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Donald Trump Burns Obama’s Debate Critique; Meanwhile, All of Obama’s ‘Achievements’ Are Failing

Trump Shrugs off Obama’s Debate Critique: ‘He Can’t Handle the Country’

By Jeremy Diamond. Donald Trump dismissed Tuesday President Barack Obama’s mocking of the the GOP presidential candidates’ criticism of the CNBC moderators in the last debate.

Trump, whose campaign decided to continue dealing directly with the TV networks rather than forming a united front with other presidential campaigns, said he “doesn’t care too much” about the debate format, instead knocking Obama’s handling of the country.

“They’ve been hitting me one way or the other. I just want to have the debates. I like the debates. They can ask tough questions. … I just want to answer the questions and be done with it, frankly,” Trump said on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

Of Obama’s criticism, Trump added, “He can’t handle the country. He’s doing a terrible job running the country.”

Obama ripped into the GOP’s field of 2016 hopefuls on Monday night, noting that while they’ve knocked him for being “weak” on the international stage, “it turns out they can’t handle a bunch of CNBC moderators.” (Read more from “Donald Trump Burns Obama’s Debate Critique: ‘He Can’t Handle the Country'” HERE)

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All of Obama’s ‘Achievements’ Are Failing

By Jennifer Rubin. President Obama’s biggest domestic “accomplishment,” Obamacare, and his biggest foreign policy objective, extracting the United States from the Middle East and redesigning our alliances (Iran in, Israel out), are now Exhibits A and B in the argument for jettisoning the Democrats from the White House. At the very least these issues, combined with a lackluster economy, suggest Hillary Clinton will have trouble running for a “third Obama term.”

On the Obamacare front, CBS News reports, “Sign-up season started Sunday for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, now in year 3. Premiums are going up an average of 7.5 percent, but they could be much higher depending on where you live.” It is not hard to see that if this keeps up we are headed for the infamous “death spiral,” as Sally Pipes, a health-care expert and critic of Obamacare explains . . .

If the domestic scene looks less than attractive for Democrats, the foreign policy front is abysmal. The president’s latest, cynical move to send just 50 Special Operations forces to Syria — but not into combat! — encapsulates the absence of a coherent strategy that will leave the region bloodier, less stable and more violent than when Obama took office.

His latest move on Syria has unsurprisingly been poorly received. Fred Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute writes:

The situation is now beyond dire and all anyone can do is offer first steps that might start to drive it in a more positive direction. But any such steps must begin from the understanding of what this conflict is really about and who must actually resolve it: the Sunni Arabs and the non-Assad Alawite community. Those are the groups that will have to decide to put down their weapons and work out a mutually-acceptable deal. Defeating ISIS will still be hard in that context, but at least it might be both feasible and meaningful.

(Read more from “All of Obama’s ‘Achievements’ Are Failing” HERE)

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Watch: Trump Just Revealed Who the Real Enemy Is, and It’s Not Who You’d Expect

By Randy DeSoto. Who the real enemy Donald Trump and his fellow candidates face came into clear focus during Wednesday night’s debate in Colorado, and it is not Hillary Clinton or each other, it is the main stream media.

Sean Hannity had Trump as a guest on his program following the debate and observed that the real loser of the event was the media. He said the debate revealed just “how bad” the media is towards Republicans. He gave the example of CNBC moderator John Harwood, who called Trump’s campaign “comic book” in his first question to the candidate . . .

As reported by Western Journalism, Sen. Ted Cruz later came to Trump’s defense, as well as other candidates on the stage. Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee also refused to take Harwood’s bait, when invited to denigrate Trump’s character. “He is a good man. I’m wearing a Trump tie tonight, get over that one,” the candidate said.

Hannity asked Trump what he thought of how other candidates came to his defense in the antagonistic environment CNBC sought to foster. (Watch at 5:00 in the featured video)

“I thought it was a great. There was a certain camaraderie up there tonight, not only with respect to me but with respect to everybody. It was very beautiful to watch,” Trump said. (Read more from “Trump Just Revealed Who the Real Enemy Is, and It’s Not Who You’d Expect” HERE)

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As Challengers Close in, a Different Donald Trump Is Revealed

By Jenna Johnson and Robert Costa. A new Donald Trump showed up here this week.

Gone were the withering attacks on his Republican rivals, the obsessive discussion of his poll numbers and another spate of bombshell remarks.

Trump instead focused on more fully introducing himself to voters at an hour-long rally here, underscoring a subtle maturation for a presidential candidate trying to move the spotlight away from his booming reality-TV personality.

This shift comes as Trump fights to maintain his position as the untouchable front-runner and the national favorite of conservatives. After months of dominating the field, other candidates now pose a threat, especially retired surgeon Ben Carson, a fellow non-politician who is leading in Iowa.

In front of a crowd of several thousand people at the Nugget Casino here, Trump took a handful of questions from the audience, but none from reporters as he once regularly did. He touted his instincts, leadership style and negotiating skills. And he pitched himself as someone who thinks like them but has the power and acumen to enact their dreams. (Read more from this story HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Watch: This Vet Just Asked Trump 1 Question That Makes Him Instantly Walk off Stage

By Jack Davis. For 21 years, a wounded veteran who served with the 101st Airborne fought for his nation. On Tuesday, in an emotionally charged face-to-face meeting, Donald Trump promised to take this veteran’s side in the ex-soldier’s current battlefield: the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Trump was answering questions at a Sioux City, Iowa, campaign stop when a wounded veteran named Todd was given the opportunity to speak.

“These are our greatest people. The wounded warriors. These are the greatest. The best,” Trump said before leaving his podium to greet the man and his family.

“With the current administration, warrior care is lacking to say the least…especially post-service,” Todd said to Trump, noting that he did not work and his wife, April, was his caregiver. “What will the Trump administration do better than the Obama administration?”

“Is the VA not doing the job?” Trump asked.

April explained that Todd was supposed to enroll in a new VA program, but can’t get an appointment. (Read more from “Watch: This Vet Just Asked Trump 1 Question That Makes Him Instantly Walk off Stage” HERE)

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Donald Trump Rights Ship on Immigration

By Stephen K. Bannon and Alexander Marlow. Last night during the CNBC primary debate, Donald Trump, who to this point in the campaign had been the Republican candidate most closely aligned with the conservative grassroots on immigration policy, seemed to have altered his message in several significant ways.

Breitbart News documented some of these changes here.

Trump, who leads many national 2016 polls, granted Breitbart News an interview on the subject. Full questions and responses below:

BNN: The media has been filled with stories about companies flying in low-wage H-1B workers to replace American workers in tech jobs. Adding insult to injury, these American workers have been forced to train their replacements. If you were President, would you put a stop to this practice?

DT: Day one. This is why I got into this race. Because the everyday working person in this country is getting screwed. Lobbyists write the rules to benefit the rich and powerful. They buy off Senators like Sen. Marco Rubio to help them get rich at the expense of working Americans by using H-1B visas–so called “high tech” visas–to replace American workers in all sorts of solid middle class jobs. If I am President, I will not issue any H-1B visas to companies that replace American workers and my Department of Justice will pursue action against them. (Read more from “Donald Trump Rights Ship on Immigration” HERE)

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Trump Boasts About Limiting the Debate

By Nick Gass. Several campaigns had threatened to bail on the debate during negotiations unless CNBC limited the event to 2 hours including commercial breaks, a chief concern of Donald Trump and Ben Carson, who sent a joint letter to the network complaining about the format.

“I could stand up here all night. Nobody wants to watch three and a half or three hours. And I have to hand it to Ben,” Trump said during his closing statement, motioning to Carson.

“They lost a lot of money. Everybody said it couldn’t be done,” Trump continued. “And in about two minutes, I renegotiated it to two hours, so we can get the hell out of here,” he said, to cheers. (Read more from “Trump Boasts About Limiting the Debate” HERE)

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Bozell: CNBC Debate Was an ‘Encyclopedic Example of Liberal Media Bias’

By News Busters Staff. MRC president Brent Bozell issued a statement Wednesday night criticizing the overall tilt and tone of the CNBC Republican debate in Boulder:

“The CNBC moderators acted less like journalists and more like Clinton campaign operatives. What was supposed to be a serious debate about the many issues plaguing our economy was given up for one Democratic talking point after another served up by the so-call ‘moderators.’ They clearly war-gamed this thinking that a relentless series of personal attacks on the candidates would somehow drive their ratings and help Hillary Clinton.

(Read more from “Bozell: CNBC Debate Was an ‘Encyclopedic Example of Liberal Media Bias'” HERE)

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Look: The Bizarre Image of ‘Donald Trump’ That’s Taking the Internet by Storm

The “Trumpkin” has become a novelty hit for front porch decorating this Halloween season, with the largest known one sitting outside the home of an Ohio woman.

Jeanette Paras, of Dublin, Ohio, is a pumpkin artist who tries to come up with a clever pop culture idea to use every Halloween. She has “pumpkinized” singer Miley Cyrus, Phil Robertson of “Duck Dynasty” fame, Lady Gaga and Monica Lewinsky. Last year, she painted the face of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on a pumpkin.

She’s also painted the faces of politicians, including Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, on pumpkins for her display at various times in the past. This year, Paras opted to paint the face of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.

Paras went huge for the project and used a 374-pound pumpkin, according to WJW in Cleveland. It was a tedious job, with Paras describing how she first sketched the design on paper and then transferred it to the pumpkin. The famous Trump hairstyle wasn’t easy to achieve either, she said.

“He required six, 38-inch blond wings,” Paras said. (Read more from “Look: The Bizarre Image of ‘Donald Trump’ That’s Taking the Internet by Storm” HERE)

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An Open Letter to Donald Trump Supporters

I get why you’re excited about Donald Trump. Like you, I find the prevailing political culture in Washington almost hopelessly corrupt, and I’m outraged at how the Republican establishment keeps trying to push through immigration amnesty without real border security. Like many of you, I consider immigration the most decisive issue that faces us today: Demography is destiny. Flooding our country with poor, less-educated people who will likely skew pro-choice, pro-welfare state and pro-Democrat at the voting booth for decades to come is not just political but national suicide. We are turning our country, state by state (see California) into the kind of poorly governed, statist quagmire that immigrants are understandably fleeing.

Like Trump, I think that the unique greatness of America is not a brute fact of nature, like the Grand Canyon, but something delicate and magnificent, like an heirloom grandfather clock. We have been reckless and careless, and the system just might break down, in our own time or in our children’s. And because of America’s specialness, that would be a tragedy of unthinkable proportions, like the fall of Rome.

I have stood in your shoes. I have supported “insurgent” conservative candidates in the past: I turned out for Pat Buchanan in 1992. In 1995, I joined insurgent Mike Foster in Louisiana — who was still a pro-gun, pro-life Democrat. I pitched his campaign manager the bumper sticker: “Arm the Unborn!” and was promptly hired as Foster’s press secretary. I helped arrange Foster’s cross-endorsement with Pat Buchanan, who carried Louisiana. I was elected an alternate delegate for Buchanan at the GOP convention. I backed Ron Paul in 2008, and Rick Santorum in 2012. I’m the furthest thing from an establishment Republican.

Because I care deeply about the same issues as most Trump voters, I want to ask you to consider whether he is really the GOP candidate most likely to faithfully execute the policies he is promising.

The challenges facing our next conservative president are daunting. On immigration, for instance, securing the border, preventing employers from exploiting illegal workers, and tracking all visitors to the U.S. who (like many of the 9/11 hijackers) overstay their visas — these are all crucial policy reforms. And they make fine campaign talking points. But getting them through Congress will be hard, between all the Democrats dependent on ethnic activists, and those Republicans in tight with the big business/cheap labor lobby. The battle to secure our immigration future will be a long and painful slog through hostile territory, with immense pressure put on the president and individual lawmakers, whom he will have to reach out to and bravely lead.

Is Trump really the man for this job? Even very recently he supported immigration amnesty, criticizing Mitt Romney (!) for taking too tough a line on illegal immigrants.

And this is just one of many issues on which we need our next president to take an unwavering, principled stance. We need to restrict the powers of the U.S. Supreme Court and return the legislative power to those the Constitution gave it to: the people’s duly elected legislators. We must overturn Roe v. Wade and restore legal protection to the most vulnerable Americans. But Trump was publicly “very pro-choice” for most of his career. And even after his politically necessary pro-life “conversion,” Trump let slip his anything-but-conservative preference for Supreme Court justice — his left-wing, judicial activist sister who supports even partial birth abortion.

We also need a president who will roll back the disaster that is Obamacare, but Trump until very recently supported a government takeover of our health system — and even in the first debate couldn’t help himself from praising socialized medicine in other countries. If he can’t even make it through an evening debate without wavering on the issue, how is he going to stand firm for the many months it will take to salvage healthcare from the clutches of Leviathan? Don’t mistake bluntness and brashness for principled commitment.

We also need a president who will stop the federal government’s abusive use of “eminent domain,” the seizure of private property in pursuit of crony capitalist deals between big business and big government. Here, again, Trump’s history is far from reassuring. In his own business endeavors, as Robert Verbruggen put it, “The man has a track record of using the government as a hired thug to take other people’s property.” Verbruggen continued:

A decade and a half ago, it was fresh on everyone’s mind that Donald Trump is one of the leading users of this form of state-sanctioned thievery. It was all over the news. In perhaps the most-remembered example, John Stossel got the toupéed one to sputter about how, if he wasn’t allowed to steal an elderly widow’s house to expand an Atlantic City casino, the government would get less tax money, and seniors like her would get less “this and that.”

Add to this Trump’s well-documented and longstanding chumminess with Democrats such as Al Sharpton and Bill Clinton. (It seems likely that Clinton urged Trump into the race against his wife. Ever wonder why?)

In the light of all these cold, hard facts, it is our duty as faithful citizens to ask whether Trump is really the principled leader who will stand against massive pressure, defend America’s founding ideals and preserve our sovereignty. Or will he turn to the voters shortly after his inauguration and tell them that “some really fabulous people, best in the business” have convinced him of the wisdom of open-arms amnesty, socialized medicine or any of the other leftist policies that he quite recently supported? I ask you, with all respect for your patriotic instincts and your willingness to buck the establishment, to take such questions seriously. (For more from the author of “An Open Letter to Donald Trump Supporters” please click HERE)

Watch a recent interview with the author below:

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Many Hispanics Agree: Trump’s Immigration Policies Aren’t All Hogwash

Polls indicate that support for Donald Trump is plateauing while key challengers like Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina and Marco Rubio are quickly gaining ground.

If this trend continues and Trump flames out, the Republican establishment shouldn’t simply dismiss his candidacy as a fad. There are lessons to be learned from Trump’s unexpected popularity. The most important one is that there is broad support for some components of his immigration platform, even among Hispanics . . .

Polls show that many Hispanics agree with Trump that illegal immigration is a huge problem. The eventual GOP nominee should, of course, reject the divisive, inflammatory language Trump and his supporters have often used to make the case for reform. But there are smart policy ideas buried under all that rhetoric. They ought to be incorporated into the official party platform.

A recent poll by SurveyUSA shows that Trump commands the support of 31 percent of Hispanics. That’s not only a higher share than Mitt Romney received in 2012 — it’s also more than Republican George H.W. Bush received in 1988 when he won the general election.

Most Hispanics aren’t single-issue voters when it comes to immigration. A recent Gallup poll found that among registered Latino voters, 67 percent are at least willing to support a candidate who doesn’t share their views on immigration. And 18 percent don’t consider the issue important at all. (Read more from “Many Hispanics Agree: Trump’s Immigration Policies Aren’t All Hogwash” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Trump Doubles Down on Bush 9/11 Remarks

By Jeff Poor. On Tuesday’s “New Day” on CNN, Republican presidential front-runner [Donald Trump] defended his response aimed at his GOP opponent former Gov. Jeb Bush (R-FL), who had claimed in a debate earlier this month that the country was kept safe under former President George W. Bush . . .

“[L]ook, his brother gets hit on, he’s a loyal person, and he’s loyal to his brother. But his brother made some mistakes. His brother could have made a mistake with the actual hit because they did know it was coming. And George Tenet, the head of the CIA told him that it was coming. So, they did have advanced notice and they didn’t really work on it. Now that’s something that could happen. I don’t blame him for that. Again, the question was — it wasn’t that I was blaming. They said that our country was safe under Bush. I said, well, what about the World Trade Center coming down in the worst attack in history? The statement was our country was safe under his brother.”

(Read more from “Trump Doubles Down on Bush 9/11 Remarks” HERE)
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Legendary Television Producer: Donald Trump Is America’s ‘Middle Finger’ to Establishment

By Daniel Nussbaum. Legendary television producer Norman Lear believes Donald Trump’s meteoric rise in the Republican presidential contest represents a “middle finger” from America to the establishment political class.

In an interview with Jeanne Wolf’s Hollywood blog, Lear told Wolf that it was “interesting” that she compared Trump to his character Archie Bunker from the hit 70s TV show All in the Family.

“I want to believe that the American people are holding up Donald Trump as they might their middle finger and they’re giving the middle finger to the establishment, to all of us – left and right – because they are badly served by the establishment. We are a culture of excess. That’s our biggest product: excess. In everything. He is excessively assholian. I think the American people understand that and this is their way of saying, ‘This is how you’re taking care of us? You leaders? Take this.’ Then they give us Donald Trump.

“At least he’s shaken up the conversation. He’s made everybody stop talking and stop accepting the idea that they can talk in these canned messages, yes?” Wolf pressed. (Read more from “Legendary Television Producer: Donald Trump Is America’s ‘Middle Finger’ to Establishment” HERE)

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Trump-Bush Feud Fires up Over 9/11

By Daniel Strauss. The feud between Donald Trump and Jeb Bush over the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks escalated on Sunday as Trump argued that his hard-line stance on immigration would have prevented the attacks while Bush defended his brother’s handling of them.

In an interview on “Fox News Sunday,” host Chris Wallace asked Trump what he would have done differently in response to an earlier suggestion that then-President George W. Bush was partially at fault for the attacks. And Trump insisted he is not blaming the former president for them.

“Jeb [Bush] said ‘We were safe with my brother. We were safe.’ Well, the World Trade Center just went down. Now, am I trying to blame him? I’m not blaming anybody, but the World Trade Center came down, so when he said we were safe, we were not safe. We lost 3,000 people. It was one of the greatest — probably the greatest catastrophe ever in this country,” the Republican presidential hopeful said.

If he were president, Trump said, it would have been different.

“I am extremely, extremely tough on people coming into this country,” Trump said. And if he were president then, he said, he doubted “those people would’ve been in the country. … There’s a good chance that those people would not have been in the country. (Read more from “Trump-Bush Feud Fires up Over 9/11” HERE)

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GOP Vet: Trump Win Looking More and More Likely

By Byron York. “I’ve resisted the idea that Donald Trump could and would become the Republican nominee,” writes GOP strategist Alex Castellanos in an email assessment of the presidential race. “Unhappily, I’ve changed my mind.”

Castellanos, who once said flatly that “Trump is not going to be the nominee,” writes “the odds of Trump’s success have increased and been validated in the past few weeks.”

The key indicator, Castellanos says, is the fact that Trump dipped in the polls and now appears to be rising again. “In my experience, that tells us something important,” Castellanos explains:

Republican voters went through a period of doubt about Trump, an understandable window of buyer’s remorse. They went shopping for someone else — but returned, finding no acceptable alternative who could match Trump’s bad-boy strength and his capacity to bring indispensable change. … Fearing they have only one last chance to rescue their country, they found no one else as big as their problem.

(Read more from “GOP Vet: Trump Win Looking More and More Likely” HERE)

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The Inside Story of Trump Campaign’s Connections to a Big-Money Super PAC

[Editor’s note: This smells like another Establishment hit on Trump. Although we are not endorsing his candidacy, it’s apparent that the Ruling Class is hitting Trump for using the tool they designed and employed to keep themselves in power] As he brags that he is turning down millions of dollars for his presidential campaign, Donald Trump has leveled a steady line of attack against his rivals: that they are too cozy with big-money super PACs and may be breaking the law by coordinating with them . . .

What Trump doesn’t say is that he and his top campaign aide have connections to a super PAC collecting large checks to support his candidacy — a group viewed by people familiar with his campaign as the sanctioned outlet for wealthy donors.

This summer, Trump appeared at at least two events for the Make America Great Again PAC, which took his campaign slogan as its name and received financing from his daughter’s mother-in-law. A consultant for the super PAC is a Republican operative who has previously worked with Trump’s campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, according to several people with direct knowledge of their ties.

The Trump campaign’s links to the low-profile group could undercut the candidate’s posture as the only Republican in the race who has not sought to curry favor with wealthy donors, a central part of his anti-establishment message.

Lewandowski denied that Trump or the campaign had given the green light to Make America Great Again. (Read more from “The Inside Story of Trump Campaign’s Connections to a Big-Money Super PAC” HERE)

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