That is bad for America and the world
DONALD TRUMP won the White House on the promise that government is easy. Unlike his Democratic opponent, whose career had been devoted to politics, Mr Trump stood as a businessman who could Get Things Done. Enough voters decided that boasting, mocking, lying and grabbing women were secondary. Some Trump fans even saw them as the credentials of an authentic, swamp-draining saviour. After 70 days in office, however, Mr Trump is stuck in the sand. A health-care bill promised as one of his “first acts” suffered a humiliating collapse in the—Republican-controlled—Congress (see Lexington). His repeated attempts to draft curbs on travel to America from some Muslim countries are being blocked by the courts. And suspicions that his campaign collaborated with Russia have cost him his national security adviser and look likely to dog his administration.
Voters are not impressed. No other president so early in his first term has suffered such low approval ratings. It is tempting to feel relief that the Trump presidency is a mess. For those who doubt much of his agenda and worry about his lack of respect for institutions, perhaps the best hope is that he accomplishes little. That logic is beguiling, but wrong. After years of gridlock, Washington has work to do. The forth coming summit with Xi Jinping, China’s president, show show America is still the indispensable nation. A weak president can be dangerous—picture a trade war, a crisis in the Baltics or conflict on the Korean peninsula.
The business of government Mr Trump is hardly the first tycoon to discover that business and politics workby different rules. If you fall out over a property deal, you can always find another sucker. In politics you cannot walk away so easily. Even if Mr Trump now despises the Republican factions that dared defy him over health care, Congress is the only place he can go to pass legislation. The nature of political power is different, too. As owner and CEO of his business, Mr Trump had absolute control. The constitution sets out to block would-be autocrats. Where Mr Trump has acted appropriately—as with his nomination of a principled, conservative jurist to fill a Supreme Court vacancy—he deserves to prevail. But when the courts question the legality of his travel order they are only doing their job. Likewise, the Republican failure to must era majority over health-care reflects not just divisions between the party’s moderates and hardliners, but also the defects of a bill that, by the end, would have led to worse protection, or none, for tens of millions of Americans without saving tax payers much money.
Far from taking Washington by storm, America’s CEO is out of his depth. The art of political compromise is new to him. He blurs his own interests and the interests of the nation. The scrutiny of office grates. He chafes under the limitations of being the most powerful man in the world. You have only to follow his incontinent stream of tweets to grasp Mr Trump’s paranoia and vanity: the press lies about him; the election result fraudulently omitted millions of votes for him; the intelligence services are disloyal; his predecessor tapped his phones. It’s neither pretty nor presidential.
That the main victim of these slurs has so far been the tweeter-in-chief himself is testament to the strength of American democracy. But institutions can erode, and the country is wretchedly divided (see page 19). Unless Mr Trump changes course, the harm risks spreading. The next test will be the budget. If the Republican Party cannot pass a stop-gap measure, the government will start to shut down on April 29th. Recent jitters in the markets are a sign that investors are counting on Mr Trump and his party to pass legislation.
More than anything, they are looking for tax reform and an infrastructure plan. There is vast scope to make fiscal policy more efficient and fairer. American firms face high tax rates and have a disincentive to repatriate profits. Personal taxes are a labyrinth of privileges and loopholes, most of which benefit the well-off. Likewise, the country’s cramped airports and potholed highways are a drain on productivity. Sure enough, Mr Trump has let it be known that he now wants to tackle tax. And, in a bid to win support from Democrats, he may deal with infrastructure at the same time.
Yet the politics of tax reform are as treacherous as the politics of health care, and not only because they will generate ferocious lobbying. Most Republican plans are shockingly regressive, despite Mr Trump’s blue-collar base. To win even a modest reform, Mr Trump and his team will have to show a mastery of detail and coalition-building that has so far eluded them. If Mr Trump’s popularity falls further, the job of winning over fractious Republicans will only become harder.
Were he frustrated in Congress, the president would surely fall back on areas where he has a free hand. He has already made full-throated use of executive orders and promises to harness the bureau crazy to force through his agenda. In theory he could deregulate parts of the economy, such as finance, where the hand of govern ment is sometimes too heavy. Yet his executive orders so far have been crudely theatrical—as with this week’s repeal of Barack Obama’s environmental rules, which will not lead to the renaissance of mining jobs that he has disingenuously promised coal country (see leader). It is the same with trade. Mr Trump could work through the World Trade Organization to open markets. More probably, the economic nationalists on his team will have the upper hand. If so, America will take a bilateral approach, trade protection will grow and foreign policy will become more confrontational.
The character question
The Americans who voted for Mr Trump either overlooked his bombast, or they saw in him a tycoon with the self-belief to transform Washington. Although this presidency is still young, that already seems an error of judgment. His policies, from health-care reform to immigration, have been poor—they do not even pass the narrow test that they benefit Trump voters. Most worrying for America and the world is how fast the businessman in the Oval Office is proving unfit for the job.
Friday, May 19, 2017
Trump’s view of Trump is overrated
All politicians like to brag about their abilities and achievements. But rarely has a presidential hopeful emerged like Donald Trump, who consistently touts his resume and plans for the nation in sweeping and over-the-top terms.
Trump is particularly unique in how he talks about himself. Plenty of would be presidents make dubious claims about what they have accomplished in elected office (created millions of jobs! slashed spending!). Few make such claims about their personal attributes. Trump has no such hesitation. Just before the Iowa caucuses, here are five of the biggest myths Donald Trump tells about himself.
1. “I’m, like, a really smart person.”
Trump is not shy about his intellectual prowess. As he tweeted in 2013: “Sorry losers and haters, but my I.Q. is one of the highest—and you all knowit! Please don’t feel so stupid or insecure, it’s not your fault.”
Of course, “smart” is a bit subjective. There’s book smarts as well as street smarts. Many would say Trump has run a pretty smart campaign. But clearly he’s saying that his brain is very sharp —as he puts it, “super-genius stuff.” At one point, Trump rebutted criticism from Washington Post columnist George Will and GOP consultant Karl Rove by saying: “I’m much smarter than them. I think I have a much higher IQ. I think I went to a better college better everything.”
Trump’s college background, in fact, is often his key piece of evidence for his intellectual superiority. But there’s less here than meets the eye. Trump did graduate from the Wharton School of business at the University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League college. But Trump did not get an MBA from Wharton; he has a much less prestigious undergraduate degree. He was a transfer student who arrived at Wharton after two years at Fordham University, which U.S.
News&World Report currently ranks 66th among national universities. (Besides, simply going to an Ivy League school doesn’t prove you’re a genius.) Gwenda Blair, in her 2001 book “The Trumps,” said Trump’s grades at Fordham were just “respectable” and that he got into Wharton mainly because he had an interview with an admissions officer who had been a high school classmate of his older brother. And Wharton’s admissions team surely knew that Trump was from one of New York’s wealthiest families.
For years, numerous media reports said Trump graduated first in his class from Wharton, but that’s wrong. The 1968 commencement program does not list him as graduating with any sort of honors. In fact, The Boston Globe reported that he barely made an impression at all: “His former classmates said he seemed a student who spoke up a lot but rarely shined in class, who barely participated in campus activities, shunned fraternity parties.”
2. “I have the world’s greatest memory.”
One of Trump’s most controversial statements is his claim that he saw a television news report about thousands of Muslims in New Jersey cheering the collapse of the World Trade Center in 2001. That statement ended up on The Washington Post Fact Checker’s list of 2015’s biggest Pinocchios. Trump insisted he was right because he has such a great memory.
But no TV network could find such a clip—though extensive searches were made. No news reports were tracked down to validate Trump’s claim of “thousands.” The closest thing ever found was a local newscast at the time, from a CBS affiliate in New York, that reported on the arrest of eight men who neighbors said had celebrated the attack. That’s a far cry from thousands. There were also video clips of several Palestinians—in the Israeli-occupied territories—cheering. But that wasn’t New Jersey—and again, it wasn’t thousands.
Trump also pointed to a line in a Washington Post article written days after the attacks that said law enforcement authorities detained and questioned some people who were allegedly seen celebrating. But when one of the reporters, Serge Kovaleski, said the article did not validate Trump’s claim, Trump mocked Kovaleski’s disability. (Kovaleski has a chronic condition that limits his mobility.)
Trump later denied doing so, claiming that he didn’t know the reporter even though Kovaleski had closely covered Trump in the 1980s and 1990s and had interviewed him several times. Maybe Trump should rephrase his boast: “I have the world’s most selective memory.”
3. “I’m proud of my net worth. I’ve done an amazing job.”
Trump frequently touts his financial acumen. He often says he is worth $10 billion, though most analysts say that is exaggerated. Bloomberg News closely studied his 92-page financial disclosure report and concluded that he is really worth $2.9 billion. That may sound like a lot of money. But don’t forget that Trump inherited a lot of money, too—about $40 million in 1974. In 1978, his net worth was estimated by Business Week at $100 million. The Post’s Wonk blog calculated that if Trump had gotten out of real estate, put his money in an index fund based on the Standard & Poor’s 500 index and reinvested the dividends, he’d be worth twice as much—$6 billion—today.
National Journal noted that Warren Buffett was also worth $40 million in 1974—and he managed to turn that into $67 billion today. But then Buffett doesn’t have a long list of business flops, such as Trump Airlines, Trump Vodka, various Trump casinos, Trump Steaks and Trump University.
4. “I’m self-funding my campaign.”
Trump keeps saying that unlike his rivals, he’s paying for his own presidential campaign, but that’s largely false. At the start of his campaign, he loaned his political operation $1.8 million. As of Oct. 1, he had given his campaign an additional $104,829.27—but he had also received $3.9 million from donors, which accounted for the vast majority of the $5.8 million his campaign had taken in by then. His campaign website features a prominent “donate” button on its homepage. Trump has spent $5.4 million, and interestingly, about one-quarter of his spending has gone to Trump-owned entities (mainly his private jet company).
In January, Trump launched an ad campaign in Iowa and New Hampshire, saying he planned to spend $2 million. He also claimed that his campaign was $35 million to $40 million below budget. Ultimately, all of his spending —and where the money came from—will have to be disclosed in campaign finance reports. The odds are his personal share of the spending will be less than 50 percent.
5. “I’m probably the least racist person on Earth.”
When people have criticized Trump for promising to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border or proposing a ban on all Muslims from entering the country, he has defended himself by saying he’s not motivated by racism. Still, he has a pattern of racially tinged remarks and actions.
The very first article about Trump in The New York Times—it appeared 42 years ago—was headlined “Major Landlord Accused Of Anti black Bias in City.” Trump was quoted in the report as saying that the charges in a lawsuit brought by the Justice Department against the company he and his father ran were “absolutely ridiculous.” The two sides eventually settled the case—but three years later, the Justice Department charged Trump’s organization with continuing to discriminate against blacks.
When five black and Latino teenagers were implicated in a brutal attack on a white woman jogging in Central Park in 1989, Trump took out full-page newspaper advertisements calling for the death penalty for “criminals of every age.” The suspects were convicted but later exonerated by DNA evidence—and Trump then called their wrongful-conviction settlement a “disgrace.”
Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino President John R. O’Donnell, in the 1991 book “Trumped!: The Inside Story of the Real Donald Trump,” alleged that Trump once said that “laziness is a trait in blacks.” He also claimed that Trump said, of his accountants: “Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are little short guys that wear yarmulkes every day.” (Trump has called O’Donnell a disgruntled employee, but he has not disputed the remarks. “The stuff O’Donnell wrote about me is probably true,” he told Playboy in an interview published in May 1997.)
Speaking to the Republican Jewish Coalition in December, Trump made a speech riddled with Jewish stereotypes, such as: “Look, I’m a negotiator like you folks; we’re negotiators.” And: “I know why you’re not going to support me. You’re not going to support me because I don’t want your money.”
Another Trump observation: “A well-educated black has a tremendous advantage over a well-educated white in terms of the job market. … If I were starting off today, I would love to be a well-educated black, because I believe they do have an actual advantage.’’
When Trump launched his campaign, he made a broad-brush accusation against Mexico: “They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing … drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”
By Glenn Kessler Washington Post
Glenn Kessler is a veteran diplomatic correspondent who writes the “Fact Checker” blog for The Washington Post.
Trump is particularly unique in how he talks about himself. Plenty of would be presidents make dubious claims about what they have accomplished in elected office (created millions of jobs! slashed spending!). Few make such claims about their personal attributes. Trump has no such hesitation. Just before the Iowa caucuses, here are five of the biggest myths Donald Trump tells about himself.
1. “I’m, like, a really smart person.”
Trump is not shy about his intellectual prowess. As he tweeted in 2013: “Sorry losers and haters, but my I.Q. is one of the highest—and you all knowit! Please don’t feel so stupid or insecure, it’s not your fault.”
Of course, “smart” is a bit subjective. There’s book smarts as well as street smarts. Many would say Trump has run a pretty smart campaign. But clearly he’s saying that his brain is very sharp —as he puts it, “super-genius stuff.” At one point, Trump rebutted criticism from Washington Post columnist George Will and GOP consultant Karl Rove by saying: “I’m much smarter than them. I think I have a much higher IQ. I think I went to a better college better everything.”
Trump’s college background, in fact, is often his key piece of evidence for his intellectual superiority. But there’s less here than meets the eye. Trump did graduate from the Wharton School of business at the University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League college. But Trump did not get an MBA from Wharton; he has a much less prestigious undergraduate degree. He was a transfer student who arrived at Wharton after two years at Fordham University, which U.S.
News&World Report currently ranks 66th among national universities. (Besides, simply going to an Ivy League school doesn’t prove you’re a genius.) Gwenda Blair, in her 2001 book “The Trumps,” said Trump’s grades at Fordham were just “respectable” and that he got into Wharton mainly because he had an interview with an admissions officer who had been a high school classmate of his older brother. And Wharton’s admissions team surely knew that Trump was from one of New York’s wealthiest families.
For years, numerous media reports said Trump graduated first in his class from Wharton, but that’s wrong. The 1968 commencement program does not list him as graduating with any sort of honors. In fact, The Boston Globe reported that he barely made an impression at all: “His former classmates said he seemed a student who spoke up a lot but rarely shined in class, who barely participated in campus activities, shunned fraternity parties.”
2. “I have the world’s greatest memory.”
One of Trump’s most controversial statements is his claim that he saw a television news report about thousands of Muslims in New Jersey cheering the collapse of the World Trade Center in 2001. That statement ended up on The Washington Post Fact Checker’s list of 2015’s biggest Pinocchios. Trump insisted he was right because he has such a great memory.
But no TV network could find such a clip—though extensive searches were made. No news reports were tracked down to validate Trump’s claim of “thousands.” The closest thing ever found was a local newscast at the time, from a CBS affiliate in New York, that reported on the arrest of eight men who neighbors said had celebrated the attack. That’s a far cry from thousands. There were also video clips of several Palestinians—in the Israeli-occupied territories—cheering. But that wasn’t New Jersey—and again, it wasn’t thousands.
Trump also pointed to a line in a Washington Post article written days after the attacks that said law enforcement authorities detained and questioned some people who were allegedly seen celebrating. But when one of the reporters, Serge Kovaleski, said the article did not validate Trump’s claim, Trump mocked Kovaleski’s disability. (Kovaleski has a chronic condition that limits his mobility.)
Trump later denied doing so, claiming that he didn’t know the reporter even though Kovaleski had closely covered Trump in the 1980s and 1990s and had interviewed him several times. Maybe Trump should rephrase his boast: “I have the world’s most selective memory.”
3. “I’m proud of my net worth. I’ve done an amazing job.”
Trump frequently touts his financial acumen. He often says he is worth $10 billion, though most analysts say that is exaggerated. Bloomberg News closely studied his 92-page financial disclosure report and concluded that he is really worth $2.9 billion. That may sound like a lot of money. But don’t forget that Trump inherited a lot of money, too—about $40 million in 1974. In 1978, his net worth was estimated by Business Week at $100 million. The Post’s Wonk blog calculated that if Trump had gotten out of real estate, put his money in an index fund based on the Standard & Poor’s 500 index and reinvested the dividends, he’d be worth twice as much—$6 billion—today.
National Journal noted that Warren Buffett was also worth $40 million in 1974—and he managed to turn that into $67 billion today. But then Buffett doesn’t have a long list of business flops, such as Trump Airlines, Trump Vodka, various Trump casinos, Trump Steaks and Trump University.
4. “I’m self-funding my campaign.”
Trump keeps saying that unlike his rivals, he’s paying for his own presidential campaign, but that’s largely false. At the start of his campaign, he loaned his political operation $1.8 million. As of Oct. 1, he had given his campaign an additional $104,829.27—but he had also received $3.9 million from donors, which accounted for the vast majority of the $5.8 million his campaign had taken in by then. His campaign website features a prominent “donate” button on its homepage. Trump has spent $5.4 million, and interestingly, about one-quarter of his spending has gone to Trump-owned entities (mainly his private jet company).
In January, Trump launched an ad campaign in Iowa and New Hampshire, saying he planned to spend $2 million. He also claimed that his campaign was $35 million to $40 million below budget. Ultimately, all of his spending —and where the money came from—will have to be disclosed in campaign finance reports. The odds are his personal share of the spending will be less than 50 percent.
5. “I’m probably the least racist person on Earth.”
When people have criticized Trump for promising to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border or proposing a ban on all Muslims from entering the country, he has defended himself by saying he’s not motivated by racism. Still, he has a pattern of racially tinged remarks and actions.
The very first article about Trump in The New York Times—it appeared 42 years ago—was headlined “Major Landlord Accused Of Anti black Bias in City.” Trump was quoted in the report as saying that the charges in a lawsuit brought by the Justice Department against the company he and his father ran were “absolutely ridiculous.” The two sides eventually settled the case—but three years later, the Justice Department charged Trump’s organization with continuing to discriminate against blacks.
When five black and Latino teenagers were implicated in a brutal attack on a white woman jogging in Central Park in 1989, Trump took out full-page newspaper advertisements calling for the death penalty for “criminals of every age.” The suspects were convicted but later exonerated by DNA evidence—and Trump then called their wrongful-conviction settlement a “disgrace.”
Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino President John R. O’Donnell, in the 1991 book “Trumped!: The Inside Story of the Real Donald Trump,” alleged that Trump once said that “laziness is a trait in blacks.” He also claimed that Trump said, of his accountants: “Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are little short guys that wear yarmulkes every day.” (Trump has called O’Donnell a disgruntled employee, but he has not disputed the remarks. “The stuff O’Donnell wrote about me is probably true,” he told Playboy in an interview published in May 1997.)
Speaking to the Republican Jewish Coalition in December, Trump made a speech riddled with Jewish stereotypes, such as: “Look, I’m a negotiator like you folks; we’re negotiators.” And: “I know why you’re not going to support me. You’re not going to support me because I don’t want your money.”
Another Trump observation: “A well-educated black has a tremendous advantage over a well-educated white in terms of the job market. … If I were starting off today, I would love to be a well-educated black, because I believe they do have an actual advantage.’’
When Trump launched his campaign, he made a broad-brush accusation against Mexico: “They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing … drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”
By Glenn Kessler Washington Post
Glenn Kessler is a veteran diplomatic correspondent who writes the “Fact Checker” blog for The Washington Post.
The dynasty is dead as Trump sees off Jeb Bush
“The Bushes always bristled at the ‘d’ word,” said Maureen Dowd in The New York Times, but they won’t have to worry about that anymore. “The dynasty has perished, with a whimper.” Jeb Bush has pulled the plug on his bid for the Republican presidential nomination, having failed to win a single primary. It’s hard to say which moment of Jeb’s doomed campaign was saddest, said Dara Lind on Vox.com. There was his team’s widely mocked decision to place an exclamation mark after Jeb’s name on his campaign logo, in an attempt to make the wonkish, patrician candidate seem exciting. There was the time that Bush implored a silent New Hampshire crowd to “please clap” during one of his speeches. But the final humiliation came when Jeb wheeled out his more personable brother, George W. Bush, to help campaign in South Carolina – and still crawled in a distant fourth.
The campaign must have been a confusing experience for Bush, said Betsy Woodruff on The Daily Beast. After Barack Obama thrashed Mitt Romney in the 2012 election, the Republicans brought together a brain trust of party elders to figure out where the GOP was going wrong. They concluded that the party needed to reach out beyond the “Old Christian White Man” demographic. Judged on those terms, Bush’s campaign should have been a great success. He consistently championed immigration reform, had many prominent Hispanic supporters and employed a diverse team that included many women in senior roles. Yet that and $150m in campaign donations “didn’t do him a lick of good”. Donald Trump, meanwhile, prospered by doing the exact opposite – stoking fear of immigrants and treating female rivals with “contempt”.
Trump was Bush’s undoing, said Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone. The real estate mogul “seems to genuinely despise Bush”, and he used Bush’s “gentlemanly dignity” against him to devastating effect, mocking him as a “low-energy” wimp living under the thumb of his Mexican wife. Trump, whose political act owes a clear debt to the trash-talking conventions of professional wrestling, knows the public “always loves seeing the self-proclaimed good guy get whacked with a chair”. Well, I don’t, said Rod Dreher in The American Conservative. It made me queasy to see Trump repeatedly insult Bush and his family. I don’t regret that Bush is out of the race, “but I regret very much that what wins in American politics this year are the tactics employed by the man who conspicuously lacks what Bush plainly has: character”.
The campaign must have been a confusing experience for Bush, said Betsy Woodruff on The Daily Beast. After Barack Obama thrashed Mitt Romney in the 2012 election, the Republicans brought together a brain trust of party elders to figure out where the GOP was going wrong. They concluded that the party needed to reach out beyond the “Old Christian White Man” demographic. Judged on those terms, Bush’s campaign should have been a great success. He consistently championed immigration reform, had many prominent Hispanic supporters and employed a diverse team that included many women in senior roles. Yet that and $150m in campaign donations “didn’t do him a lick of good”. Donald Trump, meanwhile, prospered by doing the exact opposite – stoking fear of immigrants and treating female rivals with “contempt”.
Trump was Bush’s undoing, said Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone. The real estate mogul “seems to genuinely despise Bush”, and he used Bush’s “gentlemanly dignity” against him to devastating effect, mocking him as a “low-energy” wimp living under the thumb of his Mexican wife. Trump, whose political act owes a clear debt to the trash-talking conventions of professional wrestling, knows the public “always loves seeing the self-proclaimed good guy get whacked with a chair”. Well, I don’t, said Rod Dreher in The American Conservative. It made me queasy to see Trump repeatedly insult Bush and his family. I don’t regret that Bush is out of the race, “but I regret very much that what wins in American politics this year are the tactics employed by the man who conspicuously lacks what Bush plainly has: character”.
Trump triumphant
Donald Trump established himself as the overwhelming favourite to win the Republican presidential nomination with a string of election victories this week. On “Super Tuesday” – the biggest single day of the primary season – the billionaire topped the polls in seven of the 11 voting states, giving him a solid, though not impregnable, lead in the delegate count. Trump’s nearest rival, the conservative firebrand Ted Cruz, won his home state of Texas, along with two other contests. The establishment favourite Marco Rubio won just one, in Minnesota: he nevertheless vowed to fight on. In the lead-up to the polls, Trump had come under concerted attack from Rubio and Cruz, who condemned his initial failure to disavow an endorsement by David Duke, a former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.
On the Democrat side, Super Tuesday cemented Hillary Clinton’s front-runner status. Building on her big weekend victory in South Carolina, she beat her self-proclaimed socialist rival Bernie Sanders in all but four of 11 states.
When Trump started rising in the polls last summer, said The New York Times, the Republican leadership refused to take him seriously. They were content to let the voters decide. Well, the voters are now deciding – and “they are leaning, in unbelievable numbers”, towards a race-baiting demagogue. This has caused disarray in the GOP and led Trump’s rivals to ape his crude rhetoric: Rubio last week resorted to making double entendres about Trump’s “small” hands and joking about him wetting his pants. The GOP is a mess, agreed the Los Angeles Times. Some Republicans are already reconciling themselves to a Trump nomination: former White House hopeful Chris Christie has even endorsed him. Others have vowed to block it. A despairing Senator Lindsey Graham declared that his party had gone “batshit crazy”.
The Democrat race, by contrast, has reverted to a stately “coronation”, said The Wall Street Journal. “Only the FBI probe into [Clinton’s] emails and her mishandling of classified information can derail her now.” And that’s unlikely. It’d take “a brave government employee” to “recommend a criminal charge against a major-party nominee so close to an election”.
“This is really happening,” said Ben Judah in The Independent. One of the contenders in
November’s presidential election looks set to be a man who wants to build a “great, beautiful wall” along the border with Mexico, and deport America’s 11 million illegal immigrants – an operation that would cost “an estimated minimum $420bn”; a man who wants to launch an economic war against China by branding it a “currency manipulator”; who openly admires Russia’s Vladimir Putin and who would give Putin carte blanche in the Middle East. Trump hasn’t hijacked the Republican Party, said Robert Kagan in The Washington Post. He is “its creation, its Frankenstein’s monster”. For years the party has been fuelling these nativist prejudices for its own political benefit. Now, in “a bit of cosmic justice fit for a Greek tragedy”, it is being destroyed by the forces it unleashed, and its creation “will soon be let loose on the land”.
It’s “almost certainly too late to stop Mr Trump’s hostile takeover of the Republican Party”,
said Edward Luce in the FT, but could he go on to win the presidency? On paper, that looks
implausible: his polarising policies should ensure he loses in “a landslide” to Clinton. But the
experts have been proved wrong many times in this strange election (just three months ago, Nate Silver, the guru of election forecasts, was still putting Trump’s chances of winning the Republican nomination at just 2%). Besides, Trump does have some things going for him. He is well placed, for instance, to take on Wall Street, something America is “itching to do”. When Clinton was making $225,000 speeches to Goldman Sachs, Trump was imposing haircuts on his creditors. He may be a “con artist”, as Rubio claims, but Trump “knows how to make a deal”. Clinton will need to play her cards well, said Frank Bruni in The New York Times. Her advisers are preparing a ruthless line of attacks against Trump – a strategy that has been characterised as less “hope and change” than “hate and castrate”. But such negative tactics could rebound on her. While Clinton is certainly tough enough to fight an “ugly contest”, has she “honed the character and nimbleness to prevail in a more inspiring, unifying way”?
The next key date in the primary season is 15 March, reports CNBC.com. Rubio’s home state of Florida is staging a winner-takes-all primary on that day, with 99 delegates at stake (in this week’s contests, delegates were allocated in proportion to each candidates’ share of the vote). If Rubio can’t beat Trump there (and he’s currently trailing), the race will effectively be over. In the event that neither Trump nor any of his GOP rivals secures a requisite majority of the total 2,472 delegates before July, the Republicans would hold a brokered convention, at which delegates would be free to reassign their support to other candidates.
On the Democrat side, Super Tuesday cemented Hillary Clinton’s front-runner status. Building on her big weekend victory in South Carolina, she beat her self-proclaimed socialist rival Bernie Sanders in all but four of 11 states.
When Trump started rising in the polls last summer, said The New York Times, the Republican leadership refused to take him seriously. They were content to let the voters decide. Well, the voters are now deciding – and “they are leaning, in unbelievable numbers”, towards a race-baiting demagogue. This has caused disarray in the GOP and led Trump’s rivals to ape his crude rhetoric: Rubio last week resorted to making double entendres about Trump’s “small” hands and joking about him wetting his pants. The GOP is a mess, agreed the Los Angeles Times. Some Republicans are already reconciling themselves to a Trump nomination: former White House hopeful Chris Christie has even endorsed him. Others have vowed to block it. A despairing Senator Lindsey Graham declared that his party had gone “batshit crazy”.
The Democrat race, by contrast, has reverted to a stately “coronation”, said The Wall Street Journal. “Only the FBI probe into [Clinton’s] emails and her mishandling of classified information can derail her now.” And that’s unlikely. It’d take “a brave government employee” to “recommend a criminal charge against a major-party nominee so close to an election”.
“This is really happening,” said Ben Judah in The Independent. One of the contenders in
November’s presidential election looks set to be a man who wants to build a “great, beautiful wall” along the border with Mexico, and deport America’s 11 million illegal immigrants – an operation that would cost “an estimated minimum $420bn”; a man who wants to launch an economic war against China by branding it a “currency manipulator”; who openly admires Russia’s Vladimir Putin and who would give Putin carte blanche in the Middle East. Trump hasn’t hijacked the Republican Party, said Robert Kagan in The Washington Post. He is “its creation, its Frankenstein’s monster”. For years the party has been fuelling these nativist prejudices for its own political benefit. Now, in “a bit of cosmic justice fit for a Greek tragedy”, it is being destroyed by the forces it unleashed, and its creation “will soon be let loose on the land”.
It’s “almost certainly too late to stop Mr Trump’s hostile takeover of the Republican Party”,
said Edward Luce in the FT, but could he go on to win the presidency? On paper, that looks
implausible: his polarising policies should ensure he loses in “a landslide” to Clinton. But the
experts have been proved wrong many times in this strange election (just three months ago, Nate Silver, the guru of election forecasts, was still putting Trump’s chances of winning the Republican nomination at just 2%). Besides, Trump does have some things going for him. He is well placed, for instance, to take on Wall Street, something America is “itching to do”. When Clinton was making $225,000 speeches to Goldman Sachs, Trump was imposing haircuts on his creditors. He may be a “con artist”, as Rubio claims, but Trump “knows how to make a deal”. Clinton will need to play her cards well, said Frank Bruni in The New York Times. Her advisers are preparing a ruthless line of attacks against Trump – a strategy that has been characterised as less “hope and change” than “hate and castrate”. But such negative tactics could rebound on her. While Clinton is certainly tough enough to fight an “ugly contest”, has she “honed the character and nimbleness to prevail in a more inspiring, unifying way”?
The next key date in the primary season is 15 March, reports CNBC.com. Rubio’s home state of Florida is staging a winner-takes-all primary on that day, with 99 delegates at stake (in this week’s contests, delegates were allocated in proportion to each candidates’ share of the vote). If Rubio can’t beat Trump there (and he’s currently trailing), the race will effectively be over. In the event that neither Trump nor any of his GOP rivals secures a requisite majority of the total 2,472 delegates before July, the Republicans would hold a brokered convention, at which delegates would be free to reassign their support to other candidates.
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