He is winning the nomination on the strength of the unshakable bond he has built with the white Republicans who consider themselves to be the most dispossessed of Americans.
.. in North Carolina, where one of his white supporters sucker-punched a black protester, he said, “I thought it was very, very appropriate. [The protester] was swinging. He was hitting people. And the audience hit back. And that’s what we need a little bit more of.”
A videotape of that event had emerged, and needless to say, Trump was lying. The black protester was walking up a flight of stairs inside a sports arena with his arms at his side when seventy-eight-year-old John Franklin McGraw yelled “Hey!,” got the young man to look his way, and hit him in the face.
.. Each new outrage only confirms to his supporters that Trump is gleefully defying the establishment, and they love him for it.
.. He first vowed that he would look into paying the sucker-puncher’s legal costs; then a few days later denied he ever said that, even though it was there on video tape for all to hear.
.. The Trump movement clearly has some elements of the fascistic, at least in affect and tone. He evidently does not call for a one-party dictatorship; but he has been willing to approve of force against the opposition; and he has expressed “belligerent nationalism, racism, and militarism,” as one basic definition has it.
.. As long ago as last November, I was hearing from conservative sources that the big Republican money people were drawing up plans to mount an extensive campaign of attack ads against Trump designed to finish him off before Iowa. I was told that a few such meetings or conference calls took place. But nothing ever came of them. The different players had different ambitions, supported different candidates, or couldn’t agree on the best lines of attack.
.. The racial politics Trump has brought to the surface is something the party is particularly incapable of dealing with, since they all must know deep down that he is only doing openly what they have done more subtly for decades.
.. If you’re scheduled to do a segment at a certain time and date, and it becomes apparent once you get to the studio that Trump might be speaking at any moment, you know there’s a very strong chance your segment won’t happen. The channel will cut away to Trump.
.. And Trump? He’d spent not more than $10 million on paid media and received $1.9billion in free media. That’s nearly triple the other three major Republican candidates combined.7
.. Moonves said that the Trump phenomenon “may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS,” adding:
Man, who would have expected the ride we’re all having right now?… The money’s rolling in and this is fun…. I’ve never seen anything like this, and this is going to be a very good year for us. Sorry. It’s a terrible thing to say. But, bring it on, Donald. Keep going. Donald’s place in this election is a good thing.8
.. Sanders attacked Clinton effectively on the ill effects on employment of trade deals, which she had supported throughout her career until her recent turnabout on the Trans-Pacific Partnership. She had no answer
Why Trump Was Inevitable
However, as we saw with the abortive John Kasich–Ted Cruz alliance prior to the Indiana primary on May 3, it was impossible for even two of Trump’s opponents to coordinate their attacks on the front-runner.
.. But even with a more successful effort at coordination much earlier during the campaign, it is very unlikely that Trump could have been stopped.
.. Even though almost two thirds of Republican voters supported a candidate other than Trump at the time of our survey, a substantial number of those supporting other candidates shifted to Trump when their favorite candidate was eliminated from the choices available. Only Rubio, Carson, and Cruz attracted even 60 percent of other candidates’ supporters in the survey when the race narrowed to a two-person contest.
.. One of the main reasons many political commentators were surprised by Donald Trump’s success in the primaries was his willingness to take extreme positions and use unusually harsh rhetoric in talking about immigration and related issues. Indeed, Trump’s comments about Mexican immigrants and Muslims have been at the center of his campaign.
.. The clear answer is that they reflected the views of likely Republican voters extremely well. We asked a series of questions about Trump’s controversial proposals (banning Muslims from entering the US, building a wall on the Mexican border, and identifying and deporting illegal immigrants). On all three issues overwhelming majorities of likely Republican voters supported his positions
.. large majorities of likely Republican voters who did not support Trump for the nomination did support Trump’s positions on his three central issues.
.. In fact 60 percent of non-Trump supporters took his position on all three of his distinctive issues.
.. Trump’s positions on immigration, rather than limiting his appeal, actually gave him the potential to expand his electoral coalition.
.. Trump supporters were quite distinct from other Republicans on issues like raising the minimum wage and raising taxes on upper-income households. Almost two thirds of Trump supporters favored raising taxes on incomes over $250,000 compared with only 41 percent of other Republicans, and while almost half of his supporters (48 percent) favored raising the minimum wage, that was true of less than a third of those supporting other candidates.
It is not happenstance that these are two issues on which Trump has said he may change his positions in order to “clarify” them.
Trumps Motion for Summary Judgement April 10 2015
Moreover, Plaintiffs lack any evidence that Mr. Trump did not hand select TU’s instructors. To the contrary, the undiputed facts show that Mr. Trump not only personally met with some instructors, but he also reviewed the resumes of all the instructors.
.. Mr. Trump testified at his deposition that he did not personally send emails to prespective students, but TU may have done so
Makaeff als cannot recall seeing the Donald Trump video — the only source of the alleged oral misrepresentation by Mr. Trump regarding his handpicking the TU instructors and mentors — and Mr. Trump was not present at her 3-day seminar
.. The only writing Low could identify regarding Mr. Trump’s representation was that fact that pictures of Mr. Trump were used by TU at the 3-day seminar.
Why Is Donald Trump So Angry at Judge Gonzalo Curiel?
The tirades against the respected federal judge may have less to do with his ethnicity than with the magnitude of the legal challenges facing Trump.
..Curiel is presiding over two separate class-action lawsuits about Trump University. One of them, Low v. Trump University, was filed in April 2010 under the name Markaeff v. Trump University. The other, Cohen v. Trump, was filed in October 2013. (A third case brought by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman in 2013 is also under way in that state.) Trump is named as a defendant in both cases.
.. The Low plaintiffs sued Trump University and Trump himself under various consumer-protection laws in California, Florida, and New York—a relatively standard class-action lawsuit.
.. Cohen, on the other hand, targets Trump through a provision of the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, more commonly known as the RICO Act—the same statute federal prosecutors use to bring down mob bosses.
.. The judge’s role when addressing a summary-judgment motion is to determine whether there are any factual disputes.
In Low, the plaintiffs’ case centers on three misrepresentations allegedly made to them by Trump and Trump University: “(1) Trump University was an accredited university; (2) students would be taught by real estate experts, professors and mentors hand-selected by Mr. Trump; and (3) students would receive one year of expert support and mentoring.”
.. This doesn’t mean Curiel sided with the plaintiffs on the facts of the case. It means that Curiel determined a factual dispute existed between Trump and the plaintiffs—nothing more, nothing less.
.. The public is presumed to have the right to access court documents barring “compelling reasons” to keep them sealed, but Trump argued against their release by citing the existence of trade secrets within the internal “playbooks.”
.. Trump has publicly complained about Curiel since at least 2014, when one of his lawyers claimed Trump would ask Curiel to recuse himself based on his alleged (and unspecified) “animosity toward Mr. Trump and his views” after Curiel rejected his motion for dismissal. Almost two years later, no motion for recusal can be found on the docket of either case, then or now.