Trump refuses to debate on Fox News tonight, so Ted Cruz challenges him to a series of mano a mano debates. Trump thinks about this for three seconds, and comes back…
This is like swatting flies.
The Democrats better have a more effective answer to dealing with this than any of the midgets in the Republican field.
Why should the D’s have a “better” way of dealing with this?
Last I heard, the candidate who was behind in the polls was the one who wanted debates. According to every poll I’ve seen for 2 months both Bernie AND Hillary far outpoll Trump.
WI: Trump is -9 and -18 (1/29/16)
MN: Trump is -6 and -16 (1/24/16)
NH: Trump is -9 and -13 (1/20/16)
US: Trump is -10 and -15 (1/17/16)
IA: Trump is -8 and -13 (1/10/16)
and the Knee-capper? US: Trump is -11 against Hillary according to FOX NEWS! (12/18/2015)
I know we are too far out for general election polls to mean much, but this is seriously not good for the Trumpster. I could only find 2 polls taken since Dec where Trump defeats Hillary: One from NC and one from Florida. (and I hope to hell I didn’t misread them)
Let the SOB whine and not show up. I can’t see either Bernie or Hillary having problems debating an empty chair.
The Fox poll shouldn’t be interpreted as pro-Trump and anti-Dem biased as at the moment Fox would rather tear Trump down.
Trump definitely has some problems, but he’s a wild card and capable of getting some substantial swings in his favor. Because his policies have been so vague and so protean he can tailor them to poach key constituencies like anti-war groups and the working poor.
It’s my understanding that the GOP has the same rule wrt to unsanctioned debates as the DEM party (may be where DWS got the idea).
Trump has been getting more media attention for declining to participate in the debate tonight than all the other candidates combined. Wonder how the rating will go for this Fox GOP debate.
We have a similar thing happening on the Democratic side. Hillary is whining because Bernie won’t give her an unsanctioned debate on February 4 just before she loses the NH primary, after Hillary had used her former campaign co-chair to prohibit this exact kind of debate as DNC Chair. For Bernie to participate his campaign says the DNC must sanction the February 4 debate (after saying they would not) plus add three new DNC sanctioned debates in March, April, and May, not on weekends. Dealing with midgets indeed.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/sanders-clinton-debate-race-changed
debate deja vu — ’08?
My memory isn’t playing tricks on me — Flashback: Clinton pushed for more debates in 2008
When will people tell this woman to go pound sand with her billionaire buddies?
How’s that for a snappy comeback from the Democratic nominee?
He doesn’t want to show up for a debate with Hillary or Bernie, let him. Who cares, except the news outlets that have promoted him so relentlessly because they want the ratings to sell ad time. Moron has nothing intelligible to say anyway. Let him run on his putrid personality and let voters decide if they really want a feces-throwing Howler monkey as president.
And if that’s what America wants, we’re already so far gone it doesn’t really matter if it’s Trump they vote for; with a brain-dead majority, this country was nothing more than a wasteland already.
The Donald is currently on all the other cabal stations. All day there was no other news besides The Donald. But, by tomorrow, we may find this all was just noise and maybe too much noise. At some point The Donald is going to stop only talking about himself.
what’s with Ben Carson’s eyes tonight?
Might not have titrated his little blue pills correctly — apparently nodding off more than usual. Perhaps he went to the Admiral Stockdale debate prep school.
don’t know what you mean re: admiral stockdale
1992 VP debate
Didn’t get any better for him after that.
It was downright painful, even cringeworthy, to watch.
That’s my real time recollection as well. More surreal than Palin because we’ve seen no-nothing, sort of dumb VPs before.
sad, because seems like he was quite a person and certainly not just some grifter as Carson seems to have spent recent part of his life
Made even more painful because (at least to me) Stockdale appeared to be a reasonably decent and honorable, if sadly naive, guy who’d been flung headlong into the meatgrinder without any preparation for what he was going to face. That’s a massive failure, even betrayal, by the people who put him there.
He wasn’t a child or an adult that others have an obligation to protect or duty not to take advantage of a person’s youth or frailty. He chose to be there. If he or his family and associates had concerns about a decline in his cognitive functioning, they were the ones that were in a position to persuade him not to accept Perot’s offer or inform Perot that he wasn’t up to the task.
yes, as a lifelong military guy he was accustomed to certain well defined guidelines of respect and boundaries in interactions. very sad.
Or, what Errol said. ;o)
Cross-posted from my diary – Oregon Standoff: Finicum Preferred Death Above Arrest.
Trump’s feud with Fox is kind of scary. Fox News – like Limbaugh, Beck & Palin – is a lucrative operation that caters to stupid wingnuts and makes tons of money in the process. But to the majority that elects the president each 4 years, Fox News is a pathetic joke. Stewart, Colbert and SNL have long since humiliated Fox to the point of no return (among the majority). The media-savvy Trump seems to get this and he’s laying the groundwork to do to Fox what he did to Jeb. As a child I remember hearing people who lived in Germany during the nazi period talking about the media savvy of Hitler as if – at the time – he seemed to them to be a charismatic and relatively harmless maverick. I hope we can trust the crucial swing state voters to not be taken in by Trump after he completes his purge of the laughably discredited conservative movement. It’s the rust belt states that worry me – OH, PA, MI, et al. Never underestimate the stupidity of the average American.
The problem is, the other republicans want his voters.
Democrats don’t need his voters.
Presidenting isn’t a tv game show. Trump gained prominence by being a birther, for which he was humiliated by Obama. He’s a racist, a philanderer, he’s been bankrupt four times, he’s mobbed up, he’s an embarrassment, a clown. You come out 100% with an absolutely unapologetic line on him and you never ever back down on it. You treat him like the contemptible creature he is and never ever waver on that.
I mean, Trump has more upside than any other Repub candidate, but he also has massively more downside. In a contest with a candidate who realizes he/she has no need for the core Trump voters, Trump’s media bubble could pop very quickly.
When Trump dumps on the Democratic candidate would electorate have more sympathy for Hillary (the experienced former Secretary of State) or Sanders (the angry old guy)?
Similarly, when the Democratic candidate responds to Trump’s dumps, will they be more likely to laugh and cheer along with Clinton (a Clinton) or Sanders (the old Jewish guy)?
To turn around a slightly overused phrase: Bernie hasn’t even started on Trump yet! Hillary got her turn with the idiots doing the email thing but that was nothing like what Trump will throw at her. At the start of the primary cycle Bernie wanted to engage with Republicans, any Republican, in an early debate during the primary cycle simply because as he put it, they have been getting away with murder. Because Bernie is a master politician who thinks on his feet, I can’t wait to see him take on Trump.
If Bernie wins the nomination the PUMAS will just have to suck it up once again. Bernie will be our old Jewish guy by then. Trump is going to have a real problem with Republicans because so many Republicans are already having a hard time choosing between Trump and Bernie because both are populist addressing a real anger. If anyone can turn them and expose Trump for what he really is, it’s Bernie.
If Hillary wins the nomination I’ll probably do what I do now, just laugh at what comes out of Trumps mouth then cringe a little as I think about the future of our country because he’s going to beat her like a rented mule. Maybe the pity vote will be strong enough.
I’m going out on a limb here (not really, but snark is called for here) and say that I don’t think are many PUMA’s on Hillary’s side.
Bernie’s side … not so sure about that one. Marie3 is would have a better read on that than I would.
Well, `Party Unity My Ass’ is going to be an issue either way for the side that not only loses but also feels cheated or mistreated. I just say to the Hillary supporters; better you than me.
My only take (not knowledgeable enough to have a read) on the ’08 PUMAs is that they were a fringe group of stalwart Clinton supporters. It did seem to be tinged with racism, but that may have been the situation and wasn’t actually race based.
Wouldn’t be surprised if this time around they have rallied around Fiorina.
If history is any guide, sympathy for Hillary goes up when she’s bullied. But it does seem to depend on if the issue driving the bullying is based on something she did (or didn’t) do that most people would view as unacceptable and of importance.
Sanders is so clean that his opponent has been scrambling to concoct something that will stick or hope that the old GOP attack memes on Democrats will work with DEM primary voters.
There’s bound to be a bucketful of investigative followups on Trump’s new Vet site set up just for this event. He is cagey, give him that, he called on some pals to feed the kitty to get him to his $5million plus mark. But since many of the Vet organizations declined to accept funds or allow themselves to add to a Trump promo, the question of where and how those funds will be spent better be front and center.
And why, given a perfect spotlight moment, didn’t Trump promote a policy his admin would have to help vets? The answer just underscores why this is a campaign for Trump not a campaign for America.
Trump plays the White Version of ‘ The Dozens’ better than all the rest of them COMBINED.
OT:
Year-old document shows Snyder admin knew Flint water substandard
Rachel Maddow shares a new report from the Detroit Free Press showing a year-old e-mail acknowledging that the public water in Flint “does not meet treatment requirements” for state employees to drink, even as the Snyder administration was assuring Flint residents about the integrity of their water.
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