

Buck Banks

4

Number of consecutive months Donald Trump has led the GOP primary field. A new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds Donald Trump leading the GOP field with 32%, followed by Ben Carson at 22%, Marco Rubio at 11%, Ted Cruz at 8% and Jeb Bush at 6%. No other candidate has more than 4% nationally. In the Democratic race, Hillary Clinton leads with 60%, followed by Bernie Sanders at 34% and Martin O’Malley at 3%.

A new Fox News poll also shows Trump expanding his lead to 28%, followed by Carson by 18%, Cruz at 14%, Rubio at 14% and Bush at 5%.

Trump: U.S. May ‘Have to’ Shut Down Mosques

Buck Banks

Nobody wants to say this and nobody wants to shut down religious institutions or anything, but you know, you understand it. A lot of people understand it. We’re going to have no choice.

— Leading GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, saying the United States will have “absolutely no choice” but to close down some mosques where “some bad things are happening,” Politico reports.