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Trump: GOP has a ‘death wish’ By Daniel Strauss - 06/09/11 04:19 PM ET Donald Trump on Thursday accused the Republican party of having a “death wish” because of Rep. Paul Ryan’s proposed reforms to Medicare. Trump made the statement in a new video released Thursday in which the real estate mogul explained why he was not running for president. He mentioned Ryan’s (R-Wis.) budget, which includes the Medicare proposal, as a reason. “It almost seems as though the Republicans have a death wish,” Trump said. “When they tamper with Medicare —which happens to be a good program, but there’s...

Another vacant season winds to an end for the grand hotel formerly known as Trump. The yellow and blue tower, one of the few modern structures in Broward County designed by a world renown architect, should have been the throbbing heart of the renaissance on Fort Lauderdale Beach. It’s empty. As empty, perhaps, as the Trump brand that was used to lure investors into a condominium-hotel scheme that would collapse before a single guest signed the register. The architectural flourishes of the 24-story building, with great portholes looking out over A1A, were meant to evoke the old fashioned “elegance and...

In 1988 when George H. W. Bush was running for president, one of the derisive comments on him grew into something called the Wimp Factor. Newsweek wanted to know if he were tough enough for the job. Now this is an atrocious thing to even infer about a man with an impeccable record of heroism and government service. Not only was the man shot down in the Pacific but also survived a long ordeal on the open seas in a lifeboat. The whole issue seems incredulous until one looks at it from another angle. Newsweek was saying that Republicans were...

Dear Mr. Trump: A few weeks ago you made a sincere request of our president to release the long form of his birth certificate. You were ridiculed by many of your close friends and the media, but you stuck to your guns like a true American who knows he is right and won the respect of many people on this forum and throughout the country. Miraculously the president posted a long form birth certificate on the government’s web page for all to see, and you went before the media, graciously congratulated him on his new found candor and transparency. You...

Potential 2012 presidential candidate Donald Trump took a departure from his sideshow topics Wednesday to tout his past remarks on Osama bin Laden, weigh in on the budget negotiations and assess his chances of moving into the White House. During his second trip to the early presidential contest state of New Hampshire, the famously confident Trump said he appeared on television "a few weeks ago" saying bin Laden was in Pakistan but that "nobody else picked it up." "You tell them (Pakistan) we're not giving you any money unless you hand over to us Osama bin Laden and everybody looked...

OK whatever you might think about Trump, (and I'll confess to rather supporting what he's said) You have to admit things were a lot more interesting, while he was making waves.

We're thinking the odds that Trump never runs for the GOP nomination are fading. A new poll of Republican primary voters from PPP found that his support plunged from 26% last time to just 8% this time. That puts him tied with Ron Paul. Perhaps "winning" the birth certificate fight has undermined his only point of relevance in this race, although his negatives have always been sky high, with a huge block of voters always saying they'd never support him. Trump is one point ahead of Michelle Bachmann.

The boomlet for Donald Trump as a Republican nominee for president of the United States ought to be a wake-up call for Republican candidates and Republican party leaders alike. Why has Trump surged ahead of other Republican candidates and potential candidates in the polls? It is not likely that his resurrection of the issue of Barack Obama’s birth certificate has aroused all this support. The birth-certificate issue does more political damage to Obama’s critics than to the president himself, because it enables the media to paint those critics as kooks. Nor are Donald Trump’s political positions such as to create...

Like most people, I enjoy a good joke. But Donald Trump for president? With apologies to Karl Rove, it's not really that funny. The Trump candidacy is not a joke; it's a scam. But its success with millions of voters shows us we are a nation very susceptible to scams if they are done on a grand enough scale...... In Donald Trump we have a liberal billionaire with a long record of supporting Democratic candidates who is willing to spend unlimited amounts of money to reinvent himself as a populist conservative. Ordinarily, that would be an impossible, even laughable undertaking....

The New York City Board of Elections says Donald Trump hasn't voted in any primary elections for more than 21 years. The board says the last time the possible Republican presidential candidate voted in a primary election was in the 1989 primary for mayor. That's when Rudy Giuliani beat businessman Ronald Lauder. He also skipped the 2002 general election. TV station NY1 was the first to report the information. Trump told NY1 that it was wrong and he has voted in every general election. His lawyer Michael Cohen said Saturday that "for one of the greatest international businessmen who travels...

Don’t be fooled by the Donald. Take it from one who knows: I’m a South Jersey gal who was raised on the outskirts of Atlantic City in the looming shadow of Trump’s towers. All through my childhood, casino developers and government bureaucrats joined hands, raised taxes, and made dazzling promises of urban renewal. Then we wised up to the eminent-domain thievery championed by our hometown faux free-marketeers. America, it’s time you wised up to Donald Trump’s property-redistribution racket, too. Trump has been wooing conservative activists for months and flirting with a GOP presidential run — first at the Conservative Political...

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) - Questions about President Barack Obama's birth certificate continue to make news as Sarah Palin, Donald Trump and others question the his citizenship. Now the so-called "birther" issue will be the subject of a vote at the Indiana Statehouse, and Donald Trump has weighed in on what's going on here. A committee in the state Senate will vote Monday on a birther resolution. State Sen. Mike Delph (R-Carmel) is a proponent of the birther movement. He wants proof pf American citizenship required for candidates for president, and he points to his pocket copy of the Constitution for support....

On Bret Baier FOX News show yesterday Charles Krauthammer revealed that Donald Trump had called him personally and as a result of their conversation Krauthammer is convinced Trump is "absolutely" running for president. It was a surprise, and when my secretary told me, I put on a helmet and a flak jacket as I answered the phone. I expected a tirade, which he had every right to do given what I have been saying about him. In fact, he was courteous but very calm, and he made his case, rather than sort of attacking everything I said about him. Simply,...

Consider what Trump had to say about the Bush Administration's approach to Iran: "Maybe the President, instead of saying let's not even see this guy, maybe he should be negotiating with him, maybe he should be talking with him." Upon hearing that, Fox & Friends co-host Steve Doucy asked Trump with regard to Ahmadinejad, "Do you think he's mentally stable?" Trump replied, "Who are you talking about? The President?"

If one were drawing up a list of Donald Trump’s first principles of business, “Fake it ’Til You Make It” would probably be at the top. One of the young Trump’s more clever business tactics involved hiring workers and machines to push dirt around his frequently stalled or underfunded real-estate developments to present visiting potential investors with the illusion of industry. And he has developed a long-running reflex to offer unsolicited — and largely unverifiable — assessments of the strength and virility of his portfolio to anybody who will listen, perhaps in an effort to erase memories of the four...

This is called, of course, “eminent domain.” The Constitution’s Fifth Amendment allows the government to take private property for “public use,” so long as “just compensation” is paid. In the infamous 2005 Kelo decision, the Supreme Court held that “public use” could include, well, private use, so long as the new property owner paid more in taxes than the previous one. In other words, it allowed developers and the government to gang up on homeowners. The developer gets more land, the government gets more tax money. The only losers are the original owner and his property rights. A decade and...

Donald Trump has a deal for the President: He'll release his tax returns if Obama releases his birth certificate. The billionaire businessman and aspiring presidential candidate laid out the conditions for his financial records disclosure Tuesday. "Maybe I'm going to do the tax returns when Obama does his birth certificate … I'd love to give my tax returns. I may tie my tax returns into Obama's birth certificate," he told ABC News' George Stephanopoulos. Obama revealed Monday that the First Family shelled out $453,770 to the IRS for 2010. Presidents and potential candidates traditionally reveal how much they pay in...

Donald Trump believes that he’s fit to be president. Why, you ask? Because he knows so much about foreign policy or economics? Or perhaps because he has a lot of experience working in the public sector? No, because he’s rich. “I’m a much bigger business man and have (a) much, much bigger net worth. I mean, my net worth is many, many, many times Mitt Romney,” he said yesterday on CNN’s State of the Nation. “I built a very big net worth and I’d like to put that ability … to work for this country.” He added that he doesn’t...

Tea Party darling and "birther" blowhard Donald Trump hasn't always put his money where his mouth is: The Donald has splashed campaign cash on a "Who's Who" who's who of liberal pols. Trump shot to the top of GOP presidential polls by embracing debunked conspiracies about President Obama's birthplace — but he repeatedly has opened his fat checkbook for a slew of Democratic stars, a review by the Center for Responsive Politics found. The all-time apple of Trump's eye is beleaguered Harlem Rep. Charlie Rangel, the once powerful once-powerful ex-head of the tax-writing Ways & Means Committee — and a...

Fuzzy Slippers makes a great case for dumping The Donald. He backed Harry Reid when tea party candidate Sharron Angle was ahead in the polls, and he got government to declare imminent domain on an old lady's house so he could build a parking lot. She just googled up a little dirt. Imagine what the Obama operatives will do to Trump. Here's an excerpt from Fuzzy Slippers: Look, I get it. I was warming to Trump. Big. I even told Adrienne that he was the top of my list of potentials. But then I started watching him more closely, listening...