The Press Conference Republican Voters Have Wanted to See for Years

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May 31, 2016

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH:  Well, that's what you've all wanted.  That's what everybody's been asking for I don't know how long.  That was a press conference.  That was a press conference.  That was the kind of press conference Republicans voters have been dying to see for who knows how many years. 

Greetings, my friends.  Great to have you here, and great to be back.  A short busy broadcast week.  Rush Limbaugh back at it.  It is 800-282-2882 if you want to be on the program; the email address,ElRushbo@eibnet.com. 

Say what you will about Donald Trump -- how many years have people been begging for a Republican to just once take on the media the way Trump did? All the way from the premise, to the details, to the motivation, he took 'em all on. And the piece de resistance is some journalist said, "Mr. Trump, Mr. Trump --" and, by the way, these people in the media, they may hate the guy, but they cannot stop covering himThere are a couple things in the Trump Stack today that are gonna force me -- not force -- have, I should say, inspired me to do another in-depth explanation of why all this is happening. Why Trump is happening. Why Trump is working. Trump's relationship with the media, what is sustaining it. How it is that Trump is succeeding in getting a bunch of people that literally hate him to help him out.  It's fascinating. 

Folks, it's a fascinating case study in politics and sociology, psychology, pop culturism, post whatever modernism, it's an amazing thing, and I'm gonna do my best to explain it because it's fascinating to me.  It's literally fascinating to me.  

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Now, back to this Trump press conference, if you didn't see it, if you didn't hear it, we're working on audio sound bites now. We're an editor short today so we'll get them up as quickly as we can.  We only got one guy editing.  When we have two guys editing it would only take half the time it's gonna take now. 

But, anyway, the piece de resistance -- you thought I lost my place, but I didn't, because I never do.  Near the end of it a frustrated journalist (paraphrasing), "Mr. Trump, Mr. Trump, Mr. Trump, is it gonna be this way, are you gonna be attacking us after you become president?" 

"Yes, it is.  Because you are the most dishonest people, political press the most dishonest people I know. You know it and I know it.  The press is dishonest, but the political press is especially dishonest." 

And then Jim Acosta, I think it was, CNN (paraphrasing), "Mr. Trump, Mr. Trump, do you object to scrutiny?  You seem like you didn't even like scrutiny, but you're seeking the office of president of the United States, how do you think --"

"I don't mind scrutiny.  What I don't like is lies.  You can scrutinize me all day long but you set up false premises. You state things about me that are not true. Then you run stories on that. That's why I'm out here trying to correct the record."  And then Trump says, "By the way, I've seen you, you're among the worst. You're at ABC, right?  You're the worst. You're a sleaze."  And I'm thinking the people at home watching this -- (laughing) 'cause, folks, in the age of internet trolling, manners are out the window.  It's a waste of time asking for manners here.  Because, remember, in a war the aggressor sets the rules and I'm guaranteeing you that Trump thinks the media are the aggressors here. 

He was asked even about that, "Are you gonna be critical even of Republicans trying to unify --" "If they attack me, yes. Somebody comes after me, maybe not as much if they're Republican, but I'm still gonna go after 'em, of course I am."  But the media, the media totally wants Hillary Clinton to win, but they're so conflicted.  The cable networks, since this thing ended, have been devoted to the press conference and how Trump was mean to them and how Trump insulted them and how Trump criticized them. And they're now doing all these introspective panel discussions on what does it all mean and what kind of deranged guy is Trump. 

Even the New York Times. Folks, the New York Times has a story today.  This is, in fact, the foundation of the great dissertation I have coming up to explain much of what's going on, analyze it.  Well, not so much explain, I don't know how many questions there are, but I'm going to try to unravel why some of this is happening, what it really means for those of you who are just watching it casually. 

But the New York Times headline:  "Television Networks Struggle to Provide Equal Airtime in the Era of Trump."  Oh, yes.  Five pages this baby prints out.  And the New York Times has another story:  "Hillary Clinton Struggles to Find Footing in Unusual Race." This is also related. 

They've got two stories here on how the Times is actually apologizing to its readers for being unable to balance coverage in favor of Hillary.  If Trump were any other Republican, they would have practically destroyed him by now and they'd be worried about rehabbing Hillary's image and building her up. But she's so unexciting, she's so dull, she's so scandal ridden, they've got nothing to work with.  All they can do is try to destroy Trump, but they don't know how.  Because they didn't make Trump, they can't destroy Trump.

And everybody dealing with Trump -- including Bill Kristol and everybody else trying to take him out -- is making the big mistake of trying to plug Trump into the age-old political handbook.  Trump's not part of that.  You don't deal with Trump in the standard, political handbook way on policy and issues and things like that.  That's not the way to separate Trump supporters from Trump.  It isn't gonna work. 

"Television Networks Struggle to Provide Equal Airtime in the Era of Trump."  Let me tell you what the upshot of this story is.  I'm not gonna read the whole five pages to you because I don't need to.  I can make the complex understandable.  I can tell you in one paragraph what the New York Times takes five pages to tell you.  Ready?  The upshot of this is Trump's constant access to media and Trump's unpredictability is frustrating Hillary and the Drive-Bys' capacity to shape and control the narrative. 

They are unable to write the daily soap opera script as they have become accustomed to being able to do.  They're unable to do it because Trump is so unpredictable. They'll write a script, they'll write a narrative for the day and Trump will go out and do an appearance and blow it to smithereens, at the same time blowing their plans. Then Hillary is frustrating, 'cause there's nothing to cover.  All there is with Hillary is emails and shady financial dealings and Mao pantsuits and basic incompetence and boredom and a total lack of excitement. 

So there's no way that they can write a narrative every day that destroys Trump and builds up Hillary because... See, the first mistake in the New York Times is worrying about granting Trump access.  They're not "granting" Trump access.  Trump is commanding access.  Trump is taking access.  Trump is dictating the daily narrative, as this press conference today on his donations to the vets and to various groups illustrate.  What got all this started... Don't forget.

This all started when the Washington Post published an article last week right before the Memorial Day weekend -- which is a typical Drive-By Media trick.  Whenever they want to destroy anybody or take a hit on somebody, they do it at a time when even if there is a response, nobody sees it, or very few.  So the Washington Post published an article last week right before the Memorial Day weekend started in which they claimed, essentially, that Trump was lying about having raised $6 million in that fundraiser he held in lieu of going to the GOP debate before the Hawkeye Cauci. 

And it turns out, lo and behold, that the Washington Post was right after all.  Trump didn't raise $6 million for veterans groups, he only raised $5.6 million.  Only raised $5.6 million.  And, by the way, by the time he gets through, it will be over $6 million.  Money is still coming in.  Our buddy Jim Kallstrom of the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation, indicated to a very disappointed CNN that Trump donated $1.1 million to them last week or last couple of weeks ago.  But, anyway, they started out with this.

They make some factual misrepresentations that Trump is lying about all the money he's raised for the vets.  They claim that Trump claims he's raised $6 million or whatever it is and they go out and they're doing what they can to try to convince people that Trump's lying about it, that he hasn't raised that much -- and, even worse, that if he has raised that much, he hasn't passed it on. He's holding on to it. He hasn't donated it all.  All of these insinuations and allegations were the Washington Post piece. 

And Trump felt the need to correct the record today and did so in his own inimitable way, which basically attacked the media for dishonesty and corruption.  And the thing is he stood there for, what, 45 minutes? I mean, he didn't hide, didn't run away from it, answered every question. He just took them on.  They have no complaint.  They can never say Trump avoids them. They can never say Trump does this or that to try to evade any kind of scrutiny, even though he got that question about scrutiny. 

But the New York Times... This is actually kind of funny, I think, because they're worried that Trump's constant access to the media and his unpredictability is frustrating Hillary.  Hillary doesn't know how to deal with this. Hillary doesn't know how to counterprogram Trump, if you will.  Hillary doesn't know how to go out and write her own narrative of the day.  Hillary doesn't know whether to focus on herself or to criticize Trump or to go after Crazy Bernie. She doesn't know what to do.  And the press doesn't, either.

The New York Times is admitting here that their capacity, their ability to shape and control the narrative -- the soap opera script -- every day, is almost impossible because of Trump.  And so the Times, in this story, is struggling to figure out some kind of Fairness Doctrine solution to the problem.  I kid you not.  They're trying to find a way they can balance this, because Trump is generating so much more coverage.  They're not starting it.  The press isn't.  Trump's just out doing what he's doing, and they are compelled to cover it. 

They cannot not cover it.  But there is no... Hillary Clinton calls a press conference; it's no big deal.  There isn't a mad dash by countless members of the media to get there and see what she's gonna say.  There is no comparative excitement, unpredictability, drama, entertainment, you name it. There isn't any comparison.  Now, not to say Trump doesn't have any competition, because he does.  That's a crucial factor in all of this, too.  Now, the Times here, they're hand-wringing. They're worried. They're complaining. (paraphrased)

"It's not fair! It's not fair! We can't control the media 'cause of Trump."  The problem is -- and they don't want to say this, but the problem is -- that Trump, no matter what anybody thinks of him, is interesting.  And Trump, no matter what anybody thinks of him, is funny.  Trump, no matter what anybody thinks of him, is different.  Trump, no matter what anybody thinks of him, is drama.  Trump, no matter what anybody thinks of him, is unpredictable.  All of that means, you can't miss it. 

You can't roll the dice and not cover it, hoping that it isn't anything.  You have to be there, as the media, and you have to hope that he's gonna attack you as the media.  But Hillary, on the other hand? Dull, totally colorless, mistake prone, scandal ridden, because Hillary doesn't have any natural talents. Hillary doesn't have any natural connection to people. Hillary doesn't have any charisma, magnetism. All of that has to be manufactured by the media. 

Hillary needs to be hyper-scripted while, at the same time, have limited availability in a campaign that's about spontaneity and entertainment.  This has become a pop culture campaign.  Like it or not, that's what it is.  And that's why so many in the political world are having trouble understanding it, dealing with it, being involved with it, defining it, what have you.  But Hillary Clinton has this problem.  The more she's seen, the more she's heard, the worse she does.  This is not arguable.

This has been proven over and over again in polling data alone.  The less she speaks, the less she's seen, the higher her numbers go.  But with Trump out there all the time, spontaneous and entertaining, the press has to do something to keep her in the game.  So they hyper-script her appearances, they hyper-script the coverage, all with limited availability because Hillary has to maintain some restraint.  Otherwise, it's a potential total implosion.  

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH:  The New York Times, also from over the weekend: "Rise of Donald Trump Tracks Growing Debate Over Global Fascism." There's even a photo of Hitler and a photo of Mussolini in the New York Times article.  They never call Trump a fascist.  They just claim that Trump's campaign and that Trump's rise to popularity is a sign of a growing global fascism.  Do you think that story would ever be written about Barack Obama and any other governing world leaders today? 

Here you have a guy who's nothing more than a candidate right now, and the New York Times, over the weekend -- the Memorial Day weekend -- with a story: "Rise of Donald Trump Tracks Growing Debate Over Global Fascism."  Never mind that both Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton's positions are far more in line with the German National Socialism approach than Trump could even dream of being.

Forget, you know, that the Nazis were National Socialists.  National Socialists!  I mean, we're closer to having that currently in the White House than anywhere on the campaign trail right now on the Republican side.  And now we find out that Hillary Clinton's campaign set up this veterans against Trump protest to begin with. We find this out after the fact.  The media could have found out before it happened, but, no, no, no, no!

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Let me get started with these Trump sound bites.  We opened the program talking about this presser, and it was a press conference for the ages, and it's one of these press conferences that many people on the Republican side have been desperately hoping to see someday, sometime, with a Republican under assault judged to be an unfair assault, finally being ripped into by the Republican, the media being ripped into here for the way they're going about their business.  So this is at Trump Tower.  Major Garrett, CBS, chief White House correspondent, "How personally involved were you in deciding which military organizations were to be recipients and how much they got and how did you prioritize 'em?"

TRUMP:  I wasn't too involved in picking the organizations other than I gave a million dollars to the Marine law enforcement, Marine, they are fabulous people.  They honored me last year.  I knew them.  I was going to give it to three companies or three groups, and we couldn't vet them quickly, and so I gave it to the Marine.  And if you look at that number, the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation is a fabulous group, and I didn't have to go through a big vetting process with them, because I was going to split the million-dollar check up among three or four different groups, and in the end I just didn't want to go through the process of having to vet all those different groups.

RUSH:  Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation, Jim Kallstrom, the former head of the New York office of the FBI is now one of the executive directors of MC-LEF, and as you know, this program is involved deep well MC-LEF, as is the Rush Revere Time Travel Adventures with Exceptional Americans book series, Two If By Tea.  We are sponsors of the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation. 

If you recall, the Harry Reid letter that he wrote to the former CEO of Clear Channel demanding that I be made to apologize and maybe forced to resign over unfairly calling a veteran a phony soldier.  We auctioned that Harry Reid letter, and I agreed to match whatever it raised.  And $4 million was donated to the Marine Corps Law, 4.2, actually.  It sold on eBay for $2.1 million, and I had agreed to match it, so it was $4.2 million to MC-LEF.  And I was at the event that Trump was honored.  He was sitting, for what it's worth, two tables over.  But I was at that event, just to attest that it happened. 

I want you to hear, Kallstrom was on CNN today.  Carol Costello was hoping, hoping that Kallstrom would somehow contradict what Trump had said.  She said, "Mr. Trump pledged $1 million of his own money to one organization.  Was it yours?"

KALLSTROM:  We did get a million dollars from Donald.  He's been a big supporter of veterans groups for close to four decades now, Carol.  I knew for some time that we were gonna be the recipient.  I didn't know the actual amount.  But I guess it was about a week ago.  Don't hold me to that.  Some week ago, ten days ago, and we actually received money.

RUSH:  Yeah.  And I was there.  I think it was like two Aprils ago.  Maybe it's in March.  But it's always at the Waldorf-Astoria in the grand ballroom there.  And Trump was the award winner and the recipient that year.  One more question from Carol Costello and answer.

COSTELLO:  So I was just wondering if you found out in January shortly after the event if your organization would be a beneficiary?

KALLSTROM:  Well, there were hints in that direction, and he's always been a big supporter of us.  We give 98% of the money donated, which is a very high number, that we're very proud of.  We have one part-time employee.  And basically all the money goes to the children of those who've lost their life in the line of duty.

RUSH:  Yeah, Marines and sometimes they expand it to Army and Air Force, sometimes Secret Service, Oklahoma City bombing, all of the protective agencies that were housed in the Murrah building, MC-LEF went into action then.  But they provide scholarships to the children of Marines killed in action.  I was practically there in the living room when this foundation was formed in Rockville Centre out on Long Island.  And they are a great bunch of people.  They do have a 98% pass-through, and I know who the one employee is, and he's one of the greatest guys in the world. 

But what difference does it -- Trump does his veterans deal on the night of the Hawkeye Cauci primary debate that was on Fox, you know, Trump skipped it, did a veterans fundraiser.  So here's Carol Costello (imitating Costello), "Well, well, Mr. Kallstrom, did Trump, did he decide way back in January the organization that gets --"  What they're trying to say is that they have forced Trump into donating money that he never intended to donate, he was just saying that he was going to. That's their premise, and they're trying to catch Trump in all that, he knows it, and it's fed up with it. And that set the tone for the press conference.  Back to the next press conference bite.  This is Major Garrett following up.  "Don't you believe you should be accountable to the people?"

TRUMP:  I'm totally accountable, but I didn't want to have credit for it.  We have given to groups that are unbelievable groups, and honestly, I wish you could hear the phone calls and see the letters, they are so happy.  And I'm happy to do it.  I didn't want the credit for it, but it was very unfair that the press treated us so badly.  Go ahead.

MAJOR GARRETT:  To follow up on that, you keep calling us the dishonest press, the disgusting press.

TRUMP:  Generally speaking, that's a hundred percent true.  Go ahead.

MAJOR GARRETT:  I disagree with that, sir.  And if I can ask you this question, it seems as though you're resistant to scrutiny, the kind of scrutiny that comes with running for president of the United States.

TRUMP:  Excuse me.  I've watched you on television.  You're a real beauty.  When I raise money for the veterans, and it's a massive amount of money, find out how much Hillary Clinton's given to the veterans.  Nothing.

RUSH:  That's exactly right, because Hillary Clinton doesn't give anybody anything.  With Hillary Clinton it's all incoming.  There's no outgoing, there's no outflow with Hillary Clinton.  But Trump is right.  Okay, so you think I deserve scrutiny.  Where is the scrutiny of Bernie Sanders?  Where's the scrutiny of Hillary Clinton?  Where is one half of the interest in this whole email scandal of hers that you're showing in whether I've donated to the vets or not? 

Look, everybody knows the game here.  This is why people love what Trump is doing here.  He's not standing up there taking it.  He's firing right back at 'em. He's letting them know he knows it's an unlevel playing field, he's gonna treat them accordingly.  

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Back to the audio sound bites.  We still have some to go here on the Trump press conference that concluded -- knowingly, by the way. The message was apparently received.  The Trump press conference, 45 minutes in length, ended 15 minutes before the EIB Network began today.  Right on schedule.  So now we are up to number 25.  This is... I told you about this.  It's where he calls a reporter a sleaze.  He's talking with... It's a reporter Q&A.  It's an unidentified female reporter and ABC correspondent Tom Llamas.  Tom Llamas is who Trump calls a sleaze.

TRUMP:  It was the biggest crowd you could have had, because it was all cordoned off, and they weren't allowed to have any more people than they had.  So instead of saying, "Trump made a speech in front of a packed crowd," they said, "Trump was disappointed," because I didn't have millions of people going from Jefferson to Washington.  I mean, give me a break.  It's just honestly... It's dishonest reporting.  Yeah, go ahead.

REPORTER:  How are veterans to believe that you reported...? 

TRUMP:  I'm not looking for credit.  But what I don't want is when I raise millions of dollars, to have people say -- like this sleazy guy right over here from ABC. He's a sleaze in my book. 

LLAMAS: Why am I...?

TRUMP: You're a sleaze, because you know the facts, and you know the facts well.

RUSH:  Why am I a sleaze?  It's a badge of honor, by the way.  Don't be hurt for the media.  It's a badge of honor to be called a name by Trump.  I guarantee you what's his name, Tom Llamas, at the bars and restaurants he's always gonna be The Sleaze now.  His wife will call him The Sleaze, if it's married, I don't know.  But his colleagues, everybody will call him, "Hey, Sleaze, how you doing tonight, buddy?"  It's a badge of honor to have your name called by Trump and be made a nickname. 

What Trump is talking about here, he had a big rally in Washington where there were a bunch of bikers, there was a bikers rally for Memorial Day for vets, and Trump is claiming that he would have had just as big a crowd as Martin Luther King had, but they cordoned the area off and they wouldn't let nearly as many people get in that wanted in, and the press didn't report that.  Instead, the press reported that Trump was disappointed at the small crowd.  And that's what that sound bite was all about. 

(paraphrasing Trump)  "I wasn't disappointed.  They wouldn't let the people in that wanted to get there.  Could have been big, could have been as big as Martin Luther King."  Unidentified female reporter:  "You yourself recently reacted against what you called a spoiler independent candidate in this race.  Yet earlier in the primaries you didn't rule out an independent run of your own."

TRUMP:  Kristol's the one, he's the last one.  Don't forget, he said Trump will never run.  The guy's not a smart person.  He said, Donald Trump will never run.  Remember?  You remember?  I actually blame you.  Why do you put this guy on television?  I see him on the different shows.  He's got no credibility.  Let me tell you.  These people are losers.

CAMERON:  When you refer to some Republicans and conservatives as losers --

TRUMP:  No, I didn't say that.  I said Bill Kristol is a loser.  And I'll tell you why.  He has called every single move -- take a look, on me.  "He's going to lose this state."  I win in a landslide.  Wait a minute, Carl.  I didn't say everybody.  Many.  But I didn't say everybody.

RUSH:  Carl Cameron, what he wanted to ask here, "How you gonna unify the Republican Party when you're out there referring to some Republicans, conservatives as losers?"  "I'm just talking about Kristol, that's all, Kristol's been wrong in everything he said about me." 

The post-press coverage of this, one little bite here from CNN.  This is At This Hour, John Berman, Kate Bolduan, they had this exchange over the Trump press conference and the money he donated.  The point they're saying is the money to be donated isn't the story.  So they're announcing they're changing the narrative on this.

BERMAN:  The headline at the end of this event wasn't the money he raised or how many groups got it, but it was just how petulant and peevish he was, saying the press should be ashamed of itself for asking questions like, "How much did you raise and where did it go?"  I want to go to CNN's --

BOLDUAN:  On a factual basis, those are pretty simple questions you should answer when you're raising money, when you're raising money for charity.

RUSH:  Right.  Seriously, how many questions do the Clintons get about the two billion in their Crime Family Foundation and all those donations from foreign investors and whoever they may be?  No, no, no, no, no.  Do not do that.  I'm not defending Trump by saying, "Hey, Trump did it, but why don't you go get the Clintons who did it."  That's not what I'm saying.  I'm saying these people have two different sets of rules.  They've got two different sets of standards for their scrutiny. 

And the upshot of it is that the Clintons don't get any.  Whatever they say goes on with their foundation, that's what's reported, and whatever they say happens at Clinton Global Initiative, that's what they say and that's what gets reported.  But the Clintons aren't under any scrutiny.  The Clintons won't believe that.  The Clintons believe they're under more scrutiny than anybody's ever been, but because of the way they do things they invite that scrutiny. 

So, anyway, this was John Berman at CNN announcing they're changing the narrative here.  The narrative is no longer what Trump donated and to whom, but what a peevish, small-minded guy he is to be treating us in the press this way.  Now, back to the press conference.  Reporter:  "Is this what it's gonna be like covering you, if you're president?  Are we gonna be having this kind of confrontation in the pressroom at the White House?"

TRUMP:  Yeah, it is gonna be like this, David.  If the press writes false stories, like they did with this, because, you know, half of you are amazed that I raised all of this money.  If the press writes false stories like they did, then we have to read probably libelous stories, or certainly close, in the newspapers, and the people know the stories are false, I'm gonna continue to attack the press.  Look, I find the press to be extremely dishonest.  I find the political press to be unbelievably dishonest. I will say that. Okay, thank you all very much.  Thank you.  Thank you very much.

RUSH:  Thank you, thank you, you dishonest liars, thank you, thank you for showing up. 

END TRANSCRIPT

Trump’s turn right started a long time ago

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New York Post
Opinion

By Ron Kessler

May 8, 2016 | 8:01pm

Donald TrumpPhoto: AP

The conventional wisdom is that Donald Trump only became a conservative the day he announced his candidacy for the presidency. But like all conventional wisdom about Trump, it’s wrong.

After President Obama took office, Trump told me almost eight years ago the new president was a “disaster” whose economic policies were going to ruin the country.

Trump wasn’t ready to be quoted then. But almost five years ago, in a book that has been largely overlooked during the campaign, Trump laid out exactly what’s wrong with Obama’s vision and why conservative policies are needed to turn around the country’s pathetically slow growth under his leadership.

In “Time to Get Tough: Making America #1 Again,” which came out in December 2011, Trump presented a detailed economic critique that any fiscal conservative would applaud.

The reason “this country is an economic disaster right now,” he wrote, “is because Barack Obama doesn’t understand how wealth is created — and how the federal government can destroy it.”

Liberals “scratch their heads and wonder why businesses don’t want to hire,” Trump wrote. The answer: “Companies know Obama is anti-business, and his government-run health-care takeover has created a major disincentive to hire new workers.”

Raising taxes, as Obama wants to do, merely forces business owners to “lay off employees they can no longer afford,” Trump noted. “It also drives up prices, encourages businessmen and women to move their businesses (and their jobs) to other countries that have far lower tax rates and regulatory costs, and sends people scrambling for tax shelters.”

Conservative though he is, Trump knows how to appeal to most Americans. As Norma Foerderer, Trump’s top aide for 26 years, told me, there are two Donald Trumps: the “outrageous” one portrayed on television and the real one only insiders know.

The private Donald Trump, on the other hand, is “the dearest, most thoughtful, most loyal, most caring man,” Foerderer said.

Illustrating the difference, last summer, the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, which represents 3.2 million business owners, announced its members would be boycotting all of Trump’s properties following his statements on illegal immigrants and his vow to build a wall across the entire Mexican border. But last September, Trump met privately with Javier Palomarez, the chamber’s CEO.

“There were no bombastic statements of any sorts,” CNN quoted Palomarez as saying admiringly. “It’s kind of interesting, the dichotomy between the private Donald Trump and the public Donald Trump. He listened a lot more than he spoke.”

Far from being a bigot, Trump insisted on admitting blacks and Jews to Mar-a-Lago when several other Palm Beach clubs wouldn’t. When I first got to know Trump while conducting research with my wife Pam for my 1999 book “The Season: Inside Palm Beach and America’s Richest Society,” on the way down to Palm Beach on his plane, Trump imitated the nasal, constricted tones of Palm Beach’s blue-blood Old Guard condemning his club for not discriminating.

If Trump is intemperate, as the conventional wisdom has it, his employees haven’t seen it. Rather, as an employer, Trump is both demanding and loyal, according to Anthony P. “Tony” Senecal, who for 20 years served as personal butler to Trump and is now the Mar-a-Lago historian.

Some years ago, when Senecal had to undergo surgery to implant a stent, Trump called him the day before.

“So when do you go under the knife?” Trump asked.

“Tomorrow,” said Senecal.

“Well, if you don’t make it, don’t worry about it. You’ve had a good life,” Trump said, and then added: “Listen, I don’t want you going back to your place. You come and recuperate at Mar-a-Lago.”

“The guy is fairer than hell,” says Gary J. Giulietti, a Trump friend who handles a portion of his insurance as president of Lockton Cos., the largest privately held insurance brokerage company in the world. “He wants the best for his properties, he wants a competitive price. But he treats everyone with respect.”

The conventional wisdom that Trump is a carnival act will be proven wrong once again when he moves into the White House. Donald already has a winter White House — Mar-a-Lago — picked out.

Ronald Kessler is the author of “The First Family Detail: Secret Service Agents Reveal the Hidden Lives of the Presidents.”

Trump’s Mission To Make America Great Again: How It’s Been Done, How He Can Do It Again

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by JAMES P. PINKERTON13 May 201651

A key point to remember about American Greatness is that you can see it: It’s tangible.

If America is rich, if its middle class is prosperous, you can tell. If our military is strong, you can see that, too. If we’re winning our wars and destroying our enemies, we know it—and so does the foe. If we are doing cool things, that’s visible, too: It’s our test pilots breaking the sound-barrier, it’s our scientists developing the polio vaccine, it’s our astronauts walking on the moon, it’s our entrepreneurs debuting the next world-changing smart-device or launching the next reusable rocket. Again, the common thread in American Greatness is reality, technology—that is, tangibility.

As a real-estate developer, Donald Trump has been building tangibles all his career. The building, and all its parts, either stands tall and looks good, or it doesn’t. The same holds true for a golf course, or a resort—or even a beauty pageant.

And now, in politics, Trump brings his emphasis on the real, and the tangible, with him as he enters the political arena. When he says, “Build a wall on the US-Mexican border,” everyone can visualize it. Whether one loves the idea—as do a majority of Americans, and an overwhelming majority of Republicans—or hates the idea, it’s a real thing in the mind. When he says he would“bomb the [bleep]” out of ISIS, that’s a real thing, too. Tangible.

No, Trump has never been about intangibles—theories. In business, he made real things, and now, in politics, he describes the real things he will do in office. Real things, we might add, that are in service to America.

Sophisticated observers are noticing that Trump is truly something different. Peggy Noonan, in the April 28 edition of The Wall Street Journal, wrote an important piece, “Simple Patriotism Trumps Ideology.” As she put it, “Mr. Trump’s appeal is simple: What Trump supporters believe, what they perceive as they watch him, is that he is on America’s side.”

Continuing, Noonan added that Trump’s blunt and concrete appeal marks a huge change from the style of his two predecessors, who have dealt mostly in abstractions. Whereas Trump, as we have seen, traffics in tangibles, George W. Bush and Barack Obama traded in intangibles. This lack of specificity, Noonan continued—combined with alien, avant-garde ideology—was disturbing to ordinary Americans:

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They believe that for 16 years Presidents Bush and Obama were largely about ideologies. They seemed not so much on America’s side as on the side of abstract notions about justice and the needs of the world. Mr. Obama’s ideological notions are leftist, and indeed he is a hero of the international left. He is about international climate-change agreements, and leftist views of gender, race and income equality. Mr. Bush’s White House was driven by a different ideology—neoconservatism, democratizing, nation building, defeating evil in the world, privatizing Social Security.

In other words, too much ideology, not enough practicality—not enough tangibility.

But that’s not Trump’s problem. We don’t hear him saying things like,“Islam is peace,” or “diversity is our strength.” Instead, he is emphasizing real things, like building fences, or bringing jobs home, or destroying ISIS.

A further indicator that Trump is really something different came on March 26, when he identified, in a New York Timesinterview, his two favorite eras in America history. In describing both eras, he was heavy on the tangibles.

The first era was the turn of the 20th century, back when Theodore Roosevelt was our 26th president. As Trump said of that time, “If you really look at it, it was the turn of the [20th] century, that’s when we were a great, when we were really starting to go robust.” Continuing, he added—combining metaphor, literalism, and a dollop of his own pro-business thinking—we were “building that machine, that machine was really based on entrepreneurship.”

The second of those Trump-favorite eras was the middle of the last century: “I would say . . . during the 1940s . . .the late ‘40s and ‘50s . . . we were not pushed around, we were respected by everybody, we had just won a war.” The presidents back then, of course, were Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and Dwight Eisenhower; all of them, to use Trumpian language, were definitely winners.

Perhaps it’s just a coincidence, but popular culture today is reinforcing Trump. The new movie, Captain America: Civil War, opened last weekend to a colossal domestic box office gross of $179 million.

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Okay, but even if the title is Captain America—a character that debuted in the wartime year of 1941—maybe it’s only a movie, and nothing more. Yet Wired magazine, for one, thinks that the success of the film is, in fact, a legitimate indicator.

In an article, “How Captain America Became Marvel’s Big-Screen Secret Weapon,” writer Brian Raftery observes, “Just a few years ago, it would have been hard to imagine a big-name Marvel character less destined for movie-stardom than Captain America.” That is, “In a comic book universe full of coolly vengeful mutants and relatably angsty teen heroes, the World War II-era do-gooder has always seemed almost defiantly square—a throwback to the firm-jaw, firm-handshake era in which he was created.” And yet, continues Raftery, Captain America’s “earnestness and discipline” and “patriotically charged uniform” have struck a chord with today’s audiences. And so, the author concludes, Captain America is now “the most valuable soldier in the Marvel big-screen universe.”

Yes, the country wants something different from what we’ve had. The polls showing huge majorities of Americans declaring that we are on the wrong track are proof of that.

So yeah, it’s about time we had a president who focused on real things—real deliverables for people—and not theories. On May 12, Peter Morici, an economist at the University of Maryland, outlined the failure of the status quo, using cutting words:

Politicians at all levels—obsessed with political correctness, victimhood and identity politics—have dumped billions into failing public schools and universities, financed an increasing array of entitlements instead of adequate public investments in R&D and the infrastructure needed to support a technology-based economy, sowed divisions and suspicion among ethnic groups, between men and women, and the successful and those deserving a genuine hand up.

Continuing in this vein, Morici added:

High schools churn out students unprepared for college or vocational programs, and many university graduates lack the critical thinking and technical skills needed to prosper in a technology-intensive workplace.

To Morici, and all the rest of us, the results of this systemic failure are, well, tangible:

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Since 2000, annual GDP growth has slowed to 1.7 percent, new business startups and the percentage of adults working are down, and average annual family incomes have slipped $4000.

This is America, 2016; the country, as we know, is currently a mess—and the root of the problem is bad leadership.

If Hillary Clinton thinks that she can run and win on a promise of bringing, in effect, a third term for Obama, well, with apologies to Judas Priest, she’s got another thing coming. Indeed, she faces, one might say, a rendezvous with destiny this November, a rendezvous with a cold and harsh reality. Very cold, very harsh.

Then, beginning in 2017, it will be President Trump’s opportunity to build his vision for America. And it’s a safe bet that, in the spirit of the great 20th century presidents whom Trump admires, that vision will be tangible—tangible as all get-out.

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Session: Election '16 between Nationalism and Globalism

Sen. Sessions: Election offers a simple choice

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Sen. Jeff Sessions and Donald Trump in Madison, Ala., on Feb. 28, 2016.(Photo: John Bazemore, AP)

For the first time in a long time, this November will give Americans a clear choice on perhaps the most important issue facing our country and our civilization: whether we remain a nation-state that serves its own people, or whether we slide irrevocably toward a soulless globalism that treats humans as interchangeable widgets in the world market.

In Donald Trump, we have a forceful advocate for America. Trump has said that our trade, immigration and foreign policies must be changed to protect the interest of American workers and our nation.

In Hillary Clinton, we have a committed globalist. Clinton was an ardent supporter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership — which surrenders American sovereignty to an international union of 12 countries — and has clearly left the door wide open to enacting the pact if elected.

There is only one sure way to defeat the TPP, and that is to defeat Hillary Clinton.

Meanwhile, Clinton’s immigration platform is the most radical in our history. Freezing deportations. Ending detentions. Halting enforcement. She’d expand President Obama’s illegal amnesty decree, effectively creating open borders.

USA TODAY

The Trump train: Our view

Clinton’s extremist proposal economically targets our poor African-American and Hispanic communities whose wages and job prospects are being steadily eroded by the huge influx of new foreign workers.

Yet some Republicans persist in saying that they don’t know whether Mr. Trump is a “real conservative.” This charge misleads in two ways. First: Mr. Trump’s cautious approach to mass migration, transnational trade commissions and nation-building are, by definition, conservative.

Second, the divide between Trump and Clinton on the role of government could not be more stark. Consider just a few of the things President Trump would do after taking the oath: repeal Obamacare; nominate constitutionalist justices; replace Obama’s radical Cabinet appointments; reduce taxes and regulations; produce more American energy; rein in the out-of-control EPA; and cancel Obama’s illegal amnesties.

The choice is a simple one: Do we want a country that serves our people, or not?

Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., was the first senator to endorse Donald Trump.

COMMENTS

Exclusive: Trump surges in support, almost even with Clinton in national U.S. poll

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www.reuters.com

Donald Trump's support has surged and he is now running nearly even with Democrat Hillary Clinton among likely U.S. voters, a dramatic turnaround since he became the Republican party's presumptive presidential nominee, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Wednesday.

The results could signal a close fight between the two likely White House rivals as Americans make up their minds ahead of the Nov. 8 election to succeed Democratic President Barack Obama. As recently as last week, Clinton led Trump by around 13 points in the poll.

In the most recent survey, 41 percent of likely voters supported Clinton, the Democratic front-runner, and 40 percent backed Trump, with 19 percent not decided on either yet, according to the online poll of 1,289 people conducted from Friday to Tuesday. The poll had a credibility interval of about 3 percentage points.

The results reflect a big increase in support for Trump since he knocked out U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and Ohio Governor John Kasich last week to become the last Republican in the White House race.

There was no immediate comment from the Clinton or Trump campaigns.

Clinton, who has all but clinched the Democratic nomination over rival Bernie Sanders, has mostly led Trump in the head-to-head poll this year. Trump briefly matched her support a few times in 2016, most recently in mid-March, after U.S. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, a favorite of the Republican establishment, dropped out.

Presidential elections are not decided by the national popular vote but by the Electoral College, which is based on state-by-state results.

Opinions are likely to change over the next six months as American voters become inundated with hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign advertising, highly publicized debates and a pair of party conventions.

Trump and Clinton both have much to prove to the American electorate. The Reuters/Ipsos poll found earlier this month that a majority of voters did not trust either candidate with key presidential responsibilities such as managing the U.S. economy, handling the role of U.S. commander in chief, and conducting themselves according to a “high moral standard.”

The candidates' choice of running mates could also be important. Voters surveyed in the poll said they would be more likely to support Clinton if her choice for vice president was a liberal, while Trump would help his chances if he picked someone experienced in politics and someone who is “consistently” conservative.

Trump’s rise in the polls coincides with his attempt to take over the reins of the Republican Party from leaders who clashed with him during a bruising and blustery primary fight.

U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan, the country's top elected Republican, said he would not immediately endorse Trump, and party elders including former Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush and the last two presidential nominees, Mitt Romney and John McCain, said they would not attend the Republican convention in Cleveland in July.

(Reporting by Chris Kahn; Editing by Richard Valdmanis and Peter Cooney)

COMMENTS

SIMPLY THE WORST=> Obama is First President Ever to Not See Single Year of 3% GDP

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www.thegatewaypundit.com

Obama’s just like Reagan… Except when he isn’t.

The rate of real economic growth is the single greatest determinate of both America’s strength as a nation and the well-being of the American people.

On Thursday the Commerce Department announced that the US economy expanded at the slowest pace in two years. GDP growth rose at an anemic 0.5% rate after a paltry 1.4% fourth quarter advance.

Ronald Reagan brought annual real GDP growth of 3.5%.Barack Obama will be lucky to average a 1.55% GDP growth rate.

This ranks Obama as the fourth worst presidency on record.Obama will be the only president in history that did not deliver a single year of 3.0% growth rate.

Barack Obama will be the only U.S. president in history that did not delivera single year of 3.0%+ economic growth.

According to Louis Woodhill, if the economy continues to perform below 2.67% GDP growth rate this year, President Barack Obama will leave office with the fourth worst economic record in US history.

Assuming 2.67% RGDP growth for 2016, Obama will leave office having produced an average of 1.55% growth. This would place his presidency fourth from the bottom of the list of 39*, above only those of Herbert Hoover (-5.65%), Andrew Johnson (-0.70%) and Theodore Roosevelt (1.41%)

COMMENTS

Donald Trump most primary votes in GOP history

Donald Trump could amass most primary votes in GOP history

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nypost.com

Donald Trump will likely wind up winning the most primary votes of any GOP presidential candidate in modern history, the author of the influentialSmart Politics blog told The Post on Wednesday.

After convincing victories in Tuesday’s primaries in five East Coast states, Trump has roughly 10.1 million votes, about 200,000 more than Mitt Romney got during the entire 2012 primary campaign.

And with the primaries ahead — including in populous states such as California, New Jersey and Indiana — the former “Apprentice” ­reality-TV star should easily break the modern record of 10.8 million held by George W. Bush in 2000, according to blogger Eric Ostermeier, a political-science professor at the University of Minnesota.

“In an election cycle with a high Republican turnout, his numbers are rising, even more so now that there’s only three candidates” left in the GOP race, he said.

The reasons include a combination of Trump’s celebrity, media exposure and higher-than-usual interest in his over-the-top candidacy, Ostermeier said.

The numbers-crunching blogger uses figures compiled by Congressional Quarterly and differ from those compiled by other groups, some of which say Bush got as many as 12 million votes in the 2000 primaries.

But even if that were the case, Trump would still likely shatter the record.

The next big-state primaries include Indiana on May 3 and both California and New Jersey on June 7.

Meanwhile Wednesday night, Trump held a rally in Indianapolis, where former Indiana University basketball coach Bobby Knight called him “the most prepared man in history to step in as president of the United States.”

COMMENTS

Trump Hires Reagan, Ford Delegate Manager to Stave Off Establishment Convention Hopes

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The Associated Press

by MATTHEW BOYLE28 Mar 2016Washington, DC117

In the hopes of staving off the GOP establishment’s efforts to block his nomination at a contested convention, GOP frontrunner Donald Trump hired a new delegate manager who has successfully led similar convention battles over the past several decades.

Trump has hired delegate manager Paul Manafort to lead his GOP convention efforts and shore up enough delegates to ensure he wins the nomination on the first ballot at the GOP presidential convention in Cleveland in July. Manafort is well known in GOP circles because in 1976, on behalf of then President Gerald Ford—who ascended to the presidency without being elected because of Richard Nixon’s Watergate-driven resignation—Manafort successfully fended off future president Ronald Reagan in a delegate battle that may end up looking a lot like 2016. Thanks to Manafort’s work for Ford that year, the incumbent president barely held on to the party’s nomination, beating back Reagan’s challenge.

But four years later, when Reagan faced a similar but less complicated delegate battle in 1980, he hired Manafort to lead his successful delegate fight at the convention that year.

Reagan, of course, would go on to win the nomination and then win the White House back for Republicans from the failing Carter.

Manafort also played a leading role in the 1988 GOP convention, which nominated then future President George H.W. Bush, and in the 1996 convention which nominated then Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole as the GOP presidential nominee. Dole would go on to lose the general election to incumbent Democratic President Bill Clinton.

“Yes,” Trump told the New York Times when asked to confirm the news he hired Manafort. “It is true.”

Trump’s hire of Manafort, the Times’ Maggie Haberman and Alex Burns wrote, “is a sign that Mr. Trump is intensifying his focus on delegate wrangling as his opponents mount a tenacious effort to deny him the 1,237 delegates he would need to secure the Republican nomination.”

Haberman and Burns wrote:

Under those circumstances, Mr. Trump’s opponents hope they can wrest that prize away from him in a contested convention.
Bringing Mr. Manafort on board may shore up Mr. Trump’s operation in an area where his opponents currently see him as vulnerable. In an alarming tactical setback for Mr. Trump, the Wall Street Journal reported last week that he may harvest fewer delegates from his primary win in Louisiana than Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), whose campaign has aggressively picked off delegates who are uncommitted or apportioned to candidates no longer in the race. Too many missteps of that kind could force Mr. Trump unnecessarily into a Cleveland floor fight.

Similar reports in recent days have cropped up in Missouri, South Dakota, South Carolina, and many other states where Trump has dominated with the public but still infuriates party insiders. The addition of Manafort to his team decreases the likelihood that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Ohio Gov. John Kasich, any other campaign who has since suspended, or the party itself can pull off major delegate shenanigans in Cleveland.

Trump has been aiming to pivot to the general election sooner rather than later, in large part because his only two remaining competitors—Cruz and Kasich—can’t realistically beat him without a contested convention. Cruz would have to reach nearly 90 percent of the party’s remaining outstanding delegates to get there, a virtually insurmountable feat, while it’s already mathematically impossible for Kasich to get there.

Anti-Trump forces inside the GOP have hung all their hopes on a contested convention, and Trump’s Manafort hire could stave off those efforts. A fierce battle lay ahead over the next several days heading into next Tuesday’s Wisconsin GOP primary where different polls show the candidates bunched up competing closely within the margin of error, some with Cruz in front and some with Trump in front. A Trump win in the Badger State would devastate the so-called “Never Trump” group, whereas a Trump loss to Cruz would embolden his critics.

Then two weeks later it is Trump’s home state of New York, where the real estate magnate is expected to dominate. After that, the rest of the eastern seaboard—Rhode Island, Connecticut, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and Maryland—votes before the end of April. In May, Indiana, Nebraska, West Virginia, Oregon, and Washington State hold nominating contests before the final votes are cast before the July convention on June 7 in California, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, and South Dakota.

Theoretically, Trump could wrap everything up before or on June 7—but it’s a tough road ahead. There are also hundreds of delegates who are entirely uncommitted walking into the convention whom Trump could get to vote for him—something Manafort is undoubtedly already working on achieving.

“The move [hiring Manafort] is freighted with political symbolism: After the 1980 election, Mr. Manafort was among the young-gun Reagan operatives who founded one of Washington’s best-known political consulting and lobbying shops,” Haberman and Burns wrote in the Times. “His principal business partners were Roger J. Stone Jr., a longtime Trump confidant who frequently advocates for the campaign on television, and Charles R. Black Jr. Mr. Kasich unveiled Mr. Black as an adviser earlier this month, in an announcement intended to convey his readiness for a contested convention – effectively making Mr. Black and Mr. Manafort, allies dating back to the 1970s, direct competitors in the 2016 race.”

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1980 Ronald Reagan Can't Win General Election Against Carter Experts Say

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Politico: The Reagan’s Were ‘Insurgents’ Against the GOP Establishment

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AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews

by BREITBART NEWS6 Mar 2016927

Matt Latimer writes in Politico:

Nancy Reagan never would have considered herself part of the Washington “establishment.” For one thing, she hadn’t lived in this town in decades. More importantly, she had a constituency of one: her beloved husband. And if the DC establishment didn’t like it (they often didn’t) that was too damn bad.

Still it’s hard to miss the symbolism of Mrs. Reagan’s passing—she died Sunday at age 94—coinciding with the final collapse of the Republican ruling class as GOP voters over the weekend anointed one of two antiestablishment outsiders, Donald Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), as their likely new standard bearer. With her death and the eclipsing of the GOP establishment, there is a palpable sense that something in the Grand Old Party—to which Nancy and Ronald Reagan devoted decades of their lives—has been lost forever.

There is more than a little irony to that outcome. Through the last decades of her life, Nancy Reagan tenderly kept her husband’s legacy alive, and his presidency became the altar upon which every GOP aspirant to the White House pledged fealty. But it didn’t play out that way when she actually was in the White House.

Amid the many well-deserved tributes to the former First Lady, it does no injustice to Mrs. Reagan’s memory to recall that she was an unpopular figure in Washington. To the contrary such an acknowledgment puts her accomplishments in proper perspective.

Indeed, the Reagans arrived in Washington in the winter of 1981 as insurgents themselves. A number of Republican leaders had worked against Reagan’s nomination, preferring predictable moderates like George H. W. Bush or seasoned political tacticians such as Senators Howard Baker or Bob Dole. The California governor was an outspoken outsider who preferred a good horse, cowboy hats, and denim to the meaningless blather of DC salons. He said impolitic things like Washington was the problem. Many, including the man he defeated, Jimmy Carter, intimated that he might start a nuclear war.

You can read the rest of the story here.

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