trump is serious!!!!!

[Gob]

Trump is the Nigel Farage of American politics.

[Lord Jim]

That's not really fair to Farage...

Farage is Winston Churchill compared to His Trumpness...

It's tough to come up with a British analogy to Trump...(Which should make you feel fortunate)

Maybe if Jeremy Clarkson went into politics, (a loud-mouthed, childish, bullying, celebrity egomaniac) that would be a closer analogy...

[Gob]

Fair comment.

[Guinevere]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/pos ... ?tid=sm_fb

Donald Trump's visit to the U.S.-Mexico border dominated the airwaves on Thursday -- in English and Spanish.

While the national newscasts on ABC, CBS and NBC covered Trump's visit to Laredo, Tex., coverage of the GOP presidential candidate dominated the national news broadcasts on Univision and Telemundo. Republicans fearful of how Trump is hurting the party's image with the nation's fast-growing Latino voting population need only play back Thursday night's broadcasts as proof.

Univision devoted six minutes of coverage to Trump's visit, while Telemundo gave him a total of nine minutes. No other Republican or Democratic presidential candidate was mentioned on either program.

"The magnate said that the United States needs a wall that divides it from Mexico," co-anchor Jorge Ramos told viewers at the top of his "Noticiero Univision," the more popular of the two newscasts.

Jose Diaz-Balart, the co-anchor of "Noticiero Telemundo," anchored his newscast live from Laredo and told viewers that "Trump declared to the press that he's certain of the Latino vote and insisted that he hasn't insulted anyone."

The anchors and correspondents spoke in Spanish. Trump's remarks in English were translated into Spanish.

Ramos and Diaz-Balart enjoy outsized influence with Latino viewers of nightly newscasts. Their broadcasts air at the same time as the programs on ABC, CBS and NBC and usually win the ratings race in the largest Hispanic markets, including New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Phoenix, Dallas and Houston.

Am I chortling? I suppose I am

[Joe Guy]

Did you know that Donald Trump has a llama farm?

[Long Run]

Combover se llama?

[Econoline]

If you can look past the standard-issue leftwing rhetoric, this site makes some fair points about the Trump candidacy, and its media coverage.

There is much being made about a new CNN poll that shows Donald Trump leading his GOP rivals in the race for the Republican nomination for president. However, there is less substance in these numbers than the media is pretending there is. What is astonishing is just how shallow the media analysis of these polls are. The ranking at which Trump finds himself can easily be explained by the clinical dementia of today’s Republican (Tea) Party. And despite these polls, Trump will never get the nomination or reside in the White House.

Let’s take a closer look. Trump currently has 18% of the support of the GOP voters. The truth that everyone is ignoring is that that’s an awfully pitiful expression of support. It means that 82% are not supporting him. Why does anyone in the press think that’s a positive showing?

Nevertheless, the media is heralding Trump as the runaway GOP leader with his measly 18% of support. For perspective, note that Bernie Sanders, in his campaign against Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination, is pulling support from 19% of Democratic voters. Yet the press is dismissing him as trailing Clinton badly. So Sanders has more support among Democrats than Trump does among Republicans, but the schizophrenic media declares Sanders a loser and Trump a phenomenon.

This same schizophrenia is shown in how Republican operatives and pundits portray the relationship between the media and the candidates. If Clinton declines to do an interview or makes reporters walk behind a rope line so they don’t interfere with her interactions with voters, she is condemned as being anti-media and disrespectful to the fine men and women of the press who are struggling mightily to bring truth to the American people. But if Trump or any other Republican bashes the press or denies them access (as Trump just did to the Des Moines Register), they are cheered for putting those unethical press weasels in their place.

Getting back to Trump’s placement in the GOP polls, the explanation for it is that there is a demographic in the Republican electorate that can best be described as batshit insane. And Trump has managed to secure a near monopoly on that addle-brained GOP faction. Prior polling has revealed that a significant subsection of the GOP holds some hysterically idiotic views. For instance:

● 54% of Republicans say that, “deep down,” Obama is a Muslim
● 7 in 10 Republicans in a poll say Obama doesn’t love America
● 51 percent of GOP primary voters think Obama born abroad
● 20% of Republicans believe that President Obama is the Anti-Christ

Having established that a fair percentage of Republicans embrace a measure of dumbassedness in frightening proportions, the fact that a particularly knuckleheaded candidate has corralled them into his camp is not especially surprising. In fact, it would be surprising if these dimwits did not coalesce around a similarly daft contender, just as they did in the last election cycle with Michelle Bachmann, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, et al.

Consequently, Trump’s confederacy of dunces is sufficient in numbers to rise above his rivals, so long as there’s a lot of them. That’s because when you divide the remaining Republicans who are not wacko-birds (h/t John McCain) among the fifteen other candidates, there aren’t enough of them left to surpass the Trump/crazy constituency. That does not mean that Trump has a commanding lead. It means that there are way too many players on the field diluting the results for each of them. As they whittle down to a more manageable number, the 82% of non-Trump supporters will disperse to other candidates who will then tower over his paltry flock.

While the media is obsessing over the fake Trump “dominance,” they are missing some real news in the same CNN poll. For starters, they missed that Trump has the highest unfavorables of all candidates, Republican and Democratic. Meanwhile, Clinton has the highest favorables of all candidates, Republican and Democratic. Furthermore. Clinton is beating every Republican matched against her (Trump loses by 18 points). And the icing on the cake: Sanders is also beating the Republicans in head-to-head matchups (Trump loses by 20 points).

This is what passes for political reporting these days. Is it any wonder that people hold the media in such low esteem? They are littered with lightweights who seem to have no analytical skills or historical memory. If they did they would not be so shocked that a loudmouth buffoon has earned the admiration of the GOP’s most radical, racist, and ignorant bloc of voters, while four out of five of the poll’s Republican respondents reject him.

Nevertheless, I'm still chortling while it lasts....

[wesw]

well, I hope that trump stays in the race, as a republican, or democrat....

I m really ticked off that the Des Moines Register called on him to withdraw. how dare they?

they can pillory him, denigrate him, present his views , disagree with all he stands for , and that is all well and good.
what they have no right to do is to presume that they have any say on who runs for office.

I believe that any move back toward citizen statesmen is good. the media has no right to make any decisions for us. just report the news and views and let the electorate decide

[MajGenl.Meade]

Lord, you are a very confused person, wesw. A newspaper editorial can say absolutely anything about a candidate but NOT "our opinion is you should drop out"?

Editorials don't have a RIGHT to suggest a person enter a race or leave it? For once I'm more glad that someone else (you) is not in charge than I am delighted at my not being in charge.

Your fasces are over there in the corner.

[Sue U]

[RayThom]

[MajGenl.Meade]

I'm betting on the white zero. (I'd say green zero but Jill Stein's got that one wrapped up)

[Lord Jim]

Trump currently has 18% of the support of the GOP voters. The truth that everyone is ignoring is that that’s an awfully pitiful expression of support. It means that 82% are not supporting him. Why does anyone in the press think that’s a positive showing?....

...That does not mean that Trump has a commanding lead. It means that there are way too many players on the field diluting the results for each of them. As they whittle down to a more manageable number, the 82% of non-Trump supporters will disperse to other candidates who will then tower over his paltry flock.

That's correct, (in fact I would argue that even the 18-22 percent he has received in recent polls is inflated, because a percentage of that are people who are just registering a frustrated protest to the pollsters towards politicians, but would never actually vote for him.)

The answer as to why this gets reported as a positive showing is pretty simple. With the 24 hour news cycle, and social media reporting, the press has to report something, and reporting Donald Trump as the front runner has more entertainment and audience engagement value than reporting the truth; that with such a divided field there is no real GOP front runner at the moment.

I'm sure that covering Trump is also good for ratings; I'd bet money that when the cable news channels are running Trump stories, their ratings go up. (Trump's a lot more entertaining then boring stories about complicated stuff like the Trade Agreement or the Iran Nuke deal.)

And the main reason that Trump has audience appeal isn't because there's some great groundswell of support and approval for him; it's because you never know what stupid, childishly insulting, or flat out crazy thing is going to come out of his mouth next...

He's a curiosity; a one-man traveling freak show... it's not surprising that he draws a crowd...

But while this is all understandable from the standpoint of human nature and the ratings interests of the news media, it is having a terrible impact on the serious political discourse about who the next President will be that the country ought to be starting.

[wesw]

well of course they have a right (italics).

...not their place tho, and I am free to object.

p.s.- what is this fixation with fecal matter that you have developed? is that how you spell poop? doesn t poop have an 'e' in it?

[dgs49]

Quick: Somebody provide a quotation of something Trump has said that is "racist."

Now, define "race" (in context).

Define "racist."

Are illegal Mexican immigrants a different "race" from Donald Trump? What "race" would that be, exactly?

[Sue U]

is that how you spell poop? doesn t poop have an 'e' in it?

Only if you're very fancy, and then it's pronounced poo-pay.

[Crackpot]

For the record wesw has no business running for president

[MajGenl.Meade]

Apparently it's not me that's fascinated by poop. Here's yer bundle:

[Sue U]

Apparently it's not me that's fascinated by poop. Here's yer bundle:

Yeah, that was a load of crap, too.

[oldr_n_wsr]

are people who are just pissed off at politics and politicians in general

That's hitting the nail on the head.
There are a whole pile of people who are fed up with political doublespeak and have been even before Obama and his out and out lies.