'He is a Trojan horse': Donald Trump rages after getting crushed in Wisconsin

Donald Trump's presidential campaign unleashed a furious statement Tuesday night after Ted Cruz easily defeated him in the Wisconsin primary.

"Ted Cruz is worse than a puppet--- he is a Trojan horse, being used by the party bosses attempting to steal the nomination from Mr. Trump," the statement said.

Trump had aggressively campaigned in Wisconsin and repeatedly predicted that he would win there.

Instead of offering a note of praise Trump after past losses, the Tuesday-night statement leveled a bevy of attacks against "Lyin' Ted Cruz." Among other things, the statement accused Cruz of illegally coordinating with super PACs supporting his campaign.

The Trump camp also claimed that the candidate "withstood the onslaught of the establishment yet again" and noted that Cruz had the support of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and a number of local conservative radio hosts.

The statement further predicted that Trump would win the upcoming April 19 New York primary.

Read the full statement below:

Donald J. Trump withstood the onslaught of the establishment yet again. Lyin' Ted Cruz had the Governor of Wisconsin, many conservative talk radio show hosts, and the entire party apparatus behind him. Not only was he propelled by the anti-Trump Super PAC's spending countless millions of dollars on false advertising against Mr. Trump, but he was coordinating `with his own Super PAC's (which is illegal) who totally control him. Ted Cruz is worse than a puppet--- he is a Trojan horse, being used by the party bosses attempting to steal the nomination from Mr. Trump. We have total confidence that Mr. Trump will go on to win in New York, where he holds a substantial lead in all the polls, and beyond. Mr. Trump is the only candidate who can secure the delegates needed to win the Republican nomination and ultimately defeat Hillary Clinton, or whomever is the Democratic nominee, in order to Make America Great Again.

Trump: ‘I Don’t Think’ I’m Blowing My Campaign Trump

Fox News host Chris Wallace bluntly asked Donald Trump on Sunday if he was “blowing” his campaign after a spat of negative headlines the past two weeks, to which Trump responded, “I don’t think so.”

Over the past two weeks, Trump courted controversy by retweeting an flattering photo of rival Ted Cruz’s wife, suggested there should be “punishment” for women who have abortions, made eyebrow-raising remarks about nuclear weapons, and saw his campaign manager charged with simple battery.

“This may sound harsh, but are you in the process of blowing your campaign for president?” Wallace asked.

“I don’t think so,” Trump said.

The GOP frontrunner reminded Wallace that rumors of his campaign’s demise had been consistent among the talking class since his candidacy began last June. However, Trump has seen his lead vanish in the Wisconsin polls over the past month, and his favorability numbers have hit staggering lows, particularly among women.

“I just got great polls from NBC nationwide,” Trump said. “I think that we’re doing very well. Don’t forget you have been thinking about that or asking me that question numerous times … ‘He just blew his campaign,’ only to end up having higher poll numbers.”

Wallace reminded Trump of his love of discussing polls, bringing up the massive swing in Wisconsin over the past month. He led Cruz by 11 points there in February, but now trails by 10 points, a 21-point swing. Wisconsin’s primary is Tuesday.

“If you had purposely set out to turn off voters, especially women voters, over the last two weeks, I”m not sure you could have done a better job,” Wallace said.

Trump admitted the “retweet” was not wise, something he discussed at length with the New York Times‘ Maureen Dowd in a column published Saturday.

“All I can do is do what I do,” Trump said. “I’m self-funding my campaign … I think I’m doing very well. Was this my best week? I guess not. I could have done without the retweet, et cetera, et cetera, but I think I’m doing OK.”

Trump In Advanced Talks To Buy AC Milan

Frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, Donald Trump, is allegedly in advanced talks to add AC Milan to his international sporting empire, which already includes a number of golf courses.

The 69-year-old recently made a detour from the campaign trail to fly into Italy on an overnight flight from Chicago.

The former High School variety soccer star was spotted getting into a waiting car outside Casa Milan in the early hours of the morning.

Former Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, had been attempting to sell the club to Thai businessman Bee Taechaubol for some time before the American tycoon stepped in to unexpectedly come close to sealing a deal.

The Rossoneri were regarded as a valuable political tool for Berlusconi and the Trump campaign now hope that the ‘make Milan great again’ platform will help tap into the large Italian-American demographic.

The Republican frontrunner has also reportedly opened talks with Trump Tower inhabitant, Cristiano Ronaldo, in a bid to take him to the Stadio San Siro.

DONALD TRUMP BURNT IN EFFIGIES ACROSS MEXICO

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexicans celebrating an Easter ritual late on Saturday burnt effigies of U.S. Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump, whose anti-immigrant views have sparked outrage south of the American border.

In Mexico City's poor La Merced neighborhood, hundreds of cheering residents yelled "death" and various insults as they watched the explosion of the grinning papier-mâché mock-up of the real estate tycoon, replete with blue blazer, red tie and his trademark tuft of blond hair.

Media reported that Trump effigies burned across Mexico, from Puebla to Mexico's industrial hub Monterrey.

The burning is part of a widespread Mexican Holy Week tradition where neighborhoods burn effigies to represent Judas Iscariot, who betrayed Jesus Christ according to the Bible. The effigies are often modeled on unpopular political figures.

"Since he started his campaign and began talking about immigrants, Mexico, and Mexicans, I said 'I've got to get this guy,'" said Felipe Linares, the artisan who crafted Trump and whose family has been making Judases for more than 50 years.

Trump, the front-runner to win the Republican nomination for the Nov. 8 election, has drawn fire in Mexico with his campaign vow to build a wall along the southern U.S. border to keep out illegal immigrants and drugs, and to make Mexico pay for it.

Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto has said his country will not pay for the wall and likened Trump's "strident tone" to the ascent of dictators like Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini.

Trump, who has also aroused concern among many in his own party with his proposals, has accused Mexico of sending rapists and drug runners across the border and vowed to increase fees on some Mexican visas and all border crossing cards to help make Mexico pay for the wall.

Judas effigies are burnt in villages and towns in several Latin American countries such as Venezuela and in parts of Greece. Anthropologists say the practice serves a symbolic function to overcome divisions and unite communities around a common enemy.

Linares has also done mock-ups of corrupt former union leader Elba Esther Gordillo and President Enrique Pena Nieto, whose popularity has been hit by conflict-of-interest scandals and the disappearance of 43 students at the hands of corrupt police.

Someone wrote 'Donald Trump 2016' in chalk at a university campus and students are freaking out

Mirror UK

'Trump 2016' scrawled in chalk at Atlanta's Emory University campus

Students at an American university have claimed they are frightened and “in pain” after someone scrawled support for Donald Trump on their campus.

About 40 to 50 undergraduates expressed their fears demanding a meeting with officials after the 'Trump 2016' graffiti appeared.

Some students at Atlanta's Emory University were upset as they do not support Trump and are against some of his political values which include anti immigration.

During a protest they chanted: “You are not listening. Come speak to us, we are in pain.”

They then entered a building screaming: “It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win. We must love each other and support each other. We have nothing to lose but our chains.”

The move led to president of the university Jim Wagner meeting with the protesters.

He later sent out an email explaining: "During our conversation, they voiced their genuine concern and pain in the face of this perceived intimidation.

“After meeting with our students, I cannot dismiss their expression of feelings and concern as motivated only by political preference or over-sensitivity.

"Instead, the students with whom I spoke heard a message, not about political process or candidate choice, but instead about values regarding diversity and respect that clash with Emory’s own.”

The move however has led to widespread condemnation with many calling for the students, who called the scribblings “hateful graffiti”, to grow up.

Army veteran Terry Wood, 72, said: “In World War II teenagers stormed the beaches of Normandy and Iwo Jima putting their lives on the line for these people’s freedoms. Today teenagers are afraid of things written on chalk boards. Liberalism has gone too far.

“Can you picture going to these cry babies, dragging them out of their classrooms because someone said no to them and sending them to war? That is what happened to us.”

Students say they are 'in pain' over the Trump graffiti

Candice Morgan, 24, herself a student, added: "Oh those poor little lambs.

“I do hope the President tucked into bed with a cup of hot chocolate after that horrible experience. “There must be so traumatised.”

Emory’s student newspaper's editor, Zak Hudak, posted an editorial addressing the incident.

He wrote: "I do not take lightly the fears and pains of those students who felt victimised by the 'Trump 2016' chalkings around campus, and I try my best to support oppressed groups on campus.

"The duty of a newspaper to give a voice to the voiceless surpasses that of echoing those in power.

Trump is the Republican front-runner

"I acknowledge again that Donald Trump is unlike any recent candidate who has lasted to this stage of a presidential election and that, for many Emory students, support of him holds a different connotation than support for Hillary Clinton or John Kasich.

"It is nonetheless necessary to ask those protesters what would happen should the tables be turned. "Suppose we had a different administration.

"Suppose it was ruled that protests, such as the one on Tuesday, made Trump supporters feel threatened on campus.

"Freedom of speech works both ways, and its hindrance affects both sides.

"It is not the role of an institution that is devoted to the critical education of its students to tell those students which opinions they are allowed to have."

Emory University caters for around 14,000 students.

Man charged with assault after Trump rally

A man who reportedly punched and kicked a protestor at a rally for Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump was arrested and charged with assault with injury, ABC News reported Sunday.
Tony Pettway, who was allegedly seen in a video punching a protestor as he was being escorted out of a Trump rally Saturday in Arizona, was arrested at the event and charged before being released.
The protestor was wearing an American flag shirt and holding up a sign of Trump that said, "Trump is Bad for America."
In a video posted on Twitter, the Trump supporter appears to have tried to grab the poster out of the protestor's hand and proceeded to punch and kick him. The attacker was handcuffed by police.
Another protestor walking behind the man in the American flag shirt was seen wearing a white Ku Klux Klan-style hood.

Alex Satterly (@alex_satterly) March 19, 2016
Trump called out the hooded protestor during the rally.
"He s a disgusting guy," Trump said. "That is a disgusting guy, really disgusting."
Earlier this month, a Trump supporter punched a protestor in the face as he was being escorted out of a North Carolina rally. The supporter was arrested the next day and charged with assault.

Protesters block the road to Donald Trump rally near Phoenix

WASHINGTON POST

 FOUNTAIN HILLS, Ariz. — Donald Trump’s rally in the Phoenix suburbs on Saturday was briefly delayed as dozens of protesters carrying signs that denounced racism blocked an Arizona highway leading to the rally site.
The route was first blocked by a pair of pickup trucks decorated with banners reading “Comb Over Racism: Dump Trump” and “Shut Down Trump.” Dozens of protesters then filled in the roadway, carrying signs reading “Love Trumps Hate” and “Stand Against Racism.” One homemade sign said, “Combat White Supremacy.”
 As the trucks were towed away, protesters formed a human wall. Traffic finally resumed after officers began arresting protesters.
Later Saturday afternoon, scores of protesters temporarily blocked the entrance to the Tucson Convention Center, chanting “Shut it down!” and preventing supporters from entering a Trump rally there.
And in New York City, protesters from a wide range of left-leaning organizations organized a roaming protest Saturday targeting two of Trump’s most prominent properties in midtown Manhattan. There were reports that the police used tear gas to prevent a group of protesters from moving past barriers near Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue.

READ MORE :Republicans Brace for Messy Convention to Stop Trump

For yet another weekend, footage of anti-Trump protests is poised to dominate the news. Activists hope these images hurt the billionaire businessman’s chances of becoming the Republican presidential nominee, but many Trump supporters say the pictures will only strengthen their candidate’s popularity ahead of Tuesday’s primary in Arizona and caucuses inUtah.
“It’s a big spectacle,” said Devin Wood, 32, a supporter of Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R). Wood attended a protest outside Trump’s Friday night rally in Salt Lake City but worries that the real estate mogul benefits from the media coverage the protests prompt. “I think the showman in him thinks any type of news or any type of exposure is going to help. He relishes in seeing this because I think he’s a narcissist and he loves to see this whole hullabaloo just made up about him.”
The anti-Trump blockade in Arizona on Saturday deepened Geneva Arthin’s admiration of Trump. She said she is convinced the same group of protesters has attended each of the candidate’s rallies and is being paid by Trump’s Republican and Democratic opponents.
“They are against Mr. Trump,” said Arthin, 77, who lives in Mesa and has already cast her primary vote for him. “And Mr. Trump is not afraid of them because they are afraid of Trump because they will lose their subsidies.”
As police worked to unblock the highway, several thousand people waited in the sun for Trump to arrive at Fountain Park, known for a fountain that shoots up a tall column of water. News of the blockade popped up on cellphones and spread through the crowd.
The rally began nearly an hour late. Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, whose jurisdiction includes Fountain Hills, introduced Trump and announced that law enforcement had arrested three protesters. Arpaio is a controversial longtime sheriff known for demeaning his prisoners and for using his office to target immigrants in the country illegally and to hasten their deportation. Arpaio has endorsed Trump and has appeared on the campaign trail with him several times.
“We had a little problem — some demonstrators were trying to disrupt,” said Arpaio, as the crowd booed the protesters. “If they think they’re going to intimidate you and the next president of the United States, it’s not going to happen. Not in this town, I’ll tell you right now.”
In the crowd was Courtney Enos, 20, a community college student from Mesa who got in line at 6:30 a.m. and had planned to shout at Trump, asking why he is not talking about issues important to Native American communities. But when she got inside, she lost her confidence — she was the only minority in a sea of white faces, and some of the men around her commented on how they wanted to physically harm the protesters who shut down the highway.
“Honestly, for me, it was a little scary and nerve-racking,” said Enos, who said she would have voted for Sen. Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary but didn’t register to vote in time. “I was too scared to say anything, with the way people go after protesters.”
Marla Becker, 64, a Trump supporter from Apache Junction, didn’t make it to the rally in time to get a spot inside, so she watched from a nearby grassy hill, along with a group of protesters.
“I was kind of nervous because I didn’t want any ruckus to start, because when you’re old it’s kind of scary when there’s a ruckus,” said Becker, a former Democrat. She plans to vote for Trump, and her decision was reinforced as she listened to the protesters. “It’s kind of irritating when they’re yelling and screaming.”
Inside the Tucson rally, the demonstrations escalated after Trump took the stage, where he was interrupted at least half a dozen times. In some instances, the interruptions prompted physical altercations involving shoving and punching. At one point, at least a dozen protesters heckled Trump from behind the podium while holding “Black Lives Matter” and “Dump Trump” posters.
Trump took umbrage in another instance when a protester put on a white Ku Klux Klan hood and began shouting at the candidate. As the protester and a friend were escorted out, a man punched, threw down and stomped on the protester’s friend. That man was taken away by police as well.
At Fountain Hills, Trump took the stage in one of his red ball caps that read “Make America Great Again,” and he kept his comments under 25 minutes, as people in the audience were turning red from the sun and a few were becoming ill. He hit on many of controversial stances that have sparked protests: building a massive wall along the Mexican border, stopping illegal immigration, barring Syrian refugees and banishing political correctness.
He also resumed attacking his Republican opponents, telling the crowd that Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) “wasn’t even born in our country” and that Kasich is weak on immigration.
A few protesters were led out of the rally early during Trump’s remarks, including four women with their arms linked and a man in a U.S. Army hat with a sign reading: “Vets to Trump: End hate speech against Muslims.”
A few protesters stood near the entrance to the rally. Among them was Jay Helser, 47, a small-business owner and father of five who made a sign showing an orange pig and Trump that said: “Cute orange pig, Pompous orange pig.”
“The man personally offends me,” said Helser, who lives in nearby Litchfield Park with his wife, who is from Mexico. “He offends my wife — he offends her as a woman, he offends her as a Mexican American. He offends my kids, who are all half Mexican. . . . I’ve never lost sleep before over politics, but I have literally had lots of sleepless nights over this man.”
By the time the road was blocked, the rally was already packed and a long line of people were waiting to get in, so the protesters did little to prevent Trump from getting a full audience. Still, John Kavanagh, an Arizona state senator who supports Trump, told local NBC affiliate KPNX that he plans to introduce legislation first thing Monday to increase penalties for those who block traffic into political events.
“These people are the fascists, and we’re going to crack down on them,” Kavanagh said. “Maybe President Trump will get a federal law, too.”
For months, Trump’s rallies have attracted protests, but the number and intensity have dramatically increased in recent weeks. Several high-profile eruptions of violence have attracted the condemnation of Trump’s critics, who say he has set a tone at his rallies that encourages violence among his supporters.
At a campaign rally in Fayetteville, N.C., a Trump fan sucker-punched a protester who was being escorted out by police officers. In St. Louis, 32 demonstrators were arrested at the Peabody Opera House, where protesters interrupted Trump eight times inside while hundreds clashed outdoors. And Trump canceled a rally at the University of Illinois at Chicago because thousands of protesters had gathered inside and outside the venue, often violently clashing with Trump supporters.
The candidate has strongly pushed back on the suggestion that he is responsible for the incidents, even as he has played down their frequency. He and his supporters say that protesters are intentionally stirring up trouble and inciting aggression to hurt Trump’s campaign.
Amy Muldoon of the International Socialist Organization, which helped organize the protest in New York, said it was important for her organization to protest, despite Trump’s use of similar protests to leverage support.
“What Chicago proved is that when people act in a united way, that’s his weakness,” Muldoon said. “He feeds on division.”
Bump reported from New York and DelReal from Salt Lake City. Niraj Chokshi in Washington and John Wagner in Phoenix contributed to this report.

Abraham Lincoln Warned Us About Donald Trump

Watching the rise of Donald Trump brings to mind the story of Francis J. McIntosh’s demise.
McIntosh was a Mississippi River boatman who disembarked, one morning in the spring of 1836, at the port of St. Louis. He had a rendezvous planned with a chambermaid there, but he didn’t make it far before he got into a scuffle with a couple of constables, who had been in hot pursuit of another sailor, who was wanted for brawling. McIntosh was arrested for interfering with law enforcement, hauled before a justice of the peace, then marched off to jail. Along the way, he asked how long he’d be held there, and was told: at least five years. At that, McIntosh drew a knife, stabbed one policeman to death, badly wounded another, and bolted. Word spread, and a mob gathered. McIntosh was tracked down to an outhouse where he was hiding, and hustled back to jail.
Meanwhile, a much larger mob collected on the street, where, as Elijah P. Lovejoy, the editor of the St. Louis Observer, wrote a few days later, the body of the murdered policeman “lay weltering in his blood.” The mob soon moved on to storm the jail and tore McIntosh from his cell; it brought him to the edge of town, chained him to a tree, and built a fire at his feet. Until then, Lovejoy wrote, hardly a word had been spoken by the mob or McIntosh, but when the flames were lit he pleaded to be shot instead, then gave up and sang hymns as he was slowly roasted to death. His charred remains were then hung from a branch for all to see, and “a rabble of boys” who had taken in the whole spectacle took turns throwing stones at McIntosh’s head to see who could break it.
When a grand jury was convened to consider whether the members of the mob had committed any crimes, the presiding judge changed the subject and railed against McIntosh—a free mulatto—as proof of the perils of the anti-slavery movement. The judge’s name was Luke Lawless, and he insinuated that McIntosh had acted as a sort of terrorist, under the influence of the newspaperman Lovejoy, who was a steadfast abolitionist. To Judge Lawless, “the free negro” was “the enemy,” and he made sure that nobody was charged for McIntosh’s lynching.
For most of Missouri’s press, that was as it should be. But to Lovejoy, it was as if the Constitution itself—and the order it was supposed to impose—had been torched along with McIntosh. Lovejoy had no problem calling the dead boatman a “blood-thirsty wretch” who deserved a death penalty in a court of law. The issue, in his view, was the broader slide into mob rule happening throughout America, and he wrote, “When the question lies between justice regularly administered or the wild vengeance of a mob then there is but one side on which the patriot and Christian can rally.” So Lovejoy mounted a campaign against “mobology,” and before long a mob ran him out of town. He then set up shop a little ways upriver, in Alton, Illinois, where he lasted about a year before a mob came to destroy his printing press, and he was shot dead trying to stop it.
McIntosh and Lovejoy live on in memory today chiefly because, a few months later, in a speech to the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois, a twenty-eight-year-old lawyer named Abraham Lincoln invoked them as American martyrs. Hardly anyone in the country had heard of Lincoln before, but his speech at the Lyceum started to change that. His topic for the occasion, “The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions,” could hardly have sounded less promising, but to Lincoln it raised a fundamental question: What was the greatest threat to the Republic?
He did not fear a foreign attack: “Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.”
No, Lincoln said, the only danger that America really needed to fear would come from within: “If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”
Lincoln was not speaking hypothetically. He saw precisely such “ill-omen” in the growing disregard for the law in favor of lynch-mob vigilantism: “Accounts of outrages committed by mobs, form the every-day news of the times. They have pervaded the country, from New England to Louisiana; they are neither peculiar to the eternal snows of the former, nor the burning suns of the latter . . . neither are they confined to the slave-holding, or the non-slave-holding States.”
Lincoln said that he did not want to dwell on the horrors, but then he laid the horrors on pretty thick. For example, he said, in Mississippi, the mobs began by hanging gamblers—even though gambling was allowed by law— then “negroes, suspected of conspiring to raise an insurrection,” then “white men, supposed to be leagued with the negroes,” and then random strangers visiting from other states, until “dead men were seen literally dangling from the boughs of trees upon every road side; and in numbers almost sufficient, to rival the native Spanish moss of the country, as a drapery of the forest.”
As for McIntosh, Lincoln said, his story was “perhaps the most highly tragic,” considering the speed at which he went from being “a freeman, attending to his own business, and at peace with the world,” to being lynched. Lincoln argued, as Lovejoy had, that the fact that McIntosh would surely have been sentenced to death anyway only made his lynching more offensive. To Lincoln, the offense was lawlessness, and he argued that both those who indulged in lawlessness and those who fell prey to it would eventually come to regard “Government as their deadliest bane . . . and pray for nothing so much as its total annihilation.” It was this feeling of “alienation” rather than “attachment” to public institutions that Lincoln feared most in the “mobocratic spirit.”
However far we may be today from the scenes of violence that Lincoln described, it’s easy to see the danger he was talking about gathering force across contemporary America. Donald Trump personifies the mobocratic spirit; he fuels it and is fuelled by it, though it is doubtful that he can control it. All the elements are there: the incessant, escalating lust for violence; the instinct for mobilizing a mob to take the law into its own hands; the claim that whole groups are the enemy; the belief that those who are not with the mob forfeit all protection from the mob and invite attack; the attribution of hostile conspiracies to peaceful independent actors; the contempt for evidence, as if accurate information and honest adjudication of competing claims were dirty tricks contrived to disadvantage the mob; the vilification of the press as hooligans who deserve to be beaten, if not killed; an all-encompassing animosity toward the government and its institutions; in short, an ever-intensifying lawlessness.
This ugliness and violence and destructiveness is all that inflates Trump. His support reflects deep strains of preëxisting disenfranchisement, alienation, and division, but, although Trump gives echo to these passions and has an uncanny genius for harnessing them as his engine, he proposes no coherent remedy, only swagger: there will be blood. His success thus far reflects a world-upside-down sort of triumph, in which every word and deed that should destroy his candidacy only seem to fortify it. In this respect, Trump is the true representative of a party that has, for far too long, preferred to indulge all the dangers that Lincoln warned of and done nothing to protect itself, much less the nation, against them. That the Republicans were once the Party of Lincoln makes the danger that Trump’s party now constitutes not only alarming but tragic. And nobody foresaw the tragedy more clearly than Lincoln himself in his speech to the Lyceum, seventeen years before the Grand Old Party of the Republic was founded.
Haunted by the spectre of Francis McIntosh, Lincoln described the coming of a figure startlingly like Trump as all but inevitable: someone whose singular ambition and genius for power so “thirsts and burns for distinction” that he will pursue it at any cost. It would be foolish, he warned, not to expect such a person to arise. And when that happens, Lincoln said, there is only one solution: “it will require the people to be united with each other, attached to the government and laws, and generally intelligent, to successfully frustrate his designs.” Is that asking too much?

Trump ad features Hillary ‘barking’

The clip of Hillary Clinton mimicking a dog is taken from a speech she made in February.

Republican front runner Donald Trump has always said he would train his guns on Democratic rival Hillary Clinton once he has dealt with all opponents within the party. He has not yet won the Republican nomination, but the first Trump ad that targets Ms. Clinton is now out, and features the former first lady barking like a dog, which the ad says is her only answer to all the threats that the U.S faces.

The ad has been criticised for its gender coded insinuations, but some conservative commentators have found it attractive. The ad also features Russian President Vladimir Putin as an enemy, which the Kremlin found “negative” and as “demonising Russia”.

The clip of Ms. Clinton mimicking a dog is taken from a speech in February, where she said in jest that it would be a good idea to have a dog that barks each time a Republican candidate told a lie. “Well, we’ve trained this dog and the dog, if it’s not true, he’s going to bark,” she had said.

The ad shows Mr. Putin slamming an opponent in Judo and an Islamic State militant with his face covered, pointing a gun at the camera as the threats to America. “The Democrats have the perfect answer...” the ad says before moving to the clip of Ms Clinton barking like a dog.

Mr. Trump has been an admirer of Mr. Putin and his style, particularly his West Asia policy. The Republican candidate has said he would get along well with the Russian leader and it would be good for America. Mr. Putin has described Mr. Trump as a “really brilliant and talented person”. Mr. Trump has also said his Republican opponents were incapable of dealing with “tough” people like Mr. Putin and only he could do that.

“It’s an open secret for us that demonising Russia and whatever is linked to Russia is unfortunately a mandatory hallmark of America’s election campaign. We always sincerely regret this and wish the [U.S.] electoral process was conducted without such references to our country,” a Kremlin spokesperson was quoted as telling by Reuters.

Donald Trump: Eight celebrities who have vowed to leave America if the Republican becomes president

'I don’t think that’s America. I don’t want it to be America. Maybe it’s time for me to move, you know,' says Whoopi Goldberg

Few candidates in the history of American politics have been quite as loathed or loved as Donald Trump.
As landslide victories have mounted and political momentum has steadily grown, the Republican presidential frontrunner has continued to divide political opinion in America.
This raises the inevitable question of what happens if, against all previous odds, Trump wins the 2016 election and later becomes the 45th president of the United States.
Believe it or not, some prominent figures are so terrified by the prospect of the billionaire property mogul becoming president that they have said they will move abroad.
Here is a selection of eight people who have said they will jump ship if the former reality TV star gains power:

Miley Cyrus

After Trump won the Republican nomination in seven out of 11 states on Super Tuesday, Miley Cyrus became the latest person to announce her desire to leave the US.
“God’ he thinks he is the f***ing chosen one or some shit! […] Honestly f*** this sh*t I am moving if this is my president! I don’t say things I don’t mean!” the 23-year-old said in a tearful Instagram post.

Whoopi Goldberg

Whoopi Goldberg also expressed her desire to leave if Trump makes it in but didn’t say where she would go.
“I don’t think that’s America. I don’t want it to be America. Maybe it’s time for me to move, you know”

Samuel L. Jackson

The legendary American actor was more specific about where he was keen to go.
“If that mother**er becomes president, I’m moving my black ass to South Africa.”
                              
Raven Symone
                               
'My confession for this election is, if any Republican gets nominated, I’m gonna move to Canada with my entire family. Is that bad? I already have my ticket. I literally bought my ticket, I swear'

Cher
                               
'If he were to be elected, I'm moving to Jupiter'

Neve Campbell
                               
'I’m terrified. It’s really scary. My biggest fear is that Trump will triumph. I cannot believe that he is still in the game ... [I'll] move back to Canada'

Jon Stewart
                               
'I would consider getting in a rocket and going to another planet, because clearly this planet’s gone bonkers'

AUSTRALIAN GOVERMENT FEARS TRUMP PRESIDENCY

(Reuters) - A senior Australian government minister on Thursday called Donald Trump's campaign for the U.S. presidency "terrifying" and warned it risked casting the Republican Party into the wilderness if he wins nomination.
Australian government ministers rarely make critical comments about elections in other countries, especially stalwart allies like the United States, which Australia relies on heavily for military backing in the Asia-Pacific.
Australian Industry Minister Christopher Pyne, a cabinet member of the ruling conservative Liberal-National coalition, criticized the violence at recent Trump rallies and said that his rise was casting a pall over American democracy.
"Now, democracy should be robust but it certainly shouldn't be violent," Pyne said in an interview on Australia's Channel Seven television network.
"And I think the Donald Trump phenomenon is a real problem for the United States, making their democracy look kind of weird," he said.
Republican front-runner Trump warned on Wednesday of riots if he is denied the party's presidential nomination, only days after Trump supporters and protesters clashed at a rally for the Republican in Chicago that was later scrapped.
Republican Party leaders are appalled at Trump's incendiary rhetoric and reject policies such as his vow to deport 11 million illegal immigrants, temporarily ban Muslims from the United States and build a wall along the Mexican border.
The party tried to play down Trump's riot comments, which have raised the temperature even more in a heated White House race.

Read the original article on Reuters

Donald Trump 2016: Making America Racist Again

BY Tim McGettigan 


Thanks to Donald Trump, the 2016 presidential election has become a national referendum on racism. When Americans elected Barack Obama in 2008. many hoped that his presidency signaled the long-promised denouement of white supremacy. For others, Barack Obama's presidency represented their worst nightmares realized: people of color being treated like citizens rather than deviants.
THE CRIME OF BEING BLACK IN PUBLIC

Emile Durkheim, the modern founder of sociology, argued that every society constructs its own definitions of deviance. Deviance functions as a type of social glue by lionizing those who comply with social norms and stigmatizing those who don't. The USA's European founders incorporated an ethnocentric preference for white skin into the political substrate of American democracy.
Beginning in 1790, the US made white skin a prerequisite for citizenship. This hateful pigment bias -- which a federal judge reaffirmed as recently as 2015 -- established white skin as the norm for US citizens. By making whiteness the norm, the founders categorized non-white skin as a type of deviance. This means that, for people of color, even the simple act of appearing in public constitutes a form of anti-normative criminality. People of color have often paid with their lives for committing no greater crime than being themselves. People of color are vastly overrepresented in US prisons because, having repeatedly committed the crime of being black in public, people of color are more likely to be perceived by law enforcement as "incorrigible recidivists."
How could a nation that touts itself as "the world's greatest democracy" equate non-white skin with criminal deviance?Back in the day, European colonists had a problem. They wanted to claim ownership of an entire continent that was already occupied. If Europeans were going to make a home for themselves in North America, they would either have to share the continent with its original inhabitants, or they would have to murder millions of Injuns and steal their land. While Native Americans may have been willing to co-exist, Europeans weren't keen on the idea of sharing. So, Europeans invented the ludicrous fiction of White Nativism, which is the self-evidently preposterous notion that light-skinned Europeans are North America's true natives. White Nativists have treated people of color as the arch enemies of freedom ever since.
White Nativists have constructed imaginative prejudices for each group of pigmented peoples in the US. White Nativists enacted genocide against Native Americans, and instituted slavery, Jim Crow, and mass incarceration for African Americans. White Nativists have also excluded Chinese immigrants, interned Japanese Americans and have treated Hispanic Americans as if they were all illegal immigrants. More recently, White Nativists have openly contemplated a national ban on Muslims. The common denominator for all of these prejudices is white supremacy. The US has always celebrated whiteness and denigrated skin pigment.
It doesn't have to be like this. White supremacists like Donald Trump take pleasure in fomenting racism. Given Trump's nauseating popularity as a 2016 presidential candidate, it is also obvious that many Americans share Trump's White Nativist/supremacist hatreds. Since entering the 2016 presidential race, each time Trump has uttered a despicably racist comment his popularity has increased.
America's much-beloved founding fathers gave Americans the gift of white supremacist racism. If Americans really love democracy, then they -- and by that I mean we -- can and must dismantle white supremacist racism. And we need to start dismantling racism today.*

DONALD TRUMP 2016: A NATIONAL REFERENDUM ON RACISM
Donald Trump wants to take America back to the good ol' days when privileged white racists got their jollies by terrorizing people of color. Sadly, a small, but passionate cadre of fellow racists want to help Donald Trump set civil rights back a century. We can't let that happen. Fortunately, the US operates on the principle of majority rule. The majority certainly has its work cut out. If America elects Donald Trump, the most foul-mouthed racist since Paula Deen, we'll have no one to blame but ourselves.
Register. Vote. And tell your friends and family to do likewise.
The last thing we need is a David Duke wannabe in the White House.
*In A Formula for Eradicating Racism, Earl Smith and I argue that Americans can terminate the climate of sadism that inspires white supremacist racism by erasing the Three-Fifths Compromise from the US Constitution and replacing it with a universal declaration of human equality.

HERE IS WHAT AMERICA PRISONERS THINK OF TRUMP

It's safe to say Donald Trump means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. Some people think he should be the next president of the United States, some think he's a fascist who supports white supremacist policies, and a few people think that he should be the next US president because he supports white supremacy. Everyone from taxi drivers to professional pundits has an opinion on Donald Trump, and so do America's prison inmates—even if they can't vote, for the most part, they are as excited and/or scared as the rest of the country.

"Donald Trump is a paradoxical individual," says Tut, a 52-year-old African-American from New York doing life in federal prison for a "three strikes" violation. "He is an extremely successful businessman, but everything in life isn't about money. People are not real estate, and every economy doesn't deal with currency. There is a human economy that supersedes the monetary and materialistic ideals of powerful people. He needs to understand the fact that the presidency isn't a pissing contest."

Many prisoners see Barack Obama's movements toward criminal justice reform as encouraging for obvious reasons, and the prospect of Trump, who can come off as a cartoonish authoritarian, doesn't seem like a step forward.

"The guy scares the hell out of me," Alex, a white guy doing ten years at medium-security prison in Tennessee for growing marijuana, tells VICE. "I believe he's Hitler reincarnated. He is a war- and fear-monger. Just like Hitler, he tells the people what he knows they want to hear and makes promises he can't keep and has no way of backing it up. He wants to build a wall to keep out the Mexicans, and he wants to kick out and alienate all the Muslims. I can't believe people entertain this con artist."

Scammer, con man, huckster—those are a few of the terms that come to inmates' minds when they talk about Trump. But a lot of prisoners don't really have a problem with the candidate's unabashed acquisitive nature. Like many Americans, they see his skill at making money as a potential asset for a president.

Dinger, a 40-year-old black man from Pittsburgh doing 20 years at federal prison in Kentucky for drug offenses, counts himself a fan. "I don't know too much about him, but he had his own casino. I think anyone that had his own casino would be a great president if he's elected," he says, adding hopefully, "I hope he changes these laws, so that I can get the hell outta here sooner."

To a swath of America's condemned population, Trump offers a breath of fresh air—even if the country should never have reached such a dire state.

"Something is very wrong with that picture," Chris, a 36-year-old white man from Ohio doing 52 months for Oxycontin distribution, tells me. "Looking at his background, he is a savvy businessman who has made a fortune. But considering his past, he has no political background. Unfortunately, he is the best person for us to elect. And that's sad! American people really need to look at this and understand how bad this country has become."

Most Hispanics in the country can't stand Trump, and Beans—a 45-year-old Sureño gang member from Mexico by way of Florida doing an eight-year sentence for illegal reentry—is no exception.

"I hate Trump," he tells VICE. "I came to this country when I was four years old. I did everything right till I got in trouble in 1992 for guns. I made a mistake and did four years in prison because of it and got deported to Mexico. I came back because I didn't have family in Mexico. I was working hard. Every day work, work, work, till I got stopped by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and charged with reentry. Trump, whatever he's thinking, I don't think it's fair. Everyone has the right to live a good life regardless of past mistakes."

And Willie, a 30-year-old Native American from Alaska doing seven years for drugs, thinks that if Trump is serious about his immigration polices, he needs to deport himself. "If he was real about kicking out immigrants, he should leave too. Because Native Americans are the only true natives of this country," he says.

Multiple prisoners I spoke to believe Trump's campaign staff are behind the burst of violence—and that the mayhem is calculated to boost his standing.

"I think Trump is behind the violence and the people running his campaign are badass," Dave, a 44-year-old white guy from Kentucky doing 17 years for a bomb-related crime, tells me. "I don't think he'll be president, but he's doing exactly what he was supposed to do. As far as helping us though, he damn sure isn't going to do a thing to help us."

It's safe to say plenty of African-Americans and Mexican-Americans inside the prison-industrial complex view Trump as a racist who only wants to make America great for white people. But it's a fact that Trump's campaign has put the spotlight on race—an issue that is even more charged inside prison than outside it.

"Trump creates racial divisions within the Democratic and Republican parties unseen since the civil rights era," argues Sly, an African-American federal prisoner from Buffalo who's doing life for drug and gun crimes. "He pushes racial divisions between the American people."

Those divisions have exploded into violence in places like Chicago over the weekend. But some prisoners, including people of color, can't resist the charm of a hyper-masculine blowhard.

"As a black man in America, to finally witness a candidate like Trump pursue the White House with brutal honesty and be successful ranks right next to witnessing the first black man become the president of the United States," says Tea Mack, a 42-year-old Chicago native doing a sentence of 420 months for a conspiracy to commit kidnapping charge.

Federal prison inmates can't vote, and most state and local inmates can't either. Even many former convicts—especially in states like Florida—are barred from the democratic process. But that doesn't mean America's least visible citizens don't understand what's going on right now.

"Obama has tried to make America a better place for all," says Alex, the Tennessee inmate. "He has tried to right some of the wrongs committed by our government. I like the direction he has pointed this country. And now we have Hillary and Trump. Now, I'm not opposed to a woman running the country, but she has to have some balls, not pockets looking to be filled. It is disheartening to think that these are the best two people in America who can run the country."

From the column 'The VICE Guide to the 2016 Election'

Donald Trump Poses an Unprecedented Threat to American Democracy

Jonathan Chait - Daily Intelligencer

Last month, I made the case that a Donald Trump nomination would be better for America than the nomination of one of his Republican rivals. I no longer believe that. I began to change my mind when a report circulated highlighting his 1990 interview with Playboy in which he praised the brutality of the Tiananmen Square crackdown. This is not the first time I had seen Trump praise dictators. (He has effused over Vladimir Putin.) But Trump’s admiration for Putin seemed to spring from a more ordinary Republican partisan contempt for President Obama, and closely echoed pro-Putin comments made by fellow Republicans like Rudy Giuliani. Trump’s quarter-century-old endorsement of Chinese Communist Party repression went well beyond the familiar derangement of the modern GOP. This was not hatred of Obama, or some obnoxious drive to stick it to his supporters; it was evidence of an authentic and longstanding ideology. Trump has changed his mind about many things, but a through-line can be drawn from the comments Trump made and 1990 and the message of his campaign now: “When the students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it. Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength. Our country is right now perceived as weak.
My previous view of Trump was as a kind of vaccine. The Republican Party relies on the covert mobilization of racial resentment and nationalism. Trump, as I saw it, was bringing into the open that which had been intentionally submerged. It seemed like a containable dose of disease, too small to take over its host, but large enough to set off a counter-reaction of healthy blood cells. But the outbreak of violence this weekend suggests the disease may be spreading far wider than I believed, and infecting healthy elements of the body politic.
I remain convinced that Trump cannot win the presidency. But what I failed to account for was the possibility that his authoritarian style could degrade American politics even in defeat. There is a whiff in the air of the notion that the election will be settled in the streets — a poisonous idea that is unsafe in even the smallest doses.
Here is another factor I failed to predict. Trump, as I’ve noted, lies substantively within the modern Republican racial political tradition that seamlessly incorporates such things as the Willie Horton ads and the uncontroversial service of Louisiana Rep. Steve Scalise, who once called himself “David Duke without the baggage,” as House Majority Whip. But Trump’s amplification of white racial resentment matters. His campaign has dominated the national discourse. Millions of Americans who have never heard of Steve Scalise are seized with mortal terror of Trump, whose ubiquity in campaign coverage makes him seem larger and more unstoppable than he is. And terror is corrosive.
Marco Rubio, channeling the conservative movement’s response to Trump, has tried to connect him to President Obama, a figure who is Trump’s antithesis in every respect. Rubio has compared Trump’s rhetoric to “third-world strongmen,” an analogy he has in the past used to describe Obama (“It was rhetoric, I thought, that was more appropriate for some left-wing strong man than for the president of the United States.”) Rubio has fixated on the notion that Obama’s appeals to racial tolerance amount to an assault on white America, even condemning the president for speaking at a mosque. Speaking on Fox News Friday night, Rubio connected Obama’s style to the political correctness found on many college campuses and other left-wing outposts:


This is mostly laughable. Obama has condemned political correctness on several occasions, urging liberals not to try to prevent political opponents (even the most offensive ones) from making their case, but to win arguments with them instead.
But Rubio is not wrong to draw a connection between p.c. and elements of the left’s response to Trump. Donald Trump may or may not have been forthright about citing safety fears in cancelling his speech Friday night in Chicago, and disrupting the speech may or may not have been the protesters’ goal. But it is clear that protesters views the cancellation of the speech as a victory, breaking out in cheers of “We stopped Trump!”
Preventing speakers one finds offensive from delivering public remarks is commonplace on campuses. Indeed, more than 300 faculty members at the University of Illinois-Chicago signed a letter asking the University administration not to allow Trump to speak. I polled my Twitter followers whether they consider disrupting Trump’s speeches an acceptable response to his racism. Two-thirds replied that it is. Obviously, this is not a scientific poll, but it indicates a far broader acceptance than I expected.
Because Trump is so grotesque, and because he has violated liberal norms himself so repeatedly, the full horror of the goal of stopping Trump from campaigning (as opposed to merely counter-demonstrating against him) has not come across. But the whole premise of democracy is that rules need to be applied in every case without regard to the merit of the underlying cause to which it is attached. If you defend the morality of a tactic against Trump, then you should be prepared to defend its morality against any candidate. Now imagine that right-wing protesters had set out to disrupt Barack Obama’s speeches in 2008. If you’re not okay with that scenario, you should not be okay with protesters doing it to Trump.
Of course it is Trump who has let loose the wave of fear rippling out from the campaign. And it is Trump who has singled out African-Americans peacefully attending his speeches for mistreatment, and Trump who has glorified sucker-punching attacks on non-violent protesters. This is part of the effectiveness of authoritarian politics. The perception that Trump poses a threat to democracy legitimizes undemocratic responses — if you believe you are faced with the rise of an American Mussolini, why let liberal norms hold you back? The anti-Trumpian glory falls not upon the normal, boring practitioners of liberal politics — Hillary Clinton with her earnest speeches about universal pre-K and stronger financial regulation — but the street fighters who will muster against Trump the kind of response he appears to require. Just the other day, a man charged Trump as he spoke, and came disturbingly close to reaching him. More of this seems likely to follow, and it can spread from Trump’s rallies to those of other candidates.
A huge majority of the public finds Trump repellent. Some of his current unpopularity is the soft opposition of Republican voters who are currently listening to anti-Trump messaging from party sources and would return to the fold if he wins the nomination. But there is simply no evidence that the country that elected Barack Obama twice, and which is growing steadily more diverse, stands any likelihood of electing Trump. He can and must be defeated through democratic means. He is spreading poisons throughout the system that could linger beyond his defeat. Anybody who cares about the health of American democracy should hope for its end as swiftly as possible.

Trump And His Protesters Both Hate Free Speech

 The Federalist

When it comes to Donald Trump’s “Go to Auschwitz!” thugs versus MoveOn.Org’s “Shut them down” rioters, I go for the full Kissinger: “It’s a pity they both can’t lose.” (Kissinger was talking about Iran and Iraq. Close enough)
But they aren’t losing. If fact, the sucker-punching Trumpies and sign-shredding socialists are both winning. The only loser is the principle of free speech.
Trump tells supporters to “rough up” protesters. He publicly suggests he will pay the legal fees of fans who beat up hecklers. He announces he’d personally like to “punch [a protester] in the mouth.” And the Trumpies cheer.
People who disagree with Trump’s politics announce their plans to “shut him down,” to disrupt his speeches and make it impossible for Trump and his supporters to rally. They scream. They yell. They destroy property—then brag they’ve succeeded in silencing their fellow Americans. They consider themselves heroes.
It’s the IWW versus the WWE. And I’d like to respond by saying, “Of course, they’re both wrong.” But is this an “of course” in America anymore?

Is Free Speech Dead?

Why should we believe a majority of Americans actually believe that free speech is an inherent good, the old “I disagree with what you say but would defend blah, blah, blah?” For days I’ve been hearing the opposite: Trump supporters happy that protesters are getting beat downs, and Trump haters thumping their chests in pride over silencing speech they don’t like.

Why should we believe a majority of Americans actually believe that free speech is an inherent good?

Even the people whose livelihood depends on it—the media—are celebrating assaults on free speech. Hours after he rushed the stage at a Trump event, CNN did a full, sit-down interview with Thomas DiMassimo—the progressive punk who, when he isn’t making videos of dragging the American flag across the ground under the protection of his own free speech rights, is advocating the use of violence to deny Trump’s. Best (or worst) of all: DiMassimo doesn’t see the irony.

Then again, college students are practically pale with irony deficiency at the moment, particularly when it comes to small-L liberal principles. “Feminist” students who shriek like banshees to shout down pro-life women speakers react in outrage at the micro-aggression of said speaker complaining of being “manhandled.”

Liberals simply no longer believe in the value of open discourse, in and of itself. Thus defending it has fallen to the Right—just in time for Trump to arrive.

From Freedom to a Free-for-Brawl

Let’s set aside the fact that Trump is a “conservative” in the same way that Hugh Laurie is a doctor (they both play one on TV). The people swarming to Trump certainly are not of the Left. It’s ridiculous for American conservatives to deny that they are part of the coalition of the Right.

They’ve watched Black Lives Matter rallies turn into riots, Occupy protests where trash cans get thrown, windows get broken, and cops get hurt, yet nobody gets called a 'Nazi.'

The talk-radio Right absolutely shares Trump’s “punch him in the face” philosophy on free speech. You can say it’s because they’re (as I heard it growing up in rural South Carolina) “no-account white trash,” but there’s not a lot of data to back that up.

There is frustration and fatigue over being played. They’ve watched Black Lives Matter rallies turn into riots, Occupy protests where trash cans get thrown, windows get broken, and cops get hurt, yet nobody gets called a “Nazi.” This violence isn’t a “threat to the republic,” it doesn’t smear the political views of its practitioners. At least, not in “polite society.”

Now imagine you’re a Tea Party supporter watching all this. Your movement involved literally millions of people at thousands of events—and there’s more violence at one G-20 summit than you’ve had at all your events combined. Why, the Tea Party held a massive rally on the National Mall in Washington DC and literally left it cleaner than they found it.

But who are the “haters?” The “violent?” Who’s called “terrorists” by politicians and the press? They are. If you’re going to get called “violent racists” anyway, why not shout “Auschwitz?” Nobody wants to hear what you have to say, nobody cares about the people who are shouting you down—but the media and the Left demand that you respect free speech? No wonder many of the Tea Party Right have given up on playing by the rules.

The Left won’t defend free speech because they don’t believe in it. The Right won’t defend it because it’s a bat only used to beat them down. So where does that leave principled conservatives and libertarians? Vastly outnumbered.

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