Free Republic

The state will host what’s likely to be the contest's decisive primary in June, but the campaigns are already marshaling their forces. Ted Cruz lands in California on Monday for two rallies in a state where voters won’t head to the polls for nearly 60 days, but the West Coast swing is anything but a diversion. It’s preparation for the campaign’s endgame. If Cruz is to stop Donald Trump short of 1,237 delegates, the final, decisive stand will almost certainly come in California. And that realization has spurred a behind-the-scenes arms race, with Cruz, Trump, John Kasich and their allies...

On March 1, the Colorado Republican party prepared for 60,000 voters to arrive at nearly 3,000 precinct-caucus sites across the state. Those voters would select men and women to attend the party’s county assemblies and congressional district conventions, in the first step of a multi-part process that determined 34 of Colorado’s 37 delegates to the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. To hear Donald Trump and his fans tell it, those tens of thousands of Republicans never arrived, never made their choices, and never had the chance to play a role in selecting the party’s delegates. Matt Drudge, the populist Right’s...

Donald Trump is right: The system is rigged. It’s rigged in favor of front-runners. That’s why Trump, who is leading the Republican nominating contest, has a larger percentage of delegates (46 percent) than of votes (37 percent). Unsurprisingly, Trump never mentions when the rules have helped him. He much prefers to whine and peddle conspiracy theories when they don’t. Trump’s latest tantrum is over Colorado, where Ted Cruz just swept all 34 of the state’s available delegates. Trump is calling the results “totally unfair” and on Twitter he asked: “How is it possible that the people of the great State...

Donald Trump played up his plans to tax companies that move jobs out of the United States as he tried to appeal to blue collar workers in a New York rally Sunday. Speaking for about an hour Sunday in Rochester, N.Y., Trump recited statistics about the area's loss of manufacturing jobs and economic hardship in recent years. He reiterated his desire to tax goods sold by companies once based in the United States that moved away to find cheaper labor. The plan has been widely panned by economic experts. But the Rochester crowd ate it up. "I'm the only one...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Now, there's something else about these delegate fights that have taken place over the weekend where Cruz has just skunked Trump. It isn't even a contest. It is fascinating to watch. And, of course, the Trump people think that games are being played and that tricks are being pulled. But that's not happening. This is just somebody who understands the system using it. You know, we could go into a little discussion if you want about insider versus outsider, and I've tried to tell people: "These insiders are not just gonna let this stuff go, folks. They're...

Despite what you may have heard or read, Donald Trump has never filed for bankruptcy. His companies have, four times, but Donald Trump never has.  The purpose of corporations is for investors to put a limited amount of capital at risk in exchange for the opportunity to earn money in any one of a myriad of legal ways. Investor use the corporate structure to ensure that if their bets go south, the most they can lose is the capital they invested in the first place. Corporate bankruptcy laws can give a company an opportunity to restructure its business in a...

If you’ve spent any time on social media, particularly in the politicalsphere, chances are you’ve encountered an internet troll or two. This election cycle has been er, um… interesting. I never thought I’d long for the days the so-called Paulbots would troll my feeds lecturing me about liberty and the Constitution and Dr. Paul. At least most of those accounts were real. Alas… Not so in 2016. The Trumpbots, or accounts that seem to exist solely to attack those with unfavorable views of The Donald, are a special breed of vicious. I’ve learned it’s best to ignore, block, and move...

JACQUELINE ALEMANY CBS NEWS April 8, 2016 "Kosher" Trump Vodka Lands In Hot Water Well, apparently neither does the kosher liquor company that Donald Trump rented his name to. Trump Vodka, the product of yet another licensing deal under Trump's name, was founded in 2006 and distributed by a company called Drinks Americas, the Jerusalem Post reports. Despite the Trumpian catchphrase "Success Distilled," distribution of the drink came to an end in 2011. But when an independent importer saw an opportunity for the drink to enjoy a fruitful afterlife in Israel, Trump agreed to a new deal allowing H. Pixel...

More than two months after Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump claimed to have raised $6 million for veterans' charities at a fundraiser held on the eve of the Iowa caucuses, most of the organizations targeted to receive the money have gotten less than half of that amount.

An Associated Press-GfK Poll released Thursday finds Donald Trump’s “unfavorable” numbers are nearing 70 percent. The AP reports: Seven in 10 people, including close to half of Republican voters, have an unfavorable view of Trump, according to a new Associated Press-GfK poll. It’s an opinion shared by majorities of men and women; young and old; conservatives, moderates and liberals; and whites, Hispanics and blacks — a devastatingly broad indictment of the billionaire businessman.Even in the South, a region where Trump has won GOP primaries decisively, close to 70 percent view him unfavorably. And among whites without a college education,...

If you think President Richard Nixon was paranoid to the point of having an enemies list, consider the Donald J. Trump statement following his crushing defeat by Sen. Ted Cruz in the Wisconsin primary. Trump did not make the statement personally, lest he provide enough ad hominem sound bites to last a generation. Rather he and his myth of invincibility hid from the camera he usually loves. The statement blaming his loss on everybody and everything but himself, and with the first word after his name being a lie, reads...

It's right there in the Washington Post... https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-hopes-message-appeals-to-democrats-independents-too/2016/04/02/e55057ba-f945-11e5-958d-d038dac6e718_story.html "The party's presidential front-runner told supporters Saturday that he's out to bring independents and Democrats behind his cause even though 'right now I'm catering to the Republicans.'" Which means, of course, that it's all been an act and, once nominated, he'll be "catering" to the Democrats. Face it, Trumpsters, if Jeb Bush or Mitt Romney had said this, you'd know exactly what it meant. If Cruz or Kasich said this, you'd be wagging your fingers and hammering their supporters over it. But, there it is, plain as Kansas, Trump is "catering to...

Over the past few months, the Republican race has morphed from a seventeen-headed gorgon into a more manageable monster with four faces. The first face belongs to front runner Donald Trump, who has run an idiosyncratic campaign, focused almost entirely on his own personality. He has no discernible platform, represents no clear faction of the GOP, and is running as Trump rather than as a Republican. The next two faces are recognizably Republican. Ted Cruz, a respectable second, is running as the strong constitutional conservative. He favors a smaller government; decentralization of authority; a foreign policy grounded in the national...

An executive at Donald Trump’s hotel chain was arrested for throwing a young woman to the ground inside the parking garage of his luxury Brooklyn condo building, law enforcement sources said. Nathan Crisp, 34, was charged with misdemeanor assault for pushing Sheneik McCallum, 27, to the ground twice inside the parking garage of the Avalon Fort Greene condo tower at 10:52 p.m. on Sunday, sources said. The pair got into a fight after McCallum pulled into the garage to adjust her child’s car seat. Crisp, who was trying to get out of the garage, told McCallum that her car was...

Donald Trump is a boor. He's a vulgarian, a liar, an ignoramus. He has only the most cursory grasp of policy, a stentorian voice and a great big set of self-assurance. He's winning the Republican nomination. Why? It is partly because of the Clintons. While the media point and laugh at the Trump reality show carnival, they forget that the Clintons originally took us all to the circus. This week, we found out that Hillary Clinton's email scandal now occupies the attention of 147 FBI agents, and that she will be questioned by the FBI. We found out that her...

The term “gaslighting” comes to us from a play called “Gas Light,” written in 1938 by British playwright Patrick Hamilton. The play focuses on an abusive husband in the 1880s who convinces his wife that she is going crazy. One of his methods is lowering the gaslights and telling her it hasn’t gotten any darker. It’s all in her imagination. Donald Trump has been playing this game on the American people, or at least a meaningful portion of it, for five months now. Telling us that Trump University was a success. Telling us that he only worked with the mafia...

As he inches toward the GOP nomination, Donald Trump is becoming more and more disliked among American voters. Donald Trump wasn't wildly popular to begin with. And now he's becoming even more disliked among American voters, creating a significant threat to his chances of winning the Republican presidential nomination. Trump is, by far, the GOP delegate leader — and the only candidate with a realistic shot at winning a majority of delegates before the July convention. But at the same time, nearly two-thirds of Americans view Trump unfavorably — and his image rating has declined since Republican voting began in...

NBC anchor Chuck Todd isn’t buying the National Enquirer hit piece on Ted Cruz. On the March 27 edition of Meet the Press, Todd commented that “there’s more evidence that ties Trump to planting the story, than there is to the story itself tying anything to Cruz.” Todd also accused Trump of taking a page out of the “LBJ playbook.” Discussing the story with NBC chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell, Todd retorted that “Trump is almost trying to borrow a page from the LBJ playbook, when he put out a statement on the National Enquirer – let me put...

As the father of three daughters, I reserved the right to interview their dates. . . For the next few hours, she would be affected by his ability to drive a car, avoid the bad crowds and stay sober. I wanted to know if he could do it. I wanted to know if he was decent. This was my word: “decent.” Would he treat my daughter with kindness and respect? Could he be trusted to bring her home on time? In his language, actions and decisions, would he be a decent guy? Decency mattered to me as a dad, and...

Donald Trump has denied any connection to the National Enquirer story released yesterday claiming Ted Cruz has had 5 mistresses: I have no idea whether or not the cover story about Ted Cruz in this week’s issue of the National Enquirer is true or not, but I had absolutely nothing to do with it, did not know about it, and have not, as yet, read it. Likewise, I have nothing to do with the National Enquirer and unlike Lyin’ Ted Cruz I do not surround myself with political hacks and henchman and then pretend total innocence. Ted Cruz’s problem...