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Clinton vs. Trump – the Hand We’ve Been Dealt

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maxresdefault (99)The presidential contest that no one ever expected and many claim not to want is back on track and coming to your ballot box this fall.

Hillary Clinton rebounded from seven straight primary losses to Bernie Sanders to win big in yesterday’s New York Democratic primary. Donald Trump is sure to regain his momentum in the Republican presidential contest with his blow-out victory in the Empire State; Ted Cruz was a far, far distant third, suggesting he has little or no chance of winning states in the more diverse northeast and putting an enormous question mark next to his bid to be president.

Next Tuesday’s primaries in Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Maryland, Delaware and Rhode Island all appear much friendlier to Clinton and Trump than to their rivals.

Even before yesterday’s primary, Clinton was seen as the likely nominee by 91% of voters in her party, with a record high 62% saying her nomination is Very Likely. Republican voters still view Trump as their likeliest nominee, although he has lost ground in recent weeks, but this Friday’s Trump Change survey is sure to show a turnaround for the billionaire businessman following his biggest primary win to date . . .

If Trump keeps winning primaries and adding delegates, it’s equally difficult to imagine the GOP elders denying him the nomination at the party’s national convention in July even if he’s a few votes short of the 1,237 total needed to claim victory. Cruz, who is nothing if not politically astute, is unlikely to see a path to victory in November by snatching delegates away from Trump at the convention after coming in second or third in most of the remaining primaries. (Read more from “Clinton vs. Trump – the Hand We’ve Been Dealt” HERE)

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The Confidential Memo Behind a Ted Cruz Victory Over Donald Trump Supporters

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6236460903_2a8ff49c7e_bBy Jim Galloway. On Saturday, Harry Abrams was a member of the five-member nominating committee for [Georgia’s] 11th District GOP convention. The committee had spent the previous week interviewing 61 applicants for the three delegate and three alternate spots the convention was to hand out.

In the end, the committee produced a six-person slate that led with a Donald Trump supporter, Lori Pesta of Cherokee County. But on a motion from the floor, the slate was dumped and the elimination of Trump supporters began.

In an after-action report, Abrams sent out the confidential blueprint that Ted Cruz supporters received on Friday night, and operated from on Saturday morning. The four-page memo is somewhat faint, but the detail is worth the squinting.

Writes Abrams in an introduction:

Was anything illegal done? I would have to say no. Was the Convention Packed. I would say yes. Under our “rules” was anything done that was illegal? No.

(Read more from “The Confidential Memo Behind a Ted Cruz Victory Over Donald Trump Supporters” HERE)

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Cruz to Win Half of Pennsylvania’s Delegates

By Ian Schwartz. NBC’s Hallie Jackson reports Cruz has changed his focus to Pennsylvania and making a play for the state’s unbound delegates. Jackson, the network’s Cruz correspondent, said even if Cruz has a third place finish in Pennsylvania’s Republican primary, he’ll win more than half the delegates.

“It’s very telling that’s Ted Cruz tonight is not in Brooklyn or Manhattan or any of the boroughs or state. He’s in Pennsylvania,” reported Jackson.

“He’ll be in Philly for his watch party tonight,” Jackson said. “That’s indicative of where he and his campaign see this race going, to Pennsylvania, where they are looking to make a play for these unbound delegates. Even if they come in a distant third, a top campaign aide tells me, they will still, they believe, pick up more than half the delegates there.”

“They’re looking at more than 30,” Jackson said. (Read more from “Cruz to Win Half of Pennsylvania’s Delegates” HERE)

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Watch: Trump Discusses 9/11 During Speech in New York — but Makes This One Big Mistake

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Just hours before the polls open in New York, Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump mistakenly mixed up 9/11 with the convenience store 7-Eleven, the chain known for its Slurpees and Big Gulps.

“I wrote this out, and it’s very close to my heart,” he told supporters at a Buffalo, New York, rally. “Because I was down there and I watched our police and our firemen down at 7/11, down at the World Trade Center right after it came down, and I saw the greatest people I’ve ever seen in action.”

Trump did not catch the mistake during the speech and had not yet acknowledged the flub at the time of publication.

The real estate mogul was using the opportunity to discuss the “New York values that we all know so well,” praising the construction workers, bystanders and first responders for their bravery during the 9/11 attacks. (Read more from “Trump Discusses 9/11 During Speech in New York — but Makes This One Big Mistake” HERE)

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Jab at Trump? McConnell ‘Optimistic’ About Contested Convention

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5435150785_cd4c33b4fa_bSenate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, in an implicit jab at Republican primary front-runner Donald Trump, said he is “increasingly optimistic” that voting at the Republican National Convention in July will go to a second ballot.

The comments, made over the weekend to WHAS-TV in Louisville, represent a break of sorts for the Kentucky Republican who has sought in public to remain neutral on the race. While McConnell did not openly criticize any candidate, the senator seemed to be rooting for a contested convention – something Trump is battling to avoid, as he tries to lock up the nomination outright before July.

“I’m increasingly optimistic that there actually may be a second ballot,” McConnell told WHAS-TV.

“I want somebody who can win in November and the whole process is about trying to beat Hillary Clinton in November,” he said. “And I think our delegates, if they end up actually having the latitude to make a decision, which would occur on the second and third ballot, are going to be interested in who can win.”

A candidate would have to amass the support of 1,237 delegates in order to clinch the nomination. While it’s still possible for Trump to reach that number ahead of the GOP convention in Cleveland, it’ll be tough. If Trump cannot reach that threshold, voting would proceed to a second ballot at the convention, with a majority of delegates free to vote for whomever they choose. (Read more from “Jab at Trump? McConnell ‘Optimistic’ About Contested Convention” HERE)

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See How Trump Campaign Manager Corey Lewandowski Responds When Asked If He Will ‘Apologize’ to Ex-Breitbart Reporter

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hqdefaultWhen “Fox News Sunday” host Chris Wallace asked Corey Lewandoski on Sunday if he would like to offer an apology to former Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields — even if only to avoid potential litigation — Lewandowski once again refused to validate Fields’ claims of assault.

Lewandowski, Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump’s campaign manager, discussed the recently-dropped battery charges that Fields brought against him following their encounter at a March press conference that was caught on camera. Although Lewandowski could be seen grabbing Fields’ arm in the footage, Trump’s campaign manager maintains that the reality of the situation did not match Fields’ violent allegations against him.

“What I acknowledge is, the sum total of my relationship with Ms. Fields was caught on that video tape,” Lewandowski told Wallace. “She’s an individual I had never met before, had never spoken to before, and candidly, I didn’t remember the incident. The whole incident lasted less than three seconds, and it was me moving from one location to another location. I would have remembered if I tried to violently throw someone to the ground, or if there was an incident which would have been memorable. And there wasn’t.”

Lewandowski also maintained that he had tried to call Fields after he read about the allegations against him from Fields’ boyfriend on Twitter, although Fields says that she has no records of a call or of any message being left for her. (Read more from “See How Trump Campaign Manager Corey Lewandowski Responds When Asked If He Will ‘Apologize’ to Ex-Breitbart Reporter” HERE)

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Donald Trump Just Revealed His Favorite Bible Verse – Many Christians Left SPEECHLESS

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16678805005_028e7f98d3_b (1)In the latest example of Donald Trump making a controversial faith-based statement on the campaign trail, the unconventional Republican presidential front-runner recently offered his pick as the Bible’s most memorable lesson.

WHAM’s Bob Lonsberry asked the brash billionaire if he has “a favorite Bible verse or Bible story” responsible for shaping his character.

“Well, I think many,” Trump began. “I mean, when we get into the Bible, I think many, so many.”

When he started to mention specifics, many Christians in the audience were taken aback.

“Some people, look, an eye for an eye, you can almost say that,” Trump said. “That’s not a particularly nice thing.”

Several of Trump’s detractors expressed their concern with the self-described “strong Christian” selecting the harsh Old Testament teaching as the one he wanted to highlight in the interview. (Read more from “Donald Trump Just Revealed His Favorite Bible Verse – Many Christians Left SPEECHLESS” HERE)

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Facebook Employees Asked Mark Zuckerberg If They Should Try to Stop a Donald Trump Presidency

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MarkZuckerberg-cropThis week, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg appeared to publicly denounce the political positions of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign during the keynote speech of the company’s annual F8 developer conference.

“I hear fearful voices calling for building walls and distancing people they label as ‘others,’” Zuckerberg said, never referring to Trump by name. “I hear them calling for blocking free expression, for slowing immigration, for reducing trade, and in some cases, even for cutting access to the internet.”

For a developer’s conference, the comments were unprecedented—a signal that the 31-year-old billionaire is quite willing to publicly mix politics and business. Zuckerberg has donated to campaigns in the past, but has been vague about which candidates he and his company’s political action committee support.

Inside Facebook, the political discussion has been more explicit. Last month, some Facebook employees used a company poll to ask Zuckerberg whether the company should try “to help prevent President Trump in 2017.”

Every week, Facebook employees vote in an internal poll on what they want to ask Zuckerberg in an upcoming Q&A session. A question from the March 4 poll was: “What responsibility does Facebook have to help prevent President Trump in 2017?” (Read more from “Facebook Employees Asked Mark Zuckerberg If They Should Try to Stop a Donald Trump Presidency” HERE)

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Donald Trump Just Received a Totally Unexpected Endorsement

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23171891964_76bcee03ed_bDonald Trump is a rookie candidate — a potential superstar of vast promise, but making rookie mistakes. The nominee Republicans need for the fall campaign is often hard to make out amid his improvisations and too-harsh replies to his critics . . .

Should he win the nomination, we expect Trump to pivot — not just on the issues, but in his manner. The post-pivot Trump needs to be more presidential: better informed on policy, more self-disciplined and less thin-skinned . . .

Trump is now an imperfect messenger carrying a vital message. But he reflects the best of “New York values” — and offers the best hope for all Americans who rightly feel betrayed by the political class.

He has the potential — the skills, the know-how, the values — to live up to his campaign slogan: to make America great again.

For those reasons, The Post today endorses Donald Trump in the GOP primary. (Read more from “Donald Trump Just Received a Totally Unexpected Endorsement” HERE)

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Karl Rove-Backed PAC Warms to Trump

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25475724870_9fe3aeb6ee_bKarl Rove has publicly blasted Donald Trump as “a petty man consumed by resentment and bitterness” with little gravitas and almost no chance of beating Hillary Clinton.

But privately, the super PAC conceived by Rove is suggesting to its donors that it can help Trump win the White House and save Republican senators whose reelection bids could be jeopardized by having Trump at the top of the ticket.

The apparent warming of the American Crossroads super PAC and its sister groups to Trump has become evident in its recent communications with donors, including a Tuesday afternoon “investor conference call,” according to multiple sources familiar with the outreach.

The phone call — which featured Rove, Crossroads officials and a pollster — laid out swing state polling and electoral map analysis done by the group showing circumstances in which Trump could beat Clinton, the Democratic presidential front-runner, in a general election, according to three sources briefed on the call.

One source, a high-level operative with the Koch brothers’ conservative advocacy network, characterized the conversation as heralding “a softening of the anti-Trump position” within the big-money GOP establishment. The source added of Crossroads’ stance on Trump, “It’s not that they support him, only that if he’s the guy, we can do something to stop Hillary.” (Read more from “Karl Rove-Backed PAC Warms to Trump” HERE)

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Almost Two-Thirds of Trump Supporters Want Third Party Run If He Loses Nomination

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maxresdefault (90)By Cathy Burke. Donald Trump has a double-digit lead in the GOP presidential primary as rival Sen. Ted Cruz closes in — and a big majority of Trump supporters say he should launch his own White House bid if he isn’t the party’s pick, a new poll shows.

The CBS News poll released Thursday has Trump with 42 percent support among GOP voters, the Texas lawmaker with 29 percent, and Ohio Gov. Kasich with 18 percent…

[I]f Trump loses the party’s nomination this summer despite having more delegates than his rivals, 63 percent of Trump supporters say he should run as an independent or third-party candidate, the poll shows. (Read more from “Almost Two-Thirds of Trump Supporters Want Third Party Run If He Loses Nomination” HERE)

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Dallas Morning News: Cruz Starting Quiet Running Mate Search

By Sandy Fitzgerald. Ted Cruz’s campaign is starting a quiet search for a suitable running mate to be in place should he pull out the GOP presidential nomination, but with the race still remaining unsettled, it’s not easy for him and rivals Donald Trump and John Kasich to plan too far ahead.

“It’s one of the complicating factors of having a protracted nomination,” Jason Johnson, Cruz’s chief strategist, told The Dallas Morning News in a Wednesday article. “We quickly approach the point where if we’re not thinking about those things, we’re neglecting our obligation to be prepared to be the nominee and beat Hillary [Clinton]”…

Johnson said that Cruz is not “negligent” by not yet naming any running mate choices, but “ultimately the goal is to beat Hillary, and in order to beat Hillary you have to have a running mate. Those things are being considered.” (Read more from “Dallas Morning News: Cruz Starting Quiet Running Mate Search” HERE)

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