“Do you think Donald would ever think of asking me?” “It’s called negotiation”, he said.
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Donald Trump continued to defy the laws of political gravity on Monday as a Reuters/Ipsos poll found the real estate mogul holding onto a wide lead among Republicans in the U.S. presidential race despite an acerbic debate and a feud with a female television anchor that have bolstered charges of sexism.
Lead the charge, if you’re the sole woman in the Republicans’ White House race and trying to crack the top tier for the next debate, by questioning Trump’s ability to withstand the pressure of the presidency. Yet he continues to dominate news coverage of the campaign, and thus far there is no indication that his transgressions have caused the plunge in his poll numbers that party pooh-bahs so eagerly anticipate.
But Lewandowski won’t say when that might happen, other than “in the very near future”.
In an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union”, Trump characteristically refused to give an inch, saying he wouldn’t apologize and he’d meant nothing of the sort.
More polls are coming, so we’ll see how Trump holds up. They suggest his approach will largely be about setting broad-based goals, with little to no roadmap for reaching them, and he may lack consistency in both approach and ideology.
What Trump drives home through ill-considered remarks about Mexican immigrants, former Vietnam POW John McCain, and now Fox News host Megyn Kelly is that he’s no plain-spoken candidate of character. His campaign organization is in turmoil!
“The idea of large-scale deportations followed by selective re-admissions doesn’t seem like a well-developed approach”, said Marc Rosenblum, deputy director of the Immigration Policy Program at the non-partisan Migration Policy Institute.
“Mexico is going to pay for the wall and they’re going to be happy about it because the cost of the wall is peanuts compared to the kind of money they’re making” off the United States, Trump said. “I will be great on women’s health issues”.
“The best way to handle it is to let it play out”, said Steve Duprey, an RNC committee member from New Hampshire. As for the people who can’t take care of themselves?
“That was a long time ago, but I was willing to do it, and it was a suggestion”, Trump told ABC News’ “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” Sunday. Kasich has yet to disparage Trump or even condemn him. Yet he recently said he would shut down the federal government in order to cut off tax dollars for Planned Parenthood. Ronald Reagan, who I worked for in three presidential campaigns, rarely got down in the weeds in his speeches and debates, always sticking like glue to his overall big picture of the Shining City on a Hill that our enemies would respect and our allies would trust. I’ve evolved on many issues over the years.
Keep that in mind the next time someone piously informs you that, whatever else you can say about him, Trump has touched a nerve, or tapped a feeling, or struck a chord.
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Ira Schwarz/APRoger Stone, left, with Ed Rollins and Lee Atwater, right, discuss the meeting they had during the President Ronald Reagan’s re-election campaign with former president Richard Nixon in Washington on November. 13, 1984. Trump “crashed and burned”, said one participant. In his 1987 book, “The Art of the Deal”, Trump suggested Reagan had conned the American people. “Of course Trump can win Iowa, as is the case for any presidential candidate that generates that type of media attention and combines it with solid ground game”, said Craig Robinson, editor-in-chief of TheIowaRepublican.com, a partisan web site.
